[zchip]

As anticommunist unease in the United States mounted, the FBI confronted Tsien in 1950 with a U.S. Communist Party document from 1938 that listed him as a member.

Must have been that pesky Joe McCarthy guy again! Maybe with a splash of J. Edgar Hoover or Richard Nixon. Those guys just never understood the difference between a rocket scientist and an agrarian reformer.

[Fishing-guy]

Yep, I believe it was McCarthyism.

He was never charged with espionage, but the government kept him under house arrest. It appears that his crime was that his name showed up on a list somewhere. He apparently attended a party when he was in college, and someone put his name down in attendance. Years later, that list got him in trouble.

His wife is the daughter of an Nationalist military advisor. It is hard to believe that a Communist would want to marry a prominent Nationalist at that time.