Lee, Wen Ho. My country versus me; the first-hand account by the Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy.

Hyperion. 332p. illus. c2001.0-7868-8687-0. $14.95. SA

For more than nine months, the world saw Wen Ho Lee as a person under arrest on the television news. An atomic scientist working at the highest level, he had downloaded technical information onto his insecure personal computer. Was he a spy, sending critical nuclear secrets to China, or was he a loyal U.S. citizen who just did what others with similar rank were doing routinely, an act not in any sense treasonous? To quote him: "The reason I downloaded these files was very simple and mundane: I wanted to protect them from loss in the event that LANL changed the computer operating system again or experienced a computer crash--both had occurred in the past, causing serious problems for me. During those incidents, I lost some important computer codes that I had written.

... There was nothing clandestine or hidden about my files or tapes."

Ho Lee saw himself identified with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and other spies of the McCarthy era. Were there political motivations, and possibly racial ones, for targeting him? Ho Lee believes so. For a time, he believed he would be sentenced to long-term incarceration under severe conditions. When the courts finally affirmed his innocence, he felt the need to tell the American people his side of the story, and this book is the result. Working with writer Helen Zia, this is a well narrated, disturbing account of an investigation gone awry but eventually set right. He tells of his fight, aided by friends, family, and unexpected supporters, who believed in him. Born in an adobe house in Taiwan, the brilliant scientist-to-be studied at Texas A&M University; he became a U.S. citizen in 1974. Is there a twinge of anger, of bitterness? Yes, but when readers are through reading his account, they will come away convinced that justice was done when Ho Lee walked out of the prison doors a free man. Ho Lee, who knows that a similar accusation in other countries would have cost him his life, remains a loyal U.S. citizen. An excellent choice for classes studying the legal system, the history of espionage, and civil liberties. Edna M. Boardman, Bismark, ND