PART 9:SECRET AGENDA PROJECT PAPERCLIP,:MOONWALK IN THE SHADOW OF THE 3RD REICH& TRYING TO OPEN THE LID

Secret Agenda The United States Government, Nazi Scientists and 

Project Paperclip 1945 to 1990 

By Linda Hunt 

13 

Moon Walk in the Shadow 

of the Third Reich 

IN the 1960's America's self-imposed goal was to beat the Russians into space. Vice President Lyndon Johnson noted the urgency of that mission in a 1961 report to President John Kennedy that states, in part: "In the crucial areas of our Cold War world, first in space is first, period. Second in space is second in everything."1 

At N.A.S.A's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the German rocket group was working to carry out that mission by developing the powerful rockets needed to take man to the moon. The Germans had been transferred to N.A.S.A from the Army soon after the new civilian space agency was established. "We were the only group at that time that knew how to build long-range rockets," said Georg von Tiesenhausen, the team's official brainstormer, who had worked on a wartime plot to launch a rocket into New York City.2 

The organization the Germans established at Marshall was almost an exact copy of the Peenemunde organization. "It had proved very efficient," said von Tiesenhausen. But it also meant that the Germans dominated the rocket program to such an extent that they held the chief and deputy slots of every major division and laboratory. And their positions at Marshall and the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, were similar to those they had held during the war.3 

• The Peenemunde team's leader, Wernher von Braun, became the first director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. 

• Mittelwerk's head of production, Arthur Rudolph, was named project director of the Saturn V rocket program. 

• Peenemunde's V-2 flight test director, Kurt Debus, was the first director of the Kennedy Space Center. 

The American public was not told the full details about the Nazi pasts of N.A.S.A's new employees. And apparently, N.A.S.A officials did not even bother to check them out. James Kingsbury, former director of science and engineering at Marshall, said he knew about Rudolph's job at Mittelwerk, but he did not believe that N.A.S.A had obtained the Army's files on the Germans when they were transferred to the agency. "N.A.S.A really wouldn't have had reason to question anything in the Germans' records," he said.4 

Other NASA officials say the Germans' Nazi pasts were not NASA's problem. The feeling was that "this was something that was all addressed and worked out years ago," recalled a high-ranking technical official who preferred to remain anonymous. He knew that one former Nazi party member, Richard Jenke, had problems during the war because his grandmother was Jewish. "He did show me one day a typewritten note signed by Adolf Hitler that said that, because of his good work for the Party, they would overlook his blood lineage."5 

The Justice Department thought Kurt Debus's Nazi past violated U.S. immigration laws and held up his legal immigration for years because of his memberships in the S.S, the S.A, and other Nazi groups. Questions also were raised when Debus violated security by sending messages to his girlfriend in Germany in code so that his wife would not find out. But the biggest problem was the wartime incident of Debus turning a colleague over to the Gestapo for making anti-Hitler statements. A security certificate signed by J.I.O.A Deputy Director James Skinner noted that his value to the Army outweighed this example of ardent nazism. Skinner added that "any conscientious and patriotic, though short-sighted person might have done the same" as Debus. His immigration finally was approved after a new law went into effect December 1952 that no longer barred individuals who had belonged to Nazi organizations.6 

Jewish groups did not forget the role the Germans had played in Hitler's Third Reich as easily as N.A.S.A did. Von Tiesenhausen recalled that "there were certain ethnic groups in the United States who were against us in principle. The ethnic prejudices operated throughout the time we had a von Braun team-it never ceased. Never." He blames Jews for being the force behind many of the Germans' forced retirements in the 1970's.7 

Although their histories escaped scrutiny at N.A.S.A, there was criticism of the Germans' operating methods. Some American-born employees at Marshall viewed their tightly knit organization as a clique rather than a team. James Webb, N.A.S.A's second administrator, complained that the Germans were circumventing the system by attempting to build the Saturn V in-house at the center. Rocco Petrone, who became Marshall director in 1973, said that Webb felt the group needed to be more tightly managed. "There were a lot of very brilliant guys who had worked in an environment a little more loosely than you should on a tight program like Apollo," said Petrone. Von Braun also was criticized for thrusting himself into the limelight as the self-appointed spokesman on space exploration. At one point Webb told von Braun to stop accepting the hundreds of paid speaking engagements that were in direct violation of N.A.S.A employment regulations.8 

The Germans themselves were aware of their detractors at N.A.S.A headquarters. "We were a very independent group, and some people didn't like that," said von Tiesenhausen. "You know when Washington hands out money, they always want to be in the loop." As an example, he describes von Braun's sales approach when he went to NASA headquarters in search of money. "He got us the funds we needed. And then he said, `Okay, we are going to deliver. But in the meantime, don't bother us.' So this independence, a lot of people didn't like." 9 

The German influence at Marshall increased in the 1960's as new Paperclip recruits arrived as a result of the continuation of J.I.O.A projects. A total of 267 individuals were brought in under Paperclip and National Interest in the 1960's, and an unknown number of others arrived under Project 63. The Paperclip recruits worked for N.A.S.A or at military installations including Edgewood Arsenal, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Fort Monmouth, and the Naval Ordnance Testing Station in China Lake, California. Seventy-eight others were employed under National Interest with defense contractors, universities, or private corporations, including Pennsylvania State University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Bell Laboratories, RCA, CBS Laboratories, Martin Marietta, Convair, and Mobil Oil.10 

In 1962 the J.I.O.A was shut down as a cost-cutting measure after being in charge of Paperclip for seventeen years. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara transferred the German scientist projects from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the secretary of defense. The military wanted to continue the projects for a variety of reasons. First, the military custody procedures still allowed individuals to bypass the usual red tape when entering the country. Second, the foreign scientists under Paperclip could obtain security clearances more quickly than could non project scientists, including Americans. Thus the project provided an immediate work force on classified jobs. Third, the projects saved the military a considerable amount of money. For example, a representative from the Navy reported that it would cost the Navy approximately $20,000 a year to send a scientist to an American university to obtain a doctorate, while it could recruit a German scientist who already had an advanced degree for only $1,200 in project expenses.11 

Former J.I.O.A Director Stone Christopher had retired from the Air Force by then, although he was working on another secret intelligence operation. In 1962 Christopher was hired to run Paperclip as a civilian. He said the project was still vital because it solved the acute shortage of scientists not only at N.A.S.A, but also among defense contractors involved in the space program. "Everybody was crying for physicists and engineers," Christopher said. "And Glen Martin, Westinghouse, General Electric people came into my office all the time asking me to help." At the time, U.S. companies also were placing employment ads in foreign newspapers and sending executives abroad on talent hunts.12 

But the continuance of Paperclip angered some American born employees at Marshall. A longtime administrator at Marshall said they complained about Paperclip because Germans were being hired instead of Americans. "And there were a few of the Germans who were not as well qualified because, indeed, they didn't even have degrees," he said. Furthermore, Paperclip recruits received preferential treatment over American's at Marshall because the top officials were themselves German. "The `Paperclip' people, when they would come to America, the first thing they would do would be usher them into Dr. von Braun's office. They immediately had an entree to the big boy." Yet newly hired Americans with comparable experience were not given the same entree to von Braun. 13 

While von Braun, Rudolph, and other early Paperclip recruits were hiding their Nazi pasts, the military was covering up the fact that the operation was still going on. The American public had been duped into believing that Paperclip had ended long ago. And the West German government had been told in 1958 that the U.S. had stopped recruiting German scientists in their own country. Therefore, anyone who tried to reveal any information about the project's existence was considered a threat. 

The perpetuation of the cover up resulted in outright censorship of the press and the release of false information to the public in both the United States and West Germany. In one case in 1961, a West German reporter visited the Special Projects Team's office in Munich in search of information for a magazine article on West Germany's critical "brain drain," caused by the loss of scientists to employers in foreign countries. He did not know that this was the Paperclip operation. But he concluded that the office was engaged in an illegal recruiting program, because the team's officers were suspiciously tight-lipped and released minimal information.14 

J.I.O.A Director Navy Captain Earle Gardner thought the reporter's story would expose Paperclip and result in bad publicity. He told Army intelligence officers to make a statement in West Germany to the effect that the U.S. government, through its Special Projects Team office, "disseminates information" on U.S. job opportunities merely as a "public service." The reporter was denied access to figures on the number of scientists who recently had emigrated to America. Gardner said that information would only "whet the appetite of the reading public for additional disclosures for other periods," and then if the J.I.O.A refused to disclose information, it "could convey the impression that we are trying to cover up."15    

That example shows the mentality present in 1964 when historian Clarence Lasby submitted the manuscript for his book Project Paperclip to the military for clearance. It was Christopher who cleared Lasby's manuscript. "I went over that manuscript three times," Christopher told me. "I didn't think it was good to mention names like this fellow State Department representative Samuel Klaus." J.I.O.A records show that Christopher also objected to Lasby's use of the words exploitation and denial because they might prove embarrassing for the U.S. government. When asked if he thought Lasby was aware that Paperclip was still in operation in the 1960s, Christopher said, "I would think so, he came into my office to see me."16 

Lasby later recalled meeting an Air Force officer whom he thought was helpful, but no one was introduced to him as being in charge of the project. He said he guessed that the project had continued after 1952, but he did not mention that in his book. Unlike today, Lasby had no way to force the military to turn over classified records. "I had to rely on the ambition and greed of a particular service to get records," Lasby said. "They were all so scared of everything." He expunged Klaus's name at the request of the State Department, which refused to show him any documents. He received a letter telling him to expunge the words exploitation and denial, but he refused to do so. "I told them to go to hell and I used it anyway," he said. Lasby did not see any J.I.O.A files. Unknown to Lasby, the J.I.O.A dossiers showing that Marshall director von Braun had been in the S.S, Kennedy Center director Debus had turned a colleague over to the Gestapo, and Saturn manager Rudolph had worked at Mittelwerk were locked up in a safe in Christopher's office.17 

Meanwhile, by 1967 the Apollo moon project was under way at N.A.S.A. But on January 27, tragedy struck as astronauts Roger Chaffee, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, and Edward White sat locked inside an Apollo capsule at the Kennedy Space Center. At 6:31 P.M., there was a short circuit in defective wiring beneath Grissom's pilot couch. Suddenly Grissom called over the radio: "There's a fire in here." Six crewmen working near the capsule began to tear at the escape hatch but were forced to dash in and out of the smoke-filled room to breathe because their emergency gas masks were the wrong type for the smoke conditions in the room. Then the smoke grew so thick that it hid the grisly scene of the three astronauts trapped inside the burning space capsule.18 

Ten days after the fatal fire Kurt Debus said: "We have always adhered to the highest standards of safety." But as director at the Kennedy Space Center, Debus was responsible for checking out the capsule at the center and determining whether to proceed with the test. "That was his responsibility in the Kennedy Space Center," said former Paperclip specialist Walter Haeussermann. It also had been Debus's responsibility to see that emergency equipment was on hand. Not only were "emergency fire, rescue and medical teams not in attendance," the Apollo Accident Board reported, "the emergency equipment located in the white room (at spacecraft level) and on the spacecraft work levels was not designed for the smoke condition resulting from a fire of this nature."19 

The board castigated N.A.S.A's upper management and the capsule's contractor, North American Rockwell, for failing "to give adequate attention to certain mundane but equally vital questions of crew safety." The fire started when a spark from defective wiring ignited in the oxygen-filled chamber. But there were numerous other examples of sloppy workmanship and design, including a defective escape hatch. The Johnson Space Center in Houston had overseen the capsule design and Rockwell's work. Marshall had been responsible only for the launch vehicle, which was not mentioned in the report as being a problem.20 

Ten months after the Apollo fire, von Braun's team had their first chance to see if their Saturn V moon rocket would fly. It was November 9, 1967-Arthur Rudolph's sixty-first birthday. As Saturn V program manager, Rudolph sat next to von Braun in the control room, watching the countdown to zero. "We wanted to go to the moon," said von Tiesenhausen. "If it's the last thing we do, we wanted to go to the moon. So we built the Saturn vehicle, a very expensive space vehicle." To accomplish that feat, the Germans first had to develop simpler models. And to do that, they had had to build weapons for Hitler and for the U.S. Army. One step after another led to the Saturn V. Now the giant rocket stood like a skyscraper struggling to break free from the clamps that held it upright on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. Then all 7.5 million pounds of thrust lifted the rocket off the earth with a deafening roar.21 

On July 16, 1969, another Saturn V lifted astronauts into space. Four days later a lunar module called Eagle landed on the moon. The reaction of Huntsville residents that day was typical of the rest of the nation. The streets were empty as people watched the spectacular scene on television when Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin walked on the moon. 

"We've done it! We've hit the moon," the teenage daughter of one of the space scientists screamed as the celebration began. Later von Braun was carried on the shoulders of Huntsville residents amid ringing church bells and fireworks. Rudolph was showered with honors, including NASA's highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal, when he retired later that year.22 

There are some who say it does not matter what crimes the Germans had committed, because they helped us get to the moon. Yet no one mentions the dead slaves who helped build the V-2, and whose ghosts still cry out for justice. We even have censored Dora survivors' point of view from our history books. Americans do not wish to be reminded of what Dora survivor Jean Michel said about the day that U.S. astronauts first walked on the moon: "I could not watch the Apollo mission without remembering that that triumphant walk was made possible by our initiation to inconceivable horror."23 

Eli Pollach had worked on V-2's at Mittelwerk, yet no one helped him come to America after the war. Pollach was only seventeen years old when the S.S rounded up the Jews of Hungary and sent him and his family to Auschwitz. Later, during an interview, his eyes filled with tears as his fingers gently touched a tattered photograph of his mother and father lying on the table before him. "This is all that is left of them," he said.24 

At Auschwitz, Pollach's parents were ordered into the line that led to the gas chambers. He was loaded onto a train headed for Dora. "They called it the Sawatzki commando," he said of the work crew he was forced to join. "We had to go in the tunnels at six o'clock in the morning." He painted finished V-2's and helped load them onto boxcars in Mittelwerk's tunnels. "Some didn't come out because, you know, they died in there." Pollach was beaten by S.S guards and he nearly starved to death. "I started getting fainting spells," he said. "So another inmate held me up, because once you fell down, either they left you there to die or they sent you to what they called the `infirmary,' and that was the end of the line."25 

After the war it took Pollach four years to get to America, even though he had relatives living here. "So how did these people get here, with falsified documents and denying everything they did?" he asked. He said that going to the moon does not make up for twenty thousand dead Dora slaves. "They have a saying in Hebrew, if you need the thief, then you cut him off the gallows. But even if the United States needed these scientists, they should have reckoned a little bit for what they did."26 

Still, the shadow of the Third Reich did cling to the Germans at Marshall. Just two weeks after the moon landing, von Braun confessed in a letter to an Army general that he had been a member of the S.S. The letter to retired Major General Julius Klein discussed columnist Drew Pearson, who had revealed von Braun's SS membership decades earlier. It was written on von Braun's official stationery as director of Marshall and was marked "Personal and Sensitive."27 

"It's true that I was a member of Hitler's elite S.S. The columnist was correct," von Braun wrote to Klein. Then he admonished: "I would appreciate it if you would keep the information to yourself as any publicity would harm my work with N.A.S.A."28 

That same year, West German prosecutors who were investigating crimes committed against Dora prisoners called on von Braun for a statement. In a general discussion about Mittelwerk, he told them that his younger brother Magnus "was engaged from approximately the fall, 1944 until the end of the war as a production engineer in Mittelwerk." Von Braun said he had visited Mittelwerk "approximately 15 times" and had been in the tunnels in 1943 while prisoners were quartered there. "I never saw a dead man, nor maltreatment nor a killing," he claimed, although he had heard "rumors" that prisoners had been hanged in the tunnels because of sabotage. The prosecutors then confronted him with the fact that several sabotage reports. were found in Peenemunde files. "I cannot remember anything about it," he replied.29 

None of the Paperclip group was called to testify when the West German case went to trial in 1971. But then key French witnesses like Jean Michel were not contacted either. "It was nothing but a cover up," Michel said recently. The court found that the Mittelwerk Prisoner Labor Supply office had requested that Dora prisoners be sent to work as slaves in the tunnels. Over a decade later Rudolph admitted to U.S. Justice Department prosecutors that it was he who had made those requests to the S.S.30 

Once America's goal of landing men on the moon was achieved, the politicians who controlled the government's purse strings found that public sentiment for space exploration had dwindled. The overwhelming interest was in the Vietnam War, protest marches, Martin Luther King's assassination, and riots in the streets. These pressing concerns crowded the astronauts' adventures in space off of the front pages of newspapers.31 

In 1970, von Braun was reassigned to N.A.S.A headquarters in Washington. His transfer marked the beginning of the end of the German rocket team at N.A.S.A. "A lot of them got down in the dumps when von Braun left," recalled Alexander McCool, director of the Safety and Quality Assurance office at Marshall. After the Apollo program, von Braun worked on a project to send a man to Mars, but it fell flat. Congress was not interested.32 

Since their Peenemunde days, the Germans always had enjoyed high-level protection. Now this "back cover," as the Germans called it, was gone. General Walter Dornberger had protected them from jealousies and undercutting at Peenemunde during the war. And the U.S. Army's back cover had included keeping secret the derogatory information in their files. "If the German group had stayed with the Army, they would probably have continued to be protected," the Marshall technical official observed.33 

Even their unseen guardians in the Pentagon had closed up shop. Christopher left the project in 1966 because the interest in continuing Paperclip had waned. "I saw the thing was dying," he said. The projects were turned over to Astrid Kraus, assistant for research and development in the Department of Defense, while Army Colonel Neil Imobersteg ran two Special Projects Team offices in West Germany. "They picked up the pieces," Christopher said, as new recruits continued to arrive until around 1973. Then Imobersteg notified Kraus that the team's offices were going to be closed. "This has been an extremely enjoyable assignment for me," Imobersteg wrote in his farewell. "My best regards, and hoping we may meet again." The team's records, he said, would be burned.34 

Things began to fall apart for the old rocket team in the early 1970's, when the Marshall Center's budget was drastically slashed and, as the Germans put it, the "Great Massacre" began. Following the civil service rule book, the non veterans were the first to be cut, and those included the Germans. "So what happened for us . . . we got two options: either a reduction in grade, or getting out, retiring. That was the choice," said von Tiesenhausen. The Germans viewed the forced retirements and demotions as a deliberate attempt to eliminate the German influence at Marshall.35 

Almost all of the top positions were cut with one sweep. Kurt Debus left N.A.S.A in 1974. Von Tiesenhausen, being younger than the others, was demoted a grade, but his job as assistant director of the Advanced Systems Department remained the same. He said he "made the best of it" and eventually received a N.A.S.A medal for exceptional service. Haeussermann, in charge of overall systems engineering, was told that his job was being cut and he did not qualify for any positions over a GS-12. "That was for me an offense," he said. Then his secretary was replaced by one who was less capable.36 

Nevertheless, all of them retired with sizable pensions. Former N.A.S.A officials also point out that there were many more Americans than Germans who lost their jobs due to cutbacks. Rocco Petrone, who was director of Marshall at the time of the cutbacks, said that the center's organization was being restructured and the Germans had reached retirement age. "You have to remember, they had thirty years behind them," Petrone said. "They all came to talk to me individually and were so appreciative of what the country had done for them.  But they also understood that this time, their careers were coming to an end."37 

When von Braun arrived in Washington in 1970 there were rumors that he was going to be named as NASA's next chief administrator. But there was still resentment toward von Braun's Nazi past in N.A.S.A headquarters and in the nation's capital. Politicians did not want to offend Jews by naming a former official of Hitler's regime to a high-ranking post in the U.S. government. "People said don't pay any attention to the rumors," said Dr. Charles Sheldon, former White House senior staff member of the National Aeronautics and Space Council. "Von Braun would never be given any political position. No one who had worked with Hitler and the Nazi government could be trusted."38 

"And from then on, von Braun became a non-person," von Tiesenhausen recalled. Von Braun's dream of going to Mars was shelved. Nobody gave him assignments, nobody wanted anything from him. "You could see him wandering up these long corridors all by himself, up and down. Then he left. ..."39 

14 

Trying to Open the Lid 

IN the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, members of Congress began a series of investigations into the Nazis-in America issue and past abuses of U.S. intelligence agencies. When these investigations began in 1974, Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman from New York was already a familiar face to most Americans. They had seen her tough questioning during the televised Nixon impeachment hearings. No sooner had President Nixon resigned than Holtzman was confronted with yet another difficult issue: she was told that there were Nazi war criminals living in the United States and that the U.S. government was covering it up. 

"When they told me that there were Nazi war criminals in America, that the government had a list of these people and was doing nothing, my first reaction was incredulity because it made no sense to me," Holtzman recalled. "America fought Hitler in World War II. Close to 200,000 Americans died in the process. Why would we give sanctuary to Nazi war criminals?"1 

Holtzman raised that issue with immigration commissioner Leonard Chapman during a subcommittee hearing in April 1974. "He did admit to me that there was a list of alleged Nazi war criminals, and then when I asked, `Well what are you doing about it?' I got hemming and hawing. So I asked to see the files myself, and it was clear that they were doing nothing."2 

Over the next six years Holtzman conducted investigations, prodded her congressional colleagues, and hassled government agencies on the subject. In the process she received strong bipartisan support from colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee, including committee chairman Peter Rodino and Hamilton Fish. The eventual result was the 1978 passage of the "Holtzman Amendment" to the U.S. immigration law. The amendment provided a statutory basis to deport Nazi war criminals and to prevent their entry into the country as either immigrants or visitors. Until 1953 the Displaced Persons Act had barred from entry individuals who had engaged in persecution under the Nazi regime. A change in that law, however, had allowed even convicted Nazi war criminals, such as Otto Ambros, to enter the country. Holtzman's amendment closed that loophole. In addition to changing the law, Holtzman pressed the Carter administration to set up the Office of Special Investigations (O.S.I) in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute cases involving Nazi war criminals. Finally there was a law and a prosecuting unit to do something about Nazis in America.3 

Yet those accomplishments were not easily obtained. "Every one of those efforts involved a battle," Holtzman recalled. One battle involved the attempt to uncover information about Nazi scientists brought here under Paperclip. A tight lid of secrecy continued to surround the project. And no wonder. The American public believed that the project had ended in the late 1940's. No one knew that Paperclip had practically marched right into the congressional hearings.4 

Nevertheless, disturbing questions did surface about Hubertus Strughold's Nazi past amid charges that government agencies and highly placed political officials were protecting him. While the Air Force touted him as the "father of American space medicine," Strughold was publicly identified as one of thirty-seven war crimes suspects who were under investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (I.N.S). His name was included on the list because of a letter written in 1958 by one Julian Bach to the editor of the Saturday Review concerning the Dachau experiments. But the 1958 investigation that followed quickly turned into a joke. I.N.S made a discreet check with none other than the Air Force the same military branch that helped cover up Strughold's past in the first place-and then dropped the investigation after being told that Strughold already had been "appropriately investigated."5 

Soon after Strughold's name surfaced again in 1974, Holtzman received conflicting reports from I.N.S when she inquired about the status of his case. In one instance, Holtzman obtained an I.N.S status report noting that a regional I.N.S office had been directed to cancel its investigation. Later, I.N.S Director Chapman told Holtzman that the investigation into Strughold's background was still ongoing.6 

A controversy ensued when I.N.S closed the case following an inquiry on Strughold's behalf by his Texas congressman, Henry Gonzales, who complained to Chapman that Strughold's name had been released as a person under investigation. Gonzales said he had been informed by an "interested individual" that Strughold's background already had been thoroughly checked. "If he did have a suspect past," Gonzales wrote, "I do not believe he would have ever pursued his profession, let alone submit to extensive investigations required for the sensitive jobs that he held for our government." A few days later, Chapman reported back that inquiries to the military and other federal agencies had disclosed "no derogatory information" and therefore the INS considered the case closed.7 

Then Strughold claimed in a New York newspaper that he had never even heard of the Dachau experiments until after World War II. That claim was disputed in a magazine article by journalist Charles Allen, which gave details of Strughold's attendance at a conference in 1942 at which the freezing experiments on Dachau prisoners were clearly revealed, causing a sensation among the scientists at the conference. After that revelation, U.S. immigration official Henry Wagner admitted to The New York Times that there was no evidence in Strughold's file that he had ever been asked directly whether he had known of the Dachau experiments on human beings.8 

A General Accounting Office investigation in 1978 could have blown the lid off the entire Nazi issue, including Paperclip. The G.A.O is the investigating arm of Congress, and it has the authority to obtain documents and question witnesses. But the G.A.O allowed itself to be duped by government agencies instead of using its authority to conduct a thorough probe. The investigation focused on whether there had been a widespread government conspiracy to obstruct investigations of Nazi war criminals living in America. Although the G.A.O revealed that some government agencies had employed or utilized Nazis, the agency concluded that there had been no conspiracy to obstruct justice.9 

But later the G.A.O was shocked to learn that government agencies had indeed deliberately withheld information from G.A.O investigators. As a result the G.A.O conducted another investigation in 1985. But that report was an outright whitewash. The G.A.O was informed of some of the major findings in this book, and the Bulletin article revealing the original J.I.O.A cover up already had been published in April of that year. But G.A.O investigators said they were not interested in seeing the materials. The G.A.O's 1985 report not only ignored the published evidence, but it contained glaring errors, such as stating that Paperclip had ended in 1947(!), and parroted all of the false myths that have been trotted out through the decades. G.A.O investigator John Tipton later admitted in an interview that research for the report had been "superficial."10 

The J.I.O.A officers were not called to account for their actions at all. "The G.A.O should have looked at the problem with Paperclip where President Truman issued an executive order saying that Nazi war criminals were not supposed to be brought to this country-an order that we now know was flagrantly violated," Holtzman said. "If we have agencies of this government willing to deliberately overlook and violate presidential directives, if we have government agencies willing to deceive other government agencies in order to protect Nazi war criminals, then we have a very serious problem here."11 

In 1974, while Holtzman was investigating Nazis, other congressional committees were uncovering a long history of other illegal activities by Army intelligence and the C.I.A. Strangely, the Nazi issue did not surface at all in those investigations, even though the intelligence agencies' use of Nazis was central to the subjects under investigation. For instance, one investigation uncovered the Army's illegal domestic spying activities. Yet no information surfaced to expose the tactics used by G-2 to suppress derogatory information about Paperclip.12 

Another investigation did uncover the Army's LSD experiments at Edgewood. But the fact that Nazi scientists worked there under Paperclip was never disclosed in either congressional hearings or in an extensive investigation by the Army inspector general. That both the Army and CIA MK-ULTRA experiments stemmed from Nazi science was certainly relevant to understanding the early history of those secret projects.13 

Although some information about the experiments was revealed, the question of rendering justice to the victims was another story. Regarding MK-ULTRA, Frank Olson's family finally learned that he had jumped from a hotel window after CIA agents slipped LSD into his drink. President Ford publicly apologized to the Olson family and signed legislation providing $750,000 to his survivors. But over a decade would pass before other MK-ULTRA victims would obtain anything resembling justice. On October 5, 1988, the CIA reached an out-of-court settlement with nine victims of Canadian psychiatrist Ewen Cameron's brainwashing techniques, which the CIA had funded. Cameron had subjected his patients to drug induced "sleep therapy" for weeks at a time, gave them LSD, and administered electroshock therapy at up to seventy-five times the usual intensity, while forcing his patients to listen to recorded messages that played continuously for days at a time. The victims suffered permanent physical and mental damage as a result of the experiments.14 

The Army's involvement in the psycho chemical experiments that killed Harold Blauer also was revealed in 1975, along with evidence that the Army had covered it up. Yet it was not until 1987 that his daughter's lawsuit finally was settled in her favor in federal court. Even then, none of the doctors involved in the experiments were charged with committing a crime.15 

The Nuremberg code pertaining to the rights of human subjects in experiments formed an issue in all of these cases. The report on an Army inspector general investigation of the Edgewood experiments discussed the Nuremberg guidelines in detail and judged that Edgewood doctors had violated the guidelines as well as the Army's own internal regulations. But in 1988 the CIA's lawyers ignored the Nuremberg guidelines by contending in court papers that "the doctrine of informed consent, as it is now understood, did not exist" when the Canadian experiments were conducted in the 1950's. 16 

Soldiers like James Stanley finally were informed in 1975 that they had been used as guinea pigs in psycho chemical experiments at Edgewood. "When I received the Army's letter telling me this, I just stood in my living room and cried," Stanley recalled. But his happiness over having learned the truth would be short-lived.17 

Army officials admitted during a House Armed Services Committee hearing in 1975 that at least one soldier had committed suicide and several others had been seriously injured as a result of the experiments. Yet the Army had never made any attempt to conduct follow-up tests on any of Edgewood's victims. After considerable congressional prodding, the U.S. Army Surgeon General, Lieutenant General Robert Taylor, promised committee members that all of the LSD victims would be located and given complete physical and psychological exams.18 

As a result of lengthy congressional hearings and considerable media attention, the American public was left with the assumption that, at the very least, Edgewood's victims would be tested to determine if they had been hurt, and if so, would receive help. That assumption would prove false.

The Army did conduct a study of the LSD victims. And the National Research Council studied seven thousand other soldiers who had been given everything from nerve gas to PCP. But five years passed before the first study was completed, in 1980, and by then neither Congress nor the press was interested in the results. The studies were released quietly with no publicity whatsoever. No one seemed to care that they were a sham.19 

Despite Taylor's pledge that 1,000 LSD victims would be located and given physicals, the LSD study shows that only 220 individuals,less than one-third of the total,actually were given physicals. One hundred others were merely sent forms. And 149 men flatly refused to participate in the study at all-over 8 percent of them saying they were suspicious of the Army's motives. One of them told the Army that he declined to participate out of "the fear I would be used again for test's of some sort or be doped and sign papers releasing the Army for these problems."20 

Some of those who did participate said they were humiliated and outraged by the experience. Stanley, for instance, was told that he was going to be put up in a motel while given a physical at Walter Reed Army Hospital. "Instead I was taken to a psychiatric hospital and treated like a crazy person," Stanley said. "I was furious."21 

Ken Loeh, who has been in and out of hospitals two dozen times since the experiments, broke down and cried over the phone when the subject of the follow-up exam came up during our conversation. "It's too painful to talk," he said. "I'll send you the information." A few days later, a package arrived in the mail. Inside were the tattered remnants of his life,the documentation of his experiments, the damaging effect on his health, and Taylor's testimony before Congress. Scrawled across that testimony, where Taylor promised that the soldiers would be helped, Loeh had written angrily, "Lies! Nothing but lies!"22 

The LSD study has other serious flaws, not the least of which is the ethical question of whether it should have been overseen by the Army, which had conducted the Edgewood experiments in the first place. The study's author, Lieutenant Colonel David A. McFarling, who also conducted most of the physicals, leaves no doubt as to his personal views of the whole affair. Those views reflect the same cold war mentality that haunted Paperclip for decades. The real crux of the issue, according to McFarling, was that the presumed ends to which the Army LSD experiments were directed- had justified the means. "It would have been grossly negligent of chemical warfare specialists not to have investigated LSD if only from a defensive standpoint," he argued. Maybe so, but was this study an appropriate place to discuss an issue that already had been investigated by Congress and the Army's inspector general?23 

Even more disturbing, McFarling's study contains a six page diatribe against the "cloak and dagger" manner in which the experiments had been portrayed in the press, repeats claims that the soldiers had been fully informed about the tests,a claim refuted by the Army's own inspector general,and asserts that the experiments had been medically supervised to insure the safety of the participants. McFarling also makes the outrageous and totally undocumented accusation against the very soldiers he was assigned to test. After pages of medical evidence, revealing that some men had suffered everything from grand mal seizures to suicide attempts, McFarling brushes off their complaints by stating that "some subjects may have consciously or subconsciously altered and manipulated their complaints for their own purposes, notably self enrichment."24 

A study conducted by the National Research Council raises equally disturbing questions, especially regarding protocol. The council did not deal with the issue of whether the soldiers had been harmed. It evaded that issue by investigating whether the chemical warfare agents and drugs other than LSD used on seven thousand soldiers at the base were capable of causing long-term damage to the soldiers' health. Even though the NRC revealed that several soldiers had been hurt during the tests-and even hospitalized-the council repeatedly said the available data was insufficient to determine the long-term effects of the experiments.25 

This ambiguous conclusion should not be surprising. What the NRC report conveniently fails to tell the reader is that the project director for the entire study, Francis N. Marzulli, and several of the study's panelists and technical consultants had been employed at Edgewood or had been under contract to that base while the experiments were going on. 

And all of them had connections to Paperclip. Project Director Marzulli worked at Edgewood in the 1950's. Panelist John J. O'Neill, now at Temple University Medical School, conducted chemical warfare research with Paperclip scientist Theodor Wagner-Jauregg when he worked at Edgewood in the 1950's. Four technical consultants also were directly connected to the base: James S. Ketchum, Joseph S. Wiles, Stephen Krop, and J. Henry Wills. Remember, it was Wills who had determined the effects of nerve gas on humans at Edgewood by examining captured records of the Nazi death camps. 

If all that is not questionable enough, the N.R.C report is based in large part on Edgewood reports and published scientific literature written by the same men who conducted the experiments in the first place-hardly a group who would admit in published articles that their experiments had harmed anyone.26 

For Stanley, however, the final insult was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in his case. Stanley sued the government, claiming that he had suffered episodes of violence and memory loss as a result of the LSD experiments. But on June 25, 1987, the Supreme Court held that the government was not liable for injuries to servicemen when the injuries arose in the course of activities incident to their military service. In a scathing dissent Justice William Brennan cited the Nuremberg code, which the Army had flagrantly violated in the so-called interest of national security. "Having invoked national security to conceal its activities, the Government now argues that the preservation of military discipline requires that Government officials remain free to violate the constitutional rights of soldiers without fear of money damages," Brennan argued. "Soldiers ought not be asked to defend a Constitution indifferent to their essential human dignity."27 [God damn AMEN to that! DC]

By 1980 the system to investigate and prosecute Nazis that Holtzman had worked to set up was in full operation. The Justice Department O.S.I's staff of historians and lawyers were investigating cases of Nazi war criminals who had lived openly in the United States for decades. Early that year, Harvard law student Eli Rosenbaum made a discovery that eventually would result in Arthur Rudolph's relinquishing his U.S. citizenship and leaving the country rather than contest charges that he had committed war crimes in Nazi Germany. 

Rosenbaum was browsing in a Cambridge, Massachusetts, bookstore when he spotted Jean Michel's book Dora. "I was stunned," Rosenbaum recalled. "I had never seen camp Dora mentioned in any Holocaust literature." That oversight by Holocaust historians is one reason why French Resistance hero Michel decided to tell the horrifying story of how he and other Dora prisoners had been forced to work as slaves in Mittelwerk's tunnels. Then Rosenbaum read The Rocket Team, by Frederick Ordway and Mitchell Sharpe, which discussed Mittelwerk from the viewpoint of the Nazi rocket scientists who worked there. Rosenbaum was furious when he came across a passage that quoted Rudolph as saying he had cursed when he had to leave a New Year's Eve party in 1943 and go out into the cold weather to resolve a production problem at Mittelwerk.28 

"I remember thinking, there were innocent people dying in that hell hole, and here was Arthur Rudolph complaining that he had to leave a nice warm party to go back to work," said Rosenbaum. One of the first things Rosenbaum did after he began working as an O.S.I attorney was to ask the unit's then-deputy director Neal Sher if he had ever heard of Rudolph. He had not. But he authorized Rosenbaum to investigate.29 

Over the next few years, the O.S.I quietly investigated the Rudolph case, looking for evidence about what had happened in that underground hell so long ago. The U.S. Army's secret Dora war crimes case provided some of the evidence uncovered by the O.S.I. Major Eugene Smith had died years earlier, but his interrogations of Paperclip scientists at Fort Bliss had been found. Unfortunately, that is not the case with another obvious treasure chest of information. Remember (in chapter 4) how the Air Force placed Mittelwerk director Georg Rickhey in charge of forty-two boxes of Mittelwerk management records at Wright Field? Perhaps it should not be surprising that those records simply vanished without a trace. 

By late 1982 O.S.I prosecutors felt they had proof that Rudolph had requisitioned and utilized slave laborers while serving as Mittelwerk's operations director. "In this case we have not just the utilization of slave labor, which is a clear-cut war crime under the Nuremberg laws," said Sher. "We have the outright exploitation of slave labor . . . working under terrible conditions."30

Rosenbaum, who directed the Rudolph investigation, compares the case with that of Nazi Armaments Minister Albert Speer, who was convicted and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment by the International Military Tribunal for his role in the utilization of slave labor. "If you look at what the I.M.T said about Speer, most of it could easily be said about Rudolph as well," Rosenbaum explained. "The I.M.T said that Speer knew that concentration camp inmates were going to be used as slave laborers to build his armaments. So did Rudolph. Speer attended meetings that dealt with the capture and enslavement of more people and their use as slave laborers for armaments production. So did Rudolph. In fact, Rudolph attended at least one meeting with the S.S on that very subject, as did other high-ranking German scientists, including Wernher von Braun. They discussed, among other things, the possibility of bringing a large number of French citizens from France to work as slaves at Mittelwerk. And Rudolph, like Speer, requested-and received from the SS-ever larger numbers of concentration camp inmates to work for him."31 

Another key part of the evidence against Rudolph was that the notorious Prisoner Labor Supply office at Mittelwerk was directly subordinate to him. That office worked directly with the S.S labor allocation office to designate the number of prisoners assigned to work in Mittelwerk's tunnels. S.S officer Wilhelm Simon, convicted in the Army's Dora trial, headed that SS office. "Rudolph relied on Simon for, among other things, bringing an increased supply of slaves to work on V2 production," Rosenbaum said. Rudolph's subordinates in the Prisoner Labor Supply office also were responsible for determining the quantity of food the prisoners received-an amount so inadequate that thousands of prisoners starved to death.32 

Rosenbaum also uncovered the evidence that civilian engineers subordinate to Rudolph had beaten or stabbed prisoners and had reported them as saboteurs to the S.S. That resulted in some being hanged. Army records identify Rudolph's subordinates, including his deputy, Karl Seidenstuecker, by name as abusing prisoners. As one witness at the Army trial put it, "practically all civilians who were working in the Prisoners' Labor Allocation" either ordered the punishment of prisoners or "carried out beatings on their own."33 

The O.S.I found Rudolph living comfortably in retirement in San Jose, California. On October 13, 1982, and February 4, 1983, he was interrogated under oath by then O.S.I director Allan Ryan, Jr., Deputy Director Sher, and Rosenbaum. In the meetings, the O.S.I attorneys examined the forms that Rudolph had filled out when he first arrived under Project Overcast in 1945. He had joined the Nazi party in 1931, two years before the Nazi regime came into power, and was also a member of the S.A. Rudolph told the O.S.I that he had participated in Nazi party meetings and processions, where he wore a Nazi arm band and paraded down the streets of Berlin.34 

In 1943 Rudolph was working at Peenemunde when General Dornberger told him that he was going to Mittelwerk. "He just phoned me and said, `You go with Sawatzki,' " Rudolph said. Sawatzki, who later was captured by U.S. Army troops at Nordhausen, became Rudolph's boss at the underground plant. Prisoners already were working and living in the tunnels when Rudolph arrived. Rudolph admitted to O.S.I that the prisoners were there for political reasons, not because they had technical skills. In Rudolph's view, they were "just bodies." Those "bodies" included a black American flyer named Johnny Nicholas, Jean Michel, Yves Beon and other members of the French Resistance, Hungarian Jews, including children, and Italian, Polish, and Russian P.O.W's.35 

When the O.S.I began to question Rudolph about the prisoners' living and working conditions, Rudolph first parroted the same story that he had told Smith in 1947-that he and other civilian engineers had worked under conditions identical to those of the prisoners. But Sher did not let him off the hook so easily.36 

"I worked twelve hours," Rudolph said. 

"Yeah, but you didn't-you didn't have to sleep in the tunnel, did you?" asked Sher. 

"No."37

Rudolph also admitted that the food was not the same for him and the prisoners, either. Rudolph ate his workday meals outside the tunnels, in a barracks cafeteria in which the prisoners were not allowed. Also, unlike the prisoners, Rudolph could eat his other meals at home. 

"I want to show you a book," said Sher, as he placed The "Dora"-Nordhausen War Crimes Trial on the table. This was the U.S. Army prosecution team's grim account of the history of Mittelwerk-Dora, complete with photographs taken by the U. S. Army Signal Corps when Nordhausen was liberated. Sher turned to the page with two photographs of Dora's crematory. The caption under the photograph of the smoldering furnace noted that the prisoners' bodies "were in many cases emaciated to such an extent that the oven could take three or four at a time."38 

"Did you ever see it?" asked Sher, referring to the crematory. 

"From the distance, yes." 

"And you knew that prisoners who died at Mittelbau were cremated at the crematory. You knew that, didn't you?" (Rudolph nodded his head in agreement.) 

"Turn to the next page, Mr. Rudolph. You'll see pictures of prisoners who worked at Mittelwerk when they were liberated by the Allies." The photograph showed a truckload of dead prisoners whose bodies were nothing more than skeletons. 

"Do those people look like they were working under good conditions?" 

"No. Certainly not." 

"You know the figures are that nearly twenty thousand people died during your service at this facility?" 

"No." 

"Twenty thousand. Did that-would that surprise you?" 

"To me, yes." 

"You knew people were dying?" 

"Oh, yeah. I knew that."39 

Rudolph said he had walked through the tunnels two or three times a day and had seen firsthand that conditions were bad for the prisoners. He also had visited Dora a couple of times to have a glass of schnapps with the S.S commandant of the camp, Otto Foerschner, who was convicted of war crimes and hanged after the war. Rudolph admitted to Rosenbaum that he never had ordered his subordinates to cease abusing prisoners. This despite the fact that O.S.I had located a Mittelwerk directive in which Rudolph and other top-ranking civilians were instructed to order their subordinates to leave such punishment to the S.S.40 

Rudolph told O.S.I that Sawatzki had once threatened to put him in a concentration camp, but later in the interview he admitted that he had not taken Sawatzki's threat seriously; he figured Sawatzki needed him to get the rockets built on time. In the spring of 1944 Sawatzki was ill for a month, and when he returned, he was transferred to V-1 production. This left Rudolph completely in charge. "I was free of his darn interfering," Rudolph said. Yet, even then Rudolph did not make changes to help the prisoners. Instead he increased V-2 production schedules, which meant that more prisoners dropped dead from exhaustion. Rudolph said he did not try to lighten the prisoners' work schedules because, "I would be called on the carpet by Sawatzki even though I was not reporting to him anymore. "41 

"We know, the world knows, it's part of history, that prisoners were forcibly taken from various concentration camps, Buchenwald, Auschwitz and others, and used as slave laborers to produce the V-2," said Sher. "You agree that that is true?" 

"That's true," said Rudolph. 

"It seems to me that you must have known that people were dying of disease and starvation and overwork. You must have known that." 

"Yes, I know that people were dying. "42 

Rudolph confessed that it was he who had asked the S.S to send more prisoners to Dora in order to meet the labor demands of increased V-2 production schedules. When Sher asked him directly if he had requested that more forced laborers be brought down into that underground hell, Rudolph admitted, "Yes, I did." And he had dealt directly with SS officer Simon to make those requests. Rudolph said he had gotten the prisoners "from Dora, and I got them probably from Buchenwald or somewhere else. "43 

Rudolph thought Simon was a nice guy. After Simon's conviction at the Dora trial, Rudolph sent Simon's defense attorney a statement claiming that he and Simon had tried to improve conditions for the prisoners. Rudolph said he had told Simon that one prisoner was too sick to work and he was returned to the camp. The problem was, prisoners judged unfit to work were then shipped to Lublin extermination camp. The U.S. Army tribunal had rejected Simon's defense arguments along the same line and sentenced him to life imprisonment.44 

One important issue in Rudolph's case is the prisoners' sabotage of the rockets. Numerous Dora survivors said they sabotaged rockets by urinating on wiring, removing vital parts, and loosening screws. "It was common practice," said Yves Beon, who sabotaged the rockets he worked on as a welder by making his welding appear sound when, in fact, the rocket parts were not welded at all. Beon believes that their sabotage efforts saved Americans' lives-that American troops landing at Normandy would have been killed if the rockets had functioned properly. "It would have been terrible for the Allies and for the American army," Beon said.45 

"These prisoners, despite living under horrendous conditions, nevertheless attempted very courageously to sabotage this Nazi effort," Sher said in an interview. "Engineers would get involved because in order to find out who was the suspected saboteur, one would have to know, mechanically, how the rocket was being sabotaged. And reports were prepared and sent to the SS, and they would then find the saboteur. There are reported incidents of the saboteur being hung in very grotesque and slow fashion, and every slave laborer was ordered-ordered to watch the hanging. "46 

Sabotage reports were discussed in the U.S. Army's 1947 trial when Sawatzki's secretary, Hannelore Bannasch, testified that Mittelwerk management "passed on" sabotage reports and if anyone had signed them, it would have been Rudolph. Yet Rudolph told the O.S.I that he had not known that prisoners were sabotaging rockets.47 

When the O.S.I concluded the interview, the attorneys gave Rudolph no indication when they would be back. Then, in ate 1983, the O.S.I confronted Rudolph with the charges and some of the evidence. As a result Rudolph decided to relinquish his U. S. citizenship and leave the country. "He stated in an agreement formally, which he executed in my presence, in front of his lawyer and his daughter, that if these charges were brought into court he could not contest them," said Sher. Rudolph moved to Hamburg, West Germany, and currently is banned from entering the United States.48 

"I think it's important that this government take a stand that Nazi war criminals are not wanted here," said Sher. "Particularly at a time when there are people, in very slick fashion, who claim the Holocaust never took place, who try to whitewash it and try to minimize what happened. I think that's very dangerous for the younger generation, and for history."49 

The most disturbing example of that whitewash occurred in the late 1980's, in the aftermath of the Rudoph case. 


next
Consequences

Notes:
CHAPTER 13: MOON WALK IN THE SHADOW OF THE THIRD REICH 
1. Joseph Trento, Prescription for Disaster (New York: Crown, 1987). 
2. Michael Jennings interview with Georg von Tiesenhausen. 
3. Ibid. 
4. Michael Jennings interview with James Kingsbury. 
5. Michael Jennings interview with Marshall Space Flight Center technical official. 
6. Debus's immigration problems: 12 February 1953, INS files; James H. Skinner, Security Certificate From the JIOA, 16 June 1950, all in Kurt Debus JIOA dossier, RG 330, NARS. 
7. Von Tiesenhausen interview. 8. Peter Cobun, "A Footnote Is Enough," Huntsville Times, 
8 August 1976; Trento, Prescription for Disaster; and Petrone interview. 
9. Von Tiesenhausen interview. 
10. Statistics are in JIOA post-1952 administrative records, RG 330, NARS. 
11. Special Projects Team, "Cost Estimates and Evaluation," memo, 31 August 1964, JIOA post-1952 adminisuative records, RG 330, NARS. 
12. Christopher interview. 
13. Michael Jennings interview with Marshal Space Flight Center administrator. 
14. JIOA Director Earle Gardner to Director of Intelligence, 5 April 1961, JIOA post-1952 administrative records, RG 330, NARS. 
15. JIOA Director Earle Gardner to ACSI, 5 April 1961; and Colonel Clarence Nelson to Chairman, JIOA, 3 April 1961-both in JIOA post1952 adminisuative records, RG 330, NARS. 
16. Christopher interview; memo on meeting between ACSI representative Henry Milne and Colonel Stone Christopher, 23 November 1964, JIOA post-1952 adminisuative records, RG 330, NARS. 
17. Author interview with Clarence Lasby; Lasby, Project Paperclip. 
18. Accident investigation reported in The New York Times, and the Washington Post, 10 April 1967. Trento, Prescription for Disaster. 
19. Ibid.; Michael Jennings interview with Walter Haeussermann. 
20. Von Tiesenhausen interview. 
21. Trento, Prescription for Disaster; von Tiesenhausen interview. 
22. Pat Naute, "Apollo Success Brings Rejoicing for Huntsville," Birmingham News, 22 July 1969. 
23. Michel, Dora. 
24. Author interview with Eli Pollach. Notes 311 
25. Ibid. 
26. Ibid. 
27. Letter, Wernher von Braun to Major General Julius Klein, 2 August 1969, OSI. 
28. Ibid. 
29. Transcript of the interrogation of Wernher von Braun, 7 February 1969, German Embassy, New Orleans. 
30. Author interview with Jean Michel, People v. Busta and Sander, Provincial Court of Essen, West Germany, 1971. 31. Trento, Prescription for Disaster. 
32. Michael Jennings interview with Alexander McCool. 
33. Marshall technical official interview. 
34. Christopher interview; Neil ImObersteg to Asuid Kraus, 17 February 1967, JIOA post-1952 adminisuative records, RG 330, NARS. Paperclip was canceled by DOD directive 70-7, 24 March 1970. Individuals recruited up to that time continued to arrive until around 1973. 
35. Von Tiesenhausen interview. 
36. Haeussermann interview. 
37. Peuone interview. 
38. Cobun, "A Footnote Is Enough." 
39. Von Tiesenhausen interview.

CHAPTER 14: TRYING TO OPEN THE LID 
1. Holtzman interview. 
2. Ibid. 
3. Ibid.; Public Law 95-549. 
4. Holtzman interview. 
5. Bach letter in Saturday Review, 9 August 1958, is in the Hubertus Strughold file, OSI. Memo, Representative Elizabeth Holtzman to INS Commissioner Leonard Chapman, 10 June 1974. 
6. Holtzman memo to Chapman. 
 7. Representative Henry Gonzales to INS Commissioner Leonard Chapman, 25 June 1974; and INS Commissioner Leonard Chapman to Representative Henry Gonzales, 12 July 1974-both in Strughold OSI file. 
8. Charles Allen, "Hubertus Strughold, Nazi in USA,"Jewish Currents, December 1974; and Ralph Blumenthal, "Anti-Nazi Drive a Year Later: No U.S. Legal Moves Are Taken," The New York Times, 23 November 1974. 
9. General Accounting Office, Widespread Conspiracy to Obstruct Probes of Alleged Nazi War Crtminals Not Supported by Available Evidence-Controversy May Continue (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 15 May 1978). 
10. Letter, Representative Peter Rodino, Chairman, House Committee on the Judiciary, to Comptroller General Charles Bowsher, 17 May 1982, notifying him that "government agencies misled GAO and Congress." See also CBS, "60 Minutes," 16 May 1982; Loftus, Belarus Secret; GAO, Nazi and Axis Collaborators; and author interview with John Tipton. 
11. Holtzman interview. 
12. Senate, Final Report, no. 94-755. 
13. House Committee on Armed Services, Military Hallucinogenic Experiments, hearings, 94th Cong., lst sess., 8 September 1975. 
14. For the Olson family's reaction see "Family Blames CIA in Death," Washington Post, 11 July 1975; and Lee Hockstader, "Victims of 1950s' Mind-Control Experiments Settle with CIA," Washington Post, 5 October 1988. 
15. U.S. Army, "Inquiry Into the Facts and Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Mr. Harold Blauer at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Subsequent Claims Actions," inspector general report (obtained under the FOIA); and Banett. 
16. Taylor and Johnson, "Use of Volunteers in Chemical Agent Research"; and Lee Hockstader, "Victims of 1950s' Mind-Control Experiments," Washington Post, 5 October 1988. 
17. Stanley interview. 
18. House Committee on Armed Services, Military Hallucinogenic Experiments. 
19. McFarling, "LSD Follow-up Study." 
20. Ibid. 
21. Stanley interview. 
22. Ken Loeh correspondence with author. Loeh applied for veterans benefits in the 1950s. In correspondence between the Army and a Veterans Administration official, the Army first denied that Loeh had participated in the experiments and then refused to reveal the identity of the chemical agent used because the name was classified. 
23. McFarling, "LSD Follow-up Study." 
24. Ibid. 
25. National Research Council, Possible Long-Term Health Effects. 
26. Ibid. Some of the most revealing documents obtained under the FOIA from Edgewood are lists of individuals who either worked at Edgewood or were under contract from 1945 to 1970. These lists contain the names of dozens of well-known scientists who became department heads at such major universities as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Maryland, Tulane, and Notes 313 others across the country. See also the footnotes of NRC studies for their published work on experiments at Edgewood. 
27. Stanley. 
28. Author interview with Eli Rosenbaum; Michel, Dora; Ordway and Sharpe, Rocket Team. 
29. Rosenbaum interview. 
30. Author interview with OSI Director Neal Sher. 
31. Rosenbaum interview. 32. Ibid.; Andrae trial record. 33. Andrae. 
34. OSI interrogation of Arthur Rudolph. 35. Ibid. 
36. Ibid. 
37. Ibid. 
38. Ibid.; and Aalmans, "Dora"-Nordhausen War Crimes Trial. 
39. OSI interrogation of Arthur Rudolph. 
40. Ibid. 
41. Ibid. 
42. Ibid. 
43. Ibid. 
44. Ibid. 
45. Beon interview. 
 46. Sher interview. 
47. Bannasch testimony, Andrae. 
48. Sher interview. See also Arthur Rudolph-OSI agreement, 28 November 1983, OSI (obtained under the FOIA). 
49. Sher interview.