I hadn't heard anything about Wen Ho Lee for a while. A little searching and...
I find this to be upsetting. Guilty or innocent, he will remain in prison thru his trial that isn't scheduled to start until November 6. I see little difference between this and many things we condemn in China.
Ron
From: Albuquerque Journal
Wednesday, April 26, 2000
Lee Gets More Freedom
By Ian Hoffman
Journal Staff Writer
Fired Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee is perhaps enjoying a greater measure of freedom this week, now that his attorneys are regularly meeting him in Albuquerque and Los Alamos for consultations.
But Lee's ankles stay shackled for those visits, and he remains jailed under restrictions tighter than those for any other prisoner in the United States, one of Lee's defense attorneys told an American Civil Liberties Union forum here Tuesday.
"If you have the misfortune to be accused of a national-security crime like Dr. Lee, you can just take the Bill of Rights and throw it out the window," Lee attorney Nancy Hollander said of his jailing.
An FBI agent still must be present and taking notes whenever Lee talks to his family, by phone or in person.
"There is never a moment when he can have an intimate conversation with his wife," Hollander said. "Every other prisoner in this country, including those on death row, can speak by telephone through glass and can have an intimate moment with their loved ones."
It took months of negotiation, she said, to allow Lee to listen to classical music on a portable radio, such as other prisoners can readily purchase inside the jail for $20.
Lee, 60, is jailed in Santa Fe awaiting a Nov. 6 trial date on charges of copying to tapes a wealth of computerized U.S. nuclear-weapons data, primarily explosive simulation programs and the weapons designs fed into them.
The extraordinary watch over Lee springs from FBI warnings that Lee, 60, might utter a deceptively innocuous phrase ? "Uncle Wen says hello," was one FBI example ? and signal accomplices to kidnap him or locate some of the tapes.
The tapes hold dozens of files designated "Protect As Restricted Data" or PARD. Los Alamos lab applied the PARD label, and a lower level of security, to printed and electronic information never formally reviewed for classified information but thought to contain "restricted data," the classification category for information on designing and making nuclear weapons.
A fellow weapons-lab scientist said he fears a trial will be poorly suited to weighing the subtleties of nuclear weapons, what about them is truly secret or valuable to a foreign nation and what is not.
"There are scientists with great credentials who are going to disagree (at the trial), just as they disagree over global warming and other things," said William Sullivan, an engineer who has worked on weapons for Sandia National Laboratories.
So far, Sullivan said, prosecutors and Congress have made a muddle of a complex field, most recently treating weapons codes used for "virtual nuclear testing" as the equal of bombs and warheads.
Asian-American advocates have rallied around Lee and the distrust that allegations of Chinese nuclear espionage has created.
"The necessary premise of the case against Dr. Lee and all these surveillances of Chinese-Americans is that there is a serious and covert threat posed to our nation by the People's Republic of China," said former federal prosecutor Nelson Dong, secretary and general counsel to the Committee of 100, a New York-based organization of Chinese-American leaders.
The easing of Lee's imprisonment came last week as the federal government opened two Secure Compartmented Information Facilities where Lee can study classified material with his attorneys. |
