For Asian Americans, Lee case raises spectre of racism at U.S. labs

After hearing the federal government's allegations of espionage against Wen Ho Lee last year, Chris Wu '02 felt angry for his nation.

Then Wu read the government officials' recantations. He learned that the government had misrepresented the strength of its case, keeping Lee in solitary confinement for seven months.

He saw the government reduce a 59-count indictment — swelled with accusations of espionage and smuggling of nuclear secrets — to a single felony count of downloading material onto an unsecure computer.

Lee, a Chinese-American scientist at Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico, was accused by the Justice Department in March 1999 of downloading nuclear secrets and sneaking them to the Chinese.

The New York Times — the paper that first broke the story and that Wu, a computer science major in the engineering school, followed closely — ran an unprecedented page two explanation last week acknowledging faults in its coverage. It admitted to accepting the government's story too easily and subtly assuming Lee's guilt.

Wu watched as the case against Lee collapsed, and he felt angry at his nation.

"I was born in the U.S.," Wu said. "I'm an American and I'm patriotic. But it hurts. I would stand up for my country. If there was a war, I would fight proudly, but here comes this thing. Here are these people who are supposed to look out for us and here they are making things up to make him look guilty."

"And as a Taiwanese-American, how am I supposed to feel about this?" Wu asked. "If I go out into the field, I might be targeted, too. Even though I'm an American, it makes me feel like an outsider. I think this says, 'Before you might be suspicious, but here's some proof that we really don't accept you.' "

Wu is not the only one who is angry. Last month, the Association for Asian-American Studies, a national organization of Asian-American scholars, voted unanimously to pass a resolution to urge Asian-American scientists to boycott U.S. national laboratories like Los Alamos.

Asian Americans on Princeton's campus were divided over the association's decision. N.P. Ong, a University physics professor who specializes in superconductivity, hailed the move as an appropriate step to fight ethnic targeting.

"Boycotting would be an effective way to get the message out," Ong said. "What the Wen Ho Lee case has done is to inject a sense of urgency into the current debates on ethnic profiling in these cases. Most Asian scientists feel Wen Ho Lee has been badly treated."

"If this serves to galvanize the Asian community this could be a good thing in the long run," Ong added. "This may not help Wen Ho and his current situation, but in helping to give the larger Asian community a voice in political affairs it could be a very significant event."

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

But others, like Wu, said they see the move as counterproductive, despite feelings that Lee was a victim of racial profiling.

"I'm angry about the treatment that Wen Ho Lee received, and I definitely think there is something underhanded going on," Wu said. "But I don't think boycotting U.S. labs is the answer. That would just lead to lower representation for Asian Americans in U.S. labs. A better way would be to have organized protests."

Politics professor Robert George, a constitutional expert, said he understands Asian-American concerns over the case. "If it's not racism, it's injustice," he said. "The government should take responsibility for two reasons: one, because that's what is right. Two, because that's the only way to overcome people's legitimate suspicions that race played a role in the case."

('Prince' Senior Writer Ben Grossman contributed to this report.)