Just a week earlier, two Chinese citizens employed by the New Jersey-based telecommunications equipment giant Lucent Technologies, and a marketing executive for a New Jersey technology company, were arrested by the FBI. They are accused of stealing trade secrets from the software company and transferring them to Datang Telecom Technology, a company in Beijing majority-owned by the Chinese government.

According to a New York Times article, the three Chinese scientists are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. "They were ready to roll out their 'rip-off' product in September," claimed U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary, according to a CNN report. "They came to Lucent as scholars, but in reality, they were no more than sleuths," he added later.

The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 was signed into law by then-president William Clinton. For the first time it makes conspiracy to steal or stealing trade secrets a federal offense. The law gives the Department of Justice sweeping authority to investigate and prosecute cases around trade secrets. An individual convicted of trade secret misappropriation including theft, copying without authorization, concealment, computer downloads or uploads, or any type of transfers without authorization can be imprisoned up to 10 years and fined up to $500,000. Penalties are greater if the act was to benefit a foreign agency or government.

The arrests and attention they have received in the big-business media come in the context of a spy scare campaign promoted by Washington to justify steps for increased government snooping operations on working people at home and abroad. After the arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen, accused of being a spy for Moscow, and the frame-up of Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese-American scientist at Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico, on charges of stealing nuclear weapons secrets, the U.S. government spying agencies have emphasized the need for a more "proactive" counterintelligence program.

U.S. president Bush recently created the post of National Counterintelligence Executive, which was established by Clinton in the final weeks of his presidency. The new spy outfit draws on various government agencies with the stated aim of protecting U.S. government and corporate "secrets," and expands counterintelligence collaboration between the government and U.S. big business.

"More and more cases of scientific and industrial espionage have come to light in recent years, a reflection of the rising value of research," stated an article in the May 10 Washington Post, in an effort to explain moves by Washington to widen its spying operations.

Van Harp, a special agent in charge of the Cleveland office of the FBI, was quoted by the Post as saying that the arrest of Okamoto and Seizawa is "a manifestation of the intent of Congress when they passed this law," referring to the 1996 Economic Espionage Act.

Asian employees at Lucent Technologies and groups representing Chinese scientists and engineers in the United States have expressed their concern about how Asians and Asian-Americans are being portrayed after the arrest. Cheuk-Yin Wong, chairman of the Overseas Chinese Physics Association, said that by "involving a racial tone the investigators induce irrational fear. The penalties do not seem that large for the kind of attention (by the government and press) being given to the allegations." He added, "This kind of thing has a chilling effect on the Chinese-American scientific community." Asian employees are the largest minority group at Lucent, comprising 11 percent of the 104,000-member workforce.

Government investigators have claimed that they have no evidence that Datang Telecom or the Chinese government had knowledge of the alleged conspiracy and they have also left open the degree of involvement of the Japanese research institute that Okamoto went to work for and the government agencies that oversee it.

On a related front, the Bush administration announced May 7 the appointment of Vice President Richard Cheney to head up a commission to develop a plan for responding to terrorists attacks in the United States and the establishment of a new office within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate the response of federal agencies to "terrorists attacks involving so-called weapons of mass destruction," as the Post put it.

On May 11, some 100 city, state, and federal officials in New York took part in a drill "intended to ensure that emergency, law enforcement, health care, and other officials know how to respond should a terrorist strike New York City," according to the New York Times. The "mock disaster" was organized around a "terrorist released bubonic plague at a basketball game at the Upper East Side armory," the paper reported.

The FBI and local police departments have already established joint task forces in 30 of the 56 FBI divisions to combat "terrorism," which is defined by the FBI as any individual or organization that uses unlawful "force or violence" to advance "political or social objectives."  
 
 
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