Word: bails
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That would turn out to be the high-water mark of the government's three-year pursuit of Wen Ho Lee. Before Christmas, prosecutors asked Federal Judge James Parker to deny Lee bail and hold him in solitary confinement before trial, lest he somehow communicate to allies or foreign governments how to find the missing tapes or destroy evidence. The government based its plea on testimony from the FBI's chief investigator in the case, Robert Messemer, who said Lee had engaged in a pattern of deceit, misled the government about his contacts with Chinese officials and written letters seeking...
...home computer. Lacking any evidence that those secrets were leaked to any foreign country, the FBI charged Lee with 59 counts of mishandling classified information--not quite espionage, but still punishable with a life sentence. Government prosecutors successfully argued that Lee should not be set free on bail before trial, since he represented a "a clear and present danger to the security of the United States." And so Lee spent nine months in solitary confinement, under a light bulb that burned 24 hours a day. During his single daily hour of exercise, he wore shackles on his legs...
President Clinton has called for a narrow review of the government's handling of the case, specifically to determine if the government was justified in holding Lee without bail. But it is only appropriate that the entire investigation--including any alleged racial motivations--be subject to wide-ranging and thorough scrutiny. Such a review may have grave implications for the future of civil liberties, not just for Chinese Americans, but for all our nation's citizens...
Keenly aware of the critical roasting they would get, the fathers of Pop decided to bail out before drowning in red ink. Says Katzenberg: "Everyone in this space is blindfolded and trying to pin the tail on the donkey." The final ignominy came when indie start-ups iFilm and Atom Films negotiated to buy Pop, but no deal materialized. And so Pop was laid to rest, its tombstone a warning to all those in Tinseltown who would jump on the Internet without first understanding it. If Spielberg and Howard own the story rights to Pop's internal wranglings, however, they...
...Then, in August, the government's case collapsed. FBI agent Messemer recanted statements he had made at the December bail hearing about Lee's alleged lies, letters and contacts with Chinese officials - claims that had helped send Lee into solitary confinement. That reversal angered Judge Parker, who already had doubts about whether the sensitive material Lee downloaded was truly vital to national security...