WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Operation Paperclip 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:06.400 Happy Saturday, eighty one years ago today. On June twentieth, 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:10.720 nineteen forty five, the US Secretary of State approved Werner 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:14.000 von Brown and other German rocket scientists to enter the 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:18.720 United States under a program called Operation paper Clip. This 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:22.439 was a secret program to bring German scientists, engineers, and 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:25.280 other specialists to the United States to live and work, 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:28.800 including ones who had deep ties to the Nazi Party 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:33.080 and war crimes. Our episode on Operation paper Clip came 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:35.519 out on May twenty fourth, twenty twenty one, and it 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:41.320 is Today's Saturday Classic Welcome to Stuff You Missed in 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:51.839 History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:53.400 the podcast. I'm Tracy V. 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:55.360 Wilson and I'm Holly Friday. 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.480 Today we are going to talk about Operation paper Clip, 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:03.200 which is also known as Project paper Clip. And this 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:07.080 was the US effort to bring German scientists to the 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.440 United States after World War Two. And to be clear, 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:14.520 the US was definitely not the only Allied nation doing this, 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:18.679 as examples, the UK and France and the Soviet Union 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:22.920 all had their own programs to try to exploit German 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:27.360 scientific and engineering knowledge after the war, but in most 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:32.080 cases those other programs involved specialists and researchers who were 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:36.520 either working in occupied Germany or they were sent back 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:39.560 to Germany after a few years of supervised work in 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:43.800 another country. But for the United States program, a lot 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:46.360 of the people who were part of it ultimately became 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:50.720 permanent residents or citizens of the US, and this included 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.200 people who were ardent Nazis or who had committed war crimes. 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:58.400 A lot of the time, the rocket scientists are the 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:02.120 ones who get the most just discussion around this program today, 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.920 so people like Werner von Brown, who developed ballistic missiles 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:09.320 for the US Army before joining the space program at NASA. 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:13.200 But paper Clippers really came from a wide range of 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:18.480 scientific and engineering specialties, including flight, medicine and chemical warfare 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:23.080 and aeronautics. They worked in military and in civilian roles. 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:28.000 It was like every layer of American industry and the 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:33.080 military industrial complex. When I started on this episode, my 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:36.320 intent was that today we were going to talk about 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:40.280 the context for this program and its precursor, which was 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:44.280 called Operation Overcast, and then the program itself and some 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:47.600 of the most prominent and notorious people who were part 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:50.960 of it. That turned out to be too much for 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:55.560 one episode, which people listening to me list all those 0:02:55.600 --> 0:03:00.359 things off may not be that surprised by. So this 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.040 episode is going to whack through the arc of this 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:07.959 program's creation and its existence, and we'll have more about 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.639 some of the specific scientists and engineers and other specialties 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:17.800 in another episode sometime soon, possibly the next episode, but 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:20.639 since it's not written yet, I don't want to promise anything. 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.200 This is one of those things that became clear at 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:26.839 like three o'clock yesterday afternoon that this could not all 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:30.679 be one episode. So that means that while there will 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:34.320 be some references to some Nazi atrocities during World War 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:38.440 Two and the general era of the nineteen thirties and forties, 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.880 there's there's not as much detail about the specifics in 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:44.880 this particular episode. It is something that will be discussed 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:49.000 more in a future episode about the researchers themselves. 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:51.880 So to establish a bit of background on this subject. 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:55.040 In June of nineteen forty two, Adolf Hitler issued the 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:59.000 Decree of the Furor on the Reich Research Council. It read, 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.840 in part quote, the necessity to expand all available forces 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:06.160 to highest efficiency in the interest of the state requires 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:10.000 not only in peacetime but also, and especially in wartime, 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:15.040 the concentrated effort of scientific research and its channelization toward 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.200 the goal to be aspired. It then went on to say, 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:21.640 leading men of science above all are to make research 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:25.599 fruitful for warfare by working together in their special fields. 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:29.760 In nineteen forty four he issued another decree, and this 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:33.039 one called for the development of weapons and equipment that 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:39.200 had quote revolutionary new characteristics. These would put Germany ahead 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:44.200 of its enemies. Nazi propaganda framed these new weapons and 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:49.800 equipment as Vunderwaffe or wonder weapons. Also in nineteen forty four, 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:55.000 Germany introduced the rocket power measureschment Emmy one sixty three, 0:04:55.520 --> 0:05:00.760 which was the world's first rocket powered fighter, the two 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:04.560 sixty two, which was the world's first operational jet fighter, 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:08.679 the V one flying bomb, which was the world's first 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.880 cruise missile, and the V two rocket, which was the 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:16.679 world's first ballistic missile. So a lot of wartime firsts there, 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:20.599 and it has been widely repeated that if these technologies 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:23.239 had been introduced just a few months earlier in the war, 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:26.919 the access Powers might well have won, and there's some 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:31.080 debate over whether that's really true, but Allied military officials 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.320 definitely saw all of this and any other innovations that 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.200 Germany might have had in the works is a huge threat. 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:40.760 There were concerns that Germany's ultimate goal for the V 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:43.520 two rocket was for it to carry a nuclear payload, 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:47.200 and concerns that it was sharing its secrets and technologies 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:51.080 with Japan. So the Allied powers made it a priority 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:54.680 to try to capture as much German research and technology 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.039 as possible, both to replicate it for themselves and to 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:02.520 try to develop countermeasures. Especially after the D Day invasion 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:06.479 started on June six, nineteen forty four, teams really searched 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:11.720 for German research facilities and weapons factories. They copied blueprints 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:17.120 and technical materials, They questioned scientists, and confiscated weapons and technology. 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:21.839 This included disassembling and removing big pieces of equipment like 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.760 V two rockets and wind tunnels and aircraft. This process 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:29.160 really accelerated in the last months of the war. The 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:33.480 UK and the US formed the Combined Intelligence Objective Subcommittee 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:37.320 to coordinate a huge sweep for German military secrets and equipment. 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.600 This really escalated after Hitler issued the Destructive Measures on 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:45.680 Reich Territory Decree, also known as the Nero decree that 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:49.799 happened on March nineteenth, nineteen forty five, and this decree 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:52.280 called for the destruction of anything that could be used 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:56.760 by enemies of Germany. British and American units became increasingly 0:06:56.800 --> 0:07:00.599 competitive as they tried to capture resources before Germany could 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.400 destroy them and before Soviet forces who had similar objectives 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.200 could move into an area. Yeah, in some cases it 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.080 was literally an area that the Soviets were supposed to 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:14.320 be occupying, but British or American forces or both together 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:16.000 would be like, we got to get as much of 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:20.720 this stuff ourselves as possible before they get here. As 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:21.280 all of this. 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:24.760 Was happening, military officials also started to shift their focus 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:28.040 a little bit because no matter how many blueprints or 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:32.040 technical manuals or formulas or actual pieces of technology they 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:36.560 managed to secure, and no matter how many specialists they interviewed, 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:40.800 that still wouldn't be the same as having ongoing access 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:44.280 to the minds behind all of this stuff. So the 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:49.440 Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee started developing lists of people to 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:53.440 target and bring in for more long term work. Initially, 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.920 there was a blacklist of targets of military value and 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:01.280 a gray list of targets of quote vital post war interest, 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:05.680 but those people were not of immediate military value. Often, though, 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:08.640 these lists are kind of lumped together as just the Blacklist. 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:11.880 One source for the names on these lists was a 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:16.600 document prepared by senior Gestapo officer Werner Osenberg, who supervised 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.960 the planning office of the Reich Research Council. He had 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:23.280 compiled a list of about fifteen thousand names, part of 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.880 which was discovered in an unflushed toilet in March of 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:31.200 nineteen forty five. When Ousenberg himself was captured, he surrendered 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:34.840 the entire list, along with documents that detailed the qualifications 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:37.959 of the people on that list and other documents related 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.840 to the German war effort. The US Army established the 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:46.480 Field Information Agency Technical or FIAT to help it exploit 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:51.960 German knowledge and resources, including finding and capturing people from 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:56.400 this list, and the term exploit comes up over and 0:08:56.480 --> 0:09:00.240 over in descriptions of this whole phase of the projected 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:04.240 Militaries and governments were increasingly interpreting all of this as 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:10.439 a form of German reparations for the war, and German scientists, engineers, technicians, 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:15.080 and researchers were all resources to exploit As part of 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:17.000 those reparations. 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:22.440 Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force had established internment camps for 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:27.079 scientists and engineers in Germany and in formerly German occupied territory. 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:31.080 Some of these camps housed hundreds of people, and beyond 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:33.920 interrogating them about their work and getting to interpret and 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:38.120 explain technical documents, at first officials weren't quite sure what 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:38.880 to do with them. 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:43.640 Simply letting people go after they'd been interrogated wasn't really 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:47.800 an option. The people who had developed the aircraft, bombs, 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:51.240 and chemical and biological weapons for the Third Reich still 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.360 presented a threat. And then, on top of that, the 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.760 Potsdam Agreement, which was signed in August of nineteen forty five, 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:02.200 called for the quote complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.320 and the elimination or control of all German industry that 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:09.920 could be used for military production. And that meant that 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.679 for a lot of these specialists, the industries that they 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:16.559 had been working in, as well as other related industries 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:18.880 where they might have been able to find jobs, those 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:20.800 just would not exist anymore. So it wasn't like they 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:25.560 could interrogate someone, release them, keep tabs on them. To 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:30.040 make sure they were not doing anything dangerous while they 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:32.680 went to some job they had gotten, because those industries 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:36.200 they would have worked in no longer were to exist. 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.200 Although the US and the UK were allies and the 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:42.920 Combined Intelligence Subjective Subcommittee had been established as a joint 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:47.640 effort between the two nations, over time they became increasingly competitive. 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:51.760 For example, on April thirteenth, nineteen forty five, Colonel Donald L. 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:55.000 Putt was led to the Herman Gerring Aeronautical Research Center 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:59.080 at Vulcan Rode, which had been camouflaged under trees. This 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:02.000 secret facility was in an area that was supposed to 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:05.640 be under British control, so American forces worked as quickly 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:08.559 as possible to secure as much as they could before 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:09.720 the British arrived. 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:13.760 Yeah, this kind of stuff led to various toe stepping, 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:18.520 basically from a military perspective, and then the United States 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:22.040 having to work with Britain to say, okay, we took 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:24.120 all these V two rockets that you were supposed to 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:27.280 get access to, so we will work with you to 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:29.960 figure out how they work and to launch some so 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:33.400 you can see how they work. Some of this was 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:37.920 specifically focused on trying to secure information and weapons that 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:40.520 could be useful in the war in the Pacific, which 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:44.400 was still ongoing. On April twenty second, nineteen forty five, 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:49.920 the US Army Air Forces Intelligence Service launched Operation Lusty, 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:54.040 which stood for Luftwaffa Secret Technology and that was to 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:57.200 secure technical and scientific intelligence that could be used in 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.880 the war against Japan. The US started cost being German 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.040 munitions that had been used against Britain during the Blitz. 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:07.840 By the time Germany surrendered on May eighth of nineteen 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:11.800 forty five, the US had captured most of Germany's most 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:16.800 respected aircraft engineers. Two days later, Allied forces intercepted the 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:20.440 German submarine U eight five eight, which surrendered in Delaware 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:24.800 on May fourteenth. It was carrying civilian engineers to Japan, 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:30.679 along with advanced weaponry and supplies, including an entire disassembled aircraft. 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:34.800 Among its cargo were twelve hundred pounds of uranium oxide. 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:38.200 This was most likely meant to be used for aircraft fuel, 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:41.960 but it raised fears of the possibility of nuclear weapons development. 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:47.559 So this made the ongoing exploitation of German researchers more urgent, 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:50.480 and officials started to question whether some of this work 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:54.160 might be done more effectively in the United States. Although 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:59.120 it was generally agreed that exploiting German researchers in Germany 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.840 was vital and was generally ethical, the idea of bringing 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:07.160 people into the US was a lot more controversial. On 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.640 May twenty eighth, Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson wrote 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:13.560 a letter to Admiral William D. Lahy which read, in 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:18.000 part quote, I strongly favored doing everything possible to utilize 0:13:18.080 --> 0:13:21.520 fully in the prosecution of the war against Japan all 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:25.160 information that can be obtained from Germany or any other source. 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:28.400 These men are enemies, and it must be assumed they 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:32.080 are capable of sabotaging our war effort. Bringing them to 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:37.160 this country raises delicate questions, including the strong resentment of 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:41.600 the American public, who might misunderstand the purpose of bringing 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:45.199 them here and the treatment accorded them, But the idea 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:49.640 of military necessity ultimately won out over these and other concerns. 0:13:50.200 --> 0:13:53.320 After this letter, the War Department General Staff held a 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:55.600 meeting at the Pentagon to develop a plan to give 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:59.880 some German researchers, specifically ones who were not Nazis or 0:13:59.880 --> 0:14:03.960 war criminals, temporary contracts to work in the United States 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:06.079 under protective military custody. 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:07.840 We'll talk more. 0:14:07.679 --> 0:14:20.800 About that after a sponsor break. The first project to 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:25.320 bring German scientists to the US to work under a 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:30.000 temporary contract was called Project Overcast, and it was launched 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:34.360 on July twentieth, nineteen forty five. Under this program, German 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:37.320 specialists and researchers would be brought to the US, where 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:42.400 they would temporarily work under military supervision before eventually returning 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.840 to Germany. Each person assigned a contract was supposed to 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.120 undergo a background check to confirm that they were not 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:54.280 an ardent Nazi. Like the word exploit, That phrase Nazi 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:56.480 is a term that comes up a lot in documents 0:14:56.520 --> 0:15:01.440 about Operation Paperclip and its related programs. Officials recognized that 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:05.320 under Adolph Hitler, Germany had been a single party dictatorship, 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.600 and that at least some involvement with Nazism was essentially 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:13.080 mandatory for non Jewish Germans. The researchers, who the US 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:16.000 saw as the most skilled and important, were of course 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:18.800 seen the same way by the Nazis, so in many 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:22.200 cases they had been targeted for leadership roles and rewarded 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:24.840 with honors and awards that were bestowed by the party. 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:28.000 Some people who joined the party also did so out 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:31.920 of a sense of self preservation or even opportunism. So 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:36.360 with all this in mind, the general conclusion among American 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:39.480 military authorities was that it was just not feasible to 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.560 restrict anyone who had any connection at all to the 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:48.640 Nazi Party. That would leave them with no researchers to exploit. Instead, 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:53.440 the focus was on banning ardent Nazis, and ardent Nazis 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:56.320 were described as people who had joined the Nazi Party 0:15:56.440 --> 0:16:00.680 before Hitler declared himself, Burier, people who were leaders in 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.320 the party or in one of its affiliated organizations like 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:06.880 the SS or the Essay, people who had been convicted 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:10.880 in a post war de notification court, or people who 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:13.480 had been accused or convicted of war crimes. 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:18.680 This process involved interviews, examining people's records, and confirming that 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.440 they were not on the Central Registry of War Criminals 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:24.800 and Security Suspects that's also known as the crow Cast List. 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:29.520 This list was described as quote an unwieldy monster archive. 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:33.280 It was often vague, it was full of undocumented allegations. 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:35.960 There's a lot of hearsay. But in terms of the 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.440 people conducting these background checks. It became a useful checkof 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:42.680 to say this person was not a suspected war criminal. 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:48.320 This program, Operation Overcast, grew really quickly. It expanded to 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:53.600 include a huge assortment of government and military programs and 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:58.360 their associated acronyms. There were a lot of Every book 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:00.760 that I read on this had just a of acronyms 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:03.600 at the beginning and what they all did for The 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:09.600 Joint Intelligence Objective Agency that has abbreviated JIOA and usually 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:12.959 said JOA was created as part of the Joint Chiefs 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:16.840 of Staff during this expansion, and this agency directed this 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:23.159 whole operation and brought about sixteen hundred German and Austrian scientists, engineers, 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:25.919 and researchers to the US between nineteen forty five and 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:30.000 nineteen seventy. The Office of Strategic Services and the Joint 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:34.320 Intelligence Committee were involved in this as well. Japan formally 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:38.320 surrendered on September second, nineteen forty five, but even though 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.400 that ended the war, the effort to bring German scientists 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:45.120 to the US continued. By January of nineteen forty six, 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:48.240 one hundred sixty German specialists had been brought to the 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:52.440 United States. One hundred and fifteen of them were rocket specialists, 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:56.399 including Werner von Braun, and the program got bigger and 0:17:56.520 --> 0:18:00.399 broader from there. As relations between the US and the 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:04.680 USSR devolved into the Cold War, the idea of keeping 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:08.240 the other side from getting access to German researchers and 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:12.159 technology became more and more important to both nations. The 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:15.480 United States started to see an eventual armed conflict with 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:20.880 the Soviet Union as inevitable advances in Soviet nuclear research 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:23.919 led to fears that the Soviets had been getting aid 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:27.080 from German scientists on this, although it later turned out 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:31.080 that they were really getting stolen American nuclear secrets. On 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:35.080 January third of nineteen forty six, the Mirk Report detailing 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:39.280 biological warfare research in Japan became public, and that led 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:43.320 for calls for more research into biological agents and their 0:18:43.400 --> 0:18:48.159 countermeasures in the United States, and that was yet another 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:52.960 specialty of these German researchers. In March of nineteen forty six, 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:57.320 Project Overcast expanded. It shifted from a limited number of 0:18:57.320 --> 0:19:01.760 people with temporary contracts working under military supervision to between 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.520 eight hundred and one thousand specialists who would be offered 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:08.760 long term residency in the US and even citizenship. Since 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:11.960 this was no longer intended as a temporary assignment, the 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:15.240 researcher's families would be permitted to enter the US permanently 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:20.560 as well. This was a whole process where Germany was 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:24.639 being denocified, like people with Nazi ties were being pulled 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.840 out of leadership positions in all of these different industries 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:30.400 and all of these different contexts, some of the same 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:32.520 people were being brought to the United States and offered 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:36.199 US citizenship. So by this point, some of the scientists' 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:38.880 families who were being housed at a camp in Germany 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:42.600 had started calling that camp Camp Overcast, and that prompted 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:46.720 this project's name change to Operation paper Clip or Project 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:50.040 paper Clip, depending on the source that you're looking at. 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:53.800 That name came from the paper clips that were used 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:58.120 to discreetly flag the files of candidates whose backgrounds were 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.439 potentially too damning for them to be allowed into the 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:05.800 United States. In August, Secretary of State Dean Atchison sent 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:09.560 a top secret memo to President Harry Truman requesting his 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.920 approval of the interim exploitation of German and Austrian specialists 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:18.359 under Project paper Clip. The document Truman approved included the 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:22.360 text of State War Navy Coordinating Committee Document two five 0:20:22.480 --> 0:20:26.119 seven Slash twenty two, which outlined a revised version for 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:29.359 the expanded paper clip program that had been launched in March. 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:31.040 This read, in. 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:34.320 Part quote, Persons proposed to be brought to the US 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:38.000 here under shall be screened by the Commanding General us 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:43.119 FET on the basis of available records. No person found 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:46.439 by the Commanding General us FET to have been a 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:49.760 member of the Nazi Party and more than a nominal 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:54.520 participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:58.680 or militarism, shall be brought to the US here under. However, 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:03.600 neither possidition or honors awarded a specialist under the Nazi 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:07.720 regime solely on account of his scientific or technical ability, 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:12.040 will in themselves be considered sufficient to disqualify a specialist 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:15.159 for evacuation to the US here Under. Where there is 0:21:15.280 --> 0:21:17.879 doubt as to the qualification of a specialist under the 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:22.440 preceding sentence, the Commanding General us FET may transport the 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:26.680 specialist to the US, where further interrogation and screening shall 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:30.400 be conducted immediately in order to determine such qualification. 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.439 Before October of nineteen forty six. The State Department had 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:38.520 been pre approving Project paper Clip candidates before they left Europe, 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:41.480 but after that point the process shifted so that the 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:45.520 Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner handled them. In the US. 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:50.520 This dropped the State Department preclearance requirement, which was required 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:54.840 by law in occupied Germany. The Office of Military Government 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:58.720 US kept security dossiers on all of the candidates, but 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:03.399 also withheld the most damaging information on many high profile candidates. 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:07.679 Documents that were declassified in the nineteen seventies and afterward 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:12.120 revealed that reports on individual candidates were revised to basically 0:22:12.160 --> 0:22:15.160 whitewash their backgrounds. Yes, some of these. 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:18.320 Revisions were really dramatic. That sort of went from, you know, 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:21.679 draft one, the first thing in somebody's file being like, 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:26.200 this person is a dangerous Nazi, and then later on 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:28.480 being like, ah, this person had no more than a 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:33.159 nominal involvement in the Nazi Party. So even though this 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:36.199 whole project had started with a lot of assurances that 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:39.840 it absolutely would not involve ardent Nazis, in the end, 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:44.040 paper Clippers included people who had worked directly with Adolf Hitler, 0:22:44.400 --> 0:22:48.480 Heinrich Himmler, and Hermann Gering. Some had been officers in 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:51.000 the Nazi Party or in the SS or the Essay. 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:55.800 Some stood trial at Nuremberg or faced other war crimes trials. 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:59.879 In some cases, people's backgrounds were so egregious that they 0:22:59.880 --> 0:23:02.800 were giving contracts to work for the US military, but 0:23:02.840 --> 0:23:05.720 they did that work while still living in Germany. But 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:09.200 in other cases, people with pretty similar backgrounds still made 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:10.479 their way to the US. 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:15.160 Of course, this whole program was classified. But just as 0:23:15.200 --> 0:23:19.240 this shift was happening from temporary contracts to American citizenship, 0:23:19.720 --> 0:23:22.200 the American public was becoming more aware of what was 0:23:22.240 --> 0:23:26.080 going on. This started thanks to news reports that originated 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:31.360 from Russian language newspapers being printed in Germany. Soon publications 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:34.280 like The New York Times and Newsweek were reporting on 0:23:34.359 --> 0:23:38.040 German researchers, some of them Nazis, being brought to the 0:23:38.160 --> 0:23:39.960 US and offered citizenship. 0:23:40.760 --> 0:23:43.240 The War Department tried to respond to all this with 0:23:43.320 --> 0:23:47.840 its own favorable propaganda about the program. It's the whole 0:23:47.920 --> 0:23:51.040 idea of like, no, we're only bringing the good Germans here, 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:56.640 like interviews with hand picked scientists who were doing relatively 0:23:56.760 --> 0:24:00.960 neutral and wholesome seeming work. Of course, course this all 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:04.400 had to totally sidestep the fact that many paper clippers 0:24:04.560 --> 0:24:08.000 had been Nazis, and even if they had not been ardent, 0:24:08.520 --> 0:24:11.560 their work during the war had still contributed to, or 0:24:11.600 --> 0:24:15.199 at the absolute very least, been complicit in the German 0:24:15.280 --> 0:24:18.240 war effort. This work had been involved in the deaths 0:24:18.240 --> 0:24:22.960 of Allied personnel and the widespread atrocities of the Holocaust. 0:24:23.520 --> 0:24:26.400 There had been critics of this program within the government 0:24:26.480 --> 0:24:30.639 and the military from the beginning. For example, Samuel Klaus 0:24:30.720 --> 0:24:32.800 was an attorney with the State Department and had been 0:24:32.880 --> 0:24:36.640 chosen to represent the State Department with Joah. He had 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:40.320 argued strongly against the program since he first became involved, 0:24:40.359 --> 0:24:43.119 pointing out that the United States was giving Nazis the 0:24:43.240 --> 0:24:47.560 chance for American citizenship while denying that chance to refugees 0:24:47.600 --> 0:24:50.919 and displaced persons who had been persecuted and harmed by 0:24:50.920 --> 0:24:54.520 the Nazi regime. Thanks in part to Klaus's role, the 0:24:54.560 --> 0:24:58.440 relationship between the State Department and the military became incredibly 0:24:58.560 --> 0:25:02.240 adversarial during this program, and he wound up being targeted 0:25:02.320 --> 0:25:06.199 during the Red Scare. Yeah, he made a lot of 0:25:06.200 --> 0:25:09.119 incredibly strident criticisms of all of this. He was eventually 0:25:09.160 --> 0:25:13.919 moved off the project. Aside from his well argued criticisms 0:25:13.920 --> 0:25:15.720 of all of us, he apparently was also kind of 0:25:16.119 --> 0:25:18.160 a tricky person to work with and rubbed a lot 0:25:18.160 --> 0:25:20.800 of people the wrong way in this and many other contexts, 0:25:20.840 --> 0:25:26.240 so he seems like kind of a tangle. After these reports, though, 0:25:26.400 --> 0:25:29.480 there was a lot of vocal criticism of this program 0:25:29.520 --> 0:25:33.640 from the public as well. On December thirtieth, nineteen forty six, 0:25:33.760 --> 0:25:37.159 the Council Against Intolerance in America sent a telegram to 0:25:37.240 --> 0:25:41.520