Customer Reviews

My Country Versus Me: The First-Hand Account By the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was Falsely Accused of Being a Spy

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I have read two books in which the authors have been attacked by two ominous powers, so they have written the books to tell their account of the stories. One is "Black And White On Wall Street" by Joseph Jett, and the other is "My Country vs. Me" by Wen Ho Lee. In the first book, one of the powers is the Big Corporation; in the second, it's the Government. But in both books, the second power is the same: the news media. For both of these men, their reputations were ruined by a two-pronged attack, first by the people who wanted to bring them down, then aided by a news reporting machine that didn't bother to check the facts but merely reported rumor leaked by the Powerful Ones. And in both books, the final judgments from the authoritative sources (the SEC for Jett, the court for Lee), revealed that all the claims of criminal wrongdoing had no substance, and that indeed these were witch hunts. (Both got slapped with minimal charges, but in both cases, after all the major efforts of the Powerful Ones, this was all they could get, which shows how weak their charges really were.) Trouble is, by the time these results appear, the public already has it in their minds that the people are evil.

And in both cases, it becomes clear after awhile that the motive for choosing these individuals was their race.

I subscribed to Brill's Content magazine, a journalist watchdog publication, in its beginning days, and I learned from that how the news media take rumors and leaked information, then report it without verifying it; then other news outlets pick up the story, and soon all the news media are reporting the same thing...and not a one has substantiated the story themselves. So everybody thinks it's true because it's all over the news.

These two books show how such lazy "reporting" can ruin someone's life. In the Wen Ho Lee book, even when some journalists did investigate, it's shocking how lame their "investigation" was. One reporter thought it notable that Wen Ho Lee grew *Chinese* vegetables in his garden. Oh boy! What irrefutable evidence that he is a spy! Listen, fellow Americans, you'd better watch what you grow in your gardens--it may determine your loyalty to your country! Another reported that Wen Ho Lee worked at a Chinese restaurant. Oh no! How could he! Certainly this must indicate that he is likely to be a spy! As ridiculous as that is, the journalist didn't even get it right--Lee had worked at a restaurant, but it wasn't a Chinese one, or even an Asian food restaurant. The journalist apparently just assumed that because Lee was ethnically Chinese, he must have worked at a Chinese restaurant.

After reading these two books and seeing the way journalists report things (as well as my personal experience), I no longer assume that just because it's all over the news media that it's true--and may be not even remotely true.

As for the Powerful Ones with the intent to destroy, each needed a scapegoat and did all they could to pin the blame on their chosen victim. For Joseph Jett, Kidder Peabody and General Electric needed to pin the blame on someone for the downfall of that financial enterprise. For Wen Ho Lee, the government needed to find a Chinese spy to prove they were not soft on China. The difference here, though, is that the government is supposed to be our protector of our civil rights. For Wen Ho Lee, the government was a humongous enemy that lied and cheated and used every form of harrassment possible to try to get him to confess to something he didn't do. One important lesson I learned from this, which other reviewers have mentioned, is NEVER TALK TO THE FBI!! Get a lawyer immediately.

I see that two new books are coming out on this subject. One is written by Turlock, one of the leaders in this awful witch hunt. Apparently, he is attempting to exonerate himself through this book. I don't see how he possibly can, which makes me want to read it. The other is an investigation from...shall we say, a journalist? ("In Search of an Enemy: Wen Ho Lee and the Revival of the Yellow Peril") Except, in book form, there is generally more care given than in the rush to have the latest hot story before a competitor gets it.

To me, Wen Ho Lee's story is totally convincing, and I highly doubt that these two forthcoming books will show that Wen Ho Lee did anything other than what he claimed to do in his book.

This book was deeply disturbing. It was sickening all the things the government did to destroy someone's life when the evidence did not support their accusations.

... to remind them that when politics drives criminal investigations, the first thing sacrificed is the truth. This book has a plot worthy of a John Grisham novel, with a host of powerful villains, starting with politicians on both sides of the aisle. Republicans from Christopher Cox to the appallingly ill-informed Bob Smith (who couldn't even distinguish between Wen Ho Lee and Bill Lann Lee) chose Lee as a scapegoat in order to bring down the Democratic presidency; the Democratic administration complied with the persecution so it wouldn't look soft on Chinese espionage. Other villains included Robert Messemer, the FBI agent whose repeated lying in court should have had him thrown in jail for perjury, Notra Trulock, whose mysterious hand in the investigation was never clearly defined (and who was later revealed to be a rightwing shill), and Bill Richardson, whose political aspirations are, quite rightfully, dead as dirt thanks to his performance in this matter. One must also add the combined forces of the FBI, DOE, and DOJ, all of them so intent on proving that Lee was their man that they were blind to the truth: that Lee was never a spy, and that his worst infraction was the downloading of files that he was actively working on. The reason for those downloads are explained and strike one as completely logical to anyone who has lost precious computer files during a crash, something that had happened to Lee during a previous computer fiasco at Los Alamos. (One should also add that while the FBI was spending millions of dollars pursuing Lee, September 11 was being planned right under their noses.)

But as culpable as the politicians and FBI villains are in this piece, they were, in truth, simply doing what they always do: bending the truth to get their way. The real villain, in my opinion, was the media, which was complicit in this witch burning. Journalists have a responsibility to seek and print the truth. In this case, they were shockingly negligent. In particular, the New York Times's Risen and Gerth come across as so egregiously shoddy and dishonest that they seem barely qualified to write for the high school newspaper. If the NY Times did not immediately fire them after this sorry episode, then shame on the gray lady of newspapers.

As in any Grisham novel, there are also heroes. The hero in this book is not Wen Ho Lee, who comes across as a naive and clueless victim. Rather, the heroes were his attorneys, who worked largely pro bono, against the powers of the U.S. government, to defend a man everyone had already labeled a traitor. Just as heroic was Judge Parker, whose clear vision and intelligence allowed him to see straight to the truth of the case. Thanks to these heroes, my faith in the U.S. court system was -- somewhat -- restored.

The moral of the story? If the FBI comes knocking at your door and wants to ask you a "few questions", shut the door, pick up the phone and CALL A LAWYER.

In this book Wen Ho Lee comes off as what I think he is, an uncomplicated, straightforward scientist and family man who got embroiled in a highly complex and ugly political game. His voice comes through clearly even with a co-author, although it alternates between simple grammar and highly polished constructions. Still, even in the polished parts, the thinking seems to be authentically Lee's own. This is a credit to Helen Zia, his co-author, who put the book into the first person in his voice based on the account he gave her.

The book is loaded with details about the case, from the investigations leading up to it, to his own account of his actions, to the legal battles, and the conclusion with the apology from judge Parker. There's a lot packed in here but it is extremely readable.

Lee's account of why he copied the data onto tapes is technically detailed and convincing.

Some of the other facts in here are astonishing, like the fact that the data was assigned a "classified" rating only after the government found evidence of copying. That is just one small point in this amazing story.

Wen Ho Lee's book covers some things missing in
Dan Stober and Ian Hoffman's "A Convenient Spy"
book. Lee's book covers the fact that when Lee
was working on his computer programs they were
not considered classified/secret but PARD, protect
as restricted data(p.118-119,262-263). Stober and
Hoffman always referrs to the programs as classified
or secret and fails to state that said the programs
were reclassified as "Restricted Data" and "Secret"
ONLY AFTER Lee was fired from his job. Lee defends
his motives to backup his data files in this book
(p.118-124). Lee also gives the reader an idea
of the politics inside the National Labs that
Stober and Hoffman totally misses. It appears
from Lee's account that he may have earned the
ill will of some scientist at the Lab for previously
criticizing the lab's "crown jewels." ( p.112-114,
228-229,271-273) Lee sometime for the sake of respecting
peoples personal lives refuses to provide any details,

e.g. Stober and Hoffman's book does details U.S
Prosecutor Gorence's personal affair/contact that
forces him to step down but Lee/Zia avoided providing
an explanation (p.279). Lee's book provides
transcripts of his interrogations and gives a
better overall view of the political movement
surrounding his case than the Stober and Hoffman book.
( p. 139-144,153-157). Stober and Hoffman's book is
more myopic and lacks the political background
setting that shows how race, politics, national security,
and law enforcement merged into a racial
profiling witch hunt. Wen Ho Lee's account is
based on what he considers important and sometims
that isnot always chronological, e.g. his account of
the plea bargining process only comes as the
very end of the book when it becomes important
to understand how the case ends (p.311-312)

Part I
the investigation, Tiger Trap, carol covert, FBI interrogation/accusations.

Part II
Wen Ho Lee's life and career, getting legal help, the FBI searches Lee's home, getting bad press - the media leaks,
anti-china/chinese espionage politics, the FBI dragnet -family members subpoenaed. going on CBS '60 minutes.' Getting arrested

Part III
denial of Bail. difficult/special imprisonment situation, the court case, CIPA (p.263-264,286-287), Alberta, Racial profiling
testimony by Robert Vrooman and Charles Washington. Trial guilty plead bargining.

I just finished reading Wen Ho Lee's book and I couldn't help feeling that I had just read a story about my father, or any worker who gets caught up in the net others with political egos and hypocrisy run rampant. He describes in the book his very practical steps and yes, little lies and actions that aren't quite by the book but that we all do to survive at work. Nothing he did warrents the action taken, only that he was ethnically Chinese. You see in his book how he grows from basically a person trying to do a good job and live a simple life, to one who understands the real motivations of people in politics and how necessary it is to participate in the American system. I think the words "Ever vigilent" are made all so real thru his story. I recommend this book for a first hand account of history, instead of the slanted and spinned accounts in newsmagazines like Newsweek or the other book out now written by some reporters.

I was anxious to read this book. Here my government, meant to serve and protect me, was using the very laws to do that to punish someone because he fit a racial-profiling matrix. I am not denying Dr Lee committed a security infraction, but other government officials have committed worse errors without punishment. I am floored (but not surprised) by the outrageous actions of our so called protectors. From the FBI to the White House, powers were completely, if not illegally, misused. This was nothing more than a present day witch hunt. Unfortunately, Dr. Lee was the supposed "witch." As I am in the computer industry, I completely understand Dr Lee's purpose of making backups and backups of your backups. The way the FBI, congressman, senators and others twisted the facts in this case should make every American concerned.

...In "My Country Versus Me", Dr. Lee had repeatedly admitted to the security infraction that he committed, and he was even man enough to say that he deserved some kind of punishment for the "mishandling" of data. But the WHOLE point of the book, and the most important lesson one could learn from the entire affair, was the cruel and unusual torture he suffered as a result of rampant anti-Chinese racism, fed by paranoia as well as ingrained prejudices in those who persecuted him and aided in his persecution...look at the first paragraph on p.178 of the book just to get a sense of what some of the main revelations and their context in this whole saga were about. The book tells a lot more, and the messages and lessons are very powerful...For the record, Dr. Lee committed a trivial mishandling of "PARD" data which was NOT "Classified", and it was THREE levels below "TOP SECRET". This is not a minor detail, because for this small security infraction, Dr. Lee was thrown in jail without either a charge or a trial, chained and shackled and treated worse than some of the most dangerous criminals in America. Compare this treatment to the way former CIA director John Deutch, who actually mishandled "TOP SECRET" files, not only got away unpunished but was also promoted to active duties on governmental commissions and then pardoned by Bill Clinton. Or compare Dr. Lee's ordeal to the way LANL lab managers were given a week of vacation after a computer hard drive containing the real crown jewels of America's nuclear weaponry went missing for three weeks! The list of security violations goes on and on...But of course, they were committed by Caucasians, and Dr. Lee was a Chinese who didn't stand a chinaman's chance of fighting the entrapment of the FBI, DOJ, DOE, Congress, and the White House. The media consistently printed false information that humiliated him and his family, violated privacy laws, ruined his reputation, and further fanned the flames of anti-Chinese paranoia in the halls of Capitol Hill. Almost all of this transpired when the persecutors did not even charge him with a crime, because they could not produce a shred of evidence linking him to the accusations...

Frightening! There's no better word to describe what happened to Wen Ho Lee. Clearly, this is a case of racial profiling, but the Chinese--and Asian--community can now relax. The new enemies are Middle-Easterners, with hundreds now imprisoned in Guantanamo. And, one day we'll be reading yet another book by the Moslem prison chaplain who has just recently been arrested and held incommunicado for---who knows what? Under our present system of "justice," what happened to Wen Ho could happen to anyone. If you don't believe it, read this book. It's truly an eye opener.

Like most American, Dr. Lee was incredibly naive about his own government. If you don't believe Dr. Lee's version, which was just what I expected from DOE and the Labs management, then you don't understand your government. Like Dr. Lee, I was "investigated" and "followed around" by inept FBI agents, just for working at a National Laboratory and associating with Chinese (my wife and graduate students). In over 20 years at the lab I never worked on nuclear weapons, yet just associating with Asians at the time of Dr. Lee's persecution was enough to damage my career. Unlike some of the other "reviewers", probably Bill Richardson and the like, I know first hand that DOE and our government is guilty of racial bias against Asians and Asian Americans.

This was the first book I've read in a long time that I couldn't put down. I completed it in two sittings. It is very disturbing to me that an ordinary American citizen can be incarcerated for 278 days and never have committed a crime. This book decribes Dr. Lee's view of what happened and how. The local FBI had determined that there was no evidence to suggest that Dr. Lee might be a spy, but the DOE persisted. His description of solitary confinement is upsetting and frightening. It's enlightening and terrifying, but at the same time, it creates respect for the American legal system and the lawyers who fight for justice.