Last December 7, testifying at a US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray made the following statement:
Do we [the Federal Bureau of Investigation] make mistakes? You bet we make mistakes, and when we make mistakes, there are independent processes that will drive and dive deep into the facts surrounding those mistakes. And when that independent fact-finding is complete, we will hold our folks accountable, if appropriate.
There is no doubt that Wray should be recognized for his courage and frankness in upholding the integrity of the FBI and its 35,000 employees, who make sacrifices and risk their lives in protecting US national security and enforcing the law day in and day out.
However, he made a grave mistake at a February 13 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing when he targeting all students, scholars and scientists of Chinese origin as threats to US national security.
The words of the director of the FBI have consequences. Besides his duty to pursue and punish the guilty, he is also responsible for protecting the innocent through the US justice system. His remarks at the Senate hearing help neither purpose.
Wray’s predecessor also used publicity campaigns as a broad-brush approach to law enforcement. A series of innocent Chinese-American scientists in academia, federal government and private industry were caught in the dragnet and wrongfully accused of the most serious crime of betraying the United States. Although their cases were all subsequently dismissed, severe damage had already been done to their lives and families.
The FBI prides itself in bringing high-quality prosecutions to justice. And yet the system of checks and balances has failed some Chinese-American citizens miserably
The FBI prides itself in bringing high-quality prosecutions to justice. And yet the system of checks and balances failed these American citizens miserably. Perhaps they were human mistakes and “collateral damage.” Perhaps it was the FBI’s bias or sinister objective to use them as convenient scapegoats for the rise of China. Whether the cause was human mistakes, implicit bias or explicit prejudice, the FBI has not been held accountable, instead acting as if these cases never occurred.
As the former national ombudsman at the US Department of Energy, this writer lived through the xenophobia created by the Cox Report, which implicated all Chinese-American scientists in the 1990s. Wray’s current term of “non-traditional collectors” is eerily similar to the term “grains of sand” used by the FBI at that time.
As far as is known, the Cox Report did not catch any spies, yet the hysteria that followed created fear and fury among many Americans in general, and Chinese-American scientists in the national laboratories in particular. It inflicted irreparable damage to Dr Wen Ho Lee, a naturalized US citizen and a nuclear scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The FBI rushed to lock on to Lee as the only suspect in its investigation. FBI agents “never came close” to meeting the legal standards of probable cause for a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, despite the court’s reputation as a rubber stamp for approving the government’s requests.
After nine months of solitary confinement, Lee was released by the presiding judge, who issued an unprecedented apology to Lee for the mistreatment he had received from the executive branch of government, including the FBI.
Patsy Mink, then a Democratic congresswoman and former chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, took the House floor and spoke about the investigation and treatment of Dr Lee in a special-order session in 2000. Her call for a review of the FBI behavior and practices is still pending in congressional records.
Asian-Americans including this writer hope Wray’s deeds will match the words of he uttered on December 7. The American people, including those of Asian background, vested their trust and enormous power to Wray to be just and fair. He is also accountable by his own words.
For the sake of the FBI workforce dedicated to honorable duties and the Bureau itself as an institution to be trusted, Wray should justify his February 13 remarks with additional facts and evidence in public statements and future congressional oversight hearings.
It may be hope against hope that he will also review the profiling approach by recognizing that Chinese-Americans have made many positive contributions to every aspect of American society. They include former and current students, scholars and scientists.
Disclaimer: This article is based on a letter that the writer, a retired US federal employee, wrote recently to FBI Director Christopher Wray. The views and opinions expressed here are the author’s and his only. They do not reflect the official position or policy of any organization or any agency of the US government.
"Chinese-Americans have made many positive contributions to every aspect of American society. They include former and current students, scholars and scientists."
Indeed, 40% of American STEM papers published in peer-reviewed journals have at least one Chinese author. If Chinese scientists decide to return to China they would deal a death blow to American science.
I have several dear friends who are Chinese ancestry and are American citizens. Some hold Communist China in disfavor while others defend current China. So hete is the dillema. We have both present. If you follow Asian news, you know many Chinese citizens take advanatage of our laws and buy houses which allows them to get green cards using a foreigb investment act. We can’t know the purpose of these citizens. Some super-rich Chinese have attempted to create Chinese cities inside the United States, first outside Boise Idaho and tghen in the Catskills in New York. These had they been successful would have been all Chinese citizen populated cities with Chinese only businesses. what’s up with that? China owns some of its largest businesses and partially owns lots of other businesses and these businesses have been buying strategically important American businesses paying above market prices. The US government has rejected some attempts. Xi Jinping’s BRI launched in 2013 has a stated goal of marginalizing the United States by replacing the dollar with the Yuan as the world’s reserve currency and establishing China as the center of commerce for more than half the world’s population while creating alternatives to the existing financial institutions because they are western dominated, not Chinese dominated. Now it is clear not all Chinesee support Communist China (have you seen Shen Yun?), but it is also clear there are a substantial number of Chinese in the United States that support Communist China and therefore we have to be practical in our trust. That is, be fair but be skeptical enough to watch your back. You can bet the Chinese are regarding Americans in China.
Cant laught at facts. They shouldnt even be appolgizing
I assume you mean "Chinese American" author.
Art why are you being evasive and ambigious? Surely the article suggested what you repeated that some Chinese Americans support Communism and some are for Western democracy. But when the FBI threw out the the seine net all Chinese were equally snared, whatever their ideology!
So, the better question you could have tried to deliberate on is whether if China had a democratic government instead but as a rising superpower about to supersede the U.S. would the U.S. or let us stick with the protagonist in this article the FBI still not round up the Chinese as Chinese?
So, please just confess, that the West have an inferiority complex when it comes to enforcing their innate superiority complex on the Chinese, for these Chinese just would not kowtow! They will not be enslaved like the Blacks!
You want to know why puny little David of North Korea is challenging the U.S.? Because in its exegesis of self-esteem and dignity it thinks or shares with the Chinese the same concept of ‘face’ and ‘honour’. It will not kowtow! If it gets beaten it will remember the humiliation and future generations of North Koreans will take revenge or retribution.
Every repeat of any types of acts analogous to the Chinese Exclusion Act of the past, whether it unjust incarceration of nuclear scientists based on sinophobia, or cutting off brilliant Chinese children from entry into the Ivy League Universities, every humiliation will be remembered in the ancient veins and mind of the Chinese living antiquity.
Vince Cheok I don’t recognise the world you exist in. You want me to conform to the anti-American world view that makes it easy to take cheap shots at us but we are not like that despite hyour bigoted perspective. The United States is not perfect and with over 300 million people you can pretty much find any point f view somewhere in the country but ut doesn’t define us. We have peaceniks and war hawks and moderate rational people. We are politically divided as is made clear by electing Obama and Trump. We aren’t the only country that had slaves and blacks weren’t the only slaves, but that doesn’t fit your world view. In the era of slavery it was something people did. That wouldn’t fly today because we have matured as a civil human race, that is some countries have, but not all.
North Korea has a history of violent behavior coupled with a desire to join the nuclear weapons armed group of countries and they wish to sell that capability to make money. they also wish to join with South Korea and end up the dominant political force which is not all that different from before the Korean War. The United States attempted to dissuade North Korea from pursuing nuclear weapons over decades and North Korea used deception to get benefits but always pursued the technology for nuclear weapons. Now they have or are close to having the ability to make good on their previously empty threats. Trump recognizes that and the failure of previous strategies and he is forcing a resolution rather than being politically correct. Yiu try to make America appear to be the bad guy, the insensitive guy who has no appreciation for culture. Nice try. We are way more sophisticated than that just as China is way more competent and advanced than you try to make it appear we don’t know it.
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