National Academy of Sciences Flouts FBI’s Now Defunct ‘China Initiative’ in New Appointments

The National Academy of Sciences announced the list of new candidates for membership on May 2, which included eight Chinese-American scientists, not least being Chen Gang from MIT, who had been investigated by the FBI for possible espionage in its notorious “China Initiative,” which has since been thrown on the scrapheap. The FBI investigation of Chen had caused great concern in the Chinese-American community and in the academic community generally, given his prestige as a scholar. While he undoubtedly earned the latest nomination on the basis of his work, it is also a black eye for the FBI, which had gone overboard in their frenetic attempts to uncover “Chinese espionage.”