MIT professor says federal prosecution turned his American Dream into a nightmare

On the morning of January 14, 2021, more than 10 federal agents arrived at the Cambridge home of MIT professor Gang Chen, blocking off surrounding streets and making their way up to the narrow corridor to his front door. 

"The way they came through the corridor, I know they were here for me," Chen told CBS News chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod in his first television interview. "They said, 'Are you Gang Chen?' I said, 'Yes.' They say, 'Don't move.'" 

Chen, a U.S. citizen, was handcuffed and jailed, becoming one of the most high-profile arrests under the Justice Department's China Initiative. Launched under the Trump administration in 2018, the program was aimed at tackling a top national security priority: hunting down those responsible for China's widespread theft of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in American trade secrets and intellectual property.