Project Paperclip

Editor's Note: The fact that Project Paperclip existed is a matter of public record.

A movie was made (sort of) about this, starring Kelly McGillis and Jeff Daniels, called The House on Carroll Street. It conflated McCarthyism and Nazi relocation, but ah well.

Werner von Braun and his staff and colleagues were Paperclip visa recipients. They went on to build the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs for NASA as well as much of the ICBM tech that went with those. The only real grey area seems to be whether or not any of these scientists avoided trials at Nuremberg by being part of Paperclip. It's unlikely the rocketry crew would have been charged, as many of them were essentially prisoners, and all had essentially worked as researchers and engineers. While slave labor was used to assemble finished products based on their designs (as well as prototypes), those laborers were under the direction of the Wermacht and SS, just as the scientists were.

When the allies and the Soviets were closing in on Germany, the SS attempted to destroy the work of the rocket scientists and disperse them so as to prevent either opposing nation from capturing them and their work. However, fortunately for the U.S., the local SS idea of 'destruction' was to toss all papers, notes, and other materials down a deep mine shaft near the rocketry center at Peenemunde. The scientists, captured by the U.S., assisted in the recovery of these materials in exchange for their relocation and protection. Their first job for the U.S. was sorting and reconstructing all of this work; that task was the official reason for (and end result of) Project Paperclip. The name was chosen to represent the work - re-sorting and compiling scattered materials recovered from around Germany.

After World War II the United States tried to find German scientists who had been involved in "psychological warfare" and rocketry development areas to take advantage of their past researchs. However the US agents couldn't find them because they had already scattered out to various places like USSR, Italy and South America. Then the CIA convinced Congress to perform a legal means of importing these people into the US and introducing them into its military industrial complex, including colleges and universities.

Thus arose the Project Paperclip, as a government sanctioned CIA procedure that was approved by Congress in 1946.

Such a project, at its formal definition, was nothing more than a transport operation. In such a concern, the airline Capital International Airways (C.I.A.) was created to be a large contributor to this. The company brought into the United States nearly 800 psychiatrists and engineers that were actively engaged in mind control, behaviour research, and military rocketry applications.

In 1947, to put an end to the scandal and controversy that ensued, President Truman told the Congress that he had made a mistake signing this project into law, " because no person that was a part of the NAZI party could be brought into this country. " In such a way, it was established the National Security Act which took over the rules on matters of foreign and military policies.

Many of the "immigrants", however, have been working in the US space program and Propaganda Department of Defense. It is well known that Wernher von Braun was put out front, as the pretty boy in charge of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.