Chinese-born Tsien Hsue-Shen (brilliant Cal Tech student, aerospace pioneer Theodore von Kármán colleague, commended by the U.S. Air Force for his contributions to its technological development after World War II, awarded a Robert H. Goddard Professorship of Jet Propulsion) was accused of harboring Communist sympathies and stripped of his security clearance that originated from his request to Cal Tech President Lee DeBridge in 1950 to visit (along with their grandchildren) his elderly parents in China.
Word was given to then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Dan Kimball of Tsien's openly made request. Kimball felt that it was a little risky for him, Tsien, and for the U.S. to have Tsien back in China. Somebody took Dan Kimball's remark seriously and said, "We've got to stop him." How were they going to stop him? Dan Kimball was shocked at the action of the Immigration Service to detain him and angry that his passing remark had been taken seriously.
DeBridge commented that "the way they found out to stop him was to charge him with having been a Communist. They found there was a little Communist group here in the thirties. When Debridge was asked if he thought Tsien was framed, his answer was the following: "Yes. I had no reason to doubt it, because we found out during the McCarthy days that two or three Caltech graduate students and others were involved. It was really a small Communist group."
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EARLY
LIFE AND EDUCATION |
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Tsien
Hsue-shen was born in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. He left
Hangzhou at the age of three when his father obtained a post in
the Ministry of Education. In August of 1935 Tsien Hsue-shen left
China on a Boxer Rebellion Scholarship to study at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. |
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In
1936 Tsien Hsue-shen went to the California Institute of Technology
to commence graduate studies on the referral of Theodore von K¨¢rm¨¢n.
Tsien obtained his doctorate in 1939 and would remain at CalTech
for twenty years, ultimately becoming the Goddard Professor and
establishing a reputation as one of the leading rocket scientists
in the United States. |
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Career
in the United States
During World War II he worked with the U.S. military ballistic missile
program as a designer. After the war he served in the United States
Army as a Lieutenant Colonel. Tsien Hsue-shen was sent by the Army
to Germany and was part of the team that examined captured German
V-2 rockets.
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| In
1945 Tsien Hsue-shen married Jiang Ying, the daughter of Jiang Baili
- one of Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek's leading military
strategists. |
Tsien's version of his association with that group was as follows. When this charge was first brought up, he came in to me and said, "I don't understand this." DeBridge said, "Well, did you have any connections with a Communist group?" Tsien said, "Well, there was a group of people here that had social gatherings. When I came over to this country, a stranger, two or three of these Caltech people invited me to their house for a little social gathering and I went several times." Tsien said, "I guess there was some talk about politics; but it was mostly just talk about general things, and I regarded them as purely social events. I certainly didn't sign up in any way with any Communist Party. And I didn't even remember the word "Communist" being mentioned at these affairs."
But somebody had written down on a piece of paper the names of the people who had attended one of these meetings, and this was later brought into evidence. I think there was a typewritten list, and over at the side was written "Tsien." Well, that killed him. He had
been back to China once before [1947] and returned to this country.
And apparently the standard procedure when you came back to this country was to answer the question, "Have you ever been or are you now a member of the Communist Party?" And of course, he wrote "No." So the charge was "perjury." This was based on the accusation (based on the above-listed typewritten list) that he had been a member of this Communist group but when he reentered the country he had said he had not been.
INS impounded his luggage and charged him with concealing classified documents-the most "secret" of which, suspected of containing security codes, turned out upon inspection to be a table of logarithms.
In the meantime the FBI had "decided" that Tsien posed a security risk and imprisoned him in San Pedro. They placed him in a detention center that consisted of a little cubicle - a room that had desk with a light and a bed. But for him to be detained that way was a terrible blow to him to his ego and his self-respect. He had served this country well, then to be treated in this way. It made him, eventually, very bitter.
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Clark Millikan
He obtained his PhD from Caltech in 1928 and
joined the Caltech faculty thereafter, where he became one of the
nation's pioneers in aerospace research and development. Millikan
served as director of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at
the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) from 1949 until
his death in 1966 and was advisor to various governmental committees
during and after World War II. |
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Tsien's
Departure |
He was freed two weeks later after Caltech president Lee DuBridge, among others, flew to Washington to intervene on his behalf. INS ignored a barrage of protests colleagues in academia, government, and industry to place him under a delayed deportation order.
For the next five years he and family lived under U.S. government surveillance and partial house arrest/parole (under the supervision of Clark Millikan) - but he could not leave Los Angeles County without permission. He was put on parole under the supervision of Clark Millikan, who had to swear that he would report if Tsien left the county. It was a very humiliating experience that made him very bitter and anti-U.S.
In September 1955, they were permitted to leave for China. As a result, Tsien concluded that he had become "an unwelcome guest" in the country in which he had spent his whole scientific life. In his determination to avoid such problems again, he deliberately left all of his research notes and papers behind when he sailed to China to become "father" of China's missile program, a trusted member of the government and Party's inner circle, and the nation's "most honored scientist."
Recently Caltech decided to offer Tsien the Alumni Award, and he said he could not come. He stated "The reason I can't come is because I'm still under a deportation order. If I were to come back to the United States, I would assume that that deportation order would be brought out, and I would be excluded."
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The
Scientist's Job - Lee A. DuBridge declared in 1947:
The
first responsibility of the scientist or engineer is to be a good
scientist or a good engineer. It is not the job of the scientist to
be primarily a politician, a sociologist, a military leader or a preacher.
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1951
