The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(T-Z)/Qian Xuesen.md

category	aliases	tags	summary	born	died	location	relations
Scientists & Researchers	H. S. Tsien H.S. Tsien Hsue-Shen Tsien Qian Xuesen Tsien Hsue-shen Hsue-shen Tsien	Person China Psi Military Science McCarthy ColdWar JPL GALCIT FBI SecurityClearance Deportation	Chinese aerospace scientist and Caltech rocket researcher who lost his U.S. clearance in June 1950, was held under deportation orders until 1955, directed China's missile programs and later endorsed Extraordinary Human Body Function research.	1911-12-11	2009-10-31	Beijing, China	type with start end role fn member_of GALCIT Rocket Research Project 1936 1944 graduate student who helped Malina with theory and the test rig 2 type with end role fn employed_by Jet Propulsion Laboratory 1950-06 section chief, as described to the FBI by Sidney Weinbaum 6 type with start end role fn subject_of Federal Bureau of Investigation 1949 1955 subject of FBI file 65-4857 (Espionage-R), Los Angeles 4 type with start end role fn subject_of Immigration and Naturalization Service 1950-09-06 1955-09 arrested September 6, 1950 on a deportation warrant dated August 26, 1950; released September 22, 1950 on $15,000 bond; deportation ordered February 8, 1952; supervised parole from June 4, 1953 11 type with start role fn contractor_to Aerojet 1942 listed by William Zisch, Aerojet general manager, in August 1950 as one of the 20 top scientists in the country 9

Qian Xuesen (錢學森), known in Western literature as H.S. Tsien or Hsue-Shen Tsien, was born December 11, 1911, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. He became one of the twentieth century's most significant aerospace scientists, making foundational contributions to rocketry and jet propulsion in the United States before being expelled during the McCarthy era and returning to China, where he directed the programs that gave China its ballistic missile and space capabilities. In his later decades he became a vocal advocate for state-sponsored research into Extraordinary Human Body Function (EHBF), endorsing the scientific investigation of claimed paranormal abilities as consistent with socialist materialist science - an endorsement that carried extraordinary weight and enabled a major expansion of Chinese government parapsychology research.¹

Early Career and JPL

Qian arrived in the United States in 1935, studying at MIT before transferring to the California Institute of Technology, where he worked under Hungarian-American aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán. He completed his doctorate in aeronautics and mathematics and became a central figure in the group of Caltech researchers, the GALCIT Rocket Research Project in Pasadena, California, that became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1944. The group was called the "Suicide Squad" for its early experiments with rocket propellants.² Qian co-authored foundational work on supersonic and hypersonic flow, boundary layer theory, and rocket engineering.¹

During World War II, Qian was commissioned as a colonel in the U.S. Army Air Forces and in 1945 was sent to Germany as part of Operation Paperclip-adjacent missions to interrogate captured German scientists. He interviewed Wernher von Braun and other Peenemünde rocket engineers, assessing German V-2 technology for American military applications. He also interviewed Luftwaffe aerodynamics experts including Ludwig Prandtl. His assessments were classified and contributed to American understanding of German wartime aerospace advances.¹

After the war, Qian continued at Caltech and JPL, rising to become one of the most prominent aerospace scientists in the United States. He held security clearances giving him access to classified rocket and missile programs.³ The FBI's summary of his case lists him in 1949 as a professor at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory holding Air Force clearance as an expert consultant and membership of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.⁴

FBI Investigation, Deportation and Departure

Tsien, after study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was at the California Institute of Technology by 1936, and was one of the Caltech students who joined the GALCIT Rocket Research Project of Frank Malina, Jack Parsons and Edward Forman, helping Malina with the theoretical work.² The FBI's Los Angeles reports describe him in 1949 as a section chief at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1949, in addition to his Caltech post, he worked on Air Force and Navy contracts, held "the highest Air Force clearance as an expert consultant," and sat on the Air Force's Scientific Advisory Board, and on April 5, 1949 he filed a declaration of intention to become a U.S. citizen at Boston.⁴

The FBI's later summary of the case states that the investigation "was instituted in 1949 on the basis of information received from a co-worker, John W. Parsons, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory," who said that Tsien associated with a group at the laboratory and particularly with Dr. Sidney Weinbaum.⁴ On January 11, 1950, Parsons, then a physicist in the Department of Electronics and Guided Missiles at Hughes Aircraft Company, gave agents a signed statement that he had met Tsien in 1938 through Malina; that a group met at Malina's house and was chaired by Weinbaum, who offered to tutor Parsons in mathematics and invited him into an "inner circle" of intellectuals; and that Tsien "seemed interested only in the theory of communism," saying "there were some good ideas in Marx and Lenin," and "expressed no interest in Weinbaum or in group activity."⁵

A Los Angeles report of 1949 recorded that Informant T-2, described as reliable, stated that Tsien "late in 1938 had joined Professional Unit 122 of the Communist Party in Pasadena" and was assigned the party name John M. Decker and the 1939 book number 1004; the same informant named Malina as a member of the unit under the party alias Frank Parma. The informant also described Weinbaum as the unit's county organizer.⁶ Colleagues interviewed by the FBI, including Louis Dunn, said they regarded him highly and that nothing had come to their attention that caused them to doubt his loyalty; Dunn also told agents that, according to a story he had heard, Theodore von Kármán, then stationed in Paris, had advised the woman who became Mrs. Tsien to "set her cap" for Tsien.⁶

Weinbaum was arrested for perjury on June 16, 1950 and was convicted on September 7, 1950 of failing to list former party membership on a personnel security questionnaire and of denying it under oath, and sentenced to four years.⁷ The "denial of consent" to Tsien's access to classified information was issued by letter dated June 6, 1950 and delivered to Caltech on June 16, 1950, the date of Weinbaum's arrest; Caltech's personnel director told the FBI that Dean Ernest Watson had learned of it on June 20, and Caltech began an appeal to the Industrial Employment Review Board.⁸ Tsien told agents that when they first contacted him on June 6, 1950 he realized that "the finger of suspicion" had fallen on him and decided to resign from Caltech and go to China; he said he understood that his own clearance was unchanged.⁸

William Zisch, general manager of Aerojet, told the FBI on August 2, 1950 that Tsien planned to return to China at the end of August and that Zisch regarded him as one of the 20 top scientists in the United States who "could furnish valuable information to the Soviets if so inclined"; Zisch said he felt Tsien was loyal and intended to see Navy Under Secretary Dan Kimball on August 2 about keeping him in the country, and the Office of Naval Intelligence told the FBI that Kimball, formerly connected with Aerojet, had asked it to interview Zisch.⁹ The Bureau's position, stated on August 14, 1950 to the Department of Justice and to ONI, was that it would not act to prevent or delay Tsien's departure unless the Department asked.¹⁰

On August 21, 1950 U.S. Customs seized a 15,300-pound shipment, which Customs identified as owned by Tsien, containing blueprints, photographs, scientific codes and notes on aeronautics and missiles, routed via Hong Kong aboard the SS President Wilson; some of it was marked restricted. The Atomic Energy Commission told the FBI on August 22 that no classified atomic-energy information had been found. The U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute Tsien for espionage and for theft of government property, finding only a technical violation lacking intent. On August 23, 1950 the Immigration and Naturalization Service served notice preventing his departure; a warrant charging him with having been, before entry, a member of a class of aliens advocating overthrow of the government by force was issued August 26 and executed on September 6, 1950; he was held at the INS detention facility on Terminal Island until September 22, 1950, when Caltech's Frederick C. Lindvall posted $15,000 in U.S. Treasury bonds.¹¹ INS ruled on February 8, 1952 that he should be deported; in February 1953 the bond was rewritten with conditions and on June 4, 1953 he was placed under supervision with requirements to report monthly and to submit to medical and psychiatric examination when ordered.¹¹

A dispatch by Robert T. Hartmann, bureau chief of the Times in Washington (the Los Angeles Times), preserved in the file under a September 13 dateline (1955), reports that Tsien received permission on August 4 to leave and would sail on Friday aboard the President Cleveland for Hong Kong, and that the State Department denied that any "swap" or "exchange for Americans" was involved in his return.¹² (The live page's statement that he was exchanged for Korean War prisoners is Chang's account; the file clipping carries the State Department denial of an exchange. Keep both, attributed.)

China's Rocket and Space Programs

Qian's return to China initiated what became one of the most consequential technology transfers of the Cold War. He was appointed director of China's missile and rocket program and effectively became the architect of China's strategic weapons capability. Under his direction, China developed the Dong Feng (East Wind) series of ballistic missiles, progressing from Soviet-assisted designs to independent Chinese development. Qian directed the programs that produced China's first satellite (Dong Fang Hong 1, launched April 24, 1970) and laid the foundation for the Long March rocket family that remains China's primary space launch vehicle.¹

He was awarded the title "Father of the Chinese Space Program" and given multiple state honors. He held leading positions in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and served on the National People's Congress. His stature in Chinese scientific and political life was essentially unrivaled among living scientists; his endorsement of any research program carried the weight of state legitimacy.³

EHBF Endorsement

In 1979, a newspaper article about Tang Yu, a twelve-year-old boy in Sichuan who could allegedly read characters printed on folded paper using his ears, ignited a national fascination with claimed paranormal abilities. The Extraordinary Powers Craze that followed produced hundreds of reported "gifted children" across China and significant public controversy. Skeptical scientists wanted the claims investigated and exposed; others sought to exploit them. The question of whether the state would sanction research into the phenomena was unresolved.¹

Qian Xuesen provided the answer. Beginning around 1979 and continuing into the early 1980s, he published articles arguing that Extraordinary Human Body Function - his preferred scientific framing for what Western researchers called parapsychology - deserved serious scientific investigation within a socialist materialist framework. His argument was that qigong and related practices tapped genuine physical phenomena that existing science did not yet explain, but that the explanation would ultimately be materialist and could yield practical applications. He wrote that EHBF could be a scientific revolution comparable to the development of quantum mechanics.¹

The political and institutional consequences were immediate. Qian's endorsement provided the ideological cover for Communist Party officials to support EHBF research without appearing to sanction religious or superstitious beliefs. Military research institutes, academic laboratories, and hospitals established EHBF programs. The Chinese government's intelligence and security establishment took an interest in potential military applications. Hal Puthoff's 1982 classified DIA report, "Psychoenergetics Research in the People's Republic of China," which Puthoff prepared for the Defense Intelligence Agency's Psychoenergetics program, identified H.S. Tsien by name as the intellectual patron of Chinese EHBF research and documented the extent of state investment the program had attracted - intelligence that DIA officials cited as justification for continued American investment in the Stargate Project and related programs.¹³

Later Life

Qian remained active in Chinese scientific and political life through the 1990s. His views on EHBF modulated somewhat as Chinese government support for the research waned in the late 1980s and early 1990s following fraud scandals involving some practitioners and a broader political retrenchment. He died October 31, 2009, in Beijing, at age 97.

Footnotes

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1. Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017, pp. 219-226. ↩︎

2. Conway, Erik M., "From Rockets to Spacecraft: Making JPL a Place for Planetary Science," Engineering & Science (Caltech), no. 4 (2007), p. 3, calteches.library.caltech.edu/702/2/Spacecraft.pdf; Doyle, Stephen E., and Michael Ciancone, "Aerojet Engineering Corporation: Stimulation and Creation, 1935-1942," IAC-19-E4.2.1, 2019, p. 8, ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20190032336. ↩︎

3. Chang, Iris. Thread of the Silkworm. Basic Books, 1995. This is the primary English-language biography of Qian Xuesen; Chang reconstructed his U.S. career and expulsion in detail from declassified FBI and military records. ↩︎

4. FBI, "Hsue-Shen Tsien (Qian Xuesen)," Los Angeles file 65-4857, Part 2, summary of the case (Declaration of Intention, April 5, 1949; investigation instituted 1949 on information from John W. Parsons), archive.org/details/fbi-file-tsien-hsue-shen (FBIFile_Tsien_Part2) and archive.org/details/HsueShenTsien. ↩︎

5. FBI Tsien file, Part 1, report of Special Agent Arthur C. Wittenburg, Los Angeles, quoting the signed statement of John W. Parsons dated January 11, 1950 (headquarters stamp February 1950), FBIFile_Tsien_Part1. ↩︎

6. FBI Tsien file, Part 1, Los Angeles report of 1949 (Informant T-2; Professional Unit 122; party name John M. Decker; interviews with Caltech colleagues including Louis Dunn). ↩︎

7. FBI Tsien file, Part 2, summary of the case (Weinbaum convicted of perjury and fraud on September 7, 1950, sentenced to four years); Part 1, report that Weinbaum was arrested June 16, 1950. ↩︎

8. FBI Tsien file, Part 1, Los Angeles report of 1950 (interview of Tsien on his resignation; "denial of consent" letter of June 6, 1950, delivered June 16; James N. Ewart and Ernest C. Watson). ↩︎

9. FBI Tsien file, headquarters memorandum to A. H. Belmont, August 1950 (Zisch to the Los Angeles office, August 2, 1950; Office of Naval Intelligence; Dan Kimball). ↩︎

10. FBI Tsien file, headquarters memorandum recommending that Liaison advise Colonel Middleton, August 1950 (information furnished to Assistant Attorney General James M. McInerney on August 14, 1950). ↩︎

11. FBI Tsien file, Parts 1 and 2: Los Angeles teletype to the Bureau, March 1955 (arrest warrant August 26, 1950, executed September 6, 1950; Terminal Island; bond of September 22, 1950; INS investigator Edward A. Vander Ploeg, March 11, 1955; conditions of June 4, 1953); Part 2 summary (Customs seizure of August 21, 1950; declination; INS notice of August 23; ruling of February 8, 1952); teletypes quoting Los Angeles press of August 25, 1950. ↩︎

12. Hartmann, Robert T., Los Angeles Times Washington bureau chief, dispatch of September 13, 1955, clipping in FBI Tsien file, Part 2. ↩︎

13. Puthoff, Harold E. "Psychoenergetics Research in the People's Republic of China." Classified DIA report, 1982 (declassified excerpt, cited in Jacobsen, Phenomena). Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997. ↩︎