The spy who wasn't

And finally there's the New York Times, whose editors and publisher must wish they'd never heard the name Wen Ho Lee. It's almost impossible to overstate what a profound impact the paper's overly sensational and utterly unfair coverage had on both creating the Beltway hysteria surrounding the questions of Chinese espionage and making Lee's personal life hell.

The paper's Page 1 blockbuster on March 6, 1999, "Breach at Los Alamos," was written by James Risen and Jeff Gerth, or, "those two guys from the New York Times" as Lee refers to them in his book. The story, coming straight from Turlock's mouth and reportedly printed just as the FBI was about to drop its case against Lee for lack of evidence, trumpeted China's supposed theft of nuclear secrets and implicated Lee.

It really is a piece of journalism that will live in infamy, one that, along with the paper's subsequent series of accusatory articles, should serve for years to come as a case study in J-schools for how not to practice the craft.

As Lee notes, "According to their [March 6] article and people quoted in it, there was no room for doubt: China got its nuclear technology spying on American, the spy was from Los Alamos, and I was it. Yet not a single one of these assertions has been proven true."

Just how close did the New York Times come to simply taking dictation from government sources who were busy hounding Lee and pushing their own obvious agendas? On March 25, the paper ran one of its many follow-up stories, ominously informing readers that Lee's former research assistant had "disappeared." The paper reported, "He returned to the University of Pittsburgh, officials said. They said they were not sure whether the assistant ... was still in the United States."

Note the information was entirely based on what "officials said." Did the New York Times reporters ever try to track down the mysterious University of Pittsburgh student on their own? Apparently not, since the assistant's name would have been easily located on the university's Web site or in the local phone book. (To the paper's credit, it eventually assigned the Lee story to other reporters who treated the topic fairly.)

Lee's story does, however, come with a set of heroes. There's Jo Starling, a former teacher of Lee's adult daughter, who offered her own home as a guarantee toward his bail. And Lee's attorney, Mark Holscher, who along with the prestigious Los Angeles firm O'Melveny & Myers, provided nearly $2 million in pro bono work on Lee's behalf.

Important members of the scientific and counterintelligence communities came forward to buck the conventional wisdom and question the government line. They included Harold Agnew, former director of LANL and revered nuclear physicist, Stephen Schwartz, a physicist and the executive director of the Education Foundation for Nuclear Science, and Bob Vrooman, LANL's former counterintelligence chief. (In retrospect, the government's case against Lee really began to collapse on Aug. 12, 1999, when Secretary of Energy Richardson disciplined Vrooman for failing to distribute an assessment of Lee; Vrooman fired back in public, detailing the flaws in the case and charging that Lee was the victim of ethnic profiling.)

Meanwhile, there was Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer, who was out front calling the Lee case what it was: a witch hunt. (Although not cited in Lee's book, the late Lars-Erik Nelson, a longtime New York Daily News columnist, also deserves credit for his dogged pursuit of the story, long before it became fashionable.)

Perhaps the most heroic performance, though, was turned in by Chief Judge James Parker of the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico. He brought the sad case to a close by helping both sides hammer out a plea bargain for which Lee pled guilty to one of the 59 counts. And on Sept. 13, 2000, Parker then took the time (30 minutes) in open court to issue an unusual apology to Lee and his family: "I am sad for you and your family because of the way in which you were kept in custody while you were presumed under the law to be innocent of the charges the executive branch brought against you."

Which brings us back to the tale of Abdallah Higazy, the Egyptian student held for more than a month and erroneously charged with perjury. Here's hoping that in the coming months when the hysteria of the day passes and the evidence being used to detain so many Middle Eastern men is fully examined, there won't be more officers of the court who, like Judge Parker, feel compelled to issue apologies on behalf of our government.

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