%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Editorial Board of CBS Incident Committee %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Friday, June 3, 1994 (No. 2) ============================================================================= *** Part II. The Letter To the Legal Referral Service *** ============================================================================= _From: hua7291@med2s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu (Mi Mi) Hi, everyone, the following is my letter to the Legal Referral Service. I just finished it today and faxed it to the local service. You may do the following: 1) Download this letter, make changes necessary if you think so, put on your name, address and phone number on the upper right hand side of the letter; sign your name on it, 2) Check your yellow pages, in the lawyers section, find you local Bar Association's Legal Referral Service, call them up and get their fax numbers, or their addresses; 3) Fax, or mail this letter to them for reviewing. 4) When they provide you with they recommendations, try to contact these lawyers to find out what they think of this case. It will cost you some dollars for the initial consultation fee. 5) if their responses are positive, then we can plan our next step in legal action. 6) The lawyers fee can be in the amount of millions. We can not afford that, Just want to see if we can strike a deal with the lawyers if they agree to collect charges ONLY after we win and CBS PAYS the compensation. Lawyers usually will get you a contract to make a portion of the compensation fee as their awards. This, will put the lawyers also on the line, so they have to fight until we win. We have assure them there are tens of thousands CSS behind us, and we are willing to and capable of providing them with supporting evidences. 7) Lawyers are categorized into many professions. Not every lawyer is qualified for class action suit, just as you can not pick any lawyer to help you to apply your green card. Do not wait for someone else do it for you. Do it yourselves, and do it NOW. Mi Mi Sr. Coordinator of the CBS Incident Committee ================================================================= Attention: Legal Referral Service Dear Sirs/Madame, I am writing to you on behalf of the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars (IFCSS), to seek a qualified lawyer to bring a class action suit against Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), for its evening news program, Eye on America, hosted by Ms. Connie Chung, on May 19th, 1994. We, as Chinese students and scholars who are currently studying in the US, feel being insulted and are outraged by Ms. Connie Chung's grossly exaggerated report on Chinese espionage in this country, particularly by the implications she made beyond the facts in her comments. Not only has the program defamed the Chinese nationals and other Chinese Americans as a whole group by creating an impression that every ordinary Chinese who has come to this country could be a potential spy and Americans should watch out on their Chinese neighbors, it also has gone so far as to advise the employers around the country to be suspicious on their Chinese employees or job applicants because these people are from China. Rarely have we seen such an openly and blatant advocating for discrimination against an ethnic group. We must point out, in this program, many totally unrelated facts are deliberately put together to make points. Ms. Connie Chung began with the fact that "A Chinese student or scientist or businessperson applies for a visa to go to the US". Then she went on to claim that the Ministry of State Security then recruits them as spies, and tell them to lay low. She claimed such a Chinese spy, Mr. Kao Yen Men, was caught 23 years later. The fact is, when the Mr. Kao came to the US twenty three years ago, there was no diplomatic relation between China and US. It was in the era of Cold War and Vietnam War. Not a single ordinary mainland Chinese could possibly set his or her foot on the soil of America. It is very unlikely that this Mr. Kao was even a P.R.C. citizen. It was not until 1978, more than seven years later than Mr. Kao Yen Men had come to shore, did that planeloads of ordinary Chinese students, scientists and businessmen begin arriving. Even so, most of the Chinese students and scientists were J-1 visa holders, or exchange visitors, who were subject to the vigorously imposed "two-year-home- residency" requirement by US Information Agency and Immigration And Naturalization Service. There was no way for these potential "fish" even to think about the "bottom". By deliberately putting Mr. Kao's totally unrelated case together with the planeloads of ordinary Chinese people, CBS was implying that the latter could be all potential spies. So, CBS is instigating the wildest imagination of and fabricating the largest espionage network ever in the history of humanity. The impression left by this report, is that any Chinese, no matter how innocent he/she looks or is, could be a potential spy. Most importantly, the report hinted that any Chinese who is hired by an American Company might steal national secrets for China, even against their own wills, since, as Connie Chung exclaims, the "Ministry of State Security will be watching their family members in China" and thus forcing them into submission. We are concerned that these irresponsible statements are producing an even stronger discrimination against people with Chinese origin. As the coordinator appointed by the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars (IFCSS), I hereby am seeking the possibility of locating a law firm in order to bring a class action suit against CBS networks. IFCSS represents tens of thousands Chinese students and scholars nationwide, and is credited with the successful effort in lobbying the Congress to enact the Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992, which in turn is providing blanket protection to all of the Chinese who entered United States before April 11, 1990, shortly after the pro-democracy movement of 1989. Most of them are participants or sympathizers of pre-democracy movement. This is the group which Ms. Connie Chung had pointed her finger as " A Chinese student or scientist or businessperson" who had applied "for a visa to go to the US". I am looking forward to hearing from you soon, Sincerely yours, Signed Enclosure: Transcript of The CBS Evening News CHUNG: Coming up next, Eye on American. Tonight, the biggest spy network in American. We'll tell you who's running it and how. CONNIE CHUNG, co-anchor: The recent Ames spy case served as a reminder that the espionage business in this country is still thriving; that you don't always find spies in trench coats and that you could find them in the house next door. In a special investigation, CBS News found out how China is grooming agents to keep an Eye on American. Unidentified Woman: Only US citizens continue straight ahead. CHUNG: Every day, planeloads of Chinese citizens arrive legally in the United States, ordinary people. But to the Chinese government, some of them may be future spies, who a few years down the road, will be activated to steal American's military and technological secrets, whether they want to or not. Are there any other countries that you know of that have this kind of spy network operating here in the United States? Mr. NICHOLAS EFTIMIADES(Defense Information Agency): No, not- certainly not to this -to this degree. CHUNG: Nicholas Eftimiades, who works for an American spy agency, the Defense information Agency. His new book on Chinese intelligence raises serious questions for American government and business. Mr. EFTIMIADES: I don't think we can say at this point any Western government is prepared to deal with this type of espionage threat, because it's different from anything that we've known to date. CHUNG: It all starts here in Beijing. A Chinese student or scientist or businessperson applies for a visa to go to the US. Then the Ministry of State Security starts asking questions: What can you learn in the States? Will you be working with computers? Will you be loyal to China? And most importantly, can you be patient? Eftimiades says the prospective spies are trained, paid and warned to stay in touch. 'Remember,' they are told, 'we'll be watching your family members in China.' 'Lay low until you're contacted,' they are told. It could be years. Mr.EFTIMIADES: Let me put it to you in the terms that the Chinese Intelligence Services describes it: Chen di yu, which is a Ministry of State Security slang term for fish on the bottom of the ocean. This has been defined in Western espionage as sleeper agents. CHUNG: So they just sit there like fish at the bottom of the ocean and do nothing? Mr. EFTIMIADES: They wait. CHUNG: Until they have to surface. Mr EFTIMIADES: Exactly. CHUNG: This man is one of those Chinese fish at the bottom of the American ocean. Call him a reluctant spy. He's afraid he'll be contacted soon to hand over state-of-the-art computer programs. Unidentified Man #1: Never forget, you belong to our organization. CHUNG:'never forget,' they told him, 'you belong to our organization.' Man #1: You were sent by our organization. CHUNG:'You were sent by our organization, and this organization belongs to the Communist Party.' Man #1: ...Communist Party. CHUNG: Twenty-three years ago this man, Kao Yen Men, came to the US. In recent years, he lived a quiet life in this house in Charlotte, North Carolina. And he even bought a restaurant in downtown Charlotte. His neighbors never knew what he was up to. Unidentified Man #2: I really didn't know what to think. I mean, you know, we came down to this nice little Southern city, and the next thing you know I'm down the street from a spy. I thought this was, like, a little fiction movie or something, but... CHUNG: Some movie. After a six-year FBI investigation, Kao was arrested and charged with trying to steal the advanced Mark 48 torpedo, engines for the FA-18 Hornet jet fighter and radar for the F-16 Falcon jet. Kao was caught, but security expert Pat Pattakos says most American companies are too naive about the Chinese spy threat. Mr. Arion "PAT" PATTAKOS(Beta Analytics): Right now a lot of people don't really think of protecting themselves. CHUNG: Especially when the target is information and computer data... Mr. PATTAKOS: They'll look at all of this information here that they can access. Unidentified Man #3: Yes. CHUNG: ... all part of the more and more accessible information superhighway. Mr. PATTAKOS: I mean, it's very easy to know when a truck is missing in front of you place. I mean, it's gone. It's a physical object. But think about information. Information is more intangible, and people may not know-realize that it's lost. CHUNG: Pattakos says a new national strategy between business and government can trap the spies. Eftimiades is much less optimistic. Mr. EFTIMIADES: Once these spies get into American society, once they're deeply rooted into our structure, our society's structure, we're not going to be able to detect them. there is no way to stop them at that point. CHUNG: The FBI is trying to help American corporations protect themselves from espionage. The bureau has a program now to brief executives about how their companies could become targets. Dan. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % Executive Editor of CBS Incident Committee: Miao Ye % % Sign on/off at listserv@ifcss.org, with mailbody as: % % sub fcbs-l Firstname Lastname, or signoff fcbs-l % % Post at fcbs-l@ifcss.org % % Anonymous ftp at ifcss.org:/ifcss/cbs % %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%