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DATE=6/8/2000 TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT TITLE=WEN HO LEE PROTESTS (L-ONLY) NUMBER=2-263308 BYLINE=MIKE O'SULLIVAN DATELINE=LOS ANGELES INTERNET=YES CONTENT= Voiced At: Intro: Asian-American activists staged protests Thursday in a number U-S cities over the treatment of Wen Ho Lee, a former U-S scientist charged with mishandling nuclear secrets. Mr. Lee, a U-S citizen, was born in Taiwan. As we hear from Mike O'Sullivan, his supporters call him a victim of selective prosecution. Text: Mr. Lee is a former weapons scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory who is charged with 59 counts of mishandling nuclear secrets. The government says he downloaded the secret data onto unsecured computers and portable tapes. The scientist is being held in solitary confinement while he awaits trail. The government argues that releasing him on bail would allow him to disclose the location of seven computer tapes, which are now missing. Representatives of 20 Asian-American organizations in California protested his treatment on Thursday, in one of at least eight demonstrations around the United States. /// SFX - CROWD SOUNDS /// Local organizations from Los Angeles neighborhoods of Koreatown, Chinatown and Little Tokyo say Mr. Lee is receiving harsh treatment because of his race. Political activist Alfred Foung (fong) believes the scientist is a victim of racial profiling. /// FOUNG ACT /// That's how we see it, because in our legal system people are innocent until they are proven guilty. And there are many more people who have committed similar or more severe code violations that remain free and were not charged. /// END ACT /// Protesters point out the former C-I-A director, John Deutch, placed classified information on an unsecure computer that was attached to the Internet. He lost his security clearance last year, but did not face criminal charges. Dan Tokaji of the American Civil Liberties Union calls that unfair. /// TOKAJI ACT /// Mr. Lee, on the other hand, was the subject of a massive investigation involving some one- thousand witnesses being interviewed, some one- million files being reviewed. At the end of all that, they could uncover no evidence of espionage on the part of Mr. Lee, and essentially to save face are making these charges against him. /// END ACT /// Federal officials respond that the two cases are very different. They say Mr. Lee first drew their attention in 1982, and in the 1990s he systematically copied thousands of pages of files. In 1995, he came under investigation by the Energy Deapartment, which runs U-S nuclear labs. A multi-agency probe finally led to his indictment in December last year. /// OPT /// One supporter of Mr. Lee, Kathy Feng (fung) of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, says despite its invesigation, the government has not found any proof of espionage, only that Mr. Lee mishandled sensitive data. /// FENG ACT /// They're charging him with 59 counts because they couldn't find any espionage but they didn't want to backpedal so they had to charge him with something. /// END ACT - END OPT /// When the trial begins, the government says it will prove Mr. Lee jeopardized nearly every U-S nuclear secret through his unauthorized copying. Most alarming, they say, some of the files that he copied are now missing. Mr. Lee's supporters ask the U-S Department of Justice to reexamine the evidence, and if they still want to prosecute, to release Mr. Lee on bail until his trial date. Federal officials contend that would pose a grave risk to U-S security. The trial will begin in November. (Signed) Neb/PT 08-Jun-2000 19:04 PM LOC (08-Jun-2000 2304 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America .