The Real Danger

On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Don Svet dealt a blow to American justice by denying bail to Wen Ho Lee, the scientist arrested more than 10 months after his firing from Los Alamos National Laboratory. Was he a flight risk? Hardly. The man has been under constant surveillance for more than three years. FBI agents have followed him to fishing holes and TV cameras have filmed him in his front yard. As the judge put it, Lee’s release would be a “clear and present danger” to the country he’s called home for almost four decades. But if that’s true, you’d think the government would have more on Lee than allegations he had transferred data between a couple of computers, both used for work.

Lee was charged with 59 felonies, half of which the Washington Post notes were derived from never-before enforced provisions of the 45-year-old Atomic Energy Act. Prosecutors never state straight out that Lee is an A-1 China spy, only that he could “reasonably” have expected that at least some of the transferred files would be slipped out. Thus, maintains the United States, Lee moved data from a “secure” Los Alamos computer to his own “open” PC “with the intent to injure the United States, and with the intent to secure an advantage to a foreign nation.”

To bolster their point, FBI agents testified that the information Lee downloaded could make a pile 134 feet high if printed out. Gee, if all the stuff on a couple of computers here (or at the San Francisco Chronicle or Examiner, to use some non-Asian examples) were printed out, quite a substantial mound of paper would result. And come to think of it, most workers everywhere have copied files here and there, usually because they’re stuck working on them over the weekend at home or because the computer ate their hard drive the last time they forgot to make backups. The latter reason is along the lines of why Lee has said he transferred files.

In a country where one is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, why is the government insisting that his primary motive was to hurt his own country? Perhaps that is because his own country -- this one -- sees him as a genetic traitor, given his Chinese ancestry. Could anyone imagine this happening to a John Smith (or even to a Hans or Pierre)? Perhaps the government sees in Wen Ho Lee an easy target -- a “model minority” who will remain docile and unquestioning.

The case for both assumptions -- given recent disclosures by high-level DOE officials, let alone historical precedent -- seems stronger than that which argues for keeping Lee behind bars. The fact that he remains in jail represents a clear and present danger to all Asian Americans.

All Asian Americans Matter

As it should be, our outrage about Wen Ho Lee’s arrest is shared. News and commentary about his indictment has rapidly filled our fax and e-mail in-boxes -- from the Organization of Chinese Americans, Committee of 100, the Steering Committee for the Dr. Wen Ho Lee Defense Fund and other groups and individuals. All declared Lee a victim of ethnic scapegoating, and all declared their commitment to righting that wrong.

At the same time, we must not overlook other wrongs, such as the fact that our fax machine has yet to spit out one concerned letter about the family of Kao Xiong, 31, who early this month shot and killed his five children before turning the gun on himself (cover story, Dec. 9). Lt. John Kane of the Sacramento Police Department, said of the rampage: “I’ve been on the police force for 25 years and have never encountered something this bad, never this bad.”

Police still don’t know what prompted Xiong. Some have speculated it was a combination of isolation from the mainstream and poverty -- the nine-member Xiong family lived in a one-bedroom apartment.

In many ways, many Hmong are unlike other Asian Americans. The statistics from the 1990 Census illuminate just how big those differences can be. For example, among Hmong Americans only 19 percent of the women 25 years and older graduated from high school, and perhaps more disturbing, their per capita income was $2,692, far below the national average of $14,143.

Those differences cause many Asian Americans to distance themselves from the Hmong, much as longtime German American Jews distanced themselves from their east European brethren in the early 1900s. The Hmongs’ obvious social and economic injustices have gotten precious little attention from the mainstream Asian American organizations -- even though we’re sure they would all denounce any supposition that they care more about Americans of Chinese or Japanese descent than about those of Hmong or Cambodian descent.

In this case, we would do well to learn from the Jewish community, which has discovered the value of unity in strength. We can, too.