09/26/2000 -- WEN HO LEE CASE LINKED TO CONFEDERATE LAWSUIT
WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 26, 2000 -- Advocates for nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee have claimed that Lee was targeted for prosecution because of his race. The president of the Confederate Memorial Association believes that there appears to be substance to this charge.
John Edward Hurley, who heads the Confederate group that operated a century-old museum in downtown Washington, said that he has been notifying both Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh that a thirteen-year-old lawsuit against his organization was financed by racists. According to Hurley, the lawsuit was being manipulated by a lawyer in the General Counsel's office at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C.
After nine months of solitary confinement, Dr. Lee pled guilty to one relatively minor charge in his plea agreement, which came only one day before the federal government was to produce documents relating to race. Had the case not been plea bargained, Hurley believes it is likely that the numerous documentation in the Confederate case that Hurley had provided to the Justice Department and the FBI would have been disclosed.
Documentation entered in evidence during the Confederate lawsuit includes literature on a racist board game called "Home Rulette." The game refers to "chinks."
Hurley said that the multi-million-dollar legal action against his organization, in which Department of Energy lawyer Stephen Page Smith played a pivotal role, was financed by Richard Hines, a DOE contractor. Hines was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article that identified him as a soft money contributor in a last-minute direct mail effort for presidential candidate George W. Bush in the South Carolina primary. Senator John McCain bitterly denounced the mailer after his defeat in the primary that effectively ended his campaign.
Justice Department records show that Hines is a$550,000 per annum lobbyist for Cambodian dictator and Chinese ally Hun Sen. Hines' semi-annual report to the Justice Department makes no reference to any direct mail political contributions.
Hurley said that he has irrefutable evidence that a secret bank account was set up by DOE attorney Smith as a slush fund. He also said that documents obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that Nancy Dorn, a former lobbyist for Pakistan, had knowledge of some of the financial arrangements which were at issue in the Confederate lawsuit. When Dorn was Assistant Secretary of the Army, she worked with Hines' wife. Dorn has been the subject of a national controversy since she was recently appointed by House Speaker Dennis Hastert to be his top national security policy aide.
According to Hurley, Vicki Heilig, who is a party to the lawsuit against his organization and a computer specialist with a security clearance for another DOE contractor, has admitted in her sworn testimony to have spent $400,000 in litigation against the Confederate Memorial Association. Her lawyer, former Reserve Officers Association President Herbert Harmon, had Hines sign for legal expenses. The contract is posted in the Association's website at http://www.confederate.org.
Pakistan and Cambodia are two of the countries that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights have identified as continuing to traffic in slaves, mostly young girls who are sold for sex.
Hurley said that after he had insisted that the secret bank account records be produced in his case, he had been jailed by D.C. Superior Court Judge John H. Bayly, Jr., who had quashed the subpoena
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