Open Letter to Harry Wu

April 17, 1996

Mr. Harry Wu, guest speaker
Stanford University, School of Law
Stanford, California

Dear Mr. Wu:

Now that you have become a person of international renown, isn't it time for you to clarify some confusions in the public mind that were direct results of your remarks and activities? All of the questions I would like to ask you are based on information in the American media, not Xin Hua News Agency or other sources from China.

(1) In the Playboy interview appearing in the February 1996 issue, you said: "I videotaped a prisoner whose kidneys were surgically removed while he was alive, and then the prisoner was taken out the next day and shot. The organs remain fresher that way. The tape was broadcast by BBC." The BBC broadcast in fact has no such footage. What was the reason for you to lie to the interviewer?

(2) Your Laogai Foundation now claims that BBC's use of the open heart surgery scene clandestinely taken by Sue Lloyd Roberts in Chengdu was not intended to deceive the viewing public. If the intention was not deception, what was the reason for taking the video and then presenting it in the broadcast?

(3) At the AFL-CIO National Convention last year, didn't you say, "The strike by Boeing members is really a strike against the Chinese government. It is a strike which the American labor movement must win." Isn't your Laogai Foundation based in the AFL-CIO headquarter building in Washington D.C.? Aren't you being paid by organized labor to help stop imports from China?

(4) When you were arrested upon entering from Kazakstan last summer, there was a young woman with you. ABC Nightline reported that she was employed by the AFL-CIO. What was the reason for her being on the trip?

(5) You have entered China under at least three different names. How were you able to get three different U.S. Passports when the rest of us are entitled to only one?

(6) Recently you were at Columbia University to receive another of many awards you have coming to you. Did you not have a private conversation with a law student there by the name of Li Qiang in Shanghainese? Did you not admit to Li that human rights conditions in China are better now than ever in 50 years but the "Americans don't know anything"?

(7) In your speech at Cal State Hayward this February, you seem to imply to the audience that in 1994, you real wife as well as Sue Roberts, the free lance reporter who posed as your wife, went to Chengdu with you for the BBC assignment. How many "wives" did you actually take to Chengdu?

(8) You like to claim that you first got in trouble for protesting the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956. You were only 19 years old then, so did the Chinese authorities kindly allow you to complete your college education before throwing you in jail?

(9) You claim to be in Chinese prison for 19 years, which is most of your adult life before coming to the U.S. If this is the case, how did you come to know some of the most obscure places in China like the back of your hand?

(10) Can you tell the public as to what credentials and circumstances were used initially to become a Hoover scholar?

I believe most Americans prefer truth and reality to hyprocrisy and phony causes. If you are able to respond to above question with truthful answers, I am sure the public would enjoy seeing it. In the meantime I will continue to collect inconsistencies and dubious statements from your public appearances and do my best to call them to the public's attention if not to your attention.


George Koo
A concerned U.S. citizen