More than a year after charges were dropped against two Chinese American scientists falsely accused of espionage in two separate cases, both remain haunted by their ordeal.
Their cases were profiled in a CBS 60 Minutes report last night and the two have also given recent interviews to the Wall Street Journal and Philly.com .
“We cannot get rid of the thought that the FBI is reading every one of our emails and listening to our phone conversations to find something,” Xiaoxing Xi , 58, said to Philly.com. “I am determined to move on, but that’s there.”
Xi lost his temporary chairmanship of the Physics Department at Temple University after the charges, but remains as a professor. He still struggles to sleep at night.
Unlike Xi, Sherry Chen was unable to get her job back following her suspension from the National Weather Service and has since been fired for the same issues raised in the since dropped Justice Department complaint.
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The Wall Street Journal reports she has filed a discrimination suit against the Commerce Department.
“The victim isn’t only me–it’s also our agency,” she said. “I have a lot of work unfinished. My [forecasting] model really saves people’s lives”
“If you took out the China connection, neither of those cases would have ever been brought in a millions years,” said Peter Zeidenberg, an attorney who represented both Chen and Xi. “Everything that has a China connection is scrutinized in a different way.”
It’s difficult for both to shake their experience from their conscious.
“I see dangers all over the place,” said Xi. “I think I sound very annoyingly paranoid when I talk to my colleagues because I tell them, ‘You better be careful, what you’re doing is dangerous.’ ”
40 members of congress have called for the Justice Department to conduct an investigation into racial profiling of Asian Americans. So far, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has not responded to the request.
