WHEN WEN HO LEE WENT FREE
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
14 Nov 2000
- Suspected spy.
- Stealer of nuclear secrets.
- Taiwan-born.
- Traitor.These are some of the ideas that flashed through the mind whenever the media mentioned the name Wen Ho Lee to millions. They rarely said these things, but of course they didn't need to. You knew what they really meant when they said "accused Los Alamos nuclear scientist," and then heard the name, which shouts its ethnic Chinese origins.
Nor did the government pull its punches when it arrested and interrogated the diminutive, 60-year-old Asian-American:
"Do you know who Julius and Ethel Rosenburg were?"
"They stole nuclear secrets for the Russians! We put 'em in the electric chair-and we'll do the same thing to you!"
This "American citizen" was thrown into solitary confinement for the better part of a year--over 270 days--to wait for trial. Over 50 charges were leveled at him. Bail was denied, and FBI supervisors falsely testified that he had flunked a lie detector test.
When Dr. Lee's lawyers petition the Court for bail, the government requests draconian conditions for bail: tapped phones, sweeps of his home, monitors on his person, limits on discussions with his wife! And then, after 9 months in repressive solitary lockdown, one week after bail was denied, the U.S. government approves a plea agreement, which consisted of a guilty plea to one count of the 59-count indictment, and time served.
No spy counts; no espionage charges; no substantive offenses... and less than a year in prison.
The spectacle of this relatively tiny man, bespectacled, a hint of a smile on his face, accompanied by tall, hulking, armed government agents symbolizes the inherent disadvantage and powerlessness that a so-called citizen has when the government is against you.
Was the prosecution of Dr. Lee a case of prosecutorial racial profiling? Ask yourself if he was a British immigrant, or a German immigrant, or a Czechoslavic immigrant, would this have occurred? You know the answer.
He was Chinese, Asian, yellow, and other. He was the forever foreign, and the embodiment of "Yellow peril." He was, well, "inscrutable" (you know how they are).
He was everything but American, for, as much as the media enjoys projecting Asian-Americans as the so-called "model minority," this is but a false label used to flog and demean the classical "unmodel minority"--blacks. When push comes to shove (as during world War II) the government, using the media, can as easily demonize a people as it can a man; and it can just as easily intern many as it can one man.
What Dr. Lee's experience teaches is how empty the presumption of innocence is, and how powerful is the presumption of guilt. It teaches us the role of the media in justifying the unjustifiable.
All Rights Reserved © Mumia Abu-Jamal, 2000
