Frank Malina

Frank Joseph Malina was born on October 2, 1912 in Brenham, Texas, the son of Czech immigrants. The FBI's description of him records a B.S. from Texas A&M on June 1, 1934, an M.S. from the California Institute of Technology in June 1935, and several years of schooling in Czechoslovakia (his 1949 passport application lists residence there from 1920 to 1925).¹ He arrived at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory in 1934 under Theodore von Kármán.²

Rocket group and Aerojet

Malina met Jack Parsons and Edward Forman in 1935 (a date given by Stephen Doyle and Michael Ciancone) and obtained von Kármán's consent for informal work with them.³ The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's historian Erik Conway describes Malina as a pacifist who accepted Army rocket work because of its value in opposing Fascism, who with von Kármán had supported the Soviet Union's opposition to Germany in the Spanish Civil War, and who "joined a Communist discussion group in 1937, although the magnitude of his involvement has never been clear"; Conway adds that Malina "denied ever having been a Communist party member" and that the group dissolved after the 1939 Soviet-German pact.²

He directed GALCIT Rocket Research Project (GALCIT Project No. 1) and was an incorporator, treasurer and director of Aerojet from March 19, 1942.³ An FBI report of 1942 shows him then as assistant professor of aeronautics and as secretary and treasurer of Aero-Jet Engineering Corporation.¹ When the Army-funded project became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in June 1944 he was its director. Conway writes that he opposed marrying his rockets to atomic bombs, proposed offering the WAC Corporal to the wider scientific community (rejected by Caltech's trustees in 1945 and 1946), and left rocketry in July 1947 for UNESCO in Paris at the invitation of Julian Huxley.⁴

FBI file, 1942 to 1953

The Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened an internal-security inquiry in 1942. Informants recorded in the file stated that Malina had held Communist meetings at his residence on Tuesday nights until about June 1941; one (T-1) said that "MALINA was associated with groups of 'pinks' at Cal Tech" and was "solidly behind the war effort," though his loyalty "would be questionable if he had to decide between our form of Government and that of Russia."¹ A later report attributes to an informant whose name is redacted the statement that Malina "held up the progress of the jet rocket propulsion units by at least two years" through technical objections and unnecessary analyses.⁵

The file on Qian Xuesen names Malina, from Informant T-2, as a member of Professional Unit 122 of the Communist Party in Pasadena under the party alias Frank Parma. It records that in early June 1949 Malina, then at UNESCO in Paris, visited the home of Sidney Weinbaum, who worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and asked Mrs. Weinbaum whether "everything was all right"; she told him she had written to Tsien about "the current difficulty" with the FBI and the possibility that her husband would lose his job over clearance difficulties.⁶ Weinbaum was arrested for perjury on June 16, 1950.⁶

Passports

The State Department's passport file as summarized by the FBI shows passports issued for travel to the British Isles in August 1944 and to England for the War Department in June 1946, amended in September 1946 to permit transit of Germany to Czechoslovakia, and a special passport in March 1947 for United Nations work. The file also records a refusal notice dated November 13, 1947 and a passport issued by the U.S. Consul at Paris on April 11, 1949.⁷ The Passport Division told the Embassy in Paris on May 26, 1951 that renewal was to be refused and the passport held; Malina surrendered it to the consul in September 1951, and on November 9, 1951 the Division instructed the Embassy to say that renewal was refused because "his further travel would be contrary to the best interests of the United States."⁷

Indictment

Assistant U.S. Attorney Angus D. McEachen in Los Angeles was given the facts about omission of party membership from Malina's personnel security questionnaires (executed October 24, 1944 and May 16, 1946) on May 26, 1952. On August 7, 1952 he declined prosecution for fraud against the government, stating that no party card or book made out to Malina existed, that omission on a questionnaire was not a sufficient basis for a perjury or fraud conviction, and that no person other than a redacted witness could testify to his membership.⁸ The FBI asked the Department of Justice to reconsider on September 12, 1952; the Department answered that, because of the "prominence of the subject in the scientific world," it had been of the view that adequate evidence existed for a true bill, though a conviction was doubtful, and noted that the statute of limitations expired on December 31, 1952.⁸

A secret indictment was returned by the federal grand jury in Los Angeles on December 30, 1952 under 18 U.S.C. 80, with a bench warrant and bond set at $10,000. McEachen later told the FBI that "notwithstanding his previously expressed opinion of weakness in this case" he had secured it "because of the Department's communications to him and his awareness of a considerable interest in this matter by the Bureau," and the office regarded Malina as a fugitive.⁸ The Department considered extradition from France and concluded it should not be sought, since France would likely refuse under the precedent of the Eisler case.⁸ The FBI noted that Malina resigned from UNESCO on February 10, 1953 with his whereabouts unknown. On October 30, 1953 McEachen recommended dismissal in light of the Harry Bridges decision on tolling of the statute of limitations, and an FBI memorandum records that the Department said the indictment would be dismissed because the limitation period had run before it was returned.⁸⁹