PART 10 OF 10: SECRET AGENDA PROJECT PAPERCLIP,:CONSEQUENCES

Secret Agenda The United States Government, Nazi Scientists and 

Project Paperclip 1945 to 1990 

By Linda Hunt 

15 

Consequences 

THE shadow of an old V-2 rocket briefly touched the silver hair of some of the twenty-two men who strolled, chatting in English and German, to a three-tiered wooden stand. There they stood posing with a larger-than-life photograph of a blond, square-jawed Wernher von Braun while press cameras clicked and whirred. The huge engine nozzles of the Alabama Space and Rocket Center's (A.S.R.C) Saturn V moon rocket loomed behind them.1 

The event in Huntsville, Alabama, was billed as the fortieth anniversary of the old German rocket team's arrival in the U.S. under Paperclip. But a stinging irony lay in the timing of the April 1985 reunion, in that it was forty years to the month after American troops liberated the Dora slaves who also had helped build Hitler's infamous V-2 rocket. And in the shocking fact that two of the men being honored that day were under active O.S.I investigation for Nazi war crimes.2 

Standing in the third row-the one wearing impenetrably dark glasses, the other wearing an open-necked shirt-were Guenther Haukohl and Dieter Grau. During World War II, Haukohl was Rudolph's subordinate at Mittelwerk as chief manager of installation and supervision of the manufacture of V-2's. Up to seven hundred prisoners worked as slaves in Haukohl's unit, under the supervision of a brutal capo named Georg Finkenzeller, who was convicted after the war of viciously beating prisoners.3 The question of whether Haukohl had anything to do with prisoners being mistreated remains unanswered. 

Grau, an engineer at Peenemunde, was sent by Wernher von Braun to Mittelwerk to find out why rockets produced at the underground factory were malfunctioning. During an inspection Grau found that prisoners who he said did not have a "positive attitude" had sabotaged the rockets. "They knew where they could tighten or loosen a screw, and this way try to interfere with the proper function of the missile," Grau said. Grau even told Atlanta Weekly in 1985 he had turned in a sabotage report on the prisoners.4 But the question of whether Grau's report led to the prisoners being hanged also remains unanswered. 

And those disturbing questions may never be answered. Patrick Richardson, a Huntsville attorney representing Haukohl and Grau, claimed that the Justice Department was on a Nazi "witchhunt" and twice turned down O.S.I's request to interview the two men, in November 1985 and March 1986. A Cable News Network cameraman and I went to see Haukohl and Grau at their Huntsville homes for my C.N.N series broadcast in 1986. Haukohl refused to talk, and all Grau would say was, "I promised my lawyer I wouldn't make any further statements."5 

From the morning shadows that lent an air of ambiguity to the A.S.R.C's photographic session, the reunion moved to an indoor auditorium, where the near-darkness signaled a change of mood-a gathering of sinister forces, some from the distant past, some from the present. There in the auditorium, along with the old Germans themselves, were representatives of the forces that had helped create and perpetuate the lies that surrounded Paperclip and its spin off's since 1945: the U.S. Army, NASA, and-a more recent addition-the empire built on zealotry and fraud by political extremist Lyndon LaRouche.6 

After an hour-long slide show and briefing on the Army's latest weaponry, an A.S.R.C public relations official set the ground rules for the press: there were to be no questions about Arthur Rudolph. But the questions were asked despite the gag attempt, and soon the air was filled with hostility and bitter comments about the O.S.I's handling of Rudolph's case. Retired Army Colonel Paul Towry, a former chief executive officer at Redstone Arsenal, lambasted the O.S.I, saying their investigations are "beginning to get out of hand. "7 

Then the press conference turned into a podium for the twisted paranoia and conspiracy theories of LaRouche. Marsha Freeman, Washington editor of Fusion magazine, a LaRouche mouthpiece, was introduced by the public relations officer and allowed to launch into a fifteen-minute attack on the O.S.I. "The witch-hunt against the leading space scientists of the United States is nothing less than a Soviet plot to destroy the military scientific accomplishments of the U.S.," she said. Freeman concluded her tirade by asking for a congressional investigation and urging that the O.S.I be shut down. At that point the Germans in the audience cheered.8 

The Huntsville gathering, with its bizarre mixture of adulation and paranoia, was a symptom of a gathering storm. For over forty years Paperclip had survived threats from within and without, kept on course by the firm determination that the ends justified the means, even if that meant breaking the law. Paperclip's dark secrets lay safely hidden in cover up's, lies, and deceit. Now the Rudolph case had put a crack in the project's protective shell and threatened to expose all of those secrets. 

An alliance quickly formed to close the gap and continue the cover up. It also resulted in the kind of Holocaust revisionism and whitewash that O.S.I Director Neal Sher had warned was taking place. 

One figure in that alliance was Frederick Ordway, a former public relations official who was a close friend of Rudolph, Wernher von Braun, and other Paperclip scientists. Ordway publicly defended Rudolph, claiming that the Dora slaves had been "well fed." As evidence Ordway cited a letter by Milton Hochmuth, a former Army intelligence officer who had rounded up V-2's at Mittelwerk in 1945, in which Hochmuth says he remembers "being surprised at how well-fed . . . and in good health" he found the prisoners assigned to V-2 production.9 

Ordway did not mention that Hochmuth also must have seen the dead bodies of six thousand Dora slaves lying on the ground, as former New York governor Hugh Carey and other American liberators did when they arrived on the same day as Hochmuth. "Everyone saw it," said Carey, who was then an eighteen-year-old Army sergeant. "We saw everything within a few minutes when we arrived at the site. It was horrible."10

Ordway also suppressed the most damaging evidence against his false claim-evidence he has had in hand for more than ten years: a taped interview with Dieter Grau conducted in 1971 for Ordway's book The Rocket Team (coauthored by Mitchell Sharpe). In describing the prisoners he saw during his wartime visit to Mittelwerk, Grau said, "the way they looked, they were not well fed at all and as far as I could see, had a tough time." Ordway conveniently left Grau's comments out of his book, which whitewashes Rudolph's activities at Mittelwerk.11 

The LaRouche organization is another part of the alliance forged in response to the Rudolph case. The perennial presidential candidate's shadowy network has been described by the CIA as a "violence oriented" cult. The inner workings of a myriad of illegal money-funneling fronts and publications generally went unreported in the establishment press until hundreds of police raided LaRouche's Leesburg, Virginia, estate in 1986. In November 1988 LaRouche was convicted in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, of conspiracy to obstruct justice, mail fraud, and income tax evasion. According to the fifty-two-page indictment in that case, LaRouche personally instructed members to "use `any means short of thievery and thuggery' to meet fund-raising quotas." But even his conviction for these crimes has not stopped LaRouche: in September 1990 he decided to run for Congress while still serving time in a federal penitentiary.12 

The LaRouche group's virulent Nazi-style anti-Semitism also has been well documented. As the Anti-Defamation League's Irwin Suall put it, LaRouche is a "small time Hitler." The LaRouche group's idolatry of defense-related research, along with its smoke screen of wild allegations of anti-LaRouche conspiracies involving the Queen of England, the KGB, and even President Bush, make them a logical vessel for paranoia about the O.S.I's Nazi-hunting activities.13 

LaRouche has long-standing ties with the Nazi scientists brought to the United States under Paperclip. One was Krafft Ehricke, a longtime member of the Fusion Energy Foundation and author of articles for Fusion magazine. Ehricke, who died in 1984, had been a tank commander in the Wehrmacht and an engineer at Peenemunde before working for the U.S. Army under Paperclip. Later Ehricke went to Bell Aircraft, where his old Peenemunde chief Walter Dornberger was vice president, and then joined the Convair division of General Dynamics, which built the Atlas missile. 

Another scientist with LaRouche ties was Konrad Dannenberg, who had been a rocket propulsion section chief at Peenemunde and was part of the original German rocket team brought to the United States in 1945. There is also rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth, who was brought to Huntsville under Paperclip in 1955. Oberth, it will be remembered, also smuggled his art treasures out of West Germany when he came here.14 

Both Dannenberg and Oberth contributed to an anti-O.S.I rally held at LaRouche's heavily guarded estate in July 1985. The rally was held under the guise of being a tribute to Ehricke, with 450 military officers and scientists from West Germany and other countries in attendance. In his keynote address LaRouche claimed that the O.S.I was carrying out a "KGB-run  witch-hunt" against German scientists and accused the Justice Department unit of committing "treason." That rhetoric was followed by Dannenberg's speech on the "lessons" of Peenemunde and the reading of a message from Oberth that evoked the mystique of Nazi science.15 

Dannenberg said he was "borne into this LaRouche affair" when he was asked to honor Ehricke at the rally. "I have since that time had only very very loose contacts with them," he said. "I do not agree and go along with his [LaRouche's] basic concept" or the aspects of LaRouche's operations that have been in the news lately. "So in a way I have dissociated myself from the group. On the other hand, of course, I certainly appreciate that the group . . . supports Rudolph quite a bit. I think they are doing a good job in that area."16 

One highlight of the anti-O.S.I rally was a taped speech by retired Major General John B. Medaris, Rudolph's old commander at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. In his speech, Medaris accused the O.S.I of waging an unconstitutional campaign of "guilt by association" against German scientists. The old Germans just "sit there now not knowing when somebody's going to put them on the pillory for things of no consequence," Medaris said.17 

Another featured speaker was the man who,apart from LaRouche himself,cuts perhaps the oddest figure in the whole spectrum of Rudolph's defenders. Friedwardt Winterberg, mentioned earlier as a high-priced candidate for Paperclip in 1959, is a German-born nuclear physicist at Nevada's Desert Research Institute in Reno. In his speech at the LaRouche rally Winterberg touched on a facet of LaRouche's K.G.B-East German conspiracy theories by claiming that the O.S.I's evidence against Rudolph had come from Communist East Germany.18 

Winterberg's ties to LaRouche go back to at least 1980, when Fusion magazine published a controversial article by Winterberg that explained how a hydrogen bomb is detonated. A year later the Fusion Energy Foundation published Winterberg's book The Physical Principles of Thermonuclear Explosive Devices. Winterberg also writes for yet another LaRouche outlet, the International Journal of Fusion Energy, which bills itself as welcoming scientists whose articles are banned in established scientific journals "because of the ideological prejudice of journal referees."19 

With Rudolph living in exile in Hamburg, Winterberg positioned himself with the press as Rudolph's public spokesman and defender. A great part of Winterberg's defense campaign consisted of sending reporters and congressmen reams of printed materials, much of it taken from some of the most virulently anti-Semitic publications in the country. One of those, Spotlight, is a weekly tabloid published by Liberty Lobby, an extreme right-wing group run by anti-Semite Willis Carto. Carto's notorious front group, Institute for Holocaust Review, was established for the sole purpose of denying the reality of the Holocaust.20 [Such an ugly word,however this Zionist plot will come to not DC]

A lengthy pro-Rudolph article by Winterberg was featured in Spotlight on August 31, 1987. Medaris also chose to defend Rudolph in Spotlight by making the outrageous assertion that "even if you accept what the allegations have been, I cannot find any justice in bringing those kinds of charges against a man after 30-odd years-and certainly not when you consider he gave 30 years of very fine, dedicated service to this nation."21 In other words, it is all right to use a mass murderer so long as he can help us get to the moon. 

Winterberg sent reporters and congressmen Spotlight and other anti-Semitic materials with a cover letter written on letterhead stationery of the Office of the President of the state funded Desert Research Institute, part of the University of Nevada system. Winterberg's letters reflected Holocaust revisionism at its worst, including false claims that Jews did not work at the V-2 rocket factory and slanderous assertions against famed Nazi hunter and concentration camp survivor Simon Wiesenthal. In a note to the World Jewish Congress, Winterberg suggested that Jews too can be Nazis. In a letter to Nevada senator Paul Laxalt, Winterberg claimed that Jews did not work at Mittelwerk and even cited as evidence an enclosed article from the Holocaust-denying magazine Instauration. Then he repeated an anti-Semitic slur against O.S.I Director Sher that he had read in Instauration. 22 

Winterberg also approached witnesses in an effort to get them to change their testimony about Rudolph. For example, he admitted in a letter to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that he had questioned Hannelore Bannasch, a witness at the Andrae trial, after her O.S.I interrogation. Bannasch had testified under oath at the 1947 Army trial that if anyone had signed sabotage reports it would have been Rudolph. She confirmed that testimony in a 1983 sworn statement to the O.S.I. Suddenly, after a visit from Winterberg, Bannasch changed her entire story, claiming that Rudolph was innocent and that her original testimony had been "mistranslated. "23 

The line taken by Rudolph's defenders resulted in press coverage that reeked with Holocaust revisionism, perpetuating what Dora survivor Jean Michel described as the "monstrous distortion of history" that has "given birth to false, foul, and suspect myths." The U.S. Army's figure of at least twenty thousand prisoner deaths suddenly became five thousand, then four thousand, and in one United Press International story was reduced to four thousand slave laborers who "allegedly died." Rudolph's public statements were tinged with amnesia as he claimed that he "did not know the prisoners were dying." And since most reporters did not bother to interview Dora survivors, they were portrayed as being "well fed," while Rudolph was viewed as the real victim.24 [This lady has bought it hook....line....and sinker, and is spiting it back out DC]

Then NASA got into the act when the Marshall Space Flight Center held a "Wernher von Braun birthday reception" on March 25, 1987, honoring eighty-three former Paperclip specialists. Two of those honored-Grau and Haukohl,still were under active 'investigation by the Justice Department's Nazi hunting unit. NASA's director, James Thompson, vowed to make the von Braun celebration an annual event and urged NASA employees to "rub elbows with these old guys-maybe some of their experience will rub off on us." NASA spokesman Bob Lessels said that Rudolph had not been invited to the party. Nevertheless, NASA's actions certainly raise questions as to the propriety of a federal agency holding public gatherings to honor men under investigation by the Criminal Division of the Justice Department.25 

All of the activities tied to the Paperclip story in the 1980's-the Rudolph case and his defenders, the Alabama Space and Rocket Center and Marshall Center meetings, the O.S.I's investigations of other former Paperclip scientists-were carried out in an atmosphere in which the Reagan White House was sending out mixed signals about the O.S.I, Nazis, and even the Holocaust itself. 

Former White House communications director Patrick Buchanan's views were the most unequivocal within the Reagan administration. Buchanan is well known for his attacks on O.S.I's prosecution of Nazi war criminals, and he has deferided Nazis repeatedly and called for O.S.I's abolition in his syndicated columns and on television. Therefore it was logical that when Rudolph's colleagues sought an advocate within the administration, they went to Buchanan. In June 1985 former Paperclip scientist Eberhard Rees met with Buchanan to discuss the defenders' efforts to restore Rudolph's American citizenship. After the meeting Rees said that Buchanan had indicated he would support their cause.26 

Others in the Reagan administration put out conflicting signals about the Holocaust and their commitment to the O.S.I. On the one hand, the administration claimed it supported O.S.I's mission to deport Nazi war criminals. On the other hand, in 1985 President Reagan laid a wreath at a war cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, where Waffen S.S troops were buried. And in October 1988 a nationwide school Holocaust history program was denied federal funding for the third straight year because of complaints by extreme right-wing factions in the U.S. Department of Education. Among the complaints was the claim by Dr. Christina Price, then from Troy State University in Alabama, that the Holocaust program was not "balanced" because "the Nazi point of view, however unpopular, is still a point of view and is not presented, nor is that of the Ku Klux Klan."27 

Another controversy ensued over President Reagan's appointment of industrialist J. Peter Grace to chair a budget advisory committee, because of Grace's links to convicted Nazi war criminal Otto Ambros. Grace's chemical company had been employing Ambros as a technical adviser since his release from prison in Nuremberg in 1951. In the midst of bad publicity and an investigation by Congressman Tom Lantos of California, a Holocaust survivor, both Grace and Dow Chemical claimed that Ambros was no longer working for them. Ambros, however, admitted in an interview in 1986 that he is working for somebody in the United States, but he refused to say who. "I'm still working for U.S. companies but they don't want me to talk," he said. "There has been too much trouble with the press." Ambros said he works as a chemist developing new plastics and chemicals.28 

Some of President George Bush's activities also raise serious questions about the O.S.I's fate under his administration. During Bush's 1988 presidential campaign several members of a volunteer ethnic coalition in Bush's campaign were exposed as Holocaust revisionists or members of Nazi or Fascist groups. Co-chairman Jerome Brentar admitted that as a postwar officer in the International Refugee Organization in Germany he had helped hundreds of Nazis to emigrate to the United States, "whether they were in the Waffen SS or in the Wehrmacht." Other coalition members included Florian Galdau, a Romanian Orthodox priest who is the New York chief of the still existing Iron Guard, Romania's pro-Nazi movement; Radi Slavoff, leader of a Bulgarian group formed by wartime members of the Nazi-aligned Bulgarian Legion; and former members of the Latvian S.S and P-2 Lodge, an illegal Italian group that plotted to overthrow the Italian government in 1970 and install a dictator.29 

In addition, on July 20, 1988, Bush attended a dinner in Detroit sponsored by the Captive Nations Committee and the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, some of whose members are longtime agitators against O.S.I because of O.S.I's cases against East European Nazi collaborators. Even if Bush was unaware of their anti-O.S.I stance before the dinner, he certainly was made aware of it when outspoken O.S.I critic Bohdan Fedorak stated the groups' strong opposition to O.S.I in his introduction to Bush. "I'm sure that there was nothing derogatory in that type of remark," Fedorak said in an interview. "Otherwise, I'm sure that we would have heard it either from him [Bush] or from other people." According to Fedorak, Bush said nothing in the O.S.I's defense in his remarks at the banquet.30 

Bush's background as a former C.I.A director poses a potential conflict should the O.S.I decide to deport a Paperclip scientist or other Nazi who had been on the C.I.A's payroll. The C.I.A's history certainly shows the agency's well-known propensity for protecting its own. In 1980, for instance, the O.S.I was forced to dismiss a denaturalization complaint against alleged Nazi war criminal Tscherim Soobzokov as a result of documents that suddenly appeared in his files after the O.S.I filed charges in 1979. The O.S.I complaint had charged that Soobzokov had concealed his membership in various Nazi organizations, including the Waffen S.S, when he applied for a visa to enter the United States. The O.S.I was forced to dismiss its case when a "V-30 personal data form" and an "operations memorandum",ostensibly showing that Soobzokov had disclosed what he was charged with concealing, mysteriously appeared in the C.I.A's files and in Soobzokov's possession. Interestingly, the State Department-the agency responsible for issuing Soobzokov's visa-had no record in its files of either document. Furthermore, when O.S.I attorneys initially reviewed the CIA's files on Soobzokov, no evidence of these materials had been found.31 

"Given all this, some may conclude that the CIA may have manufactured this evidence to protect Soobzokov, long rumored to have been an employee of the Agency," Elizabeth Holtzman told her congressional colleagues in 1980.32 [Oh She a smart one DC]

In looking at the whole story of Paperclip today, the project's most ominous legacy lies in the cold war philosophy of the intelligence officers who guided the project through the decades. Central to that Machiavellian belief is that the end justifies the means, no matter what the cost. It is a philosophy that is omnipresent in the late 1980's, most notably in Irangate. In both Paperclip and Irangate, a band of ideologues believed that their cause served a higher purpose than the laws that governed them. 

None of the intelligence officers involved in Paperclip has ever been called to account before the American public, and many have even received promotions and honors for the activities reported in this book. The man at the helm of the original cover up schemes, J.I.O.A Director Bosquet Wev, was promoted to the rank of rear admiral. He retired in 1957, having become commanding officer of the naval station in Norfolk, Virginia. The project's godfather in the late 1940's, Director of Intelligence Stephen Chamberlin, was promoted from major general to lieutenant general, assumed command of the Fifth Army in Chicago, and retired in 1951. Among those closest to the Germans, Army Air Forces Colonel Donald Putt eventually was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general in the U.S. Air Force. Putt retired in 1958, having held the position of military director of the Scientific Advisory Board to the Air Force Chief of Staff.33 

J.I.O.A Director William Whalen was incarcerated in the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1966 for his espionage activities, and was paroled just six years later. During his imprisonment Whalen thanked Judge Oren Lewis for saving his life, since he had almost died from alcoholism. His connection to Paperclip never was revealed. And some of the disturbing questions raised by that connection remain unanswered.34 

The instigator of the European and Argentine conspiracies, E.U.C.O.M Director of Intelligence and Inter-American Defense Board chief Robert L. Walsh, was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and died in 1985. His deputy at E.U.C.O.M in 1947, Colonel Robert Schow, was named assistant director of the C.I.A in 1949. Schow took over as godfather to Paperclip in 1954, when he was promoted to major general and named assistant chief of staff for intelligence in Washington.35

The Inter-American Defense Board carried on business as usual with Latin American dictators, including Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega until he was arrested in January 1990 and brought to the United States. In June 1986, at the same time that Noriega's drug- and gun-running operations were being exposed by a Senate subcommittee, Noriega attended an I.A.D.B ceremonial gathering in Washington to present a Panamanian award to U.S. Lieutenant General John Schweitzer, Walsh's modern-day predecessor as U.S. chairman of the I.A.D.B.36 

Like the intelligence officers who brought them here, most of the older recruits out of the sixteen hundred Paperclip and the hundreds of others in Project 63 and National Interest have not been held to account for their activities either. And they also received awards and promotions. One scientist with disturbing links to Dachau experiments; Hubertus Strughold, was named chief scientist of the Aerospace Medical Division for the U.S. Air Force in 1961. He even received the Americanism Medal from the Daughters of the American Revolution, and in 1985 the Texas Senate declared June 15 of that year "Dr. Hubertus Strughold Day."37 

French Resistance members and prisoners of war were used as slave labor at Peenemunde. Yet former Peenemunde general Walter Dornberger became vice president of Bell Aircraft Company and was never even questioned about his role in that deplorable affair. And this summer, when tourists converge on the Kennedy Space Center, all will pass by a portrait of former S.S member Kurt Debus that hangs in the entrance in honor of Debus's service as the center's first director.38 

Accused war criminal Arthur Rudolph lives in Hamburg, West Germany, collecting retirement checks from both the U.S. government and the German government. But at least he is barred from U. S. entry. "He is on watch lists, he cannot get a visa, and if he were found in the United States he would be subject to arrest," said O.S.I Director Sher.39 

But the ban did not stop Rudolph's defenders from stepping up their campaign to bring him back to America. On November 26, 1988, former Paperclip recruit Walter Haeussermann sent President Reagan a letter asking that Rudolph be allowed to attend NASA's twentieth anniversary moon walk celebration in July 1989. Haeussermann admitted that the request for a one-time visit was a scheme to break the O.S.I. "We try whatever we can dream up," Haeussermann said. If Rudolph is allowed even one visit, "it would show, more or less, O.S.I has been overruled."40 

NASA's moon walk celebration was held in July 1989, but Rudolph did not attend. His visa request had been turned down. In Huntsville, eight hundred Germans and Americans involved with Paperclip since 1945 attended a reunion in the Wernher von Braun Civic Center. The group's spokesman, Konrad Dannenberg, mentioned his exiled friend in his speech before the group."We invited Rudolph to this celebration," Dannenberg said bitterly, "but circumstances did not permit him to be with us here today. "41 

As for the project that brought them here, no one reading this book should be surprised to learn that nothing has changed. The project is once again rearing its ugly head.

On August 10, 1989, the Pentagon quietly announced that there were exempted positions in Department of Defense installations that would be filled under the "program for utilization of alien scientists." The program is still run by the Research and Engineering Department, which took over Paperclip when the J.I.O.A shut down in 1962.42 

Thirteen of the new recruits work at NASA, including a world-renowned climatologist. "We don't beat the bushes to find them," said Robert Nance from NASA's Office of Policy. "We hire them in rare circumstances where their skills are so unique they can't be found in America, like work on teflon skins, or other specialists like we had with Wernher von Braun." The scientists at NASA work at Langly Research Center, Ames Research at Moffet Field, California, and Goddard Space Flight Center.43 

NASA has the authority to employ up to 150 alien scientists, though Nance said they had to go through "immigration loops" to get them. As the case had been in the late 1950's, the program is viewed as a way to fill slots in a shrinking American labor force. "By the year 2000 there will be a third fewer American engineers and scientists available than there are now," Nance said. As a result he thought the program would play an even more important role in the future.44 

Not surprisingly, the Pentagon will not talk about the program, and a spokesman claimed that he "couldn't find the policy." Suddenly Department of Defense officials became as tight-lipped as some intelligence officers who ran the operation had been. Former J.I.O.A Director Benjamin Heckemeyer was close-mouthed about Paperclip in a telephone conversation in 1985. What little he did say, however, is a perfect summation of the whole sordid affair. 

"Paperclip's a can of worms," he said and hung up the phone.45

Conclusion 

IN late summer of 1990, as this book was being readied for publication, I was astonished to come across yet another disturbing account of the legacy left by Paperclip. After six years in exile in Hamburg, Arthur Rudolph arrived in Canada on July 1 to launch a smear campaign against the Office of Special Investigations, the Nazi-hunting Justice Department unit that had forced him to leave the United States. Incredibly, Rudolph had called on both old and newly recruited supporters in an audacious attempt to gain reentry to this country. The initial volley of Rudolph's campaign had been fired some months earlier at a gathering of former Paperclip rocketeers in Huntsville, Alabama. Ohio Congressman James Traficant promised the scientists in a speech that he would meet Rudolph at the U.S.Canadian border and personally escort him across it. Rudolph's plans were cut short when he was met at the plane by Canadian Mounties and then put up for deportation hearings.1 

On the stand, Rudolph glibly spun a revisionist history of Mittelwerk, reviving in particular the myth of its "well-fed" Jewish slaves. Even more appalling was the performance of Hugh McInnish, a U. S. Army-employed engineer who acted as Rudolph's "co-counsel" in the hearings. To complete the absurd picture, a platoon of home-grown Canadian Nazis--outfitted in full SS regalia-picketed alongside Rudolph's friends out on the streets of Toronto. Finally, on January 11, 1991, a Canadian court ruled that Rudolph was permanently barred from entering Canada because of his Nazi past.2 

The events in Canada are a reminder not only of the enduring scars left by Paperclip but of the outdated cold war philosophy that the project embodied. That philosophy served as the underpinning for our national policy for nearly forty five years. Only now, with the dramatic shift in world events that brought the cold war to an end, have the larger outlines of that policy and its often-tragic consequences become discernible. Only now can we begin to evaluate it with some degree of objectivity. 

The central tenet of the cold war philosophy was perhaps never more succinctly stated than it was in a secret 1954 report prepared for the White House by a commission headed by former president Herbert Hoover. The report read, in part: 

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination. . . . There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto accepted norms of human conduct do not apply. . . . If the United States is to survive, longstanding American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. . . . We must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, more effective methods than those used against us.3 

That view was accepted almost without question. Richard Bissell, then C.I.A chief of covert operations, told a C.B.S interviewer some twenty years later, "I think that's an excellent statement of the prevailing view, at least the view of those who'd had any contact with covert operations of one kind or another."4 

In the decades since, U.S. intelligence agencies embraced that philosophy as justification for all manner of tactics-even those that violated America's own laws. Abroad it justified uncounted assassination plots and coups, the total number of which still remains secret. There were at least eight documented attempts to kill Fidel Castro, for example, and he claimed that there were more. At home the "anything goes" philosophy was at work in any number of illegal activities directed against American citizens. Under the guise of fighting communism the CIA conducted domestic drug experiments, the FBI infiltrated political groups, and the Army collected dossiers and spied on thousands of Americans exercising their right to free speech. 

The Machiavellian attitude behind these operations was born when a World War II ally became a new enemy and the world axis shifted. To fight the Russians we turned to the men responsible for the horrors committed under Hitler and hired them to work as scientists, saboteurs, and spies. Over time these operations took on a life of their own. In particular, Paperclip expanded into Project 63 and Project National Interest and provided a convenient cover for still other covert operations. Over decades it became a chameleon of sorts, changing its size and shape to accommodate a succession of schemes in search of a place to hide from public scrutiny. 

Under the protective blanket of cold war philosophy, no plot or person was too unsavory to bring into the fold. In the case of Paperclip, whatever crimes German specialists had committed in the past-joining the SS, torching a synagogue, conducting experiments on Dachau camp inmates-were, in the view of J.I.O.A Director Bosquet Wev, dismissable as "picayune details. "5 

Anyone who doubts the pervasiveness of the cold war philosophy in the intervening decades need look no further than deposed Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, who remained on the CIA payroll for years despite evidence that his government was involved in drug trafficking, murder, rape, political corruption, and other crimes. Yet as late as May 1987 the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was praising Noriega for his "personal commitment" in helping the DEA carry out its investigations in Panama.6 [Yeah because they have to blow smoke up American's asses DC]

The mentality that governed Paperclip is essentially the same one that spawned the chain of secret ventures known collectively as "Irangate." The projects even bore fruit in strikingly similar ways. In both instances ideological zealots found ways to exclude from their inner circle those officials who bore legitimate responsibility for the policies that eventually were contravened. In Paperclip the J.I.O.A's conduct caused State Department representative Samuel Klaus to note with gentlemanly suspicion, "I gathered . . . that there had been meetings of the group to which I had not been invited." Nearly forty years later, in the investigation of Irangate, Secretary of State George Shultz complained that he had been left "out of the loop."7 

Not coincidentally, both cases also involved a band of ideologues who believed that their cause served a higher purpose than the policies in place. Who can forget secretary Fawn Hall's chillingly matter-of-fact assertion during the 1987 congressional hearings that "sometimes you have to go above the written law"?8 

The flawed decision-making process that set into motion the Paperclips and Irangates of the last forty-five years have had a domino effect that often created as many problems as it solved. In direct defiance of President Truman's policy, the Paperclip masterminds brazenly had the German scientists' records changed to expunge evidence of war crimes and ardent nazism and secure permanent immigration status for them in the United States. Ostensibly that was done in the interest of national security. Once here, however, the scientists were given access to classified information-again, contrary to official policy-that revealed the inner-most workings of our defense system. As a result, it was not long before the very people brought here to ensure our security had themselves become a security risk. 

Eventually some of the scientists took advantage of security lapses and left the country with classified material. German specialist Heinz Gartmann, for example, left Wright Field air base with turbojet rocket engine blueprints in his hand luggage. The full extent of the damage from incidents like that is still unknown. And what was the military's response when it was caught employing war criminals? Typically it was to try to hide its sins instead of atone for them, as Army intelligence did in sending Klaus Barbie to South America.9 

Flash-forward again to Noriega (or any of the other U.S.- 266 supported Latin dictators whose short-term attractiveness has eventually turned into a liability). By the time we invaded Panama in 1989 there was no question in anybody's mind but that we had created a monster. "Our willingness to tolerate Noriega has in fact . . . put us in a position that is directly counter to the best interests of where we wanted to wind up," observed Senator John Kerry from Massachusetts.10 

Operations like Paperclip are perhaps most indefensible on a moral level. Certainly no one can argue with the urgent postwar need to obtain German scientists' knowledge. Yet the way that was done seems unthinkable today. Was it really necessary to cover up Nazi crimes? Evade presidential policy? Harbor murderers? Change their records and then lie about it to other government agencies? Try to maintain the cover up even today? 

The dispute over Paperclip isn't whether U.S. intelligence should have pursued a policy to protect American interests from the Soviets. Obviously the Russians represented a serious threat to our country's interests during most of the cold war period. 

The argument here is over the means, not the ends, for there were alternatives to the decisions the JIOA officers made. For one thing, the German scientists could have been kept overseas and interrogated by scientists instead of by military officers. Indeed, for years after the war the U.S. high commissioner of Germany kept dozens of ex-Nazi scientists on the payroll-and under tight security-so that we could utilize their knowledge and expertise. Why the blind determination to bring war criminals here, in violation of our own laws, and essentially absolve them of their pasts? 

Such activities seem even more incomprehensible in light of the fact that other pools of scientific talent were virtually ignored. The J.I.O.A officers went to great lengths to help second-rate German technicians find jobs and a new life in America. Meanwhile, many American engineers who had suffered from layoffs in the defense industry went without jobs. 

Survivors of the Holocaust also were overlooked. One such survivor was Casimir Jobell, a Polish patriot, graduate engineer, and inventor who was forced to work as a slave laborer for the Henschel aircraft company and then emigrated to America after the war. He died working as a dishwasher in Boston. 

For Jobell's daughter Miroslawa the events honoring German rocket scientists in Alabama in 1985 were particularly heart-rending. Why, she asked in a Birmingham News story, were specialists who served the Nazis "put on a pedestal" while men like her father who. resisted "are hardly left being able to exist?"11 

Why have we made heroes of men who assisted in one of the greatest evils in modern history? Some were unquestionably highly qualified scientists. Wernher von Braun, for example, was a brilliant man who contributed immeasurably to American missile and space programs. But he was also a Nazi collaborator. What price did we ultimately pay to tap the Germans' knowledge? The most common response is that it got us to the moon. But how do you balance that against murder? 

Today, more is known than ever before of the wartime activities of the Paperclip scientists. Yet a number of them continue to be virtually deified by the military or by the communities in which they've settled. They're given medals and awards and glowing notations in history books. For someone who knows the true history of the medical experiments done in concentration camps, however, it is disquieting-to say the least-to drive by the official U.S. Air Force building in San Antonio named after Hubertus Strughold. 

It's even more disturbing to see NASA and the state of Alabama hold annual events celebrating Wernher von Braun's birthday at which Guenther Haukohl and Dieter Grau, two scientists who are currently under Justice Department investigation for Nazi war crimes, are among the honorees-at taxpayers' expense! 

Some think it is excessive, even obsessive, to continue investigating and prosecuting such men. However, former OSI director Allan Ryan, Jr., may have had a more accurate perspective: "To grant these people repose from the law . . . would mean that their thirty-five years of silence and our thirty five years of inaction somehow atone for their awful crimes, and that justice is the result."12 Already, in some cases justice delayed has meant justice denied, as the perpetrators have died. 

Obviously the Paperclip story is not over. But the end of the cold war has given us an opportunity to cast off once and for all the kind of thinking that created and justified such operations. No matter how necessary intelligence activities may be, they cannot be allowed to operate unchecked, in secrecy and darkness, shielded from the democratic process of accountability. 

Otherwise, in the end we become our own worst enemy. Edgewood already has provided us with a horrifying example of the true legacy of the cold war, which lies in the stories of James Stanley and other soldiers who were treated like laboratory rats. In essence we used Nazi science to kill our own people. 

It is not necessary to violate America's laws to achieve our national goals. The era that gave rise to such flawed thinking is over. We may never be completely rid of the atrocities it spawned. But there is no reason to perpetuate them any longer. 

CHAPTER 15: CONSEQUENCES 

1. Michael Jennings, "Shadows Touch State's Surviving Rocketry Pioneers," Birmingham News, 27 April 1985. The author attended this event with a West German TV crew whose story aired the day of President Reagan's visit to Bitburg Cemetery. 

2. For author's CNN report on Grau and Haukohl see Hunt, "Nazi Coverup." 

3. Haukohl's biography is in his JIOA and INSCOM dossiers; estimate of seven hundred prisoners is from Georg Finkenzeller's testimony in Andrae. See also "Kommando" list showing Finkenzeller and Schochel as being capos in Haukohl's detail, in Andrae, prosecution exhibits; Finkenzeller's separate trial is in Andrae, roll 16. 314 

4. Rudolph discusses Grau's visit to Mittelwerk in OSI interrogation of Rudolph; Grau quotes are from a 17 June 1971 taped interview with Dieter Grau by Frederick Ordway and David Christensen (obtained by the author under the FOIA from OSI); and Atlanta Weekly, 26 May 1985. 

5. UPI, "Lawyer Refuses `Witchhunt' Interviews," 7 March 1986; and Hunt, "Nazi Coverup." 

6. For background on LaRouche see Dennis King, Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism (New York: Doubleday, 1989); Extremism on the Right (New York: Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, 1983); Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, "The LaRouche Network: A Political Cult," ADL Facts, Spring 1982; and Dennis King and Ronald Radosh, "The LaRouche Connection," New Republic, 19 November 1984. With the exception of King and a handful of others, the press ignored LaRouche's activities for a decade. For reporters' problems when covering LaRouche: Dennis King affidavit regarding death threats, 7 June 1984, in LaRouche et al. v. National Broadcasting Company, 479 U.S. 818 (1986); and Pauicia Lynch, "Is Lyndon LaRouche Using Your Name?" Columbia ,~ournalism Review, March-April 1985. Author's experiences as a result of a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists story are reported in Investigative Reporters and Editors Award submission forms, 1986. 

7. Author's notes of meetings. This gag attempt was brazen. After Birmingham News reporter Michael Jennings and I began asking questions about Rudolph, we were ordered to the front of the auditorium. The West German TV crew videotaped the event from the back of the room. The crew's photographer, who was born in Israel, told the author that a representative of the space museum said he was glad to see them because the American press was "a pain in the neck when it came to the Nazi issue." The West German crew was not amused. 

8. Author's notes. Marsha Freeman reported in "News Briefs," Fusion, May-June 1985, that "one Linda Hunt" attended the event. For LaRouche members' attack on the author's Bulletin coverup story see Nezu Solidarity, 23 March 1985. 

9. Referring to Ordway, Rudolph told the OSI, "I consider him a friend," in OSI interrogation of Rudolph; letter, Milton Hochmuth to Frederick Ordway, 19 November 1984, in the author's personal collection. For an example of Ordway's defense of Rudolph see Ordway letter and the author's response in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1985. 

10. Author interview with former New York governor Hugh Carey. 

11. Ordway and Sharpe, Rocket Team; and Grau tape interview. 

12. "Violence oriented" quote is from CIA memorandum,l5 July 1976, in Dennis King affidavit, LaRouche v. NBC; Caryle Murphy, "LaRouche Indicted on Tax, Mail Fraud Charges in Va.," Washington Post, 15 October Notes Notes 315 1988; and Kent Jenkins, Jr., "From Prison Cell, LaRouche Raises $221,000 for House Race," Washington Post, 2 June 1990. 

13. The ADL's Irwin Suall called LaRouche a "small time Hitler" on NBC's "First Camera," March 1984. For evidence of LaRouche's antiSemitism see judge's decision dismissing Larouche's libel action against the ADL, in U.S. Labor Party et al. v. Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, No. 79-11470 (N.Y. App. Div., 1980): Plaintiffs [LaRouche group] have linked prominent Jews and Jewish organizations both in this country and abroad with the rise of Hitler, Nazis and Fascism, the international drug uade, and a myriad of purported conspiracies that have bedeviled the United States and the world at large, including a conspiracy to assassinate the U.S.L.P. leader, Lyndon LaRouche. At a minimum, under the fair comment docuine, the facts of this case reasonably give rise to an inference upon which the A.D.L. can form an honest opinion that the plaintiffs are anti-Semitic. (p. A-13) 

14. Krafft Ehricke bio is in his ACSI dossier, ACSI post-1952 Paperclip files, RG 319, WNRC. For Ehricke and Fusion Energy Foundation connections see Fusion, March-April 1985; Konrad Dannenberg authored a lengthy article, "From the First Large Guided Missile to the Space Shuttle: A Pictorial History," also in Fusion, March-April 1986. 

15. Dannenberg and Oberth's participation and information on antiOSI LaRouche rally is in Nancy Spannaus, "Space Pioneer Honored," New Solidarity, 21 June 1985; and Marjorie Hecht, "Schiller Meet: Drop OSI, Stan Crash SDI Effort," New Solidariry, 24 June 1985. 

16. Michael Jennings interview with Konrad Dannenberg. 

17. For Medaris message at LaRouche rally see Spannaus, "Space Pioneer Honored"; and Hecht, "Schiller Meet"; Birmingham News, 5 May 1985. 

18. Spannaus, "Space Pioneer Honored"; and Hecht, "Schiller Meet." 

19. Friedwardt Winterberg, "The MIRV Concept and the Neuuon Bomb," Fusion, October 1980; and AP, "Magazine to Publish H-Bomb Description," 3 September 1980; Winterberg letter regarding LaRouche's candidacy for president is in Fusion, March 1980; and Friedwardt Winterberg, The Physical Principles of Thermonuclear Explosive Devices (New York: Fusion Energy Foundation, 1981). Information on Winterberg writing for the International ,~ournal of Fusion Enetgy is in "The Leonardo Project," Fusion, March-April 1986. 

20. For information on Spotlight and Willis Carto see Extremism on the Right. As example of the notorious anti-Semitism of Spotlight and Carto see Mermelstein v. lnstitute for Historical Review, CIV 356-542 (Calif. Sup. Ct.), 316 Notes the case of Auschwitz survivor Mermelstein against Carto and others who claimed that no Jews were gassed in gas chambers at Auschwitz. 

21. "German Rocket Scientist Used, Discarded by Ungrateful U.S.," Spotlight; 31 August 1987; Medaris quote is from "America Sacrifices Integrity," Spotlight, 8 July 1985. See also Medaris's attack on the OSI in "General Says OSI is Unconstitutional," Executive Intelligence Review, 9 August 1985. 

22. Winterberg letters to the World Jewish Congress, 14 December 1985; to Eli Rosenbaum, 20 May 1985 and 2 January 1986; and to Senator Paul Laxalt, 22 July 1985 (enclosing the January 1985 issue of Instauration), all in author's collection; and Spotlight, 31 August 1987. Note: for extensive documentation on the sad fate of Jews at Mittelwerk/Dora see Andrae, especially the hospital reports listing the number of Jews who died, the cause of death, the number of those worked to death, and the number judged too weak to work who were then sent by train to Lublin for extermination. 

23. Winterberg admitted to having interrogated Bannasch in a letter to Len Ackland, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientisu, 8 April 1985. Winterberg discusses contacting some Dora survivors in Thomas Franklin, "Witnesses Without Testimony," Huntsville News, 6 April 1987. "Thomas Franklin" is an alias used by Hugh McInnish, an Army employee in Huntsville who frequently writes pro-Rudolph articles for the Huntsville News under an alias. 

24. Michel, Dora; for an example of "alleged" deaths see UPI, "Supporters Challenging Agency's Allegations," 1 November 1985; Rudolph quotes are from John Hubner's articles, "The Unmaking of a Hero" (29 September 1985) and "The Americanization of a Nazi Scientist" (6 October 1985), both in San,~ose Mercury News. Hubner was one of the few reporters who did interview Dora survivors. 25. Linda Hunt, "NASA's Nazis," The Nation, 23 May 1987. 

26. For Buchanan meeting with Rees see UPI, 15 October 1985. 

27. Ed Vulliamy, "Holocaust Project Funds `Eliminated' by Ideology?" Washington Post, 4 October 1988. 

28. Hunt, "Nazi Coverup." 

29. Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right and the Reagan Administration (Cambridge, Mass.: Political Research Associates, 1988); "Bush Campaign Committee Contains Figures Linked to Anti-Semitic and Fascist Backgrounds," Washington,~ewish Week, 8 September 1988; and "Head of Latvian Group Quits Over Link to SS," The New York Times, 4 November 1988. Brentar quote is from David Lee Preston, "Bush Backer Helped Many Nazis Enter U.S.," Detroit Free Press, 10 September 1988. 

30. "Bush Campaign Committee"; and Michael Jennings interview with Bohdan Fedorak. For East European groups' anti-OSI activities see Notes 317 The Campaign Against the U.S. ,~'ustice Department's Prosecution of Suspected Nazi War Criminals (New York: ADL, June 1985). 

31. Congressional Record, 3 December 1980. 

32. Ibid. 

33. Rear Admiral Bosquet Wev biography is from the ONH; Major General Stephen Chamberlin biography is from the CMH; Lieutenant General Donald Putt biography is from the U.S. Air Force. 

34. Letter, William Whalen to Judge Owen Lewis, in Whalen. 

35. General Robert L. Walsh biography is from the U.S. Air Force; General Robert Schow biography is from the CMH. 

36. On Noriega see the testimony of Jose Blandon, Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications, hearings, 100th Cong., 2d sess., February 8, 9, 10, and 11, 1988. For Noriega bestowing a medal on Schweitzer see AP report, 12 June 1986. 

37. On Strughold see U.S. Air Force, news release, 11 June 1985. 

38. Dornberger information is in Current Biography Yearbook (New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1965). 

39. Sher interview. 40. Haeussermann interview. 

41. Author notes on 19 July 1989 meeting. 

42. Federal Register, 10 August 1989. 

43. Author interview with Robert Nance. 

44. Ibid. 

45. Author telephone conversation with retired Army Colonel Benjamin Heckemeyer.

CONCLUSION 

1. Congressman Traficant's speech at the Huntsville Holiday Inn, May 12, 1990. 

2. Author interview with Canadian Justice Department prosecutor Donald MacIntosh, who explained that, under Canadian law, nonlawyers were permitted to act as counsel at the hearing. 

3. Bill Moyers, The Secret Government (Washington, D.C.: Seven Locks Press, 1988), p. 42. 

4. Ibid. 

5. Hunt, "U.S. Coverup of Nazi Scientists." 

6. Letter, DEA Administrator John Lawn to General Manuel Noriega, 27 May 1987, published in Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, hearings before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications, 100th Cong., ld sess., 1988. 318 Notes 

7. Samuel Klaus, "Memorandum for the Files," 21 May 1946, State fiche; Moyers, Secret Government. 

8. Moyers, Secret Government, p. 7. 

9. Captain John P. Roth, EUCOM, to Chief, Technical Intelligence Section, A C of S, 8 April 1947, G-2 Paperclip "Top Secret" files, RG 319, WNRC. 

10. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, hearings on Noriega before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications, 100th Cong., 2d sess., 1988, p. 149. 

11. Michael Jennings, "Daughter of Inventor Questions Father's Twist of Fate," Birmingham News, 11 November 1984. 

12. Allan A. Ryan, Jr., Quiet Neighbars (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), p. 339. 

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