1999. Wen Ho Lee

1. Wen Ho Lee’s Biography

He is a scientist and a specialist about nuclear weapon designer. He was born in 1939 in Taiwan China. Later He moved to the United States in 1965, and continued to study engineering in Texas A&M University. In 1974,He becomes a U.S. citizen and in 1978, he got hired as scientists in weapon design at Los Alamos’ National Laboratory in New Mexico. He accused as a spy, who steal nuclear information from Los Alamo’s National Laboratory to Chinese government in 1999.

2. Nuclear Spy Scandal

Since Wen Ho Lee was invited to China to speak with scientists in the 1920s. Even though he actually met the Chinese scientist who questioned him about the high technology information in order to build the nuclear missile, Wen ho Lee said that he never answered any questions, which is related to the classified information as required by security regulations. Later, he got suspected as a spy by the secretary of Energy Bill Richardson. In 1999, he got arrest by FBI because of taking top secret information to China, and he got 59 counts of illegally downloading classified data from the computers at the Los Alamos weapon lab. As a result, he was in jailed in solitary confinement for nine months, and released on the time when government could not probe any things. In fact, he was charged only one count of mishandling sensitive documents, and he did not require pre-trial jail because other 58 illegal actions were dropped.
* Wen Ho Lee's Story*

3. Analysis.

He was treated as a spy regardless of his the U.S. citizenship, and loyal works to the U.S government in order to make the U.S stronger. Because of the bias thought at that time, he was totally treated as a Chinese. Without a real trial and clear evidence, he was in jail and his name was mentioned on the media such as newspapers and television that were unfair and illegal treatments. On the U.S. constitution, all the U.S. citizens have to be protected by the U.S. and all the humans have to be treated equally. However, a lot of the Asian Americans often treated very unequally as other race of U.S citizens such as white and African American. It is very hard to prove that Asian American’s loyalty toward the nation just like the Wen Ho Lee. However, the Supreme Court judge, Jame A Parker, and the U.S. president, Bill Clinton, officially apologized to the unfair and unequal treatment of Wen Ho Lee. This means a lot to Asian American citizens because American presidents and Supreme Court judge are the top leaders of the U.S. Not only did they aware of the illegal treatments to Asian American, but they also try hard to protect Asian Americans from the bias or stereotypical unfair treatments just like Wen Ho Lee.