Prosecutors stumble in espionage battle

DAVIS, Calif. -- Former University of California eye researcher Bin Han, his wife and their two sons, ages 9 and 14, were home watching "Jurassic Park III" on May 17 when police showed up with a search warrant.

"Bingo," one officer said as he peered into Han's freezer.

The officer found 20 vials of a biological "glue" used in stem cell experiments that belonged to a UC Davis lab. Days before, the lab had fired Han for allegedly mishandling three mice used in experiments.

Han is one of four Asian-born scientists working in U.S. labs who has been jailed in recent weeks, accused of stealing valuable research material.

A fifth admitted in May that he lied to the FBI to cover up for a colleague who allegedly looted $2 million worth of Alzheimer's disease research.

But most charges against Han and the others have been downgraded or dropped. Han, originally charged with three felonies, now faces only a misdemeanor theft charge.

The arrests have opened a window onto an industry that experts say is plagued by spying and smuggling of American trade secrets, and a new U.S. law that has been able to do little about it.

Charges of racism

On the other side, Asian-American groups say the prosecutions smack of the same overzealous fear of Asian competition seen in the government's rigorous prosecution of Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese-American accused in 1999 of copying sensitive nuclear weapons data at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Although Lee was held in solitary confinement for nine months, he was charged only with illegally downloading data.

Since 1996, when Congress passed the Economic Espionage Act, the Justice Department has prosecuted 47 people in 34 cases. Of those cases, 16 were filed in the last 18 months.

Asian defendants were involved in a quarter of those prosecutions.

Chinese-American groups charge that some cases are little more than racist "witch hunts" that have historically plagued scientists of ethnic Chinese origin.

Tough to make case

For prosecutors, the cases are extraordinarily tough to bring forward. They require not only proof of criminal intent, but painstaking investigations by agents schooled in the high-tech world of biotechnology and other sciences.

Federal prosecutors reject many cases because they are connected to business disputes best resolved through lawsuits, Green said.

Uncovering and convicting spies in such a realm has proved extremely tricky.

Perhaps no case highlights the challenges more than one involving the University of California, Davis and the vials seized from Bin Han's freezer.

UC Davis officials said the vials were worth $1 billion in the right hands. When police also found Han had a plane ticket to China, investigators decided it all added up to economic espionage.

So Han was arrested and charged with three felonies.

But the felony charges have been dropped. Han is scheduled to go trial Aug. 13 on a single misdemeanor theft charge, the legal equivalent of shoplifting.