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Get Your Story Straight, Guys
America's China spy "scandal" is fizzling out. Was the media too eager?
By ADI IGNATIUS
Web posted at 9 p.m. Hong Kong time, Monday, Aug. 30
Was it all just a mistake? Or perhaps something more sinister? The "China Nuclear Spy Scandal" that erupted in the United States earlier this year and threatened to derail Washington's already-shaky relations with Beijing now seems to be fizzling into nothing.
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Everyone knows the story. A Chinese-American scientist (actually Taiwan-born) named Wen Ho Lee passed important weapons-design secrets to Beijing from his sensitive post at the Los Alamos nuclear lab. With that information and other pilfered data, China developed scary weapons that now threaten the American way of life. As a CBS-TV reporter intoned earlier this year: "If the allegations against [Lee] are true, he may have done much more damage to the nation than Timothy McVeigh" (McVeigh was convicted for the lethal bombing of an Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.)
There's just one problem. The story isn't panning out. In the past few weeks, several central players in the drama have come forward laying out the disturbing assertion that investigators targeted Mr. Lee primarily because of his race--a shameful development, if true, in Melting Pot America.
The case has always seemed flawed. If Lee were as guilty as the initial reports suggested, why wasn't he charged with anything? True, Lee admits that he transferred nuclear codes onto his insecure office computer--a move that, by itself, may be grounds for punishment--but the case beyond that seems circumstantial and not especially persuasive.
The media's role in the affair is troubling, too. Journalistic accounts have been riveting--featuring life-and-death narratives, a hero or two and one clear ethnic Chinese bad guy. But the tale is unraveling. No wonder the public views the press with such disdain.
It may well be that China's spies did "steal" American designs. (If they didn't at least try, they should all be sent to the labor camps.) That's what espionage is all about. And America clearly has a security problem. But unless hard evidence emerges, it's hard to escape the conclusion that China is being excessively vilified and Lee made the scapegoat.
The whole "scandal" smells a lot like other sensationalist China-related zingers the U.S. media have served up in recent years--the products, no doubt, of skillful leaks by D.C.-insiders. President Clinton's foes realized long ago that China is a great issue to bash him with. And Beijing just continues to make things worse. By arresting and intimidating democracy activists and religious leaders, China has an uncanny knack for making enemies abroad. Nonetheless, Washington's relations with Beijing are too important to be held hostage to partisan attacks.
The latest charge is the oddest yet. U.S. Senate majority leader Trent Lott asserted that Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing's publicly listed conglomerate, Hutchison Whampoa, is actually "an arm of the People's Liberation Army." The good news is that, even inside the Beltway, it's hard to find anyone who buys that one. But here's a scoop: this won't be the last silly story on China to come out of Washington.
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