At the end of World War II, the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union competed fiercely to acquire and import the defeated Third Reich's scientific and engineering manpower. Denying the Soviets, our wartime ally, these Nazi "assets" was Washington's purpose, Project Paperclip its enigmatic name.
"Dazzled by German technology that was in some cases years ahead of our own," government officials "simply ignored its evil foundation ... and pursued Nazi scientific knowledge like a forbidden fruit," Linda Hunt writes in "Secret Agenda."
This is a story that shatters images, including those of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, military intelligence operatives and many public servants. Hunt clearly delineates the forces of good from evil. Many of the latter, in her view, were on the payroll of the U.S. government.
Advertisement
A former executive producer of CNN's investigative unit and now a Washington-based reporter, Hunt tells how American military and civilian officials committed crimes in picking Paperclip's "forbidden fruit" in Germany and shipping it home. Using special organizations with quixotic titles -- Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), National Interest, Washington Liaison Group, Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS), Inter-American Defense Board (IADB) -- the officials lied, perjured themselves, obstructed justice, destroyed and altered records, and contravened the president's explicit orders closing U.S. borders to Nazis. Once here, the scientists spread out from the government to private contractors and universities. And the military stonewalled and lied to protect the Germans from outraged Americans. Intelligence agents harassed critics.
V-1 and V-2 rocket scientists such as von Braun, to many Americans a hero of the Apollo moon landing endeavor, were graduates of Paperclip. An early investigation into his background "noted that von Braun was considered an ardent Nazi and a security threat to the United States." That should have been enough Nazi baggage to keep him grounded in Germany. It wasn't. Von Braun ended up with Army rocketeers in Huntsville, Ala., later to become developer of the Apollo Saturn launch vehicle.
Hunt also points to Gen. Walter Schreiber, head of the Reich's Sanitary Division of the Military Medical Academy, which had jurisdiction over experiments on prisoners in concentration camps. "Schreiber was one of the biggest Nazi war criminals employed in the entire history of the project," Hunt writes. "Yet the attitude expressed by JIOA and Air Force officers when confronted with massive evidence of this man's crimes exemplified the anti-Semitism, the callous disregard for U.S. laws, and the total lack of any consideration of morality that plagued Paperclip for decades."
Advertisement
After the war Schreiber was captured by the Soviets. Two years later he suddenly appeared in West Berlin amid rumors he was "a Soviet plant." U.S. Army intelligence hired Schreiber in Germany, the CIA used him, and the JIOA sent Schreiber to work at the Air Force School of Aviation Medicine in Texas in 1951, Hunt writes. But complaints and bad publicity helped his past to catch up with him, and he went to Argentina a year later.
Share this articleShareVon Braun and Schreiber were but two of the hundreds of Nazis shipped to the United States and shielded by Paperclip.
It is not without irony that project Paperclip, kept secret from the American public, seems to have been penetrated by the Soviets from its inception. According to Hunt, Soviet spy Donald Maclean offered advice about which scientists to recruit; in 1959, William Henry Whalen took over as director of the JIOA. "Whalen was a paid Soviet agent until he stopped spying in early 1963," Hunt writes. Even with media coverage of criminal proceedings against Whalen -- he was arrested on suspicion of espionage, indicted on charges amounting to espionage (acting as an agent for the U.S.S.R. and conspiring to gather military secrets for the Soviets) and eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy -- his connection to the JIOA was not disclosed, Hunt says.
Advertisement
Behind Paperclip's brisk trade in Nazi scientists was the CIA. "The CIA and military intelligence used the project to bring intelligence sources or other assets to the United States" in exchange for their services, Hunt writes. In fact, Hunt says, tantalizing records of a Paperclip-related activity named National Interest tell of "nearly every early" CIA-Office of Policy Coordination "covert operation that took place in the late 1940s."This alone should be worth fuller treatment in another book.
However powerful the Paperclip revelations, Hunt impedes the story with abrupt introductions of principals and an annoying bouncing of the narrative from peak to peak. The absence of transitions in her writing is jarring. Misspelled names and words, poor grammar and incomplete indexing show lack of attention by editors and proofreaders.
But Hunt is to be commended for dogged extraction of records from federal archives and for straightening out the many twists in Paperclip. The reviewer is an editor on the national desk of The Washington Post.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZK6zr8eirZ5nnJ6zpr%2FTsqOeZ2FuhnJ7j3Fmam5fqbWmec%2Bap56qk6G2sXnFoqOeZ5JosnGDwHJqZm6Sbn5ugMFtZ2aZaJeAbrGYaWxwbWlps3eukmg%3D