Commerce Secretary Appointment Draws Ire From Asian Americans
November 28, 2008
Community looks back at Richardson’s role in Wen Ho Lee Case
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s appointment this week as President-elect Barack Obama’s commerce secretary is being greeted with anger and disappointment by some who remember the former energy secretary’s role in the botched investigation and prosecution of scientist Dr. Wen Ho Lee.
In 1999, Richardson and several other Department of Energy officials publicly accused the Taiwanese-born Lee of stealing classified nuclear-related documents from the Los Alamos Laboratories.
Lee, who had been employed at Los Alamos for 21 years, was indicted and spent 278 days in solitary confinement. Meanwhile, the case became a national story as suspicions formed that Lee was performing espionage for the Chinese government.
In the face of insufficient evidence, Lee pled guilty to a substantially reduced charge and received a public apology from President Bill Clinton for his mistreatment at the hands of the federal government.
The future New Mexico governor came under fire for his role in the case, as allegations surfaced that it was Richardson who leaked damaging classified personal information about Lee in an apparent attempt to smear the 69-year-old doctor in the press. Lee eventually received a multimillion-dollar settlement from the federal government and several media outlets in 2006.
Richardson’s new appointment has drawn fierce criticism from members of the Asian American community, many of whom still blame the New Mexico governor for perpetuating a harmful image of Chinese Americans.
“Richardson inflamed the stereotype that Americans of Chinese descent are easily disloyal citizens of our country,” said Henry Der who was Executive Director of Chinese for Affirmative Action in the 1990s. Der called upon members of the Senate Commerce Committee to investigate Richardson’s conduct as secretary of energy during Richardson’s confirmation hearings.
For critics like Der, Richardson’s refusal to acknowledge his own misconduct during the scandal remains a bitter sticking point.
“[He] needs to… apologize for the grave, calculated mistakes and harm he perpetrated against Lee and our nation’s sense of justice,” Der said.
Guy Wong, a member of a group of Chinese Americans who supported Wen Ho Lee during his imprisonment, went further in his criticism of the former energy secretary.
“Bill Richardson is simply a ruthless opportunist,” said Wong, who circulated a petition urging President-elect Obama to deny Richardson any cabinet position prior to Tuesday’s announcement. Wong criticized Richardson and other government officials for being “willing to lie, not just to Dr. Lee, but also in open court, in order to gain advantage over an innocent and powerless man.”
That Richardson’s appointment comes at a time of unprecedented economic turmoil concerns Asian American business leaders like John Jin Lee, chairman of the Asian Business League of San Francisco.
“Mr. Richardson’s association with the well-documented mishandling of the Wen Ho Lee case at the very least raises the question as to his qualifications,” said Lee.
Shien Biau “S.B.” Woo, former lieutenant governor of Delaware and co-founder of the prominent 80-20 Initiative, an Asian American political organization, had a different view.
“I doubt if we want to burn our political capital opposing the appointment of Richardson,” Woo said, questioning the notion that the Wen Ho Lee case was an important issue to Asian Americans.
In lieu of opposing the appointment and risk angering the Hispanic community, Woo proffered that the Asian American community should work to increase its influence instead of focusing on negatives.
“The politic way of doing things has always been not to be concerned with what others are getting,” said Woo. “We have to be politically astute. Otherwise we’ll never succeed in enlarging our political clout.”
Also Read: A Slap in Our Face: We can’t forget what Richardson did to Wen Ho Lee
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12 Responses to “Commerce Secretary Appointment Draws Ire From Asian Americans”
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Was Dr. Lee mistreated? Absolutely!!! Was he mistreated in custody by the Secretary of Energy? No!! Get over it!!! The judge who stated that Dr. Lee was mistreated at the hands of the FBI did so at Dr. Lee’s sentencing hearing. Does anyone in the Asian community get that??? Let me repeat - AT HIS SENTENCING HEARING!!!! He pled guilty, and the first question the judge asks is: Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty and for no other reason? Dr. Lee answered in the affirmative.
Richardson said he would have taken the same measures if his last name was Gonzalez or Garcia or Smith. You need to believe him, as he has no history of a personal vendetta or bias against Asian Americans.
Of course Dr. Lee was not in Secretary Richardson’s custody so he could not have personally shackled Dr. Lee. But Congressional Records clearly stated that the Dept of Energy requested the type of treatment Dr. Lee received in his pre-trial detention.
Judge Parker’s statement in court reads, in part, “I believe you were terribly wronged by being held in custody pretrial in the Santa Fe County Detention Center under demeaning, unnecessarily punitive conditions. ”
“In this prosecution, the more important members of the President’s cabinet were the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Department of Energy…”
“Since I am not a member of the Executive Branch, I cannot speak on behalf of the President of the United States, the Vice-president of the United States, their Attorney General, their Secretary of the Department of Energy or their former United States Attorney in this District, who vigorously insisted that you had to be kept in jail under extreme restrictions because your release pretrial would pose a grave threat to our nation’s security.”
Dr. Lee was charged with 59 counts and had to plead guilty to one count in order to get out of jail.
Here is another excerpt from Judge Parker, “I want everyone to know that I agree, based on the information that so far has been made available to me, that you, Dr. Lee, faced some risk of conviction by a jury if you were to have proceeded to trial. Because of that, I decided to accept the agreement you made with the United States Executive Branch …” Judge Parker realized there is always a risk of going to trial, even for an innocent man.
Also please read http://chineseamericanissues.blogspot.com/
Lee:
DID take classified work files unrelated to and far beyond the scope of his own work..
DID delete the security classification headers from these files..
DID transfer these files from a classified network onto an unclassified network..
Those files WERE later accessed from a location outside of the lab, UCLA.
So they botched the case OJ style, and Lee gets out of the major charges as a result. But the jury of asian public opinion makes him out to be a saint. puh-lease.
I think Obama needs to appoint at least one or more API on the table for his top administration. We came forward to vote him historically. He knew that. Now he has to do the same for API and Hispanic Americans as well as everybody else who share the pie.
He would be disfranchise his promise if he does not do so. In the case, we would have to vote him off in four year.
Well, folks, aside from the facts that the Richardson appointment is an obvious quid-pro-quo for that all-important in=house “endorsement” in the home-stretch of the party nod AND the concomitant fact that this is Big-Bro Politics, kids, no one here seems to remember that the man was kept in ‘LEG IRONS sans a shred of dignity. Sure, it’s politics and it’s cynical, but Dr. Wen-ho Lee was a human being and he was treated like a rack of lamb at a barbecue.
And let no one forget that the pre-Cheney/Bush neocons like Chris Cox had also been busi9ly building political bonfires out of just such anti-Asian “fuel.”
By the way, isn’t Cox currently the chief high poohbah of some major federal “agency:?
Yup, the wages of “sin” may not be “death,” and, for sure, the wages of political opportunism appear to be higher office and greater clout, not to mention tax-free perks and privileges, never mind the jeers and taunts of their lessers. Lessees? That too.
P.S.: I hope Dr. Lee and his family are getting some solace from their settlement “millions,” but were I he, I would spend the rest of my life exposing the system AND its chief rugrats who insist on soiling the carpet that others have to clean up.
P.P.S.: David Buchanan, if you truly believe that Gov. Richardson was guiltless in the persecution of Dr. Lee, then I congratulate you as a master at exculpation.
As for getting over it, can YOU get over the fact that WE dropped the only two nuclear bombs on civilian targets? EVER? To date, that is. Keep an eye on that lovely Kashmiri frontier.
Richardson owe applogized to Wenho Lee before be elected to gov. officer!
Had Richardson been man enough to fess up and admit that he made a mistake in mishandling the Wen Ho Lee case, his role would have been forgotten by now. As it stands, we cannot allow him to forget.
SB Woo is making a serious error in judgement when he thinks our objection to Richardson jeopardizes the relationship between Asian Americans and the Hispanic Community. We do not excoriate Richardson for being half of a Hispanic but for his conduct. Furthermore, the Hispanic Community has plenty of role models and standard bearers and do not need someone as unexemplary as Richardson.
Dr. Koo nails this one too.
“Principals” sans “principles” are a dime a dozen.
Like most of our “movers” and “shakers,” never mind our putative “leaders.”
The S.B. Woos among us may achieve “office,” but never the underlying obligations to their “mandate” from their petitioners.
This week’s bloody headlines from Mumbai should inspire anyone interested to check out the Wikipedia entry, “contested” as it is, on the sad post-Gandhi “history” of the Kashmir/Punjab.
It doesn’t “excuse” the 19 “jihadists” but it sure as Hell illuminates the motives AND the “rationalisations.” On both “sides.”
And it should remind “us” that the most likely “terrorist” threats here continue to be the “homegrown” variety, going back to Oklahoma City and the growing incidence of mindlesw, to those who try to “thin” that is, mayhem and murder. In whatever name or angst or hate and fury.
Also, as for the references to 9-11, to those highly placed watchmen who ignored/abandoned their posts the morning of that fateful day.
As Barack Obama appears to becoming a half-bake Oreo pre-Inauguration, let’s give the guy at least 100 days AFTER
. . . 199 datys AFTER Jan. 29?, the prognosis appeazrs bleak, especially when you consider the pro-AIPAC, or should that be pro-Neocon ?, investmen t of the incoming POTUSes’ “cabinet” and “advisors.”
I, for one, did NOT vote for a continuation of Dubya’s delusional and demonic imprimatur. Either domestically OR, very especially, abroad.
The domestic “meltdown” is desecrable enough, but our insistent and continuing blunders overseas is monstrous.
How many more literally “mad” “jihadists” do we intend to create, motivate, and detonate? Wherever. Including our own growing ranks of the disaffected hopeless and the hateful, as in full of hate?
This promises to be an ironic “holiday season” celebrating a “Son” of “God” who would denounce ALL the madness.
And while too many, me included,, continue to man the mercantile barricades of the material and the meretricious, or should that be me-me-me?, the outcome of this extremelhy “gross” “national” lack of production will prove but a footnote to the literal life-and-death struggles we instigate, along with others?, in the Mideast, the Punjab, Thailand, the Philippines, Nigeria, Somalia, the sub-Sahaara, Venezuela, Bolivia, Paragua?, and points North, South, East, AND West.
This nation refuses to listen to their true patriots and their elder statesmen, and continue to place their bets, odds-on, on those who have proved, consistently, both idiotic AND counterproductive to the proclaimed qnd perceived self=inte4est of the people AND the state.
No, friends, that is, assuming I have any, the solution lies OUTside of this box of self=constructed constrictions.
And neoconnings can only constrict and narrow our options until there is only one left — auto da fe. Self-immolation. The ultimate funeral pyre.
Is there any way to add my signature? Please let us know! I tried hard to find out how to join but could not see any information anywhere.
Thanks!
I don’t know Wen Ho Lee and do not know all the details in his case, so I can’t call him a saint or anything but a victim. The way the Dept of Injustice handled this case is shameful and inexcusable. Lee was certainly a victim of national, anti-Chinese hysteria. The Dept of Injustice lost all objectivity in running the Lee investigation and severely abused him, which was another reason they failed so pathetically in court.
Even Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen, two Americans who really screwed America, were handled with more dignity and less abuse. Both of these Benedict Arnolds deserved shackles. Our American intelligence system may never recover from the damage these two infidels caused. We probably haven’t had a single Russian defector for the past ten years, and are not likely to have another.
In case anyone has forgotten, Lee downloaded unclassified information in 1994 which in 1998 was reclassified “Secret.” Judge Parker did you ever consider this a violation of “ex post facto” rule of evidence?
If the information Lee was alleged to have downloaded to a PC was about the W88 miniature warhead for ballistic missiles, how could that be unclassified? If classified, it should have been Top Secret, after all wouldn’t information regarding such sensitive information related to nuclear warheads for our nuclear submarines, if released to unauthorized persons, cause extreme and grave harm to our national security?
In my opinion it appeared that the Justice Department did not have a solid case on Lee. If they had, they would not have been so desperate to pressure him with heavy shackles and conducting open surveillance on his family hoping to force a confession. One of the basic rules a Federal agent is taught in basic school is that when a confession is needed to make a case for a trial, you don’t have case. The DoJ succumbed to the political pressure of the toxic atmosphere in Washington DC.
Yes, there were 59 different charges filed in the complaint against Wen Ho Lee, he was convinced by his lawyers to confess to one charge, that of downloading (Unclassified) information from a Los Alamos mainframe to a PC. The term Unclassified was not included in the admission, as that would have delayed his release. After thousands of investigative man hours, and several million dollars of investigative time expended, the FBI had to save face. Thank you Mr. Lee for cooperating.
Politicians like Richardson and Cox are among the many politicians ( I did not say all politicians) who can not be trusted with promotions to high positions. Cox is a person who could have, should have, stopped the corrupt practices that has led to our current economic debacle. This debacle is a huge threat to our entire nation , which all of us, especially our future progeny, will pay dearly in higher taxes resulting in a lower standard of living. Many Americans will really suffer as they may never be able to retire. We did this to ourselves, even bin Laden has not hurt us so badly.
The cost of recovering from this mess is going to run into the trillions of dollars. We will have to borrow even more money if we want to improve our education system, invigorate basic government research, and even keep our military strong in the future. Thank you Mr. Cox.
President-elect Obama, you are putting Bill Richardson in the forefront of doing business with China. The US-China relationship is one of our most important bilateral relationships, especially our economic relationship. Richardson as the Commerce Secretary would be a disastrous decision. I hope you reconsider this appointment.
Unfortunately, the objections of Asian Americans will not be sufficient hackling to stop the Richardson appointment. Let’s hope I am wrong.
Roger Dong
To me the whole issue is not about race but about the person who did not have courage to apologize for his mistake. What happened to Dr. Lee has also happened to people of other races: whites, hispanics, blacks and others i.e. either set up or falsely accused. Go back to McCarthy era in late 50s…
My concern about Richardson is that he misses very important traits of a leader. Have courage to apologize when you make a misake.