The spy who wasn't

Wen Ho Lee speaks out about his ordeal at the hands of the FBI and a witch-hunting press. To many Arab men today, his story will sound all too familiar.

By Eric Boehlert

Jan 28, 2002 | On Jan. 11, the sagging war-on-terrorism beat received a welcome jolt of news when federal prosecutors in Manhattan announced they had charged Abdallah Higazy with perjury after he denied owning a ground-to-air radio transceiver. The radio was found inside a locked safe, along with a Quran and a passport, in the hotel room where Higazy was staying on Sept. 11. The downtown hotel offers unobstructed views of World Trade Center.

Higazy, an Egyptian-born student doing graduate work in America, had been held as a material witness since Dec. 17. That's when he went back to the hotel to pick up possessions he left behind on Sept. 11, the day all occupants were ordered to evacuate the building. The FBI confronted him about the radio, which was found by hotel personnel. Higazy denied it was his. But FBI interrogators, after three sets of interviews, finally got him to confess, and then charged him with perjury for his initial denial.

What was so tantalizing about the case was the charge that hadn't yet been leveled; did the Egyptian help guide the al-Qaida hijackers to their final target on the morning of Sept. 11?

Commenting on CNN, Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge confirmed the case "has been a high priority within the FBI."

The media pounced. New York Post columnist Steve Dunleavy belittled Higazy's defense, suggesting "the most amateur sleuth could raise eyebrows with questions in [his] case." Dunleavy showered scorn on Higazy's attorney for claiming that amid all the chaos of Sept. 11 somebody could have planted the radio in Higazy's room: "Puh-lease."

Four days after being charged, Higazy was released when another guest, a U.S.-born private pilot, showed up at the same hotel to claim the handheld radio he'd left behind on Sept. 11. FBI investigators went back and interviewed the hotel employee who found the radio. He changed his story; suddenly the radio wasn't found in a locked safe, but on a table in plain sight.

Upon release, Higazy insisted he had never given up hope of clearing his name: "I just thought that they're going to waste a lot of time and money and effort, and they're going to realize that I was telling the truth."

The Egyptian's court-appointed attorney, who claimed the FBI obtained Higazy's confession only after investigators threatened to entangle his family members, offered a more dour postscript to his client's ordeal: "America really needs to take a deep breath and realize that a lot of people are being swallowed up in hysteria."

Reading about overzealous prosecutors locking up suspicious foreigners on dubious charges while an eager press chimes in with a chorus of "Guilty," one can't help but wonder what Wen Ho Lee thinks of recent events.

After all, the Taiwanese-born Lee was falsely accused by the U.S. government, which painted him as a grave threat to national security. Lee has worn prison garb, stumbled through bullying FBI interrogation sessions and been persecuted by the press. But unlike Higazy's case, Lee's nightmare lasted almost two whole years, which explains why his faith -- his belief that if he simply told the truth again and again the government would set him free -- did occasionally waiver. His resistance though, did not:

"I felt that the government was torturing me now, that they were trying to break me down without coming right out and shooting me. I said to myself, 'They're trying to get me to cave in and confess to something that I didn't do, to get me to say, "Okay, you're right, I'm a big spy."' I figured if I didn't confess, they'd want me to kill myself. But their dirty tricks only made me madder. My family knows how stubborn I can be. I wasn't going to let ... the government break my spirit. I kept telling myself, I will never give up, I will never surrender to their dirty tricks and lies," writes the former nuclear scientist in his new book, "My Country Versus Me."

Lee, of course, is the infamous spy who wasn't. Caught up in a manufactured scandal that, pre-Sept. 11, passed as a national security crisis, Lee became the focus of a fierce government inquiry into alleged Chinese espionage. Utterly convinced of Lee's guilt -- and busy duping complacent New York Times reporters with grand, anonymous and erroneous accusations -- government investigators were egged on by a conservative Beltway feeding frenzy (The White House is soft on China!) and tried to lock Lee up for life.

The case eventually imploded in open court, becoming just another in the laundry list of fiascoes suffered by the FBI during Louis Freeh's tenure as chief.

Next Page: A crusade run amok

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