"Justice for Wen Ho Lee. Justice for All"

(202) 225-4695 Congressman   Howard L. Berman, 26th District, CA
(650) 323-2984 Congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo, CA
(202) 225-2631 Congressman   Mike Honda, CA
(202) 225-9817 Congresswoman Barbara Lee, CA
(510) 763-0370 Congresswoman Barbara Lee, CA
(202) 225-7163 Congressman   Robert Matsui, 5th District, CA
(202) 225-2095 Congressman   George Miller, 7th District, CA
(202) 225-4987 Congresswoman Patsy Mink, Hawaii
(415) 556-4862 Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, CA
(510) 494-1388 Congressman   Fortnery Pete Stark,  13th District, CA
(202) 225-1188 Congressman   Robert Underwood, Guam
(202) 225-6190 Congressman   Tom Udall, 3rd District, New Mexico
(202) 225-0855 Congressman   David Wu, 1st District, Oregon

In solidarity,

Cecilia Chang
Executive Director

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Two articles regarding President pardon forwarded here.
 ****************************************
  San Francisco Chronicle

      Chinese community crusader
      Wen Ho Lee case her call to action

      Chip Johnson
      Monday, July 15, 2002
      ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.

      Anyone who thinks the immigrant Chinese community isn't political
 should consider the case of Cecilia Chang and the 15,000 people who signed
 her petition.

      For nearly two years, Chang, who grew up in Hong Kong and moved to
 the United States in 1969, has been on a personal crusade to win a
 presidential pardon for her friend Wen Ho Lee.

      The Taiwanese-born Lee is the Los Alamos, N.M., scientist fired in
 1999 and then held for nine months in solitary confinement amid suspicion
 that he passed nuclear weapons design information to China.
      Although Lee was never charged with espionage, he was held for
 downloading secret files from the lab's secure computers and transferring
them to computer tapes.

      He was freed in September 2000 after pleading guilty to a single
felony count of mishandling security information.

      That's when Lee and his case became Cecilia Chang's quest for
 justice.

      On July 2, she sent the petition to Washington, asking President
 Bush to clear Lee's name.

      Chang, 52, has pursued the case beyond the bounds of her friendship
 with the Lee family, which does not want a
      presidential apology. Chang has her reasons.

      "They are so timid that I can't wait for them to agree," said
 Chang, who moved to Fremont in 1996 and serves on the city's human
 relations commission. "I've done things sometimes without their approval."

      Like the letter she wrote to U.S. District Judge James Park during
 Lee's trial -- the family worried that she'd gone too far.

      The case against Lee hit Chang hard, too. Her husband, Dan, worked
 at the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque at the time, as a
scientist,
 and she'd worked there as  well, as a technician.
 But that wasn't it.

      "I never really thought about what it meant to be a citizen of this
 country until I saw my friend's face plastered on the cover of every paper
in the country," said Cecilia Chang. "Is this how people really view us?"

      Things also deteriorated at work for Dan Chang, who took early
 retirement within six months after Lee's arrest. After 20 years on the job,
 colleagues sometimes questioned whether he should be attending sensitive
meetings.

      "I felt the wound very deeply because it's my commitment to my
 country they are doubting, and that really hurts me," said Cecilia Chang.

      "I love this country," she said. "Maybe I'm naive, but I always
 look on the bright side of this country."

      But Lee's treatment at the hands of federal authorities left her
 little to be optimistic about. The FBI investigation proved nothing and
stripped Lee of everything: his job, his name and his pride.

      Upon his release from prison, Judge Parker apologized to Lee..

      "I feel I was led astray 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," Parker
said.

      Parker's letter isn't enough for Chang, who believes that admitting
 to even one of the charges is too much for an innocent man to bear.

      She has asked for the support of congressional leaders and received
 warm if cautious responses. Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, accepted the
petition
in his Washington offices  and has promised to deliver it to the president's
office.

      Honda feels that Lee was certainly wronged, said Ruben Pulido, an
 aide. Honda is expected to deliver the petition to the White House later
this week.

      "His case is an embarrassment to our judicial and political
 system," said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Atherton. "He deserves an apology from the
federal government and to have this  stricken from the record."

      Eshoo wouldn't sign a support letter without the support of the Lee
 family, she said.

      But when Chang appeared on a popular Mandarin-language talk show on
 San Francisco radio station KFJX-AM, there was a groundswell of support
from
 an immigrant Chinese population that doesn't often speak out against
government.

      Many of the signatories are first-generation immigrants who saw
 what happened to their neighbors, friends and relatives who spoke out
against
 the Chinese regime.

      And issuing a pardon to Lee, a power usually exercised at the end
 of a presidential term, wouldn't be out of the question considering others
who've been spared in past years..

      President Bill Clinton issued at least a half-dozen pardons,
including that of ex-CIA chief John Deutsch, who was accused of mishandling
secret information, the same charge leveled  against Lee.

      Most of Clinton's pardons were issued to people who had actually
 done something illegal. It was never proved that Lee did.
 But for Chang, having the freedom to set up a Web site, www.wenholee.org,
 lobby Congress and raise the roof to demand Lee's release underscores one
 of the nation's greatest rights.

      "Do you know where I'd be had I tried to wage a campaign like this
 in China?" Chang asked. "I'd probably be in jail right now."

      E-mail Chip Johnson at chjohnson@sfchronicle.com or write to him at
 483 Ninth St., Suite 100, Oakland CA
      94607.

      ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.   Page B - 1

> > #########################################
 

From: News and Views | Beyond the City |
Monday, January 14, 2002

Accused Nuke Scientist:
I Deserve Pardon

By BOB KAPPSTATTER
Daily News Staff Writer

indicated Los Alamos nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee wants a
presidential pardon from the one minor charge to which he pleaded guilty.
 

Wen Ho Lee
Indicted on 59 counts of violating the Atomic Energy Act and thrown into
solitary confinement for more than a year, Lee eventually was freed after a
federal judge blasted the Justice Department and FBI for their tactics.

"I think I should get a pardon from the President. I think the government
owes me an apology," the scientist says in an interview in this week's
Newsweek magazine, which prints excerpts from Lee's new book, "My Country
Versus Me."

In his deal with the government, Lee admitted he downloaded a trove of
classified nuclear data onto portable tapes and then stored them on a
vulnerable, unclassified computer.

When investigators were closing in on him in December 1998, Lee hastily
erased the data from the unclassified computer.

The classified tapes were never found. Lee contends he tossed them in a
trash bin. Lee tells Newsweek he made the tapes because he feared a computer
crash at his Los Alamos, N.M., would wipe out his work.

Lee is suing the government for violating his privacy rights. New documents
in his case, recently obtained by his lawyers and reviewed by Newsweek, show
that top Justice Department officials had concerns from the outset about
some of their tactics.

In an internal memo, John Dion, chief of the department's internal security,
wrote that the aggressive tactics against Lee "suggest that the government
intentionally revealed facts about the investigation to the news media in
order to pressure Lee to confess, or out of vindictiveness toward Lee for
not confessing."

Now retired, Lee, who still lives in New Mexico, writes in his new book that
throughout his ordeal he was determined not to be intimidated.

"I wasn't going to let ... the government break my spirit," he said. "I kept
telling myself, 'I will never give up, I will never surrender to their dirty
tricks and lies.'"