America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen
The article discusses the strategic blunder made by the United States in the imprisonment of Qian Xuesen, a prominent scientist. In 1955, the U.S. traded Qian for eleven airmen captured in China, a decision criticized by officials like Dan Kimball. The roots of this blunder trace back to 1950 when Qian's security clearance was revoked based on dubious evidence.
- ▪In August 1955, the U.S. traded Qian Xuesen for eleven captured airmen during the Wang-Johnson talks in Geneva.
- ▪Qian Xuesen was a key figure in American aeronautics and co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
- ▪The decision to revoke Qian's security clearance in 1950 was based on questionable evidence, leading to a series of detrimental consequences.
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America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen In August 1955, the United States traded one man for eleven U.S. Air Force airmen at the Wang-Johnson talks in Geneva. The eleven were the crew of a B-29 shot down over China in January 1953 and convicted as spies. The one man was Qian Xuesen, the co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the colonel in the assimilated rank of the U.S. Army Air Forces who had interrogated Wernher von Braun at the end of the war, the principal author-editor of the 1945 report that the U.S. Air Force's own institutional history credits with "leading to America's postwar airpower dominance".
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Weblog.
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