URL: http://www.abqjournal.com/news/571299news01-16-02.htm

Wednesday, January 16, 2002

Lee Starts His Book Tour With Stop at SF Bookstore

By Wren Propp Journal Staff Writer

Santa Fe resident Filemon "Phil" D. Zamora, a retired U.S. Postal Service employee, on Tuesday bought one copy of Wen Ho Lee's book, "My Country Versus Me," for himself, and another for a friend with whom he has political debates.

"I want somebody else to read it, while I'm reading it, so we can discuss the issue," said Zamora as he waited in line before Lee arrived to autograph copies of his book.

Zamora and more than 100 other people -- including Lee family friends and those like Zamora, admirers of the fired Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist's spirit while facing federal prosecution on 59 counts of removing secrets from a lab computer -- attended the first stop of Lee's tour for his book at Border's Books Music and Cafe in Santa Fe.

"I find the man interesting; an educated man dedicated to his work, and when they looked for somebody to pick on, they picked on him," Zamora said of Lee's trials.

When the federal government's prosecution of Lee deteriorated, Lee agreed to plead guilty to a single count of "willful retention" of U.S. nuclear secrets.

Zamora bought a single copy of "A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage" by Dan Sober, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the San Jose Mercury-News, and Ian Hoffman, a former Journal North reporter, last week.

He believes that Lee's ethnicity -- Lee is a Taiwanese-born U.S. citizen -- was a factor in the federal government's case against the longtime scientist.

"I feel they were unfair to this man; he loves his adopted country," Zamora said.

Other well-wishers with copies of his book got a few quiet words and sometimes a handshake from Lee at the Santa Fe bookstore.

Flanked by two attorneys and a publicist, Lee spoke to those who brought his book to sign. The publicist told a knot of reporters before the book-signing began that Lee wouldn't answer any questions.

It's rare for a book-signing author at Border's to offer no comments or even not read from his or her work, said Bay Anapol, area marketing manager for the store.

And while Lee, who wrote the book with Helen Zia, has granted selective interviews -- one interview he granted to NBC News was broadcast Tuesday -- his silence may stem from continued legal battles.

Former Los Alamos intelligence chief Notra Trulock is suing Lee and two government security officials for defamation because of statements they made that racial profiling led Trulock to focus the investigation on Lee, according to the Associated Press.

And Lee has sued former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who is now seeking New Mexico's Democratic gubernatorial nomination, charging that Richardson and government defamed him by leaking information to the media that portrayed him as a spy.

Richardson said in a recently released court deposition that there were numerous reasons to focus on Lee apart from his ethnicity, including his contact with Chinese nuclear scientists during trips to China, his access to nuclear testing data and his failure of a lie detector test, according to the Associated Press.

Lee spent nine months in a cell at the Santa Fe jail in 2000 while the federal case against him deteriorated.

Paul Maes, an officer at the jail, bought a copy of Lee's book on Tuesday and asked the man that he had once guarded to autograph for him.

Maes described Lee as a man whom he came to ultimately recognize as a friend. Lee often chided him for reading "very fiction" novels from the jail's library while they were together.

Mostly, they talked about the landscaping of their respective gardens, Maes said.

He bought the book to understand Lee's story better, Maes said.

Amy Stein, a longtime courtroom artist, brought two of her works -- pastel drawings of Lee during his court hearings with U.S. Chief Judge James Parker -- for Lee to sign during the event.

Lee smiled and signed.

Stein said she felt tears rolling down her face as she frantically tried to capture the pair when Parker read a personal apology to Lee in September of 2000.

Asked if she felt sympathy for Lee, Stein said she hopes that all trials, "especially political ones," will be handled fairly and ethically.

"I was certainly very, very impressed with Judge Parker," she said.

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