U.S. Govt Drops Case Where Reknowned Chemist Had Serious Ties To China

This case happened earlier this year but for some reason did not get a lot of coverage, which is odd when you hear the details. A Harvard Chemist was being paid 50k a month by the Chinese for his research and lied about doing so. He was suspended and was about to be charged for making a false statement to federal investigators about his financial ties, but for some reason they are not pursuing him.

“The U.S. government isn’t prosecuting Charles Lieber because he’s a world-renowned inorganic chemist at Harvard University, says the U.S. attorney who last week drew headlines by charging Lieber with making false statements about his ties to Chinese research institutions. Nor does the Department of Justice (DOJ) think for 1 minute that Lieber is a spy.

What worries Andrew Lelling, U.S. attorney for the Massachusetts district, is that Lieber was allegedly paid to carry out research in China, which, combined with his failure to disclose those relationships, makes him potentially vulnerable to pressure from the Chinese government to do its bidding at some future point. “It was the amount of money involved that drew our attention,” Lelling says, referring to a 2012 contract included in court documents that indicates Lieber received $50,000 a month in salary and millions of dollars in research support. “That is a corrupting level of money.”

Federal investigators were also alarmed, Lelling says, by how Lieber “brazenly” hid that relationship from Harvard and from the federal agencies that for decades have been funding his research on inorganic nanowires. “When people begin to hide things, that’s when law enforcement authorities get all excited.”

On 31 January, Lelling spoke with ScienceInsider about the nationwide DOJ effort, dubbed the China Initiative, that resulted in the charges against Lieber…” “The effort, which aims to blunt China’s effort to improperly acquire cutting edge technology, has focused on what DOJ calls “nontraditional collaborators,” and Lelling says the vast majority of cases that prosecutors are examining involve scientists working in the high-tech industry or academia.

Lieber is the highest profile scientist arrested so far. On 28 January, DOJ announced he is one of three people from Boston facing charges related to China. The other two—a junior cancer researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a former undergraduate student at Boston University (BU)—are both Chinese nationals.

Born and trained in the United States, Lieber is a member of both the U.S. national academies of sciences and medicine. At Harvard since 1991, he has pioneered work on the chemical synthesis of nanowires and their incorporation into devices ranging from transistors to light emitters and sensors. Most recently, his lab developed soft, flexible nanowire nets that could be injected into the brains or retina of animals to unfurl and wrap around neurons, and then eavesdrop on the electrical communication between cells. In 2011, he began a collaboration with Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China that is at the center of his alleged violations. (WUT did not respond to requests for comment on its relationship with Lieber.)

Lieber was released on 30 January after posting a $1 million bond and agreeing to remain in Massachusetts. He has been suspended with pay from Harvard, which last week called the charges “extremely serious” and said it is “cooperating with federal authorities.” His lawyer, Peter Levitt, declined to comment on the charges.

Lelling says Lieber’s prominence was not a “deciding factor” in DOJ’s decision to file criminal charges. “This wasn’t about looking for a bigger scalp,” Lelling insists. But, “The fact that Lieber is a prominent academic helps us to get out our message … that transparency works,” he adds.”

This is odd that they would just let this go, the Chemist was being paid 50k a month, to work with the Chinese and what’s worse he lied about it. 50k is nothing to scoff at. It makes you wonder just what he was working on with the Chinese and if he should really be getting a pass.