quarterly-report.com Political Commentary by James R. Audet

October 5, 2000
16th anniversary of the Iran-Contra cover-up

"Until this moment, Senator,
I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness...
If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty,
I would do so.  I like to think I am a gentle man, but your
forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me...
sir, at long last, have you no sense of decency?"

These words are as valid today as they were in 1954 when Joseph Welch, legal counsel to the U.S. Army, rebuked Senator Joseph McCarthy for alleging that a young lawyer in Mr. Welch’s law firm was a communist.

We ask today, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, have you no sense of decency?

In early March 1999, Bill Richardson was utterly paranoid to save his hide as a potential vice-presidential candidate to Al Gore.  He needed a scapegoat to quell the congressional firestorm over security lapses at U.S. nuclear facilities that was roaring in Washington.  He found his sacrificial lamb in the diminutive, soft-soften Dr. Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.   What Richardson and the Clinton Administration subsequently engineered against Dr. Lee is an outrage.

A Summary of the Case

Dr. Lee was born in Taiwan and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1974.   His status as an Asian-American made him a perfect fall guy for alleged Chinese espionage at U.S. nuclear laboratories.  In an orgy of self-protective lies, Richardson, aided by other corrupt executive branch officials, inexcusably branded Dr. Lee as a super spy to suppress the media damage arising from Richardson’s maladministration of the Energy Department.  They accused the diminutive, soft-spoken Dr. Lee as "the one" who had passed nuclear secrets to the People’s Republic of China, in spite of the fact that Dr. Lee had passed his December 1998 Energy Department polygraph exam.  1/  The following chronology demonstrates how quickly Richardson acted to save his deluded vice-presidential aspirations in early 1999.

March 5: CBS News breaks the story of a soon-to-be-released
             congressional report - The Cox Report -- on security
             lapses and alleged Chinese spying at U.S. nuclear
             facilities.

             The FBI interrogates Dr. Lee.

March 6: The New York Times reports that an unnamed
             Chinese-American scientist at Los Alamos is a suspect
             in the FBI investigation.

March 7: The FBI gives Dr. Lee a polygraph examination.

March 8: Richardson directs the University of California to fire
             Dr. Lee.

Aftermath - Richardson's Role in an Executive Branch Conspiracy

Richardson claimed that Dr. Lee was fired for failing to safeguard properly classified material among other charges.  After Dr. Lee’s dismissal, Richardson said that the government "will not tolerate the theft of our secrets."

To dupe the American people into believing that the "FBI had got their man," the Clinton Administration upped the ante against Dr. Lee.  On Saturday, December 4, 1999, in the White House Situation Room, Attorney General Reno, FBI Director Freeh, Richardson, and other top Clinton advisors decided to pursue criminal charges against Lee for mishandling nuclear secrets under the 1954 Atomic Energy Act.  2/

Six days later, a federal grand jury in Albuquerque returned 59 indictments against the sixty-year-old Dr. Lee, and the FBI arrested him on December 10.  Then, Richardson, in concert with the Administration’s Gestapo justice department, levied the full weight of pre-trial sanctions on Dr. Lee.

It was Richardson who ordered that Dr. Lee be kept in solitary confinement.   For 279 days, Dr. Lee was denied bail and was held in extraordinary harsh conditions -– leg shackles when outside his cell and solitary when he was there.   He was continually monitored 24 hours a day.  It took Richardson five months before he allowed Dr. Lee to have reading materials, longer exercise periods, and more frequency visits with his family.

On September 13, 2000, a plea agreement with the government was reached.   Dr. Lee pled guilty to one count of downloading nuclear data to an unsecure computer.  The remaining 58 charges were dismissed.  3/  Chief U.S. District Court Judge James A. Parker sentenced Dr. Lee to time already served and released him from prison.  The government’s abrupt about face caused Judge Parker to react with amazement, incredulity, anger, regret, and sadness. 4/

In an extraordinary address from the bench, Judge Parker proceeded to distinguish the three branches of the U.S. government to Dr. Lee, who, of course, needed no education on the subject.  This introductory civics lesson was meant to convey to Dr. Lee that the United States Judiciary had been a pawn in a conspiracy by top officials of the Clinton Administration to deny Dr. Lee his civil rights.  Judge Parker said,

"I tell you with great sadness that I feel that I was led astray last December by the executive branch of our government through its Department of Justice, by its Federal Bureau of Investigation, and by the United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico, who held office at the time."  5/

Judge Parker closed his address with the following words:

"I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner in which you were held in custody by the executive branch".

A fool is blind to the stupidity of his actions.

On August 2, 1999, Bill Richardson appeared on CBS News program "60 Minutes.   It was a defining moment in his ignominious career.  Richardson claimed that, "This man (Dr. Lee) massively violated our security procedures at Los Alamos."   Richardson clumsy attempted to associate Dr. Lee's authorized contacts with Chinese officials to the alleged loss of nuclear secrets to China.  Through groundless, slanderous accusations, Richardson sought to close the book on the Cox Committee's damning report of the Energy Department by placing all the blame for his misfeasance in office on Dr. Lee's head.

Combining his ready access to national television with the sinister, often successful smear tactics of McCarthyism -- reckless accusations and guilt by association – Richardson slandered, defamed, and destroyed the reputation of Dr. Lee.

In spite Judge Parker’s stern admonishment of the government’s selective prosecution of Dr. Lee and the Soviet gulag conditions of confinement, did Richardson have any common sense to keep his mouth shut?  Certainly not.  On September 17, 2000, Richardson, whose ego is thinner than a skin graft, again appeared on "60 Minutes" to proclaim that Dr. Lee has "some very serious additional problems."

Obviously, Richardson equates the public’s intelligence to be on a par with his own.  More serious?  This egregious fool, this despicable human being, has the audacity to terrorize Dr. Lee on national television and to threaten him with a fate worse than,

The pejurous testimony of an FBI agent,
Nine months of solitary confinement,
Hand and leg shackles,
Restricted visitation,
59 felony counts, and
Life imprisonment.

What does Richardson have in mind?  Is Dr. Lee to be tortured by the FBI in some manner reminiscent of Torquemada's infamous Inquisition?

Richardson wields overwhelming force without discretion.  This disciple of Machiavel weaves his litany of lies into a banner of dishonor.  He urges the American public to believe him, like a deluded commander who waves a flag at the head of his troops and exhorts his comrades to advance suicidally through the enemy's hail of bullets.  If we listen to Richardson's lies, the democratic fabric of the nation shall disintegrate just as surely as the threads of a soldier’s uniform shall be torn asunder by the enemy's withering fire.

Richardson is an abominable character, and he deserves our contempt.  He symbolizes the new political aristocracy that includes corporate suborners and media patronizers.  The vision that this intelligentsia hold for America is a land where they always feel good, they always win, and if they must act as despots to fulfill their needs, then so be it.  If the individual does not subordinate himself to their will, he is sacrificed for their new world order.  They "selectively prosecute" their private agenda; they "racial profile" neighborhoods for votes.  They "character assassinate" their enemies; they "associate" those who disagree with extremist fringe groups.  For these practitioners of aristocratic exclusion, presidential campaigns are staged contests.  From the Potomac swamps we hear, "There ARE only two teams…  Democrats and Republicans, No?"  Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan are dismissed from the field without a tryout.  If we ask,

"Why?"

We are treated as children and told,

"THEM?  You can't vote for THEM.  You’d only be throwing your vote away."

Disgraceful.

Dr. Lee spent nine months in a federal prison, often shackled, in solitary confinement, to save the political career of the reckless Bill Richardson.

Disgraceful.

Footnotes

1/  See, CBS News reports, "Lee Polygraph Scores," and, "Wen Ho Lee’s Problematic Polygraph."

2/  Curiously, Dr. Lee is the first person ever charged under the McCarthy-era 1954 Act.

3/  One reason the government capitulated so completely was the admission of FBI agent Robert Messemer that he gave false testimony in December 1999 during Dr. Lee’s bail hearing.

4/  Click here for Judge Parker's Opinion from the bench.

5/  The former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico is John Kelly.   He resigned his post a month after the Lee indictment to run as the Democratic candidate for the First Congressional District of New Mexico.  Hopefully, the citizens will return the incumbent, Heather Wilson (R) to Congress.

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