Many Chinese immigrant scientists had originally entered the labs because they appeared to offer not only an intellectual environment, but also the secure haven that had eluded their early years. As immigrants who had fled war and revolution since childhood, many longed for a certain measure of peace and stability. Now they began to wonder about their decision. “In hindsight, there are some things I might have done differently,” Wen Ho Lee later wrote. “I might have made different career decisions, maybe going to work in private industry, or teaching at a university, rather than devoting more than twenty years to the national laboratories.”

In response to Lee’s experience, many have urged scientists of Chinese heritage not to work in the field of government defense. “Boycott Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and other national labs run by the Energy Department,” read one Web page that supported Wen Ho Lee. “Don’t apply for jobs there. You’ll just be a high-tech coolie, a glass ceiling will prevent you from advancing, and they’ll do to you what they did to Wen Ho Lee.” The unofficial boycott was a success. In February 2000, not one single Chinese graduate student from universities in the PRC, Taiwan, or the United States applied for the top postdoctoral fellowships at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Before the Lee affair, about half of the ten finalists would have been ethnic Chinese.

The boycott led to protracted negotiations between officials at the national laboratories and Chinese American activists, which, as this book went to press, had not yet been resolved. And the boycott was soon followed by litigation. In March 2002, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of hundreds of Asian American employees at Lawrence Livermore who alleged they were victims of discrimination.

(Chang 367-368)