John W. Powell was tried for sedition in 1959 after publishing an article that reported on allegations made by Mainland Chinese officials that the United States and Japan were carrying out germ warfare in the Korean War.

In 1956, the Eisenhower Administration's Department of Justice pressed sedition charges against Powell, his wife Sylvia, and Julian Schuman, after federal prosecutors secured grand jury indictments against them for publishing allegations of bacteriological warfare.

After the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, Powell joined the American Office of War Information, the military's journalism program, as a news editor.

On April 26, 1956, the Powells, along with an associate at the "China Monthly Review", learned that a Federal Grand Jury had indicted each of them on a charge of sedition.

The Powells responded to the charges by asserting they had properly reported on what was said by Chinese officials and troops coming from the front lines of the Korean War.

Powell's trial, which ended in a mistrial, took place in 1959 at the Federal Courthouse in San Francisco, the same location where Marie Equi had been tried and convicted of sedition in 1918.

However, with the documents that he had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Powell was able to provide additional evidence supporting his earlier reports in the "China Monthly Review".

Powell's reporting had brought widespread public attention to the use of bacteriological warfare, which helped prompt the United States Congress into hearing testimony from former American Prisoners of War in 1982 and 1986.

After returning to the United States from China, the Powells bought an old house on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, undertook extensive repairs and renovations, and then sold it for a profit.