Students Protest Treatment of Alleged Spy

Students and professors who attended a teach-in last night vowed to raise awareness of what many of them called the American government's unjust treatment of Taiwanese-American Wen Ho Lee, who is accused of violating national security regulations.

"Most people are innocent until proven guilty; Wen Ho Lee is guilty unless he is proven innocent," said MIT Professor Hugh Gusterseon.

Leaders of the "teach-in" at Emerson Hall, sponsored by the Chinese Students Association (CSA) and the Asian-American Brotherhood (AAB), said the government is placing Lee in solitary confinement because he is Asian-American, not because he poses a security risk.

"I see this event as just one of a series of [racial] injustices in the history of this country," said Wei Zhou '01, co-president of CSA.

Lee, a former employee in Los Alamos Laboratories "X Division," which handles top-secret information about nuclear weapons, has been charged with 59 counts of violating national security procedures by mishandling classified information. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

Government officials claim that Lee downloaded classified files onto portable computer tapes. Officials say these files contain enough information to rebuild the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal.

At issue are seven tapes that the government has not yet recovered. Lee says he has destroyed these tapes, but government officials say they doubt this claim and argue that he has not provided a satisfactory reason for creating these tapes in the first place.

Lee was first suspected of giving nuclear secrets to China, although government officials now say that there is not enough evidence to charge him with espionage.

CSA and AAB are planning to circulate a petition to Attorney General Janet Reno at next week's ARCO Forum event about civil rights and national security. They said they will meet early next week to consider organizing a rally.

In an open discussion following a "60 Minutes" profile on Lee, most who were present at the conference said that while Lee might be guilty of violating security rules, he is still being treated unduly harshly.

Lee is being held in jail until his November trail. He is kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, and, until recently, he was not able to speak his native Mandarin Chinese.

"It just seems like sick persecution of the man to keep him shackled and keep him in solitary confinement," Gusterson said.

Government officials said that Lee's confinement is due to his being a national security risk--still capable of delivering national secrets to other nations.

But most of those at the conference said this argument seems to make little sense.

"Taiwan. Beijing. They're about to go to war. Why would he sell secrets to the Chinese?" CSA co-president Jessica A. Eng '01 said.

Sophia M. Chang, a student at Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government, compared Lee's situation to that of MIT Institute Professor John M. Deutch, a former Director of the CIA who downloaded classified documents onto his home computer, which was connected to the Internet.

"It is very likely that [Lee] may have done something wrong," Chang said. "But the point is he was charged with a crime, while people like John Deutch are sitting pretty at MIT."

Government officials said that Deutch accidentally downloaded the files, while they believe that Lee had ulterior motives.

Not everyone in attendance said that Lee's confinement is unnecessary. Henry Y. Huang '01 said, while Lee was being singled out for his Asian ethnicity, he still posed a legitimate security threat.

"If those seven tapes are out there, you have to agree that it's possible he could tell people where those tapes are," Huang said.

"You can't just play the straight race card," he added.