Remembering Wen Ho Lee

THERE WAS an unsatisfying coda the other day to the mournful story of Wen Ho Lee, the scientist at Los Alamos who was unjustly accused of atomic espionage by the government seven years ago and maligned by journalists leaning on sources who should not have been trusted. The most disturbing aspects of Lee's persecution were hardly addressed in the settlement last week of his lawsuit alleging that his privacy was violated by government leaks to the Associated Press, The New York Times, ABC News, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.

Neither the $895,000 to be paid by the government nor the $750,000 from the five media outlets can efface the nine months Lee spent in harsh solitary confinement. What happened to the Taiwan-born scientist is not supposed to happen in America. With no evidence an act of espionage had taken place and no evidence he had passed classified information to a foreign power, Lee was singled out for suspicion by an Energy Department intelligence official with a reputation for right-wing zealotry and racist behavior.

A more fitting recompense to Lee is the courtroom apology he received from the presiding judge in his case, Federal District Judge James Parker. The judge castigated ``the top decision-makers in the executive branch, especially the Department of Justice and the Department of Energy who have. . . embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."

Judge Parker's apology will have to be the contrition that echoes down the corridors of history because the government agencies that abused him and the press that allowed itself to be manipulated still seem institutionally incapable of fully acknowledging their errors. The five news organizations issued a joint statement after the settlement of the lawsuit saying that they agreed to the financial payment to Lee to ``protect our journalists from further sanctions" and to protect their ability to gather information that can be obtained ``only from confidential sources."

In 2000, when the Justice Department dropped 58 of the 59 counts against Lee, it sought to rationalize its misconduct by insisting that Lee plead guilty to one count of mishandling information that was retroactively classified ``secret." This was a mistake that Lee had been willing to admit from the start of his ordeal. But harkening back to that one conviction, the Justice Department pettily insisted that none of the money it pays in the settlement would go directly to Lee. Instead, it is to pay his legal fees and taxes.

It is important to remember what was done to Lee because powerful institutions rarely admit abuse of their powers, and because the rule of law is imperiled when the government and a compliant or gullible press tramples on the rights of a single private citizen.