Not so long ago, 25-year-old Alberta Lee thought she was living the American Dream - she’d gotten a good degree from UCLA and landed a good job in North Carolina. But since March, the dream has been more of a nightmare.

That was when her father, Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, was publicly revealed as an "alleged" spy for China-accusations that led to his firing two days later. More than seven months after that, Lee has not been charged, but he and his family have endured round the clock surveillance that exists to this day, she said, with as many as 40 FBI agents and 10 prosecutors digging into every aspects about Lee and his family. So far, the Justice Department has not come up with any charges. An invited group of Chinese Americans gathered Sept. 20 in Palo Alto to lend support to Alberta Lee, along with Wen Ho Lee’s brother and his wife and close family friends Dan and Cecelia Chang of Fremont. Lee’s daughter said her father had been "abused and crucified" by the mainstream press, which was why only Chinese-language reporters took part in the gathering. Being a typical Chinese, Wen Ho Lee never considered hiring a lawyer because he had nothing to hide and did not feel the need to spend money for a lawyer, according to his daughter. The only time he had seen one, she said, was when he spent $400 to execute a will. But after a March 6 article in the New York Times detailed allegations against her father, Alberta Lee said she realized the boom was about to be lowered. She contacted the law firm - Melveney & Myers, which was willing to defend her father on a pro bono basis. Since then, attorney Brian Sun has agreed to represent the family as well, and a third law firm based in New Mexico has also agreed to defend Lee in the event the case goes to trial in that state.

"This is one of those rare occasions when we get to work on behalf of someone that has done nothing wrong," said Sun at the meeting. "This is a travesty against every supposed American value about freedom, equal rights to the rule of law and an individual’s right to a due process. Let the next American ready to criticize human right abuses elsewhere justify the actions taken against Dr. Wen Ho Lee."

More and more, Lee is looking like a hapless sacrificial lamb in the struggle between the White House and conservative Republicans out on a vendetta. While Monica Lewinsky didn’t destroy the president, it did exhaust him of political capital. When DOE official Notra Trulock came up with the next cannon to aim at the White House by giving the Republicans cause to allege spying for China, neither the president or Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson had the political capital (read courage) to stand up to the critics. It was simply more expedient to put Lee out as cannon fodder than to do what was right.

A month later, while speaking at the Committee of 100’s annual meeting and with ABC Nightline cameras rolling, Richardson pledged that racial profiling would never take place under his watch. Tragically, he did not take the opportunity to admit he had made a hasty mistake in fingering Lee.

Then Lee appeared on 60 Minutes, which made it openly obvious that the government has no case against him. The Committee of 100 sent a carefully worded letter to Attorney General Janet Reno and Richardson asking for fairness in Lee’s case, prompting Richardson not to recant but to point the finger at others, all non-Asian, to show that his accusations were not racially motivated.

Being non-Asian means not having to take this sort of nonsense lying down. Robert Vrooman, retired head of counter intelligence at Los Alamos, reacted to being implicated by going public and blasted the entire sordid affair as groundless and racially biased. Eventually, Trulock resigned from his position in the Energy Department, thus raising more questions about the way Richardson has handled this matter. And even the New York Times has begun to backpedal. Months after publishing the story that "broke" the scandal on Lee, it has now published an extensive review of recent events that began on the front page and ended a full page and one-half later. This review implicitly refutes the original expose.

The lesson to all Asian Americans should be obvious. Remain meek and expect to get squashed over and again or stand up and let the bigots look elsewhere for easy victims. Wen Ho Lee’s battle for justice should not be a burden for his family alone. Asian Americans that care about their rights in America and the rights of all the future generations of Asian Americans need to stand up and be counted now.

If you would like to help the family defray their mounting legal defense bills, contributions may be sent to the Dr. Wen Ho Lee Defense Fund: