Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
For the first time, Wen Ho Lee speaks out: about his work at Los Alamos and his experiences with the FBI, about his arrest and imprisonment. In January of 1999, the arrest of Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of espionage by the U.S. government and imprisoned without trial, sparked controversy throughout the country. Throughout the ordeal, Wen Ho Lee quietly and steadfastly maintained his innocence. Now he tells his story. A riveting account about prejudice, fear, suspicionand courageMy Country Versus Me offers at last a clear and truthful look at one of the great miscarriages of justice of our time.
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Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 The scape-goat of Elephant & Donkey October 30, 2007
Walter W. Ko (St Louis, MO United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Dr Lee told his story in this book. As a naturalized American citizen, he does his professional job, raised a family with a typical middle class profile. But he was the wrong man as in the Chinese saying "The city gate fire victimized the fish in the pond" in the struggle of two parties ugly politics. Reading this book creates the following questions.
1. Where is due process for Dr. Lee?
2. What is the role of free press in democracy?
3. Why a free press is enthusiastic to make a guilty assumption on him?
4. Why there is silence on the spy on Crown Jewel Rocket secret afterward?
5. Why US Court Judge Parker ended the case with an unusual apology to Dr. Lee, an alleged felon in 9-month solitary confinement with 59 charges?
6. Why there is a plea bargain for one small charge to cover up lost face?
7. Why this case is important relating to US Constitution and the rule of law?
Dr Lee warns readers "Do not talk to FBI without your lawyer." This book gives the reality lesson of politics, humanity and justice.
All men are created equal - some are more equal than others?
 WOE IS ME May 11, 2007
Gregory Moss (Diamond Bar, CA United States)
1 out of 11 found this review helpful
This book is a self-serving woe-is-me diatribe against the US government because it dared to charge a non-white individual with the crime of espionage. Lee claims this happened to him by virtue of the fact that he is Chinese, and in spite of the fact that he is a naturalized American citizen. Hence, the title.
First, I do not consider naturalized citizens to be American in the full sense of the word. It is simply amazing that people like Lee get hired to positions such as the one he held.
Second, having served in the US Air Force with a top secret crypto clearance, I know from experience that people working in the intelligence community are very aware that they are not to share any sensitive data with anyone unless he/she has the appropriate clearance as well as "the need to know." Yet Lee downloaded all kinds of classified data onto his home computer, a huge no-no for anyone working with sensitive data. And why did he do so, pray tell? What was he going to do with the data he stole? Are we to assume he had no intentions of sharing this information with anyone? According to Lee, to think otherwise makes one a racist.
Third, when the story first broke in the media, I knew it was only a matter of time until Lee or his attorneys would play the race card. If you go to Lee's website and check the names of those that have signed a petition in behalf of Mr. Lee, you will notice that the vast majority are Chinese. How many of these signatories put their names on the petition out of a knee-jerk tribalistic instinct rather than through a sincere effort to discern the truth?
And now we have the case of Chi Mak, a Chinese-born engineer recently found guilty of handing over classified data on electronic propulsion systems for stealth submarines to the People's Republic of China. One wonders why Chi Mak did not play the race card as did Lee. One wonders how many signatories to a petition he could garner from fellow Chinese living in the United States. One wonders what he was doing in such a position to begin with. Maybe we'll find out when Chi writes his book.
 Take with a grain of salt - April 12, 2007
P. M. Keating (Akron, OH USA)
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
The book is an interesting account of Lee's "persecution", but anyone who reads the book without understanding that the author is writing about HIMSELF - not exactly an impartial source for the facts - will come to the conclusion that he was a victim of an insane government.
If you don't have time to read the book, here's a synopsis - The US government knew that classified material was getting from Los Alamos to China, and targeted me for investigation not because of my admittedly suspicious and illegal activity but because I'm Asian.
Shameful government accusations December 20, 2006
mickey mouse (somewhere, USA)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Mr. Lee is an amazing author and does an excellent job portraying the "all-righteous" government so many americans think that we have in this country. The truth is that corruption does exists, which is evident in all of the ways that the FBI, DOE, courts, and all of the other Federal organizations dealt with Mr. Lee. My hat is off to him for his courage, fortitude, and skill in creating a wonderful written work straight from his heart.
Guilty (and Punished) Until Proven Innocent November 10, 2006
Timothy Ritter (Colorado)
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
In December 1999, when the threat to national security posed by Elian Gonzales had yet to be discovered and neutralized by the Reno Justice Department, another plot, equally dastardly, was uncovered by the FBI. Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwan-born American, was found to be working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory alongside America-born Americans on our nation's most sensitive nuclear secrets. With an alacrity that impressed even Reno's political opponents, the FBI clapped Lee into leg and arm shackles and an orange jumpsuit and put him into solitary confinement in a prison in Santa Fe. In so treating him *before* he had committed his crime, Reno was able to stop him from doing the sorts of things that Timothy McVeigh and Ramzi Yousef had done to get themselves the same sort of rough justice. Of course, Mr. Lee is not happy about these preventive measures, and it shows in his book, but the reader must keep in mind that he was born in Taiwan and doesn't understand our ways.
It is distressing to all patriots that a judge ordered Mr. Lee's release before the Justice Dept was able to fully punish him for what they thought he might have done. Lee's lawyers cleverly played on the so-called "no evidence" loophole to get him sprung after a mere nine months in prison.
Espionage and treason investigations are usually begun when there is evidence of a government employee in a sensitive post spending beyond his or her means: Clyde Conrad with his stash of gold coins; Ed Wilson with his vast Virginia real estate holdings; John Walker with his yacht. Lee's lawyers were able get him freed on the "no evidence" technicality before the FBI had time to find out what it was about Mr. Lee's lifestyle that made them understand that he was a spy. We know now that his stated hobbies of gardening and fly-fishing might well have been covers for illicit activities. Rare coins, might have been buried under the carrots. The whereabouts of an excellent trout pool in a New Mexico creek might have been only the first in a long line of secrets that Lee might have disclosed to the Chinese communists.
Given that the FBI was not accorded sufficient time to uncover his crimes, the whole investigation appears to have rested on Mr. Lee's own admission of the fact that he was born in Taiwan, which has a clear link to China, which in turn is one of our nation's greatest enemies. It sends a chill down my spine to think of how many others might have used the "great scientist" guise to spy on us. Albert Einstein, to name only one, was allowed access to some of our most sensitive data on physics relating to atoms and neutrons and so forth, and no one seems to have noticed that he was born in *Germany*, one of our chief enemies in Europe during World War II. He managed to infiltrate the community of America-born scientists and might well have passed on a massive amount of vital intelligence to his erstwhile compatriots, the Nazis. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that if he'd been properly incarcerated like Mr. Lee, the war in Europe might have ended many months sooner.
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