Dear Friends and supporters of Wen Ho Lee,
I went to Dr. Bin Han's preliminary court hearing on Tuesday, July 16..
Here are some of the facts that I learned. Dr. Bin Han had been
a
research scientist working at the Department of Ophthalmology at UC
Davis until a few days before being arrested. His case resembles
that
of Dr. Wen Ho Lee in many ways. The main difference is that the Han
case
is a civil action, and has not received nation-wide attention seen
when
Wen Ho Lee was first accused of nuclear espionage in the press.
Like
Wen Ho Lee, Bin Han is a naturalized Chinese American scientist employed
under the UC system, and was accused by his employer of stealing
proprietary research information and commercial espionage. (In
Han’s
case, it turned out that the 20 vials of proteins allegedly stolen
had
been provided free – at no charge -- by a commercial company whose
witness admitted the product is available in most overseas open
markets.) Both Han and Lee were terminated by their employers
and
jailed under egregious charges. Both prosecutors demanded denial
of
bail citing flight risk. In Bin Han's case, he was released after being
in jail for 16 days and after he volunteered to leave his passport
in
the judge's custody.
The incentive and motivation behind the two cases however is very
different. Wen Ho Lee was the victim of political hysteria instigated
by
efforts by persons in Congress and the Department of Energy to embarrass
Clinton Administration. Bin Han had been in a dispute with a research
colleague, and a few days later was terminated from his job and charged
with three felony violations. Most of these charges were weakly
assembled, and have been dismissed. At the end of the July 16
hearing,
the judge reduced a remaining charge to misdemeanor.
Here's a TV broadcast from Sacramento's TV Channel 10 telling about
the
Bin Han story. If you bring up the story by clicking on the URL
below,
at the end of the story, you'll see a button marked "VIDEO".
So just
click on that button, and you'll get to see the actual TV broadcast.
http://www.news10.net/storyfull.asp?id=2089
More information and photos are available at
http://www.wenholee.org/othercases.htm
.
Cecilia Chang
Executive Director