Agent Yellow:

Not A Chinaman’s Chance

A film by Christine Cho

Agent Yellow is a powerful indictment of the U.S. government’s systematic prejudice against Chinese-American scientists. The film focuses on the mistreatment of Chinese scientists who contributed significantly to American military research, specifically describing the tragic cases of Dr. Wen Ho Lee and Dr. Tsien Hsue-Sher. On June 2, 2006, Dr. Wen Ho Lee, an atomic scientist once suspected of espionage, settled an invasion of privacy lawsuit against the U.S. government for $1,645,000. Dr. Lee, who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, brought his case against the government in 1999, the year federal investigators accused him of giving nuclear secrets to China. He spent nine months in solitary confinement awaiting trial. Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to one felony count of illegally gathering and retaining national security data, and he received an apology from the judge in the case.

Dr. Lee's case eerily echoes that of Dr. Tsien Hsue-sher's fifty years earlier. After coming to the U.S. from China in 1935 to study at M.I.T. and Cal Tech, Dr. Tsien worked on American government- sponsored research grants for the Navy and Air Force specifically in the development of nuclear weaponry. He worked closely with other scientists at Cal Tech known as the Suicide Squad ," whose ideas formed the basis of today's military capability. He was named Director of the Rocket Section of the U.S. National Defense Scientific Advisory Board.

During the McCarthy hearings, several scientists of the Suicide Squad were accused of being Communists. Dr. Tsien's close relations with them led to the loss of his security clearance. He was then detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service where he suffered terribly, losing thirty-three pounds and the ability to speak. In 1955 he was traded to China for several American POWs held since the Korean War. On his deportation to China, Dr. Tsien was named to China's Academy of Sciences and immediately started working on weaponry. His knowledge went a long way toward making Red China a member of the nuclear community.

26 min. Video or DVD. Sale $295. Video rental $65.

Asian American International Film Festival, 2006