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American Morning
Talk with Author of 'My Country Versus Me'
Aired January 16, 2002 - 08:20 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Chinese. As a result, Wen Ho Lee was fired from his job in 1999 (UNINTELLIGIBLE) held for nine months in solitary confinement and threatened with execution. Ultimately all but one of the 59 charges against Lee were dropped. Lee claims he was targeted because of his race, and he's telling his side of the story in a new book called "My Country Versus Me", and Lee's co-author Journalist Helen Zia joins me now from San Francisco. Thanks for being with us this morning.
HELEN ZIA, "MY COUNTRY VERSUS ME": Good morning.
COOPER: I just want to read you something. The Washington - in the book, you say that and Mr. Lee says that he was the victim of racism basically. A report in "The Washington Post" cited an internal report by federal prosecutor Randy Bellows (ph) who said that he found in investigation Mr. Lee had many shortcomings, but racism was not one of them. What evidence do you have to counter that?
ZIA: Well certainly some of the investigators themselves, the counter intelligence people and the security individuals at the Los Alamos national labs and within the Department of Energy themselves felt that when Ho Lee was not the man, but unfortunately he found himself caught up in a story that really began way before him, which was, if you'll recall during the campaign finance scandals, in the 19 - around 1996, 1997, 1998, there was really a big - quite an uproar to try to find some Chinese influence peddling within the Clinton administration.
Now within that dynamic, there was a belief ...
COOPER: You're basically saying he was a scapegoat, that he was sort of caught between - in a political game.
ZIA: Absolutely. He certainly was. In fact, right around the time that "The New York Times" released his name as the top suspect of being a spy for China, the FBI was writing memos saying that they should drop the investigation because he was really not the spy.
COOPER: Are there lessons in this case that you think can be applied to the hunt for terrorists within the United States today?
ZIA: Absolutely. I think the story of Wen Ho Lee is truly a cautionary tale for every American, especially at a time when we're concerned about the balance between constitutional rights, civil liberties, and national security. His case is an example of government excess, abuse of government power, and searching to fit an individual into a crime. And the government had to drop - they never actually charged him with espionage. They had to drop that. They dropped 58 charges of 59.
COOPER: Right. He was originally charged with 59 felony counts of mishandling classified information of violating ...
ZIA: That's right.
COOPER: ... Atomic Energy Act.
ZIA: Right.
COOPER: He ultimately pleaded guilty to one ...
ZIA: One (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
COOPER: ... charge of mishandling classified information. Why did he mishandle classified information? He downloaded top secret information onto a non-secure computer. Is that it?
ZIA: He downloaded classified information, and actually it's questionable whether any of it was top secret, and at the time that he downloaded it, and this is a very critical point, at the time that he downloaded it, they were not even classified as confidential. They had a different classification. It wasn't until after he was fired that the - they were reclassified as confidential and ...
COOPER: Just very briefly, the government has apologized to Mr. Lee. He is suing various forces in the government. Is he bitter?
ZIA: Well as you might suspect, somebody who has been put in solitary confinement for nine months and basically had his dignity and reputation and his life destroyed, he's got quite a healing process ahead of him. But if anything can come out of this, and certainly from his point of view, it's that America learned something that this doesn't happen to any other individual, especially in this post September 11th period that we're in.
COOPER: All right, Helen Zia, co-author of "My Country Versus Me". Thanks very much for being with us this morning.
ZIA: Thank you.
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