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Wen Ho Lee: Pawn in a Global Game?

Wen Ho Lee

By Franz Schurmann/PNS

Last fall it seemed the Wen Ho Lee case might quietly fade away. He pled guilty to one of the 59 charges against him. Judge James Parker sentenced him to time served, and then he astonished the courtroom and the country by apologizing to Dr. Lee for the treatment inflicted on him. A bit later President Clinton, while not apologizing, took critical note of what happened to Lee.

Since then, Wen Ho Lee only made news when he did not appear on Clinton’s pardon list. Then, suddenly, The New York Times — the newspaper that lit the media fire that led to Dr. Lee’s misfortune — published a long two-part article, followed a day later by a major story in the Washington Post. Lee has been pushed back into the hot glare of media publicity.

Behind both articles was word that both the FBI and federal prosecutors were unsatisfied with Lee’s answers during the interrogation he agreed to as a condition of his release. They are going to ask Judge Parker to extend the time allotted for interrogation.

But the Post article introduced a new aspect to the case. According to “sources close to the investigation,” Lee’s answers during the 60 hours of interrogation “raised new questions about his relationship with China and Taiwan.” Sources also spoke of “dinner meetings with Chinese and Taiwanese nuclear weapons scientists.” And finally, he acknowledged receiving a U.S. $5,000 honorarium from the Taiwan’s Chung-shan Institute which does secret weapons research.

This comes at a time of high political tension in East Asian capitals and Washington. The Bush administration has already made some real changes in the country’s East Asia posture. National Security Council director Condoleezza Rice announced the end of a “policy of ambiguity,” meaning that if “either side,” China or Taiwan, alters the status quo, America will take action. Since normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, the posture has been “we won’t say yes or no.”

Even before he was elected, Bush called for closer military cooperation with Japan. The pro-Taiwan World Journal of Jan. 31 published a long editorial hoping that Japan will not rush to accept the invitation. And a lengthy unsigned commentary in Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao Feb. 7 noted there have long been two factions in the U.S. State Department — one holds that China is the central power of the region, like it or not; the other sees China as a threat to be contained through alliances with friendly powers, especially Japan.

A similar division of opinion also exists in Taiwan. Some say that accepting China as the central reality of the region is a way out of their economic problems. Others, such as former president Lee Teng-hui, see China as a threat and call for reliance on Japan.

China’s reaction to the Lee Teng-hui line is undisguised fury.

There is no question that tensions are rising about the China-Taiwan relationship in Beijing, Taipei, Tokyo and Washington. But could they affect the Wen Ho Lee case? The Washington Post article makes it clear that interrogators were chagrined when they did not get answers they wanted about his contacts with Chinese and Taiwanese nuclear scientists. Sixty hours is a very long time for any human being to be pressed again and again for certain answers.

Yet relations between China and Taiwan have taken a great leap forward recently. For the first time, ships on both sides have docked at the other’s ports. Two Xinhua news agency journalists have arrived in Taiwan for a month-long visit. A high-ranking Taiwan official was quoted in the Sing Tao Daily of Jan. 30, saying China is already moving fast towards full globalization, and that will bring the two closer.

For the severely harassed Dr. Lee, it would prove best if his case is allowed to fade away once again. But the opposite could happen if Taiwan and China come together, either by force or peacefully. That would constitute a change in the status quo, and there are factions in the national security community who would see that as a grievous loss for the United States.

Some 50 years ago, the question “Who lost China?” reverberated throughout the United States. Hopefully we will not hear the question raised, “Who lost Taiwan?”