Notes of a Chinese American Tourist in Iran

Originally posted in Asia Times.

A 17-day tour of Iran does not a country expert make, but it’s certainly enough to form some meaningful impressions of a country that has been virtually blacked out from Americans’ consciousness since the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979. As our first visit to Iran, we took a custom tour from Kerman in the south to the oldest port on the Caspian Sea. Thus we got a more in-depth look at Iran than the more customary 10-11 day tours of “history and culture.“

On our first day, we landed at Tehran’s international airport from Dubai via Emirates Air. The morning flight was delayed and by the time we finished lunch, we only had time for one of Tehran’s lesser attractions, the Iran National Museum. As we entered the front garden of the museum, a group of young girls in their school uniforms on an outing saw us and came running to surround us and to give us a raucous welcome. Being on our first day in Iran, we were unprepared for the warm and enthusiastic response.

School girls at the National Museum

We soon got accustomed to being “accosted” by locals in public places. As we walked on sidewalks, cars would screech to a halt and the (invariably male) driver would lean his head out of the window and shout, “Hello, welcome,” and sometimes “where from?” before driving away. Females took a different approach; they would seek out the women in our group and invite them to be part of their family photos. Being a mixed group of Asians and Caucasians, I think the women viewed us as somewhat of a special souvenir to add to their photo collections.

The Iranians love to take pictures. The younger generation of men and women all seem to have a camera phone, many at the end of a photo stick. Marion of our group quickly caught on and would walk up to groups of women and proactively offered, “Would you like a selfie?” She would be promptly invited to be part of their group photo. They would take the photo with their phone and also one with her smart phone as reciprocating mementos.

Marion So (in white hat) with and Iranian architecture students in Tabriz

We were to have interesting encounters with professional Iranian men and women at many of the famous tourist attractions. We met a pair of twins and their woman friend at the citadel in Shiraz and found out that the parents of the twins live in San Diego. We met two women at the tomb of Artaxerxes II high above the ruins of Persepolis. One of them, the audiologist, was to join us for dinner at our last night in Tehran. They had taken the bus from Tehran, close to 600 miles away, to visit Persepolis. A young couple was spending their honeymoon visiting Masuleh, the one thousand year old, mountainside village, and they approached me to have my photo taken with them. 

Despite the rate of unemployment at over 20%, I got the impression that the Iranians who could afford it, like to spend their time off visiting Iran’s many parks, gardens and other tourist attractions. We saw them at all the stops on our tour. At no time did we feel unwelcome or receive any feelings of unfriendliness from the people we encountered.

Bashing DAESH

The closest conversation we had that could be considered as political was with a mullah at the Quran School in Shiraz with the help of Hassan, our guide who acted as our interpreter. The mullah said Islam is about peace and love of fellow humankind. He pointed out that the Jews, Christians and the Muslims all believe in the same God. He rejected DAESH, his term for ISIS, as an illegitimate form of Islam that must be eradicated. As for Israel, the problem is the continued occupation of Palestinian land by the Israelis. The beginning of the solution has to begin with the return of the land that belongs to the Palestinians, he said.

Mullah at a madrasah in Shiraz

We stayed in Tehran, a car congested and noisy city just long enough to visit the Golestan Palace and the crown jewels collection before flying to Kerman, our southernmost destination, to begin our drive back north. From Kerman, our coach took us westward to Shiraz, then northeast to Yazd and west again to Isfahan, then due north to Tehran again. The last leg was northwestward to Zanjan and Tabriz before returning east and south back to Tehran by way of the coast of Caspian Sea. Each leg was 200-300 miles apart. Our zigzag tour left out the northeastern part of the country but covered the heartland of Iran’s historical and cultural heritage.

Tapping qanat tech

As we drove through central Iran and saw endless stretches of arid desert country surrounded by treeless mountains, it dawned on me that qanat was likely the most important engineering invention that the ancient Persians contributed to the world. Aside from being a handy word for the Scrabble player to know, qanat is an irrigation system that can draw water from snow-capped mountains down to towns and villages miles away. The channel has to be carefully sized and gently graded so the water flow will remain smooth (what engineers called “laminar flow”) and not surge or become turbulent and the channel has to be kept underground to minimize evaporation and contamination en route to the final destination. Regularly spaced vertical shafts from the surface allowed for maintenance of the qanats.

The 19^th century Shahzadeh Garden in Mahan, where we had lunch on our first outing out of Kerman, was an excellent example of how a qanat can create a beautiful oasis in the middle of the desert. Gushing water cascaded down terraces feeding the flowers and trees that lined both sides of the fountains. The water then exited the garden at the bottom of the hillside and went on to serve the people in Mahan. We were to see other working qanats on other segments of our tour. The qanats reminded me of the karezes in Turfan that we saw while on a tour of China’s Silk Road — same idea with a different name that most likely originated from ancient Persia. 

The Persian qanat is arguably even more significant to the development of the human civilization than the Roman aqueduct. Without the ingenuity of qanats, the arid and desiccated land of central Asia would remain sparsely inhabited to uninhabited, and could not become cradles of kingdoms and civilizations. The idea of the qanat spread from Persia to Syria, Egypt and Morocco in one direction and to Afghanistan and China in the other. The UN finds relevance in today’s working qanats as case studies to help solve the world’s challenges with polluted water.

By the time our coach pulled into Isfahan and drove along the river that bisected the city into northern and southern halves, the parks that lined both shores prompted me to modify my impression of Iran as one endless arid landscape. Tabriz to the northwest was even greener. From Tabriz as we emerged from a long tunnel on the way to Ardabil, we were surrounded by lush forest and were greeted by fog and rain. The countryside along the coast of the Caspian Sea was checkerboards of rice paddies as if we were in China. Because our tour included Tabriz and the Caspian shore, we formed a more complete impression of Iran than those that only saw Shiraz, Yazd, Isfahan and Tehran.

China and Iran

From the sampling of exhibits from museums we visited, I got the impression that the Neolithic people in Iran were capable of producing sophisticated forms of pottery — to my amateur eye, every bit as advanced as those from China and perhaps even more advanced. Later, Persians got to be quite skilled working with stone as can be seen at Persepolis. By the same period as Persepolis, China had already developed the technology for intricate bronze casting that seemed to be missing in the Persian culture.

A Neolithic drinking vessel

Persians’ skill at pottery making may have served as the basis to later develop the technology for producing brilliant blue and green ceramic tiles. This was to be an extremely useful attribute for producing the tiles needed to build mosques and mausoleums according to Islamic design after the Arabs conquered Persia in the 7^th century CE. In fact the mosques and mausoleums in Iran reminded me of the Islamic structures I saw in Samarkand and elsewhere in Central Asia. This should not be a surprise, since at times in history, parts of Central Asia were part of the Persian Empire and other times the ruling dynasty came from Central Asia.

Iran today reminds me of China in the early ‘90s. Iran’s highway system is already first rate and far superior to what China had then but most city streets are as unattractive as any in the third world, full of mom and pop store fronts, randomly arranged with no apparent logic. Some shopping malls are said to be under construction but we did not see any in actual operation. I did see a fair amount of construction activity in the cities, such as building metro stations and high-rise residential buildings. 

A typical street in Tehran

No transgender toilet issue

Public toilets are reasonably available next to mosques and other tourist attractions as well as the customary service stations. Just look for the ubiquitous “WC” signs. It’s not always clear which side is male and which is female but it doesn’t really matter. Every stall has a door for total privacy. In a way, this is unintentionally more progressive than some parts of the US that debate about which toilets transgenders should go to. In Iran it does not matter. The bad news about toilets in Iran is that they are smelly, nearly as bad as those in China or India. Most are the squat kind and the western sit-down kind is not always available.

The hotels in Iran are not quite ready for prime time. Even the 5-star hotels in the big cities miss certain essential features such as washbasins with working stoppers or face cloths. The sewer system can’t handle toilet paper. The hotels seemed to work on fixed rules: If it’s April, there is only heat and no cool air. The bedding comes with a cozy comforter that can only render a warm room even more stifling. 

If you can overlook some of the less than luxurious aspects of being a tourist in Iran, now is the time to go before all the tourist facilities get built up and the sameness of Europe or the US becomes part of travelling around Iran. It’s also possible that local Iranians will someday not find foreign tourists a novelty and lose their keenness to interact with them. Right now, the Iranians warmly welcome foreign tourists and Iran represents a novel destination for the international traveler.

At present, it’s not possible for Americans to travel in Iran as individual tourists but have to be part of a guided tour. I met a young man from China who was travelling by himself. He had quit his job as a water treatment engineer in Singapore to see the world. He had been through Nepal and India and had already spent 20 days in Iran riding public inter-city buses from south to north and found travel in Iran “easy.” I met Mr. Gong in Masuleh, a World Heritage village not on most tours. He will be crossing the borders to go on to Armenia and then Turkey and Lebanon to complete his personal journey. It’s nice to be young and adventurous.

In China, the foremost must visit attraction is the Great Wall. For Iran it’s Persepolis. Qinshihuang started the Great Wall and united China about 2,300 years ago. Darius built Persepolis as his seat to receive tribute from far flung corners of his empire 300 years earlier than the Chinese emperor. Despite being burned down by Alexander of Macedonia a mere two hundred years later, the remains continue to impress visitors with the grandeur of the Achaemenid empire and the artistry of the stone masons in that era. 

Our tour was designed and arranged by the Seattle-based Caravan-Serai and our guide was Hassan Azadi, a veteran tour guide now an independent contractor living in Toronto who flies to Iran twice a year to work during the high season. Both have been outstanding to work with.

Sidebar: Medical prowess in Tabriz with an American aside

I had the dubious pleasure of having to take advantage of Iran’s medical care system. In the middle of the trip, I experienced pain and swelling on my right wrist. A week of icing and anti-inflammatory medication did not help. When we got to Tabriz, a major city, I asked our guide to take me to a hospital that deals with broken bones. I asked Michael, my brother-in-law, who’s a family practice doctor, to come along.

We got to Shahryar Hospital after 6 pm, Hassan checked with a few windows before finding the X-ray department. He made a prepayment and the female technician took two X-rays of my wrist. A physician on duty reviewed the results and determined that I had a hairline fracture in my capitate bone and recommended a CT scan of the region. Hassan again paid for the CT scan and another technician took the scan. By then it was after 7 pm and the doctors that would put on the wrist splints had left for the day.

The next morning, we went back to Shahryar and Hassan asked to jump the queue because we were part of a waiting tour group. The doctor in charge looked at the X-ray (didn’t bother with the CT scan) and his assistant proceeded to slip a cotton liner over my hand, wrist and forearm. The doctor then went on to apply a quick setting fiber cast over the lining. This middle-aged man had a twinkle in his eye and his demeanor was friendly and reassuring. As he was wrapping the impregnated fiberglass fabric around my arm, I joshed by telling him that I was a professional tennis player. He smiled and rubbed my elbow and said, “Ah, tennis elbow.” We were in and out in 20 minutes and I was, at last, pain free.

My entire medical bill including the unnecessary CT scan came up to $590. The day after I came home I contacted my health care provider, one of the best in the Bay Area, and found out that it would be more than three weeks before the orthopedic specialists would have an opening to see me.

Author getting his wrist cast in Tabriz

Is racial bias to blame for the high number of Asian Americans charged with espionage?

This co-authored piece first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

In recent years, federal prosecutors have brought a number of high-profile criminal cases against Asian Americans accused of economic espionage or theft of trade secrets. Announced with great fanfare, many of these cases later collapsed.

Is it possible that these prosecutions were driven — at least in part — by racial profiling rather than solid evidence? Last year, more than 40 members of Congress sent a letter to Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch asking that question. The Justice Department has not yet responded, but last month it adopted a new policy requiring experienced national security prosecutors in Washington, instead of local U.S. attorneys, to oversee all espionage-related cases. It's of course too early to know whether this change will reduce the number of problematic cases brought against Asian Americans.

Although theft of trade secrets by foreign countries certainly occurs, the government has focused overwhelmingly on China. Of the 55 trade secret and economic espionage cases involving a foreign country brought since 1997, more than 70% targeted China. The government, however, seems to have a hard time bringing these cases to a successful conclusion, suggesting that such disproportionate attention is misplaced.

From 1997 to 2015, federal prosecutors had an average conviction rate of about 91% for all criminal cases. In federal white-collar cases, the conviction rate was more than 90%. But of the 39 trade secret and economic espionage cases involving China since 1997, federal prosecutors won convictions in only 66.7% of cases. In contrast, for cases involving other countries, prosecutors had a conviction rate much closer to its other cases — about 87%.

Is it possible that these prosecutions were driven — at least in part — by racial profiling, rather than solid evidence?

Under pressure to stop Chinese spying, prosecutors seem to file espionage-related charges without fully understanding the facts.

Last May, Xiaoxing Xi, former head of the physics department at Temple University, was arrested by FBI agents, who burst into his suburban Philadelphia home with guns drawn. Xi was handcuffed in front of his family and charged with sharing schematics for a piece of “secret” laboratory equipment, which it later turned out was not secret at all. Four months later, prosecutors dropped the case, saying “additional information came to the attention of the government.”

In the very first economic espionage case to go to trial, in San Jose in 2009, prosecutors accused two Chinese American engineers of seeking to “benefit” the Chinese government, simply because the engineers had applied for research funding from Chinese agencies to help their startup. The jury rejected the prosecutors' argument and concluded that this was just normal business activity. One recurring issue in Chinese trade secret cases is that local U.S. attorneys, many of whom know little about the major role that state institutions play in the Chinese economy, misinterpret normal contacts with government banks or research institutes as evidence of spying.

To many observers, the government's unjustified suspicion of Asian Americans became apparent in 1999, when Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese American nuclear physicist employed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was accused of sharing nuclear secrets with China.

Lee, who was included on a shortlist of suspects because of his frequent trips to Asia and his access to classified information — and, critics claim, his ethnicity — consistently denied he had given sensitive information to China. The case fell apart, and seven years later, Lee won a civil judgment against the prosecutors and media organizations that had tarnished his reputation.

In case after case, the government's allegations of improper motives — perhaps fed by suspicions of China — have failed to withstand scrutiny. In 2014, a jury found former Texas Instruments engineer Ellen Chen Yeh not guilty of all charges in a trade secret case. Yeh, who had left Texas Instruments to work at a company in China, was accused of wrongfully downloading computer chip designs and taking them to China with the intent to steal them. Yeh explained that she kept the designs — which she had developed herself — because she hoped to resume working with Texas Instruments someday. The jury believed her.

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The way prosecutors bring China-related trade secret cases causes immense damage to those accused. By publicizing these cases before they can prove them, prosecutors destroy reputations. In October 2014, Sherry Chen, a 60-year-old Chinese American water scientist, was arrested by FBI agents at a National Weather Service office in Ohio. Chen, who had been a U.S. citizen for more than 15 years, was accused of downloading data on U.S. dams and passing it to a Chinese government official. The charges against her carried 25 years in prison and a $1-million fine. Prosecutors dropped the charges against Chen shortly before her trial was set to start because they realized they had misinterpreted the evidence, but that did not undo damage to her good name. Undeterred by the collapse of its case, the government says it still intends to bar Chen from her job, a decision she is fighting.

There is also growing evidence that prejudice may affect the sentencing process for those found guilty of trade secret theft. An analysis of cases over the last two decades shows that, for individuals convicted of trade secret theft, the average sentence for people with Chinese surnames is more than twice that for those with non-Chinese surnames. This translates to an average of an extra 17 months in prison for Chinese Americans.

The strength of the U.S. economy is based largely on innovation and competition. A more careful approach to these prosecutions can protect the rights of Asian Americans, minimize wrongful prosecutions and help ensure an economic environment that continues to foster innovation.

George Koo is a global business advisor. Daniel Olmos is a criminal defense attorney who has successfully defended several trade secret cases at trial.

The nuclear summit is merely a small win for Obama, in face of huge challenges in foreign policy

Edited version of this blog has been posted on China US Focus and re-posted in Asia times.

By initiating and organizing the nuclear security summit, history might just decide that President Obama’s show of statesmanship was worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize hastily bestowed on him at the beginning of his presidency. The Norway based peace prize committee could hardly wait to show the warmongering axis of hubris, namely Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, the exit door and anoint the incoming president as the peacemaker to be.

Whereas his predecessor’s reign depended on confrontation and intimidation to get their way around the world, Obama at least seemed to recognize that uncontrolled proliferation of fissionable material was not in America’s interest. While the former administration thought shock and awe was enough to maintain world order, Obama at least saw that the problem was too big for any one country, even a superpower, to handle alone.

At the just concluded nuclear summit, the fourth in a series initiated by him, Obama welcomed more than 50 world leaders emphasizing collaboration and cooperation. He wanted a united world to work against terrorist groups, in his word, to prevent the world’s most dangerous networks from obtaining the world’s most dangerous weapons.

Obama honored China’s leader Xi Jinping with the only one-on-one side meeting at the summit. Xi returned the favor by reaffirming his support for Obama’s effort to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism. To show bilateral solidarity, the two parties issued a 10-point joint statement, in which, among other things, was the agreement to establish a training center in Beijing related to nuclear security, with assistance from the U.S., that would serve as a regional training center for other countries. Both leaders also affirmed that the two countries would work together to prevent smuggling of nuclear materials and to continue the collaboration after the conclusion of the summit.

Somehow it’s almost impossible for the U.S. not to insist on having its way on some other issues in lieu of pure collaboration between peer nations. In the case of Xi’s latest visit, on the one hand the Obama administration welcomed Xi and enumerated the common ground between the two nations. But at the same time, the White House spokesman assured the public that in the closed-door meeting, Obama fully intended to bring up matters related to human rights, South China Sea and cyber security.

Even when the U.S. is looking to work closely with another, the U.S. seems to expect, even insists, that Americans reserve the right to criticize as the working relationship plods along.

Apparently, Obama has not discovered that mixing the spirit of collaboration with a dollop of confrontation is not the best way of building international trust. A clear example is the absence of Vladimir Putin at the summit. Although Obama spokesperson professed being puzzled by Putin’s absence, it’s obvious that no one would feel welcomed while regarded as an enemy. MK Bhadrakumar rather undiplomatically pointed out in his commentary[1] that 97% of the world’s nuclear stockpile is under military control and not having Russia present takes away any meaningful substance from the summit.

Rightly, Obama is most concerned over nuclear weapons or radioactive material falling into terrorists’ hands. Yet it is his approach to dealing with terrorism in the Middle East that is most muddled. Former DoD official and one time member of the National Security Council, Christina Lin, calls it a schizophrenic approach[2]: the US fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan while arming al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, arming Shiíte militia in Iraq while arming Sunni militia against them in Syria. To boot, the US is arming Syrian Kurds fighting ISIS while selling new weapons to Turkey to bomb the Iraqi Kurds fighting ISIS.

In Lin’s piece, she also pointed out that the U.S. is also asking China to join in the fight against radical Islam at the expense of China’s own interests. The U.S. is supporting an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria because this group is aiming to topple Assad. There may be a thousand Uighurs from China fighting in this group, and thus hardly a group China would want to be allied. She said, “It isn’t clear why Washington believes China would join the US-led coalition that supports anti-Chinese militants.”

I think America’s unrealistic insistence that all other nations follow the U.S. even against their own self-interest comes from the my-way-or-the-highway legacy mindset that Obama has inherited from his predecessor and has not disavowed. We see the same mentality with regard to North Korea. Washington’s response to each new North Korean nuclear development is to impose harsher sanctions and increase the tension. Washington seems oblivious to China’s dilemma, which is not wishing to see a nuclear Korean peninsula but also not wanting a collapse of the North Korean regime. As I have suggested previously, the U.S. need to rethink about this situation. Obama is betting on an alignment with Japan and South Korea to pressure North Korea, which isn’t going to work. Only by including China on the alliance is there hope.[3]

Obama is not without some originality in his approach to foreign policy. In the waning days of his term of office, he has struck a nuclear non-proliferation deal with Iran and he has taken his family to visit Cuba (though he couldn’t resist commenting on Cuba’s human rights problem to Raul Castro, but Castro was tactful enough not to respond by comparing Cuba’s long established universal health care program with the one on life-support in the U.S.)

So long as he is willing to take independent courses of action in U.S. foreign policy, Obama should consider leaving a lasting legacy for his successor by overhauling the basis for dealing with China. Instead of confronting China by thinking of what to do with China or what China should do to satisfy the U.S., he should think about how and why getting along with China is in the American self interest.

From Ukraine southward through the Middle East to sub-Sahara Africa, by my back of the envelope calculation, roughly 1/7^th of the earth land mass and 1/8^th of the population is facing strife and turmoil. Except for Ukraine, all of the other parts of the region stem from conflict between nation states and radical Islam. Through interventionist misadventures in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, the U.S. has been a major contributing factor in the unrest and has proven incapable of maintaining peace and order by its own effort. Terrorism arising from religious fanaticism is the common enemy of all nations. It’s time for the U.S. to swallow some pride and admit that America needs to put ideology aside and work with all nations to combat a common adversary.

China has a non-confrontational approach to international relations and can be an effective partner in complementing the U.S. in anti-terrorism efforts. China has been able to bring the Taliban and the Afghan government to the table for an exchange of views and discussion, something the U.S. could never do. Through its one-belt and one-road initiatives, China is working with countries from Asia to Africa and Europe on infrastructure projects that promise to improve the livelihood of the local people and thus remove a motivation for suicide bombers.

Europe (led by U.K.[4]) has long recognized the merits of getting along with China even if the U.S. has been slow on the uptake. Just the opposite is happening with Washington. As Lin pointed out, despite the U.S. national debt approaching $21 trillion, the U.S. defense outlay has not made the world a safer place. With enough real fires to put out around the world, it doesn’t make sense for the U.S. to double down by sending two fleets to South China Sea and roil the waters there. Aside from burning a lot of money in the process, and adding a new incendiary spot to the world map, it’s going to hamper working with China on truly critical issues.

[1] http://atimes.com/2016/04/obamas-nuclear-legacy-is-a-mirage/

[2] http://atimes.com/2016/03/a-bipolar-us-policy-towards-china-and-syria/

[3] http://www.chinausfocus.com/peace-security/no-end-to-north-korean-conundrum-in-sight/

[4] http://atimes.com/2016/02/qa-author-martin-jacques-explains-uks-pivot-to-china/

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[1] http://atimes.com/2016/04/obamas-nuclear-legacy-is-a-mirage/

[2] http://atimes.com/2016/03/a-bipolar-us-policy-towards-china-and-syria/

[3] http://www.chinausfocus.com/peace-security/no-end-to-north-korean-conundrum-in-sight/

[4] http://atimes.com/2016/02/qa-author-martin-jacques-explains-uks-pivot-to-china/

Sherry Chen's Dismissal is an Indictment of Racist Federal Government

An edited version of this blog was posted on Asia Times.

Last May, New York Times identified Sherry Chen as the person accused of spying for China and then wasn’t, as the federal prosecutor dropped the charges just one week before her case was to come to trial. Sherry’s friends and supporters thought that being free of criminal charges meant that she could go back to her job as a hydrologist for the National Weather Service (NWS).

Lo and behold, on September 4, 2015, Sherry received a letter from Laura Furgione, Deputy Director of NWS, informing her that she was being removed as an employee of NWS. In the document formally known as “Notice of Proposed Disciplinary Action (hereafter PDA), Furgione proposed removing her for “(1) Conduct demonstrating untrustworthiness; (2) Misrepresentation; (3) Misuse of Federal Government Database; and (4) Lack of Candor.” The document ran 20 pages in length.

Peter Zeidenberg, attorney with Arent Fox LLP based in Washington, was the defense counsel for Sherry; he submitted a memorandum dated October 2, 2015 addressed to Louis Uccellini, Director of NWS in response to the PDA. The memo ran 31 pages and provided a comprehensive rebuttal to all the points raised in the PDA.

Then in a half page memo with a date stamp of December 9, 2015, Director Uccellini wrote to Vice Admiral Michael Devany, stating that he cannot serve as an impartial “deciding official” on the PDA and asked to be relieved from this role. Devany is Deputy Under Secretary for Operations of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and is Uccellini’s boss.

Uccellini’s short memo said he was provided with Furgione’s PDA and back-up material in the capacity of being the “deciding official.” He also heard an oral reply from Sherry and her attorney Zeidenberg along with the written material on October 9, 2015.

Then Uccellini made a curious statement in his memo, “Specifically, in 2014, I received a series of classified briefings from DOC’s Office of Security regarding this employee and matters related to this Notice of Proposed Removal. While I have tried to compartmentalize the additional information I learned during these briefings, I am unable to focus solely on the information and the charges in the Notice of Proposed Removal, the materials relied upon, and the employee’s response.”

Next, Furgione sent Sherry a second PDA, dated December 18, 2015 rescinding the first because Uccellini would not serve as an impartial deciding official. Other than stating that Vice Admiral Devany was now the deciding official, the second PDA was word for word identical to the first version. In response, Zeidenberg submitted the same rebuttal since the second version of the PDA added nothing and changed nothing from the original.

Devany’s decision on the PDA in the form of a letter dated March 10, 2016 addressed to Xiafen Chen was to remove her (Sherry) from Federal service. The reasons given in support of his decision basically followed the accusations as outlined in the PDA virtually uninfluenced by any of the arguments submitted by Zeidenberg. Devany’s letter did contain one curious statement: “much of your reply went to the now-dismissed criminal charges against you, which have no bearing on this matter.”

Devany’s statement is hard to fathom. Either Zeidenberg missed reading the PDA and failed to respond accurately, or the PDA repeated some of the “now-dismissed criminal charges” as part of its case against Sherry, or Devany had made up his mind to dismiss Sherry and his general note was a way to sweep away the carefully crafted rebuttals by Sherry’s counsel and avoid having to deal in any degree of specificity.

Dr. Uccellini has a PhD in Meteorology from University of Wisconsin and is a self-confessed “weather geek.” He has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed articles, books and chapters on weather related topics. Among many awards and recognition, he was at one time the president of the American Meteorology Society.

When Uccellini assumed the leadership of NWS in 2013, outside observers praised the appointment as a welcome change from the usual practice of filling the post with retired military officers. He took over an organization riven with scandal, was accused of misappropriation of funds and marked by the abrupt retirement of his predecessor.

Ironically, he co-authored an acclaimed book titled “Northeast Snowstorms.” This January, the NWS forecasted a killer storm of historic proportions for the New York City area, which prompted the mayor Bill de Blasio to order the closing of roads and subways along with schools. One minor detail was amiss, the storm never happened. To his credit, Uccellini took responsibility for the “historic screw up” and admitted that the weather service needs to improve the way weather forecast is communicated to the public.

The National Weather Service is part of NOAA and its mission is to “provide weather, water and climate data, forecasts and warnings for the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy.” In other words, NWS keeps its eye on Mother Nature. The meteorologists in this organization watch the sky while the hydrologists monitor the rivers.

Sherry Chen was employed as a Hydrologist in the Ohio River Forecast Center. This office monitors the Ohio River basin including its many rivers and tributaries that flow into the 900-mile long river. This river system affects approximately 25 million lives. A major part of Sherry’s duty is to construct and continually improve a computer model of the river to facilitate making accurate forecasts of the water flow on the river.

Sherry’s modeling work is based on a software package provided by the Hydrologic Engineering Center – River Analysis System (HEC-RAS). The Center belongs to the Army Corp of Engineers (ACE) and is well known world wide for its technical expertise on all things related to water, and HEC-RAS is just one of a large family of software programs the Center has constructed and made available for general use.

In fact the river forecasting centers belonging to NWS work closely with the ACE. The centers perform the forecasting while the Corp of Engineers control the dams and levees that can prevent or at least mitigate the impact of the river overflow. One instance where the collaboration did not pan out so happily was the Nashville flood of 2010 when the Cumberland River overflowed its banks, and 31 lives were lost along with approximately $2.3 billion in damages. It was a natural disaster that rivaled Katrina of New Orleans in severity.

The Cumberland is a tributary of the Ohio and Tom Adams, the senior hydrologist of the Ohio River Forecasting Office, led the forecasting effort and Sherry was his lead modeler. Adams and his group could see that the torrential downpour was leading to the threat of serious flooding. He tried to warn the ACE office in charge of this region. Finally on May 2, a Sunday morning, he was able to hold a conference call including Deborah Lee who was in charge of ACE office. He warned Lee of the impending threat but he felt that Lee was distracted and did not sensed the urgency of the situation.

The river crested in the evening of May 3 and all hell broke loose on May 4. The press severely criticized the ACE for poor handling of this matter including mismanagement of the dams in the affected area and should have done more to prevent flooding. Lee telephoned Adams to scream at him alleging that everyone in his office was incompetent. Adams explained to me, “Debbie Lee was really upset and worried about losing her job. She really got me mad. If she had been standing in front of me, I would have punched her.”

Since that incident, the working relationship between the forecasting center and Lee’s group in ACE turned sour. Adams speculated that the success of Sherry’s modeling most likely became an added source of embarrassment to Lee. Earlier in her career, Lee had also worked as a hydrologist at the same river forecasting center. Lee was the person that originated the accusation of Sherry being a spy for China.

Adams having seen all the discovery material related to the original criminal charges volunteered to me that emails from Debbie Lee showed clear indications of racial profiling as alleged by Zeidenberg in his memo in defense of Sherry. “All the charges leveled at Sherry were all bullsh*t,” Adams said.

In Zeidenberg’s memo, one the sections had a heading that read: “Deborah Lee’s suspicions of Ms. Chen were based on ignorance and racial profiling.” The concluding sentence of this section was, “These two concerns—one based on Ms. Chen’s national origin, one based on a erroneous factual understanding—are what triggered this entire investigation and a nightmare for Ms. Chen that is still ongoing.”

In his letter of dismissal, Devany’s response was curt: “That you are of Chinese descent is irrelevant. That you reached out to her (Deborah Lee) at the behest of an official in the Chinese government is not irrelevant.” The official was a vice minister who asked Sherry how the U.S. finance the repair of old dams. Sherry, not sensing Lee’s hostility towards her, asked her about where such publicly available information could be found. Her query gave Lee cause to report her to the DOC Office of Security.

Sherry learned of the National Inventory of Dams (NID) from a colleague at her center. According to Adams, everything in the NID was public information and no disclosure could possibly represent a threat to national security. However, the fact that Sherry did borrow a password to download some data from the NID, even though there was no evidence that she shared the information with anyone served as a major justification to dismiss her. Adams said that it would have been natural for Sherry to assume that the NID data would be relevant to her modeling work and only upon examination of the actual data would she discover that the data was “garbage.” (Ironically, since April 2015, most of the NID data is freely available to the public without any password.)

Tom Adams worked with Sherry Chen for more than five years before leaving the Ohio River Forecasting Center in February 2013--before Sherry Chen was arrested. Having left the service, he did not feel the constraint of a current employee and spoke to me freely. He maintained contact with Sherry and was working on a paper with her. In her letter of dismissal, Devany, who had a prior career in the U.S. Navy, treated the sharing of public information with Adams as if Sherry was consorting with an enemy. The weather service has a mandate to communicate and share freely the results of their findings with the public but apparently that does not include a former employee.

Adams wanted me to know that there is life after the river forecasting center. He has been consulting for the World Bank along with other gigs around the world including Beijing. He is the author of a basic textbook on flood forecasting to be published next month.

As for Sherry Chen, she has indicated that she is not willing to quietly go away. She said, “Why do I have to accept the unfair and unjust treatment my government has given me?” She goes on to say, “I am not just fighting for myself but for all victims of racial profiling so that it won’t happen again.”

It would seem that someone powerful is out to get Sherry Chen but that person is not likely to be in NWS. The leadership of NWS does not seem to be much invested in the process to dismiss Sherry. Other than drafting the PDA, Deputy Director Furgione has not shown any further engagement. She did not attend any of the meetings when Sherry and Zeidenberg presented their arguments against the proposal to dismiss. The second version of the PDA was an obvious cut and paste of the first version and would suggest that Furgione didn’t bother to read Zeidenberg’s response to her PDA. A logical question might be to ask her if she personally wrote the PDA and if not who did.

Uccellini declined to act as the deciding official on the PDA originally submitted by his deputy. Why? Did he find wielding the hatchet on Sherry distasteful? On the other hand, did the powers that be that insisted on terminating Sherry’s employment far exceeded his authority to countermand? If so, who is pushing to dismiss Sherry? (I contacted the offices of Furgione and Uccellini hoping for some answers and clarifications. Both referred me to the public affairs office of the Department of Commerce. Someone from the public affairs office promised to get back to me but has not so far.)

Vice Admiral Devany’s letter to remove Sherry also struck me as perfunctory and lacking in substance. His letter basically read like a re-written version of Furgione’s PDA. His reasons to dismiss read like re-statements and displayed no understanding or attempt to respond to the rebuttal presented by Zeidenberg. Again, if Devany did not write the letter, then who did and why?

Other than claiming that Sherry’s national origin is “irrelevant,” Devany did not address why he does not consider Deborah Lee guilty of racism. This question needs further investigation. Why was Lee not reprimanded for her obvious racist remarks? Who is protecting her and why? Lee has recently returned to NOAA as a director of a research laboratory. Surely she could not have been promoted as some kind of reward for her bigotry, could she?

Frank Wu, former Dean of Hastings Law School and incoming chairman of the Committee of 100, is personally advising Sherry on arriving at an appropriate response. “Notwithstanding the prosecution having dropped all charges against Sherry Chen and members of both houses of Congress have demanded from Justice Department a full investigation on whether racial bias have been involved,” Wu said, “How is it possible for NOAA and NWS to thumb their collective noses at that?”

“The highest priority right now,” he said, “Is to generate support from the communities that should be outraged by the government conduct in this case and others.” Readers are encouraged to contribute to Sherry Chen’s legal war chest to help her paid her bills and as she ponders her next move. Please visit http://www.sherrychendefensefund.com/donate.html.

Readers interested in reviewing the developments leading to the case up to the latest are encourage to visit the website being maintained by Jeremy Wu at http://bit.ly/AAProfiling.