Self Evident Presents: “When Your Country Doesn’t Trust You” (by WorldAffairs)

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Credits:

• Produced for WorldAffairs by Jarrod Sport, Teresa Cotsirilos, Joanne Jennings, and Elize Manoukian

• Research assistance by Taytum Sanderbeck

• Technical supervision by Jim Bennett

• Music by Blue Dot Sessions

  Self Evident is a Studiotobe production. Our show is made with support from PRX and the Google Podcasts Creator Program — and with the support of our listener community.

Transcript:

Julia: Hi, this is Julia, and this is Self-Evident. Today, we're sharing a story from WorldAffairs, a podcast from the Bay Area, all about international news. This episode is called "When Your Country Doesn't Trust You," hosted by Phillip Yun. It contains some history you might be a little familiar with already, or maybe not, about Asian Americans accusations of sabotage and spying and claims about national security.

That history is relevant to think about now with the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes and harassment during the pandemic, but pandemic or no, it all relates to fundamental questions about who is considered American and who is it? Just one. Since airing this episode, world affairs has reached out to the FBI for a statement regarding the  case, which you'll hear about in the later part of the episode, we're linking to their website in the show notes.

So you can see any updates there, and don't forget to subscribe wherever you get podcasts for more episodes, search for world affairs. That's one word, no space. Okay. Here's when your country doesn't trust you, 

Phillip Yun: You're listening to WorldAffairs. I'm Phillip Yun. Andy Kim believes in the American dream. His parents grew up poor in South Korea.

They moved to the U S, worked hard, and built successful careers. As a kid, Kim played baseball in New Jersey, and today he's the state's first Asian American Congressman. When rioters stormed the Capitol on January 6th, Congressman Kim sheltered in place in his office. The next day, he helped clean up the smashed furniture and the cigarette butts the mob left behind.

Then the Atlanta spa shooting happened. A white gunman killed eight people, six of them, Asian women, and a week or two later, Kim's five-year-old son asked if they could [00:02:00] talk. 

Andy Kim: He just said, You know, dada I have something I want to tell you about ,"and said that there was a bigger kid that was calling him, "Chinese boy, Chinese boy." You know, he's such a sweet kid.

He kind of laughed it off and said, um, you know, "I've kept telling the boy I'm a New Jersey boy," which I said that was so sweet, but you know, it was just a such a difficult experience because as a father, I just, I didn't know what to tell him. And I also just felt kind of helpless that, that like, what can I do to protect him and protect him from these types of discriminations, which, you know, could very well likely will get worse as he gets older.

Phillip Yun: And I'm curious, what did, what did you tell him? 

Andy Kim: It was tough. I mean, I, I tried to reassure him that he's doing the right thing in terms of standing up for himself, but, um, I've been thinking about it ever since. In fact, I even asked my mom, you know, for her advice, then [00:03:00] the way that I sort of learned it from my mom, it was just, eh, we gotta make sure that we fight this feeling of foreignness by showing that that there's a love here in our family and in our community. And I want my son to feel that. 

Phillip Yun: Kim says he wants his son to be proud of his ethnic heritage, instead of it becoming a source of anxiety or fear. Something pretty similar happened to me when I was five years old, too. Some neighborhood kids taunted me using racial epithets for Chinese and Japanese people.

Even though I'm Korean American, there was a lot of tension between the U S and Asia then. It was the Cold War. Most adults at the time had experienced World War II and wars in Korea and Vietnam. And when I reflect on what happened to Andy's son and me some 50 years apart, I can't help but to say this whenever tensions escalate between the U S and an Asian rival overseas, Asian Americans seem to bear the brunt of that anger at home.

Broadcast news clip:  Right now at 5:30 a man has been arrested in connection with multiple anti-Asian attacks in Brooklyn.

 Shouting in a Taishanese dialect a 75 year old woman says she was attacked unprovoked 

Phillip Yun: In the past year, reports of anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked in major cities. Community members attribute this to anti-Asian rhetoric around the pandemic. When Donald Trump was president, for instance, he called COVID-19 , "the Chinese virus" and "the Kung flu," but look for the Asian American community, 

this is an old problem. No matter how successful or patriotic you are, you can still get treated like a foreigner. Andy Kim has experienced that himself, even in the highest echelons of government. 

Before you were a Congressman, you worked at the White House in the National Security Council, the State department and USA ID.

And when you were at the State department, you had to deal with assumptions about how you looked. Could you tell me a little bit about that? 

Andy Kim: You're right. And I was a career public servant, and I worked on issues on Iraq and Afghanistan for a number of years. Had top secret security clearance. And I remember one day showing up for work at the state department and there was a envelope on my keyboard and I opened it up.

I had no idea what it was going to be. And I read through it and the letter was informing me that I was now banned from working on issues related to Korea. And I was very, very confused because first of all, I wasn't even applying to work on anything related to Korea. This was just sort of a proactive and preemptive ban.

And I was just, I remember just feeling this almost like a heartbreak. It w it was, it was really painful because it was this realization at that moment that I had that my government and my employer, and in some ways my country, didn't trust me. That they didn't want me in a situation where they thought I might choose a different country over my home country of, of America.

I, I was being seen as a potential threat or a liability. 

Phillip Yun: This week. We're looking at anti-Asian racism inside the U S government, how it impacts our foreign policy and how it can ruin people's lives. 

Andy Kim: Sorry, we can take this over again. 

Phillip Yun: I caught up with Kim a few weeks ago, right before he was called to the house floor.

We met a few years ago now. And just for the record, I even donated a little to his congressional campaign. Kim and I have a lot in common. We're both Korean American children of immigrants or born in the United States and like baseball. We both served in the state department and there were times that both of us felt like strangers there.

During the Clinton administration, I served as a senior advisor on North Korea diplomacy. So I wasn't prohibited from working on Korean issues like Kim was, but I did get a pretty explicit caution from a friend. I remember there was a mentor of mine who was a senior foreign service officer. And when he found out that I was going to be supporting some people with negotiations with North Korea, he pulled me aside.

And he said, "you know, when you walk into the room somewhere in various agencies in Washington, DC, and they look at your face and they see your last name, they're going to make certain assumptions about you. And so you've got to be very aware of that". And I'm curious if for you, was there something that was that explicit or was it just sort of that piece of paper?

You know, was there any response to any inquiries for you?

Andy Kim: Well, i, I tried to follow up on this and was told that I cannot appeal this unless. I was actually trying to apply for something related to Korea. So I had gotten no resolution from this. I got no sense of what triggered this and you know, what they were looking at so it was frustrating, but, you know, I, I had just, you know, I've had a number of instances over the course of my foreign policy career, where I remember, you know, for instance, I started off my career working on Africa issues and working at USA ID and and I, I, you know, I remember one instance where I went into a meeting about Africa and an older person in there you know saw me, he came over, talked to me and I said, "oh yeah, I'm just starting out. I'm brand new, working on Africa." And I just remember him saying, "oh, I didn't realize you people were interested in this topic."

And the person just started asking me, you know, why I'm not working on issues related to Asia. And so, you know, I've have had those types of experiences, quite a lot of them. And it does just kind of have some erosion effect on me. You know, it does have just this kind of feeling of am I really able to see myself having a long and fruitful career here where the sky is the limit

especially when, you know, if I'm banned from working on Korea, I started questioning, can I actually work a job on the seventh floor of the state department? Am I allowed to do that? If I got this kind of mark on my security clearance, you know, is that going to look down upon it? So there's just a lot of just kind of self-doubt that kind of kicked in because of that.

Phillip Yun: Let's talk about how, you know, stereotypes, perhaps even anti-Asian attitudes at the state department or in other government agencies affect and shape US policy. Um, can you talk a little bit about that? 

Andy Kim: You know, I think, I think it kind of comes to this idea of what we think about when we think about who is American.

It's also about how we're being perceived from other countries and, and from other actors, I remember this one time I was working on Africa and the middle east issues. I traveled a lot. I remember one time I was showing up in another country and I was supposed to be met at the airplane gate from officials from that host country.

And I remember I got off the plane, I went over to them and said, hi. And they said, "hi, we're we're here waiting for an American dimplomat." I just remember, like, I'm just like, I'm I'm right here. And it was, they looked at me with just such confusion and they said, "you? Like, you're you're know you're, you're an American diplomat?"

and, and so I, so there's, there's an issue here about just, you know, what do we showcase to the rest of the world? How do we understand and draw from our diversity? How do we use that as a strength and how does that help us actually shape policies?

Phillip Yun: Diversity isn't just an ethical issue. It's good diplomacy. A diverse staff can bring fresh perspectives to the state department at a time when the world is just getting more complicated. But Kim isn't alone this past March over 100 Asian and Pacific island Americans who worked in national security and diplomacy issued a statement saying that many of us have been targeted because we are ethnically Chinese or simply look Asian. This isn't just a problem for Asian Americans, by the way, some Black American diplomats for instance, have had to deal with relentless racial profiling. The state department is still a very white place.

40% of the U S population identifies as a member of a racial or ethnic minority group. Yet only 13% of the state department senior staff reflects this diversity. So how, how do we fix this then? You know, some people have called this a generational crisis in American diplomacy. 

Andy Kim: Well, we have to think about is where are we recruiting? Where are we trying to cultivate a new generation of diplomats and national security leaders? And I think that that's a huge part of it is making sure we're going out and engaging with diverse communities, engaging with schools and businesses and all others that we might not have been before. And that, you know, element of recruiting and engagement is so critically important for me, honestly, like it took a lot for me to feel like I could even apply to the state department because I knew nobody.

I like for me as a Asian American kid growing up in New Jersey with no ties. I remember the first day that I was down in DC, I knew zero people in the city of DC. Like my family had no connections, you know, so, so trying to find ways to go and connect in and, and get on the radar of people that might not necessarily be thinking that they're qualified or capable of doing this job.

But then there's also an element, not just at the recruitment, but the retention and the promotion. That is a huge problem. In fact, some of the recruitment issues are not nearly as bad as some of the problems that we see when it comes to retention and promotion. And I think that that is a broader issue about culture.

I mean, there's a lot the state department needs to confront and the government needs to confront just in terms of dealing with the modern workforce. You know, I remember very few Asian-Americans when I was working at the state department that were in some of the most senior positions and having someone like Harold Koh at that time, you know, working as the legal advisor at the state department, like that was just one thing that I looked, I was like, oh, okay.

Yeah, maybe this is doable. It means a lot to, to show that there is that diversity at the highest level and the highest ranks.

Phillip Yun:  It seems that every time there's high tension between the United States and another country, and this country is seen as threatening, it often spills over to American citizens who immigrated for the country for the region or whose ancestors did.

And I think it's particularly if those citizens are people of color, you know, we have the world war two internment of the Japanese American, the war on terror that fueled mass surveillance and an increase in hate crimes on Muslim Americans. Um, there are other examples, but this administration Biden administration considers China to be one of America's biggest rivals.

And when this threat is conflated, as it has been by others, uh, with COVID-19 fears, it seems that Asian-Americans are literally target's. A common element in all these situations is that leadership and words matter in this particular time in American history, what should we expect from our political leaders?

Andy Kim: Look, we absolutely need to make sure we're attentive to the words that we use, whether they're in Capitol hill or in the White House or, or elsewhere. We know how sensitive things are right now, especially during the pandemic, you know, right now so so many people are on such edge. And the discussion about COVID-19 fueled by the rhetoric of the former president and others has poured gasoline on this fire of foreignness and xenophobia that many Asian Americans, including myself have experienced over our lives.

And I think a couple of things that I think about next. One is that yes, the COVID crisis has made things worse, but it's so important to recognize that that's not the totality of what Asian Americans are concerned about right now. And I've had some people tell me, well, oh, I'm so sorry that, that the situation with Asian-Americans has gotten so bad during COVID, but the pandemic's almost over.

Don't worry. It's going to get better. That's literally what I've heard people say to me, because they think that, that my only concern is about Kung flu and things like that. That's not what, uh, you know, and I tried to explain that through the story about the state department or about my child, or about what happened in Atlanta, which was a, you know, a racism and kind of experience that that you know, a lot of Asian American women can connect in with just the hypersexualization that happens of Asian-American women. So for us to look at this for what it is, and be mindful about how our conversations about China could very well have an impact here right now. You know, I'm on the armed services committee, foreign affairs committee.

I spend a lot of my time right now talking about US foreign policy towards China. We are entering a new era of global politics, a new paradigm shift, like 9/11, like the fall of the Berlin wall and this uncertainty about what comes next, creates a tremendous amount of anxiety in a lot of us. And this is one of the great strategic discussions of our time, about great power competition.

How we engage with China, how we talk about China is going to affect also in some ways how Asian Americans are treated here in the United States. We need to make sure that there is a way that we can move forward on China and be strong in the ways that we need to as a country, while also making sure we're respecting Asian Americans here, respecting our diversity, respecting immigration, it requires this level of empathy that we're struggling with in this country. Right now, across the board, we have a crisis of empathy in our country.

We're struggling to see the world through someone else's eyes. We're struggling to understand how to walk in someone else's shoes. And I think it's on all of us to, to try to be mindful about that a lot more. And I think that that's something that I worry about a lot when we comes to what happens next.

Phillip Yun:  Congressman Andy Kim from New Jersey.

Thank you so very much for sharing your personal stories and your experiences, um, best wishes to you. And thank you very much. 

Andy Kim: Thank you so much for having me. 

Phillip Yun: You're listening to WorldAffairs is produced in partnership with KQED. I'm Phillip Yun as congressmen Kim pointed out, we're entering a new era of global politics with China and the United States poised for a great power competition.

Paradigm shifts typically create tremendous anxiety. And with anxiety comes fear. We've seen how that has played out for Asian-Americans during the pandemic, but this is not the first time our communities have been persecuted in times of crisis. 

Ray Suarez has picks up the story from here. 

Ray Suarez: Asian Americans are all too familiar  with the yellow peril stereotype.

It's the fear that east Asia poses a threat to Americans and our way of life. And for more than a century, this fear shaped the way the U S treated Chinese Americans. To get started, let's go back, way back to the mid 19th century. That's when people from China first started to arrive in the United States in large numbers, they took on dangerous jobs like working on the transcontinental railroad for lower pay than many white workers would accept. Resentment toward these new immigrants built up, along with an unfounded fear that Chinese laborers posed an existential threat to white Americans.

In response, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. It ban Chinese immigrants from entering the United States and stayed on the books in one form or another for over 60 years.

The US didn't repeal the law until 1943. During World War Two, China was one of our most crucial allies, but the friction between the US and China intensified almost as soon as the war was over in the shadow of the cold war and later rising economic competition. By the end of the 20th century, China had begun its meteoric rise and the us felt threatened by its economic prowess.

Even as trade relations were strengthened. In the late nineties as Bill Clinton was recovering from an embarrassing impeachment, the Democratic party was accused of accepting money from the Chinese government. Well, that was never proven. And Republican Congressman Christopher Cox publish a report suggesting Chinese sleeper agents were after US nuclear technology. 

Broadcast news clip: Damaging leaks of nuclear secrets to Chinese law.

CIA discovers evidence that a spy has helped China steal top secret nuclear plans, plans that allow China to duplicate one of America's most advanced nuclear weapons. He did not tell him. 

Ray Suarez: Then on March 6th, 1999, the New York Times published a bombshell story. A spy at a national lab in New Mexico had allegedly given US nuclear secrets to China, including the design of the most advanced warhead at the time, the W 88. 2 days later, before any arrests were made, the paper identified the suspect as a Taiwanese-American science named Wen Ho Lee. Energy secretary Bill Richardson ordered Lee fired from his job at Los Alamos immediately, even though he hadn't been charged with any crime. Lee was trailed by the FBI and hounded by the media. Here he is on 60 minutes with Mike Wallace. He was one of the few journalists at the time who was skeptical about the government's case against Lee.

Mike Wallace: Did you at any time pass any information, any U S nuclear secrets to the people's Republic of China? 

Wen Ho Lee: No. I never had found that and I have no intention of doing that at all. Period. 

Ray Suarez: We're revisiting the story of Wen Ho Lee, because we think it has something important to tell us about what's happening to Asian Americans today. To help us out, I invited two people who knew Lee personally.

George Koo:  So my name is George Koo. I'm a retired business consultant. I used to help American companies do business in the people's Republic of China. So I feel that one of my pro bono missions, if you will, is to explain America to the Chinese and explaining China to the Americans.

Helen Zia: I'm Helen Zia. I'm an author, I'm a former journalist, I'm an activist. I'm an American born Chinese and I have been writing about issues of social justice, about civil rights, about racism, about feminism and Asian Americans for a long time. 

Ray Suarez: George Koo and Helen Zia were both members of the Committee of the 100, a group of influential Chinese Americans who rallied support for Wen Ho Lee during what would become a long and painful ordeal.

George Koo: We of course, in the bay area, Became very actively concerned and started to speak up on his behalf and between March and when he was arrested in December, there were a lot of people thinking about how we can help Wen Ho Lee. 

Helen Zia: And so I, and a number of other Chinese Americans and Asian Americans started getting together to say, "Hey, you know, this is not justice." 

That no matter what the accusations are, that he deserved a fair trial. I was acquainted with the kind of racial profiling from the very early childhood, because my father who was an immigrant from China during the cold war, Uh, was investigated by the FBI. And we knew this because our neighbors and the neighbor kids would say, Hey, the FBI came to our house asking about your father.

So we knew about this as children, we had our phones tapped, our mail was opened and, and that was all because my father was not only a Chinese immigrant, but he was an educated man who spoke up about, uh, US foreign policy toward China and how wrong it was. So I grew up being very aware of how Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans were viewed in, in this country and the racism that we, and discrimination and bias that we had to face.

And so it was very clear to me that he was being set up and that he was presumed guilty, not presumed innocent.

Ray Suarez:  After Wen Ho Lee's name was leaked to the Times, the FBI felt pressured to interrogate him aggressively. He became their prime suspect, even though they had no evidence that Lee had spied or leaked classified information to anyone. Agents raided his home, seizing all his family's computers and anything that had Chinese writing on it. For nine months, Lee lived in limbo.

He hadn't been charged with any wrongdoing, but he wasn't able to work and could barely leave his home. 

Helen Zia: More than a hundred FBI agents were assigned to Wen Ho Lee's case. 

George Koo: So between March and December, for about nine months, there was sort of a Keystone cop scenario in play in New Mexico, where he was living. Every time he goes fishing, six FBI agents will pile into the car to follow him. 

Helen Zia: And it was not just six FBI agents who would follow with them. It was six cars would follow them around and wherever the family went. So it was this wagon train convoy. 

George Koo: The whole thing was a farce and it was a joke. So finally in December, shortly before Christmas, they arrested Wen Ho Lee.

Ray Suarez:  Lee was not charged with nuclear espionage because there was no evidence against him.

His indictment included 59 counts of downloading restricted data to unrestricted systems. The lead prosecutor argued Lee posed a threat to the safety of all Americans. 

Broadcast news clip: When you steal our nuclear secrets, we're not going to let you communicate with anyone. 

He's denied bail jail. 

Ray Suarez: The judge was convinced and Wen Ho Lee was placed in solitary confinement 23 hours a day.

He was permitted to see his family one hour each week, but in shackles. Well, Helen Zia, once 59 charges are approved by a federal grand jury alleging various types of security breaches, how is the story told in the American media? 

Helen Zia: There had already been the prelude to Wen Ho Lee basically pitting, uh, anybody who was Chinese of ethnic Chinese origin as potential spies for the PRC, you know, this explosive accusation, you know, that was a double broadsheet in the New York Times on the front page saying that as by worse than the Rosenbergs had been discovered at Los Alamos national labs, and of course the Rosenbergs were executed. And so, you know, the pump had been primed finding a Chinese spy.

And for, you know, the FBI and all that, that's a career enhancer. That will make your career, if you find a Chinese spy. And unfortunately, most of the media did not stop to question things. For example, that Wen Ho Lee, I mean, he was from Taiwan, but in the more than a year and a half of intense daily reporting, nobody questioned the fact that Wen Ho Lee was a third generation Taiwan born person who was very loyal and loved, loved Taiwan, and just other things, you know, the FBI reports saying that black helicopters from China would send ninjas over to Los Alamos.

To scoop Wen Ho Lee up and that's why he had to be imprisoned in maximum security in solitary confinement for more than nine months. Those are the kind of things that were fed to, unfortunately, you know, journalists who printed them without question, and, uh, created a momentum, a terrible momentum to basically try Wen Ho Lee in the media, even before there were any charges against him.

So many of us in the Asian-American community felt that Wen Ho Lee was getting charged, tried and convicted in the media without any substantial charges. And in fact, they never did find anything. 

Ray Suarez: George Koo what was he working on? What were the kinds of things, uh, that might have brought attention to somebody as Helen Zia describes it, trying to make a name for themselves and find who was leaking America's secrets to a possible future adversary? 

George Koo: I don't think it made any difference whatsoever what Wen Ho Lee was working on , he was guilty simply because he was Chinese. Whether he's from Taiwan or not, um, it makes no difference not only to the mainstream media, but to the United States government and certainly to the FBI. I want to elaborate a little bit about the systemic bias that FBI has towards Chinese.

Um, it goes all the way back to J Edgar Hoover. He basically has, is wary and suspicious of all Chinese and among his group of people, they populated the theory of grains, of sand theory of espionage and by grains of sand. They're suggesting that every ethnic Chinese in America with loyalty to their father land would send tidbits of information, of whatever importance back to Beijing.

And that's how the Chinese  conduct espionage. And that makes all of us guilty as potential spies and that's the utility and purpose of that particular theory. That was a mentality that we were faced with, uh, we Chinese in America. So Wen Ho Lee, in point of fact, didn't work on anything near that, that new 88 multihead missile.

I think he was doing mathematical modeling of, um, nuclear explosions. And so he was working primarily in computer programming side, didn't have any access to the alleged nuclear weapons that was stolen. And of course later on, many others have pointed out that those, that so-called secrets of the multihead missile  that was developed in the seventies could have been leaked from hundreds of places in the U S and it doesn't have to be from Los Alamos.

And furthermore, if the China, if the Chinese stole that secret, they never used it. So the whole thing has been based on racial bias and false premises. 

Helen Zia: You know, this grains of sand theory that, uh, that has been floated around about, uh, Chinese, especially. You asked about how the media carried it. Right after the New York Times printed that the worst espionage since the Rosenberg's  was being committed at Los Alamos, the Washington Post came out with an article about Chinese spying techniques.

And I wrote about this in my first book "Asian-American Dreams," and it says, you know, Chinese abroad brings secrets home one at a time like ants carrying grains of sand. Since at least the fourth century, BC Chinese have been doing this. I mean, this was in the Washington Post report about this and the Cox report, which was a Christopher Cox congressional report said that every waiter in a Chinese restaurant was potentially a spy.

And that, because Los Alamos had five Chinese restaurants, it was obvious there must be intense spying going on. And so that was the kind of thing that was said and continues to be said. That I might walk into a Chinese restaurant and say something like, "hello, how's the weather," and that would be a secret coded message that would then be transmitted and reassembled in the mother, anthill of China and become a miniature nuclear weapon, which is what the W88 was.

And that's the theory. And, and that continues to this day to persecute, especially Chinese scientists, graduate students, post-docs, undergraduate students, high school students. I mean, you know, anybody who is Chinese is being viewed as a potential spy for China. The W88 and all of the investigation of Wen Ho Lee and the years looking into, you know, trying to find a China connection and the w 88, there was never one found.

There was never, after all of that investigation, a connection found to say that anything had been leaked. And in fact, that information was never actually kinned on anybody  let alone Wen Ho Lee, but in the climate of trying to find, uh, a Chinese connection, he became somebody who was convenient.

Ray Suarez:  After months of interrogating Lee, agents managed to find something he did wrong.

He had backed up his computer files in a way that was a technical breach of secrecy rules, put them on tapes, and then during his incarceration did not, well, did not quickly, uh, tell the FBI where those tapes were. He refused to discuss a conversation he had had with another Taiwanese American, uh, during a polygraph test where he was picked up on a wiretap assuring the man that he would look into who turned him in.

And then he was perceived by the FBI of having lied about that conversation. Uh, the, the way he was treated in prison may be totally disproportionate to these infractions, but the infractions allowed a, well, there's smoke, there's gotta be fire kind of theory, to persist at the FBI. Didn't it? 

Helen Zia: You know, it all depends what you are looking for.

I mean, anybody, any one of us, I really defy anybody listening to this to have every part of their life, uh, put under a microscope. And then, and then little things taken out of context to say, well, this is suspicious. And then had that become a connection. And so that's what happened to Wen Ho Lee's life, everything, including things that were later shown to be complete distortions. For example, he on a charge card, had charged something connected to Hong Kong, and that was used as a way to say, look, he made payments and he got money and it turned out to be his own daughter taking a tour. And that's all it was. And that's something that the FBI knew because of course they had scooped up all of his financial records, but they pick on one thing, took it out of context.

All of the things you just cited were things that were taken out of context. And unless you actually go and look at so what was this conversation that you had, did he really refuse or did he forget? He had actually submitted to dozens of FBI inquiries. And one of the lessons for Wen Ho Lee that really every American really needs to know is you do not have to talk to the FBI because what happens is if you say something and later you remember it differently, or you forgot to say something and then you then say, oh, yes, but this happened. Um, number one, it might be viewed as you refuse to say it, as you just described, or that you contradicted yourself.

And that in itself is a crime, you know, giving this information to the FBI, which by the way, our cabinet members did in the last administration and, uh, you know, have been pardoned for doing that. But Wen Ho Lee was put into, uh, you know, intense solitary confinement and threatened with life in prison. So I would just say, you know, you can take any piece of any of our lives and then construct it in a way that you want.

And, um, you know, I really defy any of us to, to go through something similar without, uh, you know, a suspicious looking outcome. 

George Koo: I would go a little bit further than that. I think that the government behave this honestly, um, throughout the one holy process, for example, that the data he was accused of downloading was considered a confidential information, but to make his crime more serious, they retroactively upgraded the classification to top secret, so that to make his crime appear to be more serious and no even capital punishment prisoner, are treated the way he was treated. 23 hours in a room with the lights on and one hour of exercise with his foot connected to a ball and chain. The only reason he was treated that way, and he wasn't even convicted yet of any offense, was to hope that he will break down and confess to something, so the government can walk away and say see, we won.

Ray Suarez: Washington politics also played a big role in the investigation and incarceration of Wen Ho Lee.

George Koo: To be anti china is a bi-partisan effort. Both Republicans and Democrats may make political brownie points by attacking and disparaging China, and they make up wild statements and stories which are then abetted and supported by the mainstream media.

China was a favorite topic between the Democrats and the Republicans. Bill Clinton ran for president accusing George H. Bush of being soft  on China. And then the Republicans returned the favor after he gets elected by accusing the Clinton administration of letting the Chinese steal of crown jewels. 

Helen Zia: So the whole probe was based on trying to make a connection that the Clinton administration was being influenced, and not only that, but sabotaged by China. The probe was based on what was leaked to the New York Times. And that emerged out of a whole period of trying to have basically damaged Bill Clinton, you know, as a, an accusation from, uh, the GOP and from the right to say that he was too soft on crime. 

Ray Suarez: After spending 278 days in solitary confinement Wen Ho Lee was released from jail, September 13th, 2000.

Helen Zia: So of the 59 counts that he was charged of, the FBI had to drop all of them. And he only pled guilty to one, which was the mishandling of classified information, which is a highly complex series of what you have to do and changes all the time in terms of what is classified and even the head of the CIA John Deutch at the time that Wen Ho Lee was being charged, had been found to mishandled classified information.

But Wen Ho Lee was the very first and as far as I know, maybe the only one ever criminally charged with a possible life in prison for mishandling of classified information, but he pled to that, so that, so that his nightmare could end. Lee was never able to work as a nuclear physicist again. He spoke out about his experience.

Wen Ho Lee: The other question has been asked by many people was what is my advice if, um, FBI come to see you? Um, my answer is this: if FBI knock your door, you open it and tell them to go away.

Helen Zia: After Wen Ho Lee was released from his, you know, nine months of solitary confinement, a publisher contacted Wen Ho Lee to see if, if he would be willing to tell his story. And they asked me if I would write his story. And so that's how I ended up writing a book with Wen Ho Lee and and I have to say it was quite challenging because here was a man who was in solitary confinement, not being allowed to, you know, speak to anybody except his lawyers and occasional visits by his family. He couldn't even touch them or anything. It was all through those thick plexiglass windows and only allowed out of his little cell for one hour a day with a, you know, chain around his waist and his ankles. And that was his exercise. And so his immediate, his immediate task was to talk to me and, um, and to tell his story, which I think was very, very hard for him to have to relive all of that immediately after getting out.

But that's how I got connected to get to know Wen Ho Lee, to be very sure that this was not a man who was committing espionage.

Ray Suarez:  Dual loyalty stories, abound in American history. This is hardly the first one. Unlike a lot of other places in the world, this country is home to large numbers of people from large numbers of places didn't Wen Ho Lee feel like he was fighting a Phantom, that it's hard to prove a negative. It's hard to prove that you're not a trader to your adopted Homeland. 

Helen Zia: Yes. There's an incredible, uh, difficulty in being able to disprove that, uh, you know, the accusations that you're not even sure what they are, and it is a, it is a disapproving, a negative. Wen Ho Lee, even though the judge ended up apologizing to him for the way he was treated, his reputation was ruined. You cannot recover from the accusation of being a spy. Most people who even remember Wen Ho Lee will say, oh, the spy case and not the falsely accused Chinese American who was framed. No, it's the spy after the Wen Hoo Lee case, um, and the apology to Wen Ho Lee, the national laboratories of America were actually so damaged by that because no Chinese, ethnic Chinese, American born Chinese wanted to work for them.

So there was an incredible, um, uh, talent loss, you know, brain drain of America's scientific community because everyone looked at what had happened to Wen Ho Lee and said, well, I don't want to become the next Wen Ho Lee, um, because it was so clear that he had been set up and framed for this.

Ray Suarez:  George Koo, you mentioned earlier you're from China, have been here a long time. Do Asian Americans particularly have to fight against the kind of permanent foreignness? That they're assigned by the rest of American culture, sometimes totally benign, sometimes a malign idea that they're never quite fully American.

George Koo: That's certainly, um, true in, I, I wouldn't say I will not say it's a blanket situation. Um, but you certainly run into it depending on the educational level of the person that you're talking to, depending on the, the racial bias of that person, if they have any. Um, I mean, there's certainly a lot of well educated, enlightened people that do not see me as a foreigner, but certainly I do, um, even though I don't speak English with an accent, there's still others that will, you know, first question is: where are you from? Where did you come from? And, uh, as a, that's the most important, um, matter, depending on where I've belong. 

Helen Zia: Today, there's a lot of conversation about systemic racism, about institutionalized oppressions, about what exists, not just to Asian Americans, but also to, um, other people of color, Black, Indigenous, um, Black and brown people.

I do think that there is an assumption when you, when people look at Asians in America, that, um, that there is either a foreignness, that we don't belong here, that we have to prove something. And this is all part  of that view that, you know, um, take your frustrations out on the people who are to blame for this.

And that blame right now is landing squarely on people who look Chinese, which is the, you know, all east Asians and fear and Islamophobia of brown Asian Americans, you know, people from the of south Asia, as well as the middle east who look Muslim has never gone away since 9 11. So truly the Asian-American community has been under attack for a very long time and is very intense right now.

What has to be dealt with, with this legacy around, uh, Wen Ho Lee, uh, people of Chinese descent being, um, surveilled on and scapegoated and accused of so many different things, including the coronavirus and everything that's gone wrong with America, um, and in the global sense, we really have to see how the U S and China can ramp down the nationalism and the white supremacy that is embedded in the American point of view.

Because these are two super powers that are inhabiting the globe. And if the cold war gets hotter and hotter, that really bodes very badly, not just for people in the U S but for the entire world.

Ray Suarez:  Helen Zia co-authored with Wen Ho Lee, "My Country Versus Me," a memoir about his experience of being falsely accused and prosecuted for being a spy for China.

Her most recent book is "Last Boat Out of Shanghai," the epic story of the Chinese who fled Mao's revolution, and George KU is a scientist, a retired international business consultant and writer. Great to have you both along with us here at work. 

Helen Zia: Thank you, Ray. Thanks for covering this very important story.

George Koo: Thank you for having us.

Ray Suarez: You're listening to WorldAffairs produced in partnership with KQED. I'm Ray Suarez. It's been more than 20 years since Wen Ho Lee was exonerated of all espionage charges. You'd think we'd learn something from all the mistakes made with this case, but as China and the U S become entangled in a global power struggle, Asian American scientists continue to find themselves under scrutiny.

These days, espionage suspicions are more focused on corporate secrets and intellectual property, rather than national security.

 Teresa Cotsirilos picks up the story from there. 

Teresa Cotsirilos: Joyce Xi was raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia in a pretty nerdy family. Her parents are both physics professors. They immigrated here from China years ago, Joyce went on to study chemistry at Yale, and in May, 2015, she went home to visit her folks.

They talked about this new Korean fried chicken place they wanted to try, went to bed.

Joyce Xi:  Really early in the morning, I woke up to some strange voices, like, I didn't know what they were, who they were. And they were telling me, come out with your hands raised. Come out with your hands raised. And so I walk out of my bedroom and these FBI agents are pointing guns and flashlights at me.

So I was just waking up. Like I was super disoriented. It didn't even feel like reality. There's a lot of FBI agents, armed agents in our house. And my dad was being handcuffed against the wall and he asked to put on some shoes and they wouldn't let him, so he was wearing his flip flops and they just dragged them away.

They took my mom into a room for interrogation and they kept me and my sister in another room with a social worker, just trying to like watch over us. Even to ask for a bottle of water, we had to be like, can, can I get some water? And just everything that we were doing was being watched by the FBI. We had absolutely no clue why they were there.

Um, and they wouldn't tell us. We really had no clue. This was coming 

Teresa Cotsirilos: Joyce's dad had recently been made the chair of Temple University's physics department and the FBI was convinced he was a Chinese spy. The FBI had been reading Xiaoxing Xi's email and they accused him of forwarding blueprints of something called a pocket heater to Chinese researchers.

It's a superconducting device that's considered sensitive technology, and Joyce's dad wasn't supposed to mention it to anyone. This was during the Obama administration, when the justice department was cracking down hard on Chinese economic espionage. The U S and China share a long history of academic and scientific collaboration, but as tensions have escalated between the two world powers, that relationship has started turning sour. In 2015, president Obama signed an agreement with Xi Jinping on the White House lawn, where they pledged their countries, wouldn't steal each other's tact. 

Barack Obama: We've agreed that neither the U S or the Chinese government will conduct or knowingly support cyber enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information for commercial advantage.

Teresa Cotsirilos:  National security and policy experts claim that the Chinese communist party has been aggressively trying to steal tech from other countries anyway. They say it's part of an official policy Xiaoxing Xi was charged with four counts of wire fraud, and he faced 80 years in prison and a million dollar fine. Then, the FBI's case completely fell apart. It turns out the agents who'd been reading Xiaoxing Xi's email just didn't understand what all these scientists were talking about. Joyce's dad wasn't chatting with the Chinese researchers about the pocket heater at all.

He was discussing a completely different technology with them. One that wasn't sensitive. In September, 2015, all of the charges against Joyce's dad were dropped. He was left with $200,000 in legal fees and told that he was free to go. 

Joyce Xi: We received no apology, no explanation, no compensation for the numerous legal fees that we had to figure out how to pay, and also just no recourse for the suffering and damages and stress and anxiety and reputation damage, and all the things that my dad and my whole family experienced as a result.

Teresa Cotsirilos: They also knew the FBI had been spying on them. And the more Joyce found out about her dad's case, the creepier, it seemed to her. According to the ACLU, some of the surveillance was authorized by the secret court, but other elements of it weren't covered by a warrant at all. 

Joyce Xi: And we knew that the FBI could be watching and listening to everything that we were doing.

And that really just causes a lot of fear and paranoia in our lives. 

Teresa Cotsirilos: And they also knew this had happened before.

Joyce Xi:  My dad's case had been one in a string of cases of Chinese-American scientists who had been wrongfully accused and had the charges completely dropped with no explanation. 

Teresa Cotsirilos: In 2013, a federal grand jury indicted two former senior biologists. They were accused of passing information to one of China's largest drug companies. A little more than a year later, the US attorney's office asked the judge to dismiss all the charges without explanation. Then in 2014, law enforcement arrested Sherry Chan, a hydrologist at the national weather service.

She was accused of using a stolen password to download sensitive information about US dams. Then a week before her trial, all the charges against her were dropped too. Again, without any explanation. 

Joyce Xi: We knew that there was a lot of fear in the community. If this could happen to my father, it could happen to anyone.

Teresa Cotsirilos:  Joyce and her family did what they could. They talked to the media, appealed to Congress, tried to get some explanation for what happened. 

Joyce Xi: And in response, all we received was vague answers and more secrecy.

Teresa Cotsirilos:  In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, members of Congress demanded that she investigate whether racial profiling played a role in Xiaoxing Xi's case. The Justice Department denied they profiled anyone. The agency strengthened its oversight of economic espionage cases in 2016, but Joyce's family still didn't get an apology. So in 2017, the Xi family filed a civil lawsuit against the government with the help of the ACLU. They claimed the FBI made knowingly or recklessly false statements as they built their case.

And that Joyce's dad had been the victim of discrimination. 

Joyce Xi: At that point, we had seen a terrible injustice occurring to our family. And there was seemingly no way to get any recourse. And so part of it is bringing the lawsuit as well as to really get some answers as to why the government has been able to do this.

Why have they been able to do these cases? Which really are an example of racial profiling, when they're targeting people who are ethnically Chinese and botching these cases over and over again? You know, this overzealous prosecution and surveillance, if that's not put in check, then people's civil liberties can be abused like they were in my family's case left and right. 

Teresa Cotsirilos: The lawsuit spent years winding its way through the court system. Then, just last month, a federal judge issued a ruling.

Joyce Xi:  Just recently we heard that the judge in the case was dismissing the large majority of the claims that we had brought. Essentially most of the case was dismissed.

Teresa Cotsirilos: What happened to Xiaoxing Xi and his family was very unfortunate, the judge said in a statement, but his constitutional rights weren't violated. The court is still deliberating over one last claim, which is about the surveillance Joyce's family experienced. In any case, Joyce says they're appealing the decision.

Joyce Xi: If the government could, without any evidence, basically try to ruin our lives and try to put my dad in prison for the rest of his life, and inflict stress and just emotional distress and so much heartache and pain to my family, and there's no way for us to seek any legal recourse, then how is there going to be any justice for anybody else who experiences this?

Teresa Cotsirilos: In the meantime, the U S is intensifying its efforts to root out Chinese economic espionage. In 2018, the Trump administration launched the China Initiative to target alleged Chinese spies, civil rights groups claim the program has increased racial profiling against Asian scientists, researchers, and students, but the Biden administration is continuing this project and has made several high-profile arrests.

Joyce Xi: I mean, there has been a number of cases of Chinese Americans who have been targeted now in the name of national security with no transparency and no accountability, and people's lives are being ruined.

This experience will probably stay with us for the rest of our lives. You know, just even some of the fear and paranoia about FBI surveillance is like literally still persistent in my life. What's stopping them from doing anything else to us? I'm still scared. And, you know, just, just being able to see this injustice firsthand, and also seeing how the legal system and the government has brought these types of injustices against many, many more people, and not even just in the Chinese American community, but a lot of communities across the country, especially people of color, people who have been marginalized within this country's history. Yeah, it has really impacted my life and really brought me further down this path of trying to advocate for justice for people like us and really everybody and with my family, I think it's still lingering for all of us.

The damages that we have experienced are not things that will go away. And we're really committed to trying to make sure this doesn't happen to anybody else. There have been many injustices within this context, and we cannot look away.

Phillip Yun: That segment was produced by Teresa with reporting by Elisa Manoukian.

You've been listening to WorldAffairs, produced in partnership with KQED, with funding from TPG and first Republic bank. And from listeners like you. If you want to support the program by becoming a member or making a donation of any size, please go to worldaffairs.org/donate. You can also download our podcast, just search for WorldAffairs.

That's one word on Apple Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we want to hear from you. What did you think about this episode? Do you have ideas for future stories? Please email us at feedback@worldaffairs.org. Today's episode was produced by Jared sport, Teresa Cotsirilos , Joanne Jennings and Elisa Manoukian.  Tatum Centerback  provided research assistance.

Our technical supervisor is Jim Bennett. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. I'm Phillip Yun thank you for listening.