A pair of House Democrats on Thursday launched an investigation into alleged efforts by the FBI and National Institutes of Health (NIH) to scrutinize ethnically Chinese scientists for potential espionage.
Rep.Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who chairs the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) sent letters demanding documents about the two agencies' investigations into whether Chinese Americans were working as spies on behalf of China.
While the two lawmakers acknowledged that there have been some confirmed cases of espionage, they questioned whether the focus on Chinese Americans amounted to racial profiling.