Books on Wen Ho Lee were reviewed in The New York Times


Two books on Wen Ho Lee were recently published: A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage, by Dan Stober and Ian Hoffman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 384p.) and My Country Versus Me: The First Hand Account by the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was Falsely Accused of Being a Spy, by Wen Ho Lee with Helen Zia (New York: Hyperion, 332p.). They were reviewed by Joseph E. Persico entitled "Life under suspicion: the two books look at the case of Wen Ho Lee, one by a pair of reporters and the other by the scientist himself (The New York Times, February 17, 2002). The first book "presents an almanac of contemporary anxieties - a stunning intelligence fiasco, racial profiling, civil liberties competing against national security, media influence, even a hint of resurgent McCarthyism in the scientific community - all centering on an inconspicuous figure who would not stand out in a crowd of five people." The most damaging evidence of espionage is when the Chinese detector delivered to the Taiwanese bundles of documents claimed to have obtained from China which contained a memo complete with diagrams and graphs, comparing Chinese and American nuclear weapons. But the damaging evidence was delivered into American hands before Dr. Lee's meeting with Chinese nuclear scientists. But the book did not give a definite explanation on why Dr. Lee amassed huge, unauthorized computer archive. Dr. Lee explained in his autograph He claims that he did this is simply to protect the documents from loss in the event of change of computer operating system. But he admits mistake to download them to an unclassified system. At the end of book review, Dr. Lee was quoted: "If I had been accused of such a thing in China or Russia, I would probably be dead. I would have been shot if this happened in Taiwan under the Kuomington . . . I can still say that I am truly glad that I am an American."



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