Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Once again the government has looked incompetent in trying to convict a Chinese American for espionage. Following the cases of Wen Ho Lee and James Yee, the case of Katrina Leung has also come unravel. Leung was a business woman who worked for the FBI by obtaining sensitive information from China. She was acccused of switching sides and taking information from her FBI handler and lover James Smith and passed them on to China. Leung pleaded guilty to lying about a sexual affair and filing a false income tax return. Just as in the cases of Lee and Yee, the prosecution failed miserably and this plea bargain is just a face-saving attempt for the government. While I believe that Lee and Yee are totally innocent and it was a waste of time and money for the government to prosecute them, the Leung case could have helped the U.S. avoid losing secrets to China and other countries. Unfortunately, by zealously going after the alleged Chinese American spy while giving her co-defendant an easy way out, the prosecution committed misconduct and lost the chance to help our national defense.

Let's assume that Leung was a double agent. It is incredible that James Smith had no idea that she was spying for China. The first thing the prosecution did was to grant immunity to Smith with the idea that they can nail Leung. They didn't care if Smith was punished adequately for his crime. Even if they had succeeded and put Leung in jail, so what? She was guilty of doing for China against the U.S. what the U.S. had hired her to do against China. In other words, spying was something used by all countries. By putting a foreign spy into jail would not stop spying from that country. It will have no deterrent effect. To safe-guard our secrets we must make sure our own people cannot be bought. Leung could not be have been successful if Smith did not take the bait and succumb to sexual temptations. Most people become traitors not because of ideology but because of greed or sex. The logical thing to do would be to punish someone like Smith more harshly than Leung because he was higher up and was the one who gave up secrets that Leung could never have gotton without him. Instead the government just let Smith go and thus give a message to others that if you have sex with a spy from another country and lose information as a result, you would not have to go to jail.

It is not a pure racial issue where the white guy gets off while they try to punish the Asian. It is however, apparent that the government thinks that Chinese Americans are more likely to spy for China than white Americans because of ethnicity. It may be that more Chinese Americans than Americans of other races are spying for China but that is because China is trying to recruit Chinese Americans rather than people of other races. You would expect that Israel would recruit Jewish Americans to spy in the U.S., not Arab Americans. People of Chinese origin are as likely to succumb to sex or money as other races but I don't think ideologically they are more for China. In fact if they originated from Hong Kong or Taiwan they would more likely be ideologically opposed to communist China than the average American. I don't think Leung was a communist since she did provide excellent information for the U.S. against China. I believe that she is a person who craves for power and prestige and by playing off both sides she gets that feeling of power and prestige.

Chinese Americans want people who betray the U.S. to be brought to justice. It is unfortunate that in many high profile cases the government usually portray the Chinese Americans as guilty of great crimes before any substantial evidence are found. This makes people think that the average Chinese American is less patriotic than other ethnic groups. Even when the judge in the Lee case apologized to Lee for the government's conducts, the government has never acknowledge their slandering of this fine American. In the Leung case they used illegal tactics to try to secure a conviction against her but lets her white co-defendant go with practically no punishment. This is the wrong message to send to the Chinese American community as well as the intelligence community. Do you think China cares if they get Leung for spying for the U.S.? I am sure they are concentrating their effort to punish harshly those in their government who gave Leung information. They know that even if they catch Leung or other American spies, more will be coming. We should understand this and that to keep our secrets safe, we must be sure that the people who has acess to them cannot be bought.