7NEVADA
FBI's involvement in international
Thu Oct 23 02:44:02 2003
64.140.159.12

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/10/89583.php

Federal judge seals records alleging FBI's involvement in international
spy business
by Bill Conroy Saturday October 18, 2003 08:34 AM

A judge in federal court in Sacramento, Calif., has issued an order
sealing previously public court documents in a sensational case that
involves a former FBI agent who claims he worked as an international spy
for the Bureau.

Former FBI agent Lok Thye Lau alleges he worked for the Bureau as a deep
undercover agent overseas in the late 1980s.

Lau contends the work was of such a stressful and horrific nature that
it caused him permanent psychological damage, yet he says the FBI has
refused to provide him with the necessary security clearances to pursue
proper treatment.

The FBI paints a different picture of Lau. The Bureau claims Lau is a
liar and a petty thief.

However, Lau contends the bureau doesn't want the real story to come
out. He alleges the FBI went out of its way to set him up to fail,
leading to him being fired in 2000 in the wake of an alleged shoplifting
incident. Since then, Lau has been fighting to prove that he was hung
out to dry by the FBI because he now knows too much.

The remarkable revelations made by Lau are supported by court records
and reams of Freedom of Information Act documents. However, on Oct. 10,
U.S. District Court Judge Garland E. Burrell in Sacramento issued an
order to seal documents filed in Lau's case. Those papers detail Lau's
FBI career and reveal that he conducted undercover work overseas
"against hostile and aggressive foreign powers for years."

Specifically, Judge Burrell ordered that a previously public declaration
filed in Lau's case be sealed. The judge also ordered the sealing of
pleadings in a friend-of-the-court brief filed on Lau's behalf by the
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), one of the nation's
oldest Hispanic civil-rights groups.

Prior to the judge's ordering the court records sealed, the San Antonio
Business Journal had already published a story based on the previously
public documents.

The court and FOIA records in Lau's case indicate that the FBI got
involved in the spy business at least a decade before 9/11. Although Lau
can't discuss the specific nature of his past covert foreign assignment,
there are plenty of indications in the public record that point to the
likely target country's being China.

This story has major ramifications, both internationally and in the
context of the current CIA-related spy scandal plaguing the Bush
administration. The sealing of the court records also raises the specter
of government censorship in this case.

Lau's case is filed in U.S. District Court in California - Eastern
District (2:02-CV-390 USDC California Eastern).

For more on this story, check out the following Web links:

Former federal agent's spy story opens Pandora's box for FBI --
http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2003/10/13/story1.html

Judge orders previously public court records sealed in case of former
FBI agent --
http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2003/10/13/daily12.html

www.cfac.org/Attachments/fbi_spy_story.html