%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Editorial Board of CBS Incident Committee %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Friday, July 15 , 1994 ============================================================================= *** Special Issue: The Second Call for Signatures Against CBS *** ============================================================================= ***** Please send your signatures to huangy@sluvca.slu.edu including the signature line in form: SIGNED NAME UNIVERSITY/COMPANY E-MAIL-ADDRESS e.g. SIGNED XXXXX XX St. Louis University xxxx@xxxx.xxx.edu ***** Let us join our hands and stand up together for our community interest and image. We can and must make a difference! We will! ***** You may get Transcript of CBS Evening News (May 19, 1994, 6:30pm), Mr. Shi's Original Protest Letter, The response from CBS Vice President from anonymous ftp site at ifcss.org:/ifcss/Legal/cbs ***** Mr. Ray Wang is our spokeperson now. His phone numbers: Office: (607)-777-4907 Home: (607)-723-7238 ============================================================================= Table of Contents # of Lines ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. We need your signatures! We need your support for fight CBS! A cover letter to Our Supporters Nation-wide (New Version) ......... 31 2. Details about how to send signatures by e-mails ....................... 83 3. The Letter From the National Coordinator of the CBS Incident Committee 125 4. CBS Incident Committee Calls For Donations to Fight CBS .............. 458 ============================================================================== ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. We need your signatures! We need your support for fight CBS! A cover letter to Our Supporters Nation-wide (New Version) ......... 31 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ladies and Gentleman: May 19, 1994, CBS Evening News, "Eye on America": a group of Chinese faces, men, women, children, flooded out from an airport terminal. "Only U.S. citizens continue straight ahead", an airport staff announced, directing these Chinese to the immigration gate. Now the reporter Connie's face, showing grave concern for America, "Everyday, planeloads of Chinese citizens arrive legally in the United States, ordinary people", she started to explain that among these ordinary Chinese faces, men, women, children, "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"! That is one plane. There are "planeloads", "everyday". They are spies! If they are not spies today, they may be spies tomorrow! This program enraged the entire Chinese community. No matter what their background is, one thing is clear, this subjective, distorted and unprofessionally produced program has threatened everybody who looks like a Chinese. They could be spies! They don't have to be caught or convicted to be spies! They are "future" spies! Thousands of protest letters have been received by the CBS, but a CBS vice president, Mr. Lane Venardos, shows no regret or sympathy. In his identical replies to many protesters, particularly a letter to Mr. Shi Heping, the Vice President of IFCSS, a Chinese student and scholars association, Mr. Venardos lectured: "Our job is to bring all stories to the attention of the public, even those that may make some viewers uncomfortable, That is the very definition of a free press"! Some story! Obviously, to Mr. Venardos, the flat faced Chinese as shown in the program do not understand what freedom of press is! He contends that he can make any slanderous and racist remarks on an ethnic minority, making these people "uncomfortable", and that is the "very definition of a free press"! Attached please find a reply from the national coordinator of the CBS Incident Committee, which contains more detailed information about this racist and slanderous CBS report. Also attached are the transcript of the original CBS Evening News program, Mr. Shi's original protest letter and Mr. Venardos' letter. Mr. Huang Lin National Coordinator CBS Incident Committee ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Details about how to send signatures .................................. 85 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Yinrong Huang (huangy@sluvca.slu.edu), Signature collector *** Please send your signatures to Huangy@sluvca.slu.edu including the signature line in form: SIGNED NAME UNIVERSITY/COMPANY E-MAIL-ADDRESS 1. SIGNED must be put there and before others. Please Check spelling!! Without this word correctly spelt, your signature may not be retrieved. The computer program searches SIGNED as beginning of your signature. 2. The NAME format is Given + Surname. 3. UNIVERSITY/COMPANY should be concise such as St. Louis University, or blank if you choose to. 4. E-MAIL-ADDRESS should be complete. *** A MESSAGE TO SIGANEE:please get more involved by asking your family members, roommates, office mates, classmates, friends and neighbors for their support.You may use your e-mail-address to include several lines for sending other people's signatures. *** The signature format for organization Format Explanation SIGNED Must be put there and before others THE PERSON NAME IN CHARGE the person who can be contacted in need NORMAL MAIL ADDRESS as these used in normal mail TELEPHONE AND FAX NUMBERS related phone number EMAIL ADDRESS email for the person in charge or omitted e.g. Mr. Yinrong Huang The FCBS committee 258 Anywhere Street, #369 St. Louis, MO 631xx (O) (314) 147-2588 (Fax) (314) 258-3699 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. The Letter From the National Coordinator of the CBS Incident Committee ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr. Lin Huang National Coordinator CBS Incident Committee 3044 Albany Crescent 1G Bronx, NY 10463 (718)-548-9114 hua7291@med2s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu Lane Venardos Vice President Hard News and Special Events CBS Inc. 524 West 57 Street New York, NY 10019 (212)-975-6979 Dear Vice President Lane Venardos: Your recent letter to the Vice President of the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars, Mr. Shi, has been brought to my attention, in my capacity as the National Coordinator of the CBS Incident Committee, a nationwide assembly of Chinese students and scholars who have joined to protest the CBS Evening News' May 19th broadcast regarding a presumed threat of ordinary Chinese nationals spying for China in the United States. Our committee consists of 60 core members, regional and local coordinators, and a pool of over a thousand volunteers nationwide, coordinating activities provoked by this unfortunate incident. We appreciate your thoughtful and immediate response to Mr. Shi and other complainants. Yet, we find that the reply is far from satisfactory, fallacies were abound, questions were unanswered. We would like to take this opportunity to express our grave concerns in more detail. We expect your kind response point by point. A. In the CBS broadcast and in the subsequent transcript which we received, it was mentioned that the major interviewee in the report, Mr. Nicholas Eftimiades, was an employee of the Defense Information Agency. Your reply to Mr. Shi also states that your information came from "the United States Defense Information Agency in Washington". There is no "Defense Information Agency" anywhere in the United States. Mr. Nicholas Eftimiades is employed by the Defense Intelligence Agency. While this is a very small and subtle error, if CBS "special investigators" had read Mr. Nicholas Eftimiades' book, or had communicated with the Defense Intelligence Agency, they would have realized the mistake. This oversight not only characterizes the unprofessional nature of this program, but also highlights the fact that mistakes were definitely made in this broadcast. Now, the real questions are, how many more mistakes were made, and to what extent harm has been done to innocent people in this country! B. The May 19th broadcasting opened with the statement that, "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 America's military and technological secrets... ". Three aspects of this statement need to be addressed: 1) In reference to the "planeloads of Chinese citizens" who are allegedly recruited as agents, your report stated the following: "A Chinese student or scientist or businessperson applies for a visa to go to the US. Then the Ministry of State Security (MSS) 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?" This apparently meant to illustrate the standard and routine process for recruiting an agent. In reality, according to your interviewee himself, Mr. Eftimiades, MSS is very picky and cautious in recruiting. On page 64 of Mr. Eftimiades' book, he details how a certain individual was recruited: "MSS made use of its resources in identifying this individual and assessing his ability to conduct espionage. The recruitment process took place over six months. The time invested, as well as the ministry's foreknowledge of the source's personality and apparent prospects for academic achievement, indicates a well-planned and carefully regulated process of development and recruitment." In your broadcast, all those procedures and precautions disappeared. Each and every ordinary Chinese is simply approached with a blatant request to be recruited as agent, according to your reporter. I can summon thousands, if not tens of thousands, of "ordinary" Chinese to testify before any grand jury that your spy recruiting story is simply fake. It is not too hard to find the discrepancies between your report and the book. Your report generalized and distorted the facts obtained from the U.S. intelligence, putting words into the interviewee's mouth and pointing fingers at us, the "ordinary people", as we are referred to in your report. 2) The report also alleged that those "ordinary" Chinese are sent by the Chinese intelligence as "sleeper spies", "fish in the bottom of the ocean" waiting to be surfaced in the "future". However, as the report stated, the development of "sleeper" agents usually requires a long preparation period, yet that is not possible with most Chinese nationals entering the United States. According to American Government documents, the majority of students and scholars who have arrived in the U.S. since 1978 (when diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China were normalized) have been exchange visitors on J-1 visas. A J-1 visa holder must return to his or her home country after completing research and study programs. This is generally three or four years for a scholar and the reasonable length for a student to complete an advanced degree. It was not until after the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement that President Bush waived this requirement for some of the Chinese exchange visitors who were in the U.S. at the time. Thus, there was no way for these alleged "fish", as they are ridiculed in your report, even to think about surfacing 20-30 years in the future as your report suggested. There is no evidence at all to support the "future" spy allegations in your report, which are the most disturbing and outrageous part. Those claims establish that even if a Chinese does not get caught spying, he or she is still a spy suspect! He or she is a spy suspect for life! CBS, as a news organization, cannot blame the US intelligence agencies for this irresponsible claim. The US intelligence agencies can suspect and investigate any Chinese or non-Chinese in the US, however "ordinary", if there is sufficient evidence to do so, but they do not make a public announcement that any "ordinary" Chinese is suspected of being a "future" spy. What CBS has done is clearly slanderous! 3) In reference to your "concrete example" of an "ordinary" Chinese who was chosen to become a "sleeper" agent, Mr. Kao is hardly ordinary. Mr. Kao arrived in the United States in 1971, seven years before formal Sino-U.S. diplomatic relations were established. In 1971, there was no way for any ordinary Chinese to get visa to the U.S., no transportation from China to the U.S. and certainly there were no "planeloads" of "ordinary" Chinese as shown in the opening of the report. Mr. Kao is not one of the alleged "ordinary" "Chinese student, scientist or businessman" whose dramatic spying journey "all starts here in Beijing..."! C. In the May 19 broadcast, an interview was staged to dramatize the issue. The interview went as follows: "Unidentified Man #1: Never forget, you belong to our organization. "CHUNG: Never forget,' they told him, 'you belong to our rganization. "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. If we were actually to believe that this was a conversation between a "sleeper" spy and an MSS case officer, we would like to pose the following questions: 1) Wouldn't this conversation be in Chinese, rather than in English? 2) Who is this unidentified man, what is this unidentified man and what Chinese or American agency does he work for? 3) Doesn't this sound like a Hollywood interpretation of how a spy ring would be enforced? We regret to inform you, but China is not Hollywood, and business (be it espionage or car manufacturing) is not conducted in the same terse and straight-forward manner as it is here. D. At the end of the report, the reporter announced that "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." By stating "The Bureau has a program now ..", it implies that the FBI has recently created a new program against Chinese nationals to deal with the presumed threat of Chinese espionage. This is another fabrication alleging the U.S. government launching racist programs against the Chinese community! The fact is that the FBI has had programs in place for many years to protect America's interests from espionage originating from all countries, friendly or hostile. The implications arising from this misleading statement is overwhelming, possibly leading to a national "witch hunt" for Chinese in high-power jobs. E. In your reply to Mr. Shi's letter, you mentioned (as further proof that this broadcast was legitimate) that between 1986 and 1993 "one in eight of all illegal export enforcement cases closed by U.S. Commerce Department involved the People's Republic of China...". First of all, trade violations and espionage are different concepts. Second, we would like to know, what percentage of these "illegal export" crimes are committed by businesses that tried to get around trade regulations to make money, and which were genuine "spy network" cases? According to our investigation, there is only one in thirty of all illegal export cases that could be related to espionage involving China. And this percentage is comparable to that of cases involving the U.S. allies such as the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. Besides, you cannot use illegal export cases to China to support this particular news report, which was targeting "planeloads" of "ordinary" Chinese, and which made no mention whatsoever about Americans of non Chinese origin. You must know that most of these illegal export cases to China involve Americans of non-Chinese origin and you would not like to suggest that the Chinese Americans who were involved in these cases are Chinese spies and those non-Chinese Americans who were involved are patriotic citizens who just made unfortunate mistakes, would you? F. In your letter to Mr. Shi, you made another ORIGINAL and unsubstantiated accusation that was not even in your broadcast: "the Chinese Ministry of State Security has recruited HUNDREDS of ordinary Chinese citizens to steal U.S. military, technological, trade and computer secrets." You are personally responsible for this ADDITIONAL defamation of "ordinary Chinese" and we thus demand your personal reply to substantiate this claim with written documents and concrete evidence, instead of imagination and innuendo! Since your "special investigators" do not even know what the "Defense Intelligence Agency" is, we could only take the liberty to assume that your hundreds-spy fairy tale is also from your interviewee, Mr. Eftimiades. However, Mr. Eftimiades only speculated once in his book: "If the MSS recruited just 1 percent of the fifteen thousand Chinese students who travel to the United States each year, there would be a minimum of several hundred long-term agents operating here." Please pay attention, he dreamed up a "1 percent" to create "hundreds". The sentence starts with "if", a big "if". This is totally different from your assertion that "MSS has recruited hundreds..."! A person remains innocent until proved guilty. Wild speculations are not convicted or even prosecuted cases. They cannot be used as evidence to backup your vivid imagination if we are talking about Hard News here! G. Your reply also states that CBS "in no way intended to suggest that the recruits represented anything other than a minority of the Chinese population in this country and we do not believe that we in any way suggested otherwise", although there is no mention or implication of such statement in the original broadcast. In fact, CBS' choice of words in the report portrayed exactly the opposite intention, as shown in the following four examples: 1) CBS implicated the entire Chinese community by using the word "ordinary" and by providing no distinction between being an intelligence recruit and being an ordinary member of the Chinese population. 2) Once again, the CBS broadcast opened by a crowd of Chinese visitors coming out of a plane, saying "planeloads of Chinese citizens arrive [daily]... some of them may be future spies." The statement makes it seem as if spies arrive in every plane, and leading to the inescapable conclusion that, since there are numerous planes arrive each day, America must be inundated with Chinese spies! 3) The broadcast stated that ordinary Chinese "will be activated to steal America's military and technological secrets, whether they want to or not." This statement further implicates the entire Chinese community by virtually demanding that the least spy-like person must also be watched, because they can be forced to spy against their will. It is outrageous to suggest that a freedom-loving, law-abiding Chinese, whose very presence here shows an appreciation and understanding of the American dream, could be forced to commit crimes against his or her own will and against this great nation, the United States of America! 4) In the broadcast, the reporter announced that China has a "biggest spy network" in America, without any concrete evidence or statistical data. She simply asked the interviewee: "Are there any other countries that you know of that have this kind of spy network operating here in the United States?" To which the eye-rolling interviewee mumbled, "No, not-certainly not to this -- to this degree." This broad generalization and paranoid imagination creates an overwhelming image that there is a China spy network that has infiltrated every home and office in America, putting these "ordinary" Chinese under its control! It is impossible to prove a negative. Mr. Vice President Venardos, if you have a neighbor who happens to be an ethnic Chinese, what could he or she possibly do to prove to you, or CBS Evening News for that matter, that he or she is not a spy for China, since you have expressed so firmly a belief in your reply that portraying ordinary Chinese as spies is "important" and that the Chinese spy "problem may be even greater"?! A primary mission of U.S. intelligence agencies is to investigate spy threats in the U.S., whether posed by "ordinary" citizens or by government agents, and we wholeheartedly support their efforts to ferret out the multinational spies infiltrating American business. The job of a news organization, such as CBS, is to report and to investigate real life events, not to fabricate, distort, and manipulate facts to create a fairy tale. It is understandable that there are paranoia about the presumed Chinese "spy" threat among some individuals. But as a major network, CBS should report it professionally, that is, while reporting the paranoia, you should also report those innumerable facts and views that prove the opposite. On the contrary, the open generalizations and implications of your report invite American public to "keep an eye on" and be suspicious of their Chinese employees, job applicants, business partners, and even neighbors! The eye-catching proclamations in the report were unsupported by facts, but a collection of irrelevant stories patched together with some vivid imaginations, outright fabrications and unsubstantiated allegations. Just because a person is from a certain country of origin, it does not make him or her believe in the politics of that nation and would sell his or her soul and American secrets for fame or for money! Your May 19th, 1994 report by Ms. Connie Chung, produced by Mr. Thomas Anderson and Mr. Eric Sorensen, is an unprofessional, irresponsible, subjective, bigoted, and tabloid style show piece. It defamed all the law-abiding ordinary Chinese in this country. Rarely have we seen such blatant discrimination against an ethnic group on national television. We have fought so hard for the principles of freedom and democracy. We will not tolerate being accused of subverting democracy in this country! We demand that CBS issue a formal public apology on "Eye on America" and devote equal air-time to an objective discussion of this issue. We also ask that you respond in writing to the specific points we have addressed in this letter. You cannot defame an entire ethnic community by using anonymity, getting away with "sources say", "unidentified man", "CBS special investigators find" and the rest of those elusory clauses. Sincerely, Lin Huang, National Coordinator CBS Incident Committee CC: CBS President Howard Stringer CBS Vice President Eric Ober Producer Thomas Anderson Producer Eric Sorensen News Anchor Connie Chung News Anchor Dan Rather Major national newspapers (See attachment A) Local CBS stations (See attachment B) CBS advertisers (See attachment C) Co-Signed By: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. CBS Incident Committee Calls For Donations to Fight CBS .............. 458 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- By cheng@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu Dear Fellow Chinese: May 19th, 1994 is probably just another ordinary day to other people in the world. But to many of you life would never be the same again. On that day CBS Evening News in its special report "Eye on America" asked our fellow Americans to keep an eye on us because, as CBS alleged, we would "steal American's military and technological secrets," whether we want to or not. The whole Chinese community was shocked. Rarely did we see such a blatant attack on an ethnic group by a national media network. Tens of thousands concerned voices poured in because we knew if the innuendo on the part of CBS gets its way, our opportunities for employment, immigration, association and, indeed our normal life in this and other countries would be greatly jeopardized. In order to address these grave concerns, CBS Incident Committee was formed under the auspices of IFCSS (Independent Federation Of Chinese Students and Scholars). The committee consists of about 60 volunteers, which over the past two months has coordinated a nation wide protest movement by sending over one thousand protest letters to CBS, making protest phone calls, notifying government and other media groups of the incident, exploring the legal recourse and conducting serious background research on the CBS report. Obviously, those efforts are far from enough. In his reply to IFCSS's protest letter, Vice president of CBS Hard News made fresh attacks against us and in no way indicated any slightest sense of regret for the wounds CBS report has inflicted on us. To rebuff his fallacies, a new letter has been written based on our research findings and expert advice and will be disseminated to all the related groups, agencies and individuals. We cannot let CBS get away with it! However, simply sending out hundreds of mail packages requires hundreds of dollars, and our volunteers' financial resources are very limited. We can only do what our private pockets allow us to do. We need to do more and we can do more with your help. It is a very hard and arduous fight, since CBS has all the resources on their side, legal and financial. They have First Amendment protection, pools of lawyers and billions of dollars. But if we all chip in, we will be able to put up a fight because we believe ours is a just cause. A small fund is being set up to help defray mailing, legal consulting and communication costs. More costly options, such as hiring lawyers beyond simple consultation, filing law suits, advertising campaign, etc., can be done if and only if enough fund is donated. The accounting will be published on the Committee's News Releases and will be sent to the donor by postal mail upon request. We would also post the names of donors with their donation unless they choose to be anonymous. We would appreciate your valuable donation for this cause. If you would rather contribute in terms of time and energy, you are welcome, too. Dear fellow Chinese, we are all in this fight together. At stake is our own future. Let those who are fighting on the frontline feel that you are behind them! For monetary donations, please send checks payable to: IFCSS/CBS Incident Fund 361 Ogden Avenue Jersey City, NJ 07307 For human resources contribution, please contact Mr. Lin Huang National Coordinator CBS Incident Committee 3044 Albany Crescent 1G Bronx, NY 10463 (718)-548-9114 hua7291@med2s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % 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/Legal/cbs % %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%