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#51 - Wen Ho Lee - Traitor?
During the last year we have watched as the US government has tried to build a case against Dr. Wen Ho Lee. Dr. Lee used to be a scientist at the Los Alamos nuclear labs. Over the past few years there have been claims of our nuclear secrets being transferred to the Chinese. There was a claim in 1998 that it was a Chinese-American at the labs who did it and soon after Secretary of Energy Richardson fired Dr. Lee.
Nine months ago the government arrested Dr. Lee and charged him with 59 counts of mishandling the data and had him held. They specifically had him held in solitary confinement and shackled overtime he left his cell. They convinced the judge he was a high risk to flee the country. Now nine months later all the suddenly they decide they will accept a plea bargain on one charge and let him free.
What has happened? If he was such a treason committing person we could not risk bail, and had to confine him in solitary confinement, why is he walking the streets today. Obviously the Justice department determined they had no case other than he had downloaded data on an insecure computer at Los Alamos Seven tapes of the data are missing. They want to know where the seven are. I would pose the comment that the tapes could have disappeared a short time been copied and returned they would probably never have known it. Oddly this is the same facility that lost two disk drives with all out nuclear secrets this spring and no one prosecuted, and Dr. Lee had nothing to do with them as he was in solitary confinement. Not only that but the disks had no security on them.
It is time we tighten security in the nuclear labs and on the computers there. The Secretary of Energy is responsible for this and should resign or be fired by Clinton. Too many breaches during his watch.
The federal court judge apologized to Dr. Lee for his mistreatment. It is time for the attorney general who brought this case to resign. It is also time for Janet Reno to resign. They are now trying to claimn that they had evidence that he was guilty. If so then they should resign for having let a major case like this collapse. However I think they realized they had no more of a case against Dr. Lee than others at the facility. For what he pleaded guilty to there was absolutely no reason to lock him up like they did and to spread stories like they did.
President Clinton says he feels for Dr. Lee and that we bundled the case and that he disagrees with Reno on outcome. Clinton can easily do more than feel for Dr. Lee. There is an action that he can take, and only him, to relieve the pain for Dr. Lee and to show to the nation that wrong was done. He should immediately pardon Dr. Lee. Dr. Lee can then try to rebuild his life. There are claims that we dropped charges because he was going to force government to reveal secrets. What secrets? The government's claim was that the Chinese already had them. Was Dr. Lee going to let out what really happened in Area 51? Odd that we can have trials and convict other spies without this problem. President Clinton, call the dogs off and pardon Dr. Lee. Then let's get the security straight at Los Alamos. Appears to be time to clean house there.
Dwight
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