LOS ANGELES -- A physics professor with close ties to Hanoi allegedly acted as a liaison between the State Department and the Communist government of Vietnam before he was shot to death, a television station has reported.
Edward Lee Cooperman was found dead Oct. 13 in his Cal State Fullerton office. Minh Van Lam, 20, a Vietnamese student and Cooperman's friend, faces trial Jan. 7 for the professor's death.
The State Department gave Cooperman approval for shipments of computers and scientific equipment to Vietnam in exchange for Cooperman acting as a communication link between the Hanoi and U.S. governments, KCBS reported Thursday.
The United States has placed an embargo on all but emergency humanitarian aid to Vietnam.
Alan May, Lam's defense attorney, wants to subpoena two State Department officials, Brian Kirkpatrick and De-Say Anderson, who allegedly worked closely with Cooperman, to testify at Lam's trial, the station reported.
Friends of Cooperman have claimed he was assasinated by a right-wing Vietnamese terrorist group because of his close ties to Hanoi and his efforts to rebuild that country.
Cooperman was on a first-name basis with at least three State Department officials, documents filed Thursday in Orange County Superior Court show, the station said.
The documents reportedly reveal that Cooperman wrote a report to the State Department on his trip to Laos, which included a shopping list of items he needed in Vietnam. They include an invitation to Cooperman by the U.S. charge d'affaires in Bangkok, Thailand, and evidence that Cooperman shipped Apple computers, computer parts and other scientific equipment to Vietnam, the station reported.
A government document allegedly showed Cooperman had obtained export licenses to Vietnam from the State Department.
State Department officials said they would not have approved Cooperman's shipments of scientific equipment. But, physicist Morton Sobel said the State Department knew what Cooperman was doing, the station reported.
State Department officials denied that Cooperman had passed messages between the two governments and declined to comment on whether they knew of Cooperman's shipments to Vietnam.
