KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — An international advocacy group for scientists is calling on a federal judge in Knoxville "to ensure fairness" in what they say has been the overzealous prosecution for a former University of Tennessee professor and researcher.
"In the opinion of (the Committee of Concerned Scientists), the case of Dr. Hu and many similar cases tried in the U.S. in recent years stem to a large degree from the failure of the government to clearly spell out rules related to foreign collaborations on unclassified research and the differences of these rules for different countries," the letter from the Maryland-based Committee of Concerned Scientists states.
"We certainly don't condone such illegality, should it occur. However, we also do not condone the use of prosecutorial means that are themselves questionable and overzealous to the point utterly inappropriate and perhaps even constitute prosecutorial misconduct."
The group also cites the high-profile late 1990s case of Wen Ho Lee, a former researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The government prosecuted Lee, a Taiwanese American, for espionage but the case ultimately ended with prosecutors dropping almost all charges and a federal judge apologizing to him for the way he'd been treated.
The letter was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Knoxville in the pending prosecution of Anming Hu, a former UT researcher accused by the Department of Justice of lying about his ties to a Chinese university while doing research on a contract with NASA while at UT. The government in the Trump administration vowed to go after visiting or non-native researchers it said were trying to aid the Chinese government.
Federal prosecutors tried Hu in the spring but an East Tennessee jury in Knoxville couldn't agree on a verdict.
District Court Judge Thomas Varlan then declared a mistrial, and Hu's defense attorney Phil Lomonaco is asking him to toss the case. The judge hasn't yet ruled.
The government announced July 30 it intended to retry Hu, over the defense's objection. Hu says he did nothing wrong and that his past ties to the university were not a secret.
The Committee of Concerned Scientists identifies itself as a non-profit organization of scientists, physicians, engineers and scholars dedicated to protecting the human rights and scientific freedoms of the scientific community.
In the letter, the committee notes press reports "suggest that numerous serious missteps have been made by government agents and by the administration of the University of Tennessee in the course of the investigation, which if true may well deserve investigations of their own."
Members also wrote: "We understand that U.S. authorities are concerned, sometimes with justification, about efforts by Chinese authorities to illegally obtain information of a commercial or research nature using a variety of means, sometimes involving persons of Chinese nationality or origin and sometimes involving persons of other nationalities."
A professor emeritus of physics at Colorado State University also wrote Varlan in support of Hu. The Aug. 2 letter is newly filed with Hu's case.
Carl Patton told Varlan he has a chance to fix the "travesties" the government has brought on Hu, who he described as a "mild-mannered" faculty member who made for an easy target for federal prosecutors.
Patton also wrote that he was sending along a copy of Wen Ho Lee's book, "My Country Versus Me".
The government said in a filing Aug. 6 it opposed the defense's effort to throw out the case.
The OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, which advocates on behalf of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, has condemned the federal government's prosecution of Hu.
