John W. Powell

Who was John W. Powell?

John William Powell was a journalist and small business proprietor who was most well known for being tried for sedition after publishing an article in 1952 that reported on allegations made by Mainland Chinese officials that the United States and Japan were carrying out germ warfare in the Korean War. This news was reported in Shanghai in an English language journal, the "China Monthly Review", published by Powell.

In 1956, the Eisenhower Administration's Department of Justice pressed sedition charges against John W. Powell, his wife Sylvia, and Julian Schuman, after grand jury indictments, which had been sought by Federal prosecutors, were handed down against the three North Americans who had published the allegations about bacteriological warfare. However, the prosecutors failed to get any convictions. The defendants, refused to reveal any self-incriminating evidence, as was their Constitutional right, and U.S. Department of Defense officials also refused to provide any incriminating archives or witnesses to the Federal court. [Information on this did turn up decades later as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests.]