THIS
JUST IN
The
startling news that the Department of Justice security chief,
John Dion, is recommending against the prosecution of Lee
was followed by even more startling news: the resignation
of Mr. Notra Trulock, the Department of Energy official who
led the witch-hunt against Lee. This capped a week of new
developments in this long-simmering case, during which none
other than respected former Senator Warren Rudman (R-NH),
now serving on the President's Federal Intelligence Advisory
Board, weighed in on the side of the beleaguered Lee. Rudman
authored a scathing report that lambasted the investigation,
derided the lack of any evidence that Lee had passed on any
information, and raised a vital point: Why focus on Lee when
the information he is alleged to have stolen was available
in so many other places? With more than two dozen other
possible sources of the security leak, why did Trulock –
who has three other grievances filed against him by Department
of Energy employees – home in on Lee, a Taiwan-born ethnic
Chinese?
THIN
AIR
This
question was trenchantly answered by Robert Vrooman, former
counterintelligence chief at the Los Alamos Laboratory, where
Lee worked, who declared that the case against Lee “was
built on thin air.” Vrooman verified what we have been
maintaining in these pages all along, and what Lee said on
Sixty Minutes: the Feds are scapegoating Lee because
he is ethnic Chinese. Their whole case is based on ethnicity.
Who else are the alleged “kindred spirits"
here, but that traitorous Chink and his Commie masters?
TURNING
THE TABLES
Although
fired from a job he held for decades at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory, in New Mexico, Lee has not been charged with any
crime and stoutly maintains that he is not guilty. Although
his name has been dragged through the mud by government officials,
including Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, it looks like
he may never get his day in court. His big chance to prove
his innocence may only come if he turns the tables and takes
the government to court – a distinct possibility.
A
PUNK RAP
The
embarrassing truth, for both the administration and its Republican
enemies like Rep. Chris Cox, is that there is simply no
evidence that Lee ever spied for China, or for anybody else.
Secretary Richardson has vehemently denounced Lee and defended
his firing, on the grounds that Lee transferred technical
data into his secure home computer: but there is no evidence
that Lee transmitted anything to the Chinese or that the information
ever left his secured computer – one that was so secure
that Lee complained that even he sometimes had difficulty
gaining access to it. Even the New Mexico district federal
prosecutors, who are chomping at the bit to go after Lee,
are stumped as to what charge to hang on him, aside from “mishandling”
classified information. But what kind of a punk rap is that?
DOUBLE
STANDARDS, ANYONE?
The
Clintonians are rightly afraid to indict Lee on this arcane
charge, or any other – not because they are guilty of
conspiring with Beijing to deliver nuclear secrets in exchange
for campaign contributions, as some of the more rabid Sinophobes
claim, but because ex-CIA chieftain John Deutch was just caught
“mishandling” some very highly classified information
far more egregiously than Lee. It turns out that Deutch, now
retired, used to routinely cart home Top Secret files in his
suitcase. For this transgression, exposed at the height of
the spy hysteria, Deutch had his security clearance revoked.
Will they dare to prosecute Lee for the same infraction, and
go for jail time, while Deutch goes free?
STRATEGIC
INTELLIGENCE
Although
the arrogance and cruelty of this administration is for all
intents and purposes limitless, they do have some tactical
sense. Federal officials say that the reason for their lack
of enthusiasm for a trial is that it would reveal too much
about the sources and methods of U.S. counterintelligence
operations – but don't you believe it. The real reason,
as is always the case with this administration, is politics.
Such a trial would radically alienate the Asian-American community
during an election season when they could very well be the
swing vote in the pivotal states of Washington and California.
Instead, the Democratic strategy is to let the Republicans
play the role of the heavies – and let them pay the political
price.
CHUMPS
As
usual, the chumps are falling for it. Governor Pete Wilson
having already succeeded in alienating many California Hispanics,
the state GOP is going two for two with party Vice Chair Shawn
Steel's enthusiastic endorsement of the hate campaign against
Wen Ho Lee and Chinese-American “subversion." As
an official of a party which is already fractionalized and
rapidly becoming politically marginalized, Steel has not only
signed on as a cosponsor of David Horowitz's crazed crusade
against the Yellow Peril, but somehow finagled the financially-strapped
California party into paying for 3,500 copies of Horowitz's
pamphlet, The
Art of Political War. Now, if Horowitz is really
smart, he will market his anti-Chinese manifestos to the Democrats.
No doubt the Gore campaign would be interested in buying up
a bunch of them to distribute, especially in California –
if they haven't already.
THE
ART OF POLITICAL SUICIDE
The
irony of The Art of Political War, which is supposed
to be a “how to win” manual for Republicans, is
that with the help of Horowitz and the China-Haters, the burgeoning
Bay Area Chinese-American population will continue to be safely
contained within the Democratic ranks – this in spite
of the blatant and unrelenting hostility to China and all
things Chinese which is a tradition in the Big Labor wing
of the Democratic Party. Among the most ardent China-haters
in Northern California is none other than San Francisco's
own Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi – Democratic stalwart,
kneejerk liberal, and perhaps China's most vocal and persistent
congressional critic.
THE
ART OF POLITICAL WARMONGERING
As
an ex-New Leftist and red diaper baby-turned professional
China-baiter, Horowitz should really write a book on “The
Art of Political Warmongering," for surely he
is an expert on the subject. For years he has been beating
the bushes, drumming up whatever remnants of support there
were for restarting the Cold War: for him the Wen Ho Lee case
and the Cox
Report were like manna from heaven. Without waiting
for such minor details as evidence or facts, the perpetually
hysterical Horowitz early on declared Wen Ho Lee guilty of
espionage:
HOROWITZ'S
STAR CHAMBER
“In
keeping with its relentless defense of a suicidal policy,
the Clinton Administration has failed to prosecute the very
spies who have been identified as being responsible for the
most critical thefts of American military secrets. . . Wen
Ho Lee, the man responsible for the most damaging espionage,
is known to have downloaded millions of lines of computer
code revealing the designs of our most advanced nuclear warheads.
But Wen Ho Lee today is a free man.”
DEFEND
AND PROTECT
Lee
is free because, in a free country, the government needs something
called evidence before it can indict, let alone lock
up, someone accused of a crime. He may have downloaded technical
information, but only into his own computer – a common
practice, as we shall see, that extended right up to the top
levels of the US government. Horowitz also claims that the
Clintonians have been “defending” and “protecting”
Lee – by firing him unjustly, smearing him, trying to
entrap him, and threatening him with prosecution. I only hope
that, some day, someone will “defend” and “protect”
Horowitz in a similar manner.
PUT
UP – OR SHUT UP
Newsweek
speculated
that although “prosecutors may never admit they went
too far in publicly fingering” Lee, in any event the
accused scientist “may be the one hauling the Feds into
court." Perhaps Lee's lawyers will also take a look at
the virtual cottage industry that has grown up around the
thicket of baseless and damaging charges against their client.
Hatemongers like Horowitz should be held to account. Does
Horowitz have some inside information, unknown to federal
prosecutors, that Wen Ho Lee is “the man responsible
for the most damaging espionage”? If so, then it is high
time he put up – or shut up.
HOROWITZ
DEFENDS TREASON
To
add insult to injury, Horowitz is not content to convict a
seemingly innocent man of espionage without citing a shred
of evidence – he must exculpate the crimes of a real
traitor in the process! In the midst of his unsupported accusations
against Lee, Horowitz has the unmitigated gall to write that:
“Unlike
China, for example, the state of Israel is a democracy and
a proven ally of the United States. Yet when an Israeli agent
named Jonathan Pollard was discovered stealing secrets whose
dimensions did not even approach the seriousness of these
thefts (no technologies, for example, were involved), he was
given a life sentence amidst the most solemn anathemas from
the officials of the government he betrayed.”
FREE
WEN HO LEE – AND FRY POLLARD!
Attorney
Joseph
diGenova, who prosecuted Pollard, has a different view:
“Pollard ranks among the four most serious cases of national
security damage in the history of this country,” said
diGenova on This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts
[10/25/98]. “Nothing matches what he did in terms of
the compromise of the technical intelligence capability of
this country and he put at risk human lives.” As noted
in the Prather
Report, released by the office of that well-known
Maoist, Jack Kemp, the so-called “legacy codes”
downloaded by Lee were hopelessly outdated, and would be of
little technical use to Chinese scientists. Another difference
between Lee and Pollard is that the latter was caught, red-handed,
and arrested outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, just
as he was about to seek political asylum. Not only that, but
Pollard never denied his guilt: instead, he boasted about
how much material he had handed over to a foreign government
and claimed that the US was unfairly persecuting and even
attacking Israel by withholding such information. Lee insists
on his innocence, while Pollard glories in his guilt. Now,
I ask you: what kind of person wants to jail the former without
evidence, while freeing the latter in spite of the evidence?
A
NEOCON CELEBRITY
Pollard
has become a celebrity among Israeli hard-liners and their
American amen-corner, the Mumia Abu-Jamal of today's neoconservatives.
These ex-leftists-turned-warmongering “conservatives,”
of which Horowitz is the epitome, who no longer have the socialist
countries to idealize, seem to have substituted Israel for
the late-lamented Soviet Union in their affections. Just as
in an earlier time such people signed petitions to free the
Rosenbergs and exonerate Alger Hiss, while calling for the
jailing of World War II isolationists like Lawrence Dennis
for “sedition,” so today their intellectual (and,
in some cases, familial) descendants downplay Pollard's crimes,
lobby for the commutation of his life sentence – and
howl for the blood of Wen Ho Lee.
WHO
BENEFITS?
Lee's
martyrdom at the hands of vindictive bureaucrats, vengeful
haters, and vaunting politicians of both parties is not just
a crime against a single individual, but an assault on a whole
people. The effect of the Sinophobic hysteria in Congress
and the national security apparatus has been to demoralize
and drive out not only Chinese-American scientists working
on government and defense-related projects, but also to cast
a pall of suspicion on all foreign-born scientists.
For if Wen Ho Lee can be demonized as the “kindred spirit”
of the “Red” Chinese, without proof or the pretense
of fairness, then so can any foreigner working in any
government or defense-related research facility. Instead of
ensuring a strong America, the crazed campaign to drive out
Chinese-American scientists from the government-controlled
sector of the scientific community is a big blow to the national
defense. Instead of encouraging talented Chinese science and
engineering students studying in America to stay, the witch-hunt
is driving them back to China – much to the satisfaction
of Chinese government, which is trying desperately to stop
the continuous “brain drain” to the West.
THE
STRUGGLE CONTINUES
Now
that the truth is coming out – and how I look forward
to the trial! – will the professional China-haters and
opportunistic politicians apologize to the man they wrongly
maligned? No way! Instead, they will go blithely on their
way to the next scapegoat, the next hate campaign, the next
overseas “threat.” The War Party's work is never
done – and, consequently, neither is ours.
A
FOOTNOTE
My readers may remember the
last time I dealt with Horowitz and his outfit [August 11],
in which I observed that his Hate China crusade seemed to
have fallen on hard times: "From the sad and somewhat abandoned
look of the
CNLM website – the only thing that has changed beyond
the initial postings a month ago is the date – Horowitz's
“Hate China” campaign seems to have fizzled out
before it ever began. The
Spark,
as the CNLN calls its online newsletter, has failed to
catch fire." Less than twenty-four hours after that column
was posted, the CNLM website sprang to life. After over a
month of complete inactivity, visitors to the site were suddenly
inundated with information about the CNLM's alleged successes:
click here
and see “Who Has order 100-plus copies of The Art
of Political War,” click there
and see a color-coded map that purports to show “Where
Activists Are Reading It” – all this in addition
to a complete list of the people and organizations who have
made bulk purchases. Ah, the power of the press is truly awesome
to behold. As for Horowitz and the CNLM, their reaction (or
overreaction) is not hard to fathom – when you're
in the radical wing of the War Party, overkill is an occupational
hazard.
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