THE
STRANGE CASE OF THE EVAPORATING EVIDENCE
The
Los
Angeles Times
reports the inside story of a recent meeting between Janet
Reno, the White House, and top FBI officials, in which the
"mishandling" of the Los Alamos investigation was
presented to the Administration, and a new course of action
was decided on. One official is quoted as saying "I think
they're basically saying 'Perhaps this never happened. It's
like a deer caught in the headlights. They don't know whether
to go forward or backward." The case against Lee, according
to the Times, appears to have "evaporated."
NEVER
A HERO
Wen
Ho Lee has yet to be charged with any crime – and has
yet to become a civil rights hero. This in spite of the fact
that the government is now admitting that thousands
of people had access to the alleged "stolen secrets"
of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Supposedly, no one in the government
can yet figure out how their "Operation Kindred Spirit,"
initiated in 1996, came to focus on a single government lab,
Los Alamos, and a lone and rather shy Chinese-American scientist
from Taiwan.
OPERATION
"KINDRED SPIRIT"
Yeah
– right! Remember, these FBI clowns called their
campaign of harassment "Operation Kindred Spirit."
It is almost like something out of a fourth-rate espionage
thriller, and surely the meaning of this lurid symbolism is
not open to much dispute. For the word "kindred"
clearly denotes a familial, ethnic solidarity that was supposed
to be at the core of Lee's alleged treason. You don't need
a hidden microphone to pick up the sentiment at the core of
their phony "investigation." In other words, the
psychology of the FBI investigators went something like this:
"Those goddamn gooks, everyone knows they all stick together,
and I don't care if they are American citizens."
Can't you just hear it?
EVER
FORWARD, NEVER BACKWARD
The
anonymous official cited by the Los Angeles Times was,
unfortunately, wrong in assuming that "they don't know
whether to go forward or backward." They are going forward,
and with a vengeance. Instead of giving it up, dropping the
charges against Lee, and going home, the witch-hunters have
decided to expand their investigation, and have announced
that they will examine more than 500 "potential suspects,"
as the Los Angeles Times put it. More than 500 potential
Wen Ho Lees is more like it.
LIMBO
A
nationwide witch-hunt, in which Chinese-Americans are sure
to be targeted, is now underway – and we hear not a peep
about it from the various "civil rights" organizations,
and such champions of the oppressed as the American Civil
Liberties Union and the US Civil Rights Commission. The Chinese-American
community organizations, perhaps out of a fear of a backlash,
have not made much of an issue out of this gross injustice.
For years the government has been "considering"
filing charges against Lee, and they still maintain that it
is possible. In the meantime he is left cruelly dangling,
his loyalty and his status in a seemingly endless state of
limbo, and the patriotism and loyalty of all Chinese-Americans
is similarly put in question. Does anyone deserve to be treated
like this – and how have the Clintonians and their Republican
allies gotten away with it in the era of political correctness,
when ethnic discrimination (either real or imagined) is severely
punished by the courts of law and public opinion?
WHAT
IF WEN HO LEE WERE BLACK?
The
source of this liberal indifference to an outrageous case
of official persecution and shameless racism is that Chinese-Americans
do not fit into any of the common victimological categories.
If Wen Ho Lee were Lester B. Brown, unjustly accused of handing
over nuclear secrets to, say, South Africa, the silence would
not be quite so deafening. But why? Clearly, the Chinese –
and all Asian Americans – do not measure up to the strict
victimological standards maintained by the enforcers of political
correctness. Their income is well over the national average,
and their children outperform virtually all others academically,
particularly in the realm of math and science. While Asian
liberals and their leftist confreres like to denigrate the
idea of Asian Americans as "the model minority,"
and aver that this is really an insult, in reality it is clearly
a high compliment, and one that has been hard-earned. Instead
of demanding quotas, sympathy, and official recognition as
an official victim group, Asian Americans have taken a more
traditionally American road to economic and personal fulfillment:
they have excelled. Instead of maintaining their cultural
isolation, all the better to define themselves as "oppressed,"
Asian immigrants and especially Chinese Americans have assimilated
effortlessly and with relative rapidity into the American
scene. Since human achievement is more commonly resented than
admired, especially in our rotten culture, they are routinely
snubbed and generally disliked by other minorities, and largely
ignored when it comes to any discussion of racial or ethnic
prejudice in this country.
THE
POLITICS OF RESENTMENT
Politically,
this anti-Chinese resentment translates into a coalition between
two groups: the labor unions – who have always loathed
the Chinese for their rigorous and highly competitive work
ethic – and from the right wing of the War Party, centered
in the Hate China Lobby and fueled by the ongoing witch-hunt.
This is the kind of sentiment that the new investigations
are designed to play to, with politicians of both parties
shamelessly selling their souls to curry favor with the warmongering
unions and the Hollywood liberals crying cinematic tears for
Tibet. A more sickening display of hypocrisy and cynical manipulation
would be hard to imagine.
THE
SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD
Against
the backdrop of ever-worsening US-China relations, and the
looming threat of a major Taiwan crisis, the launching of
a new investigation into completely unproved allegations of
Chinese espionage does not bode well for the future of Chinese-Americans
– or for the peace of the world. How many more Wen Ho
Lees will it take before the politicians get off their bandwagon
and confront the essential fact of the case? What is almost
never discussed is that the documents handed over to US government
officials that supposedly indicate a massive espionage operation
maintained by the Chinese government were handed over by an
unnamed individual who was later shown to be an agent of Beijing.
This fact is being kept alive due almost solely to the efforts
of the Los Angeles Times, Jude
Wanniski, and former congressman Jack
Kemp, whose office released a comprehensive report on
the subject, the
Prather Report, which showed that little if anything was
stolen – and that US persecution of other Chinese-American
scientists did not begin with Wen Ho Lee.
HOLD
ON THERE!
But,
wait a minute – why would the Chinese government
plant an agent who would then hand over phony documents purporting
to implicate his employers in espionage against the US? It
doesn't make sense – or does it?
THE
CONTEXT
Looked
at in the context of the internal struggle within China, the
actions of this agent make perfect sense. The struggle within
the Chinese Communist Party, between orthodox Marxist hardliners
and pro-market Dengists aligned with radical reformers, continues
to escalate – and this curious "spy" incident
may be a key battle in the war between the Chinese factions.
TURNING
THE TABLES
The
reformers favor an opening to the West , but they have been
put on the defensive by the steady worsening of US-China relations.
On the other hand, the defenders of orthodoxy are the inheritors
of the radical xenophobia that animated the infamous Boxer
Rebellion and the hatred of all things foreign prevalent during
the Cultural Revolution. They are now on the ascendant, in
large part due to the increasingly overbearing arrogance of
the US, especially its stance in regard to Taiwan. Think of
it this way: What if China, at the height of the American
civil war, had suddenly intervened, sending aid, sailing its
fleet across the Pacific and securing California for the separatist
Confederacy? The impression made on the average Chinese by
US aid to Taiwan, and the interposition of the American fleet
in the Straits, is similar.
WHO
BENEFITS
Manipulating
this resentment is the most powerful political weapon in the
Chinese hardliners' arsenal, and they are using it to great
effect as the Republican China-bashers, this time in concert
with Janet Reno and the Clinton administration, launch an
investigation that will – they hope – turn into
a show trial. Wen Ho Lee is the fish that got away, but now
they are casting a wider net, hoping to haul in a fresh load
of scapegoats to fuel their deeply cynical and dangerous Hate
China campaign. Who benefits? The War Party in this country,
especially its Republican wing, reaps a political and financial
windfall. It means they can keep their followers and true
believers in a constant lather over alleged "treason"
and "Chicom spies" and write endless screeds about
the Dark Secret at the heart of "China-gate." This
is especially good for fundraisers headlined "Red Chinese
Spies in the Clinton White House" in lurid scarlet letters.
But
whose interests were most served when that mysterious
agent of Beijing walked in out of the cold and delivered the
documentary "evidence" of Chinese espionage to American
officials? The biggest beneficiaries of this rapid worsening
of relations are not in this country, but in China, specifically
in the orthodox wing of the Chinese Communist Party, and particularly
its military and intelligence sectors – a crowd our unnamed
Chinese defector, later unmasked as a double-agent, was undoubtedly
acquainted with. Now as the hardliners gain the upper hand
in Beijing, and the next generation of leaders is prepared
to assume the mandate of Heaven, war clouds gather on the
Asian horizon. Meanwhile, in the US, the call to defend Taiwanese
separatists as we defended the Kosovars grows louder, and
on the right this is naturally this is all done in the name
of "anti-Communism" – as the heirs of Mao look
on approvingly, and use the backlash in their own country
to smash the reformers and consolidate their own power.
THE
WAR PARTY, AMERICAN DIVISION
The
case of Wen Ho Lee, and the unending government probe into
apparently baseless allegations that he is a kind of orientalized
Julius Rosenberg is intimately bound up with the politics
of interventionism, and the division of labor between the
Democrats and Republicans when it comes to policing the world.
The Democrats have staked out their claim to the "humanitarian"
interventions in out-of-the-way and lefty-trendy places like
East Timor, Bosnia, and Kosovo, while shying away from areas
bordering both the former Soviet Union and China. The Republicans'
preferred theater of operations is in precisely those areas
neglected by the Democrats: China, at least as far as the
ostensible "conservatives" are concerned, and the
oil-rich Caucasus region bordering the Caspian sea, on while
the Bushian-moderate-internationalists are intensely focused.
Between the two parties, there isn't a single inch of the
earth's surface that does not need to be defended by American
troops and succored by Americans' tax dollars. It is a convenient
arrangement for both parties. This way, the American people
never get to vote on the foreign policy initiatives of their
leaders: by controlling both major parties, and increasingly
regulating the conduct of political campaigns and limiting
political speech via phony "campaign reform," both
parties are absorbed into a single party: The American War
Party. Now, aren't you glad we live in a democracy?
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