And operation paperclip the secret Intelligence Program that brought nazi scientists to america the scientist that came from world war ii. And then a discussion on the pope francis and musjerks luni and then the monuments men. And now, operation paperclip the secret Intelligence Program that brought nazi scientists to america and the author annie jacobsen. The Program Brought scientist to the United States despite the fact they were accused of war crimes. This is 55 minutes. Good evening, everybodyism i am annie jacobsen. And i want to thank book passage for having me. It is delightful for being here. There is nothing that makes this author happier than meeting readers. Tonight im going to talk about operation paperclip and tell you how i got interested in and then where will end with what i think are interesting ways the story is reported. To start with, my book, these gentlemen are 21 of approximately 1600 german scientist who came to america to work for the United States military and intelligence agencies after the war. I found these men to be particularly unique and nefarious on varying degrees. I think it is important to also realize that whenever you are reporting a story like this it is about riding on the heels of many people before us. I bring lots of new information to the table but academics have been involved in unearthing this story over the decades. Now there is a light cast on operation paperclip that has n been shown before. The story began when i was reporting this book area 51 i came across these two nazi aircraft designs named walter and warner hoyton. You can see hitlers weapons were interesting to the allies during the war and immediately after. I found out when i was researching the horton brothers he had a boss. And when we was working for Herman Goring and there he is with hitler and the german airforce. But in between the horton brothers and the other was this guy. And this is colonel sigfred and during the war he was one of the top10 pilots and flew over norway to decide the best places to bomb. He was also an incredible engineer and as he rose up through the ranks he got the attention of goring who made him chief of all technical and engineering developments. Goring felt that he was so important to him he called him my boy. Now i found out when i was researching this that he came to the United States and worked under this program which at the time i didnt know anything u t about it. I thought about how do you go from having goring as a boss to the pentagon. And not only that, when he retired in the middle 1970s, he was given the civilian award which is the highest award the department of defense can give to a nonuniformed person. So operation paperclip. To under about this you must go back to the fall of 1944. It was a very dark time. This is a map from the rise and fall of the third reich. You have seen we are in normandy and pushing toward munich and berlin. And among the soldiers with science with the military. They are part of an operation that is trying to find what they called abc weapons. Atomic, bilogical and chemical weapons. The real threat was atomic weapons. But the head of the opraieratio was a particle physics and he learned in november of 1944 that the Atomic Program was nothing we thought it was. And the reason was because as hitler told his minister of armarm armor that atomic science is jewish science so lets not focus on that. I am paraphrasing that. But you get the idea. Hitler was interested in chemical and biological weapons. And he learned they were practice this and it was the first time it was known. This man was came across in the letter and this is curt bloma. It is difficult to image became part of operation paperclip. Also in this documents that he came across was dr. Walter shriber who also became part of this operation and landed in texas. Scriber was in charge of vaccines and create a bubonic plaegue. To do this we was working with c c concentration inmates. We have him and hitler here in paris. And this is goring who is the head here of all science for the third reich under an Umbrella Program called the third Reich Research triangle. And hinler here who is the head of the ss. But he is also in charge of this vast network of statesponsored slavery when has been reinstituted and the slaves are used to build weapons for third reich. At the same time it becomes apparent that the third reich is crumbling. So stashed begin to happen. This have a very famous paragraph of a huge trove of money that was found in a cave but also across the third reich was military Intelligence Officers began stashing weaponry and more importantly documents related to how the weapons are built. So suddenly they are on the move and looking for weapons, documents and scientist. This tunnel is an example of a slave labor facility that the slaves that he was shipping off to the weaponry departments. This is nord housing and this is important to the rocket organization as this is where the rockets are being train. Inside the cave, entire trains could go in and as i write in the books rocket parts would go in and full rockets and bodies would come out because the labors were worked to death. The scientist are rounded up and sent here to castle crand berg. The war is at its its end so it is tmay 1945. When i went through germany and went through the archives i was fascinated reading the original transcripts of the science and these show in a subtle way how the program began. You have these military Intelligence Officers learning about hitlars biological weapons programs we didnt go about and interviewing and scientist and trying to find out what we know. But you see decisions being made should this scientist be hanged or should this scientist be hired . This is castle cran burg. You had carl brant here, hitlers physicians and leading gymnastics. Some of the scientist gave lectures and they are going in and out of these rooms and being interrogated by Different Military officers. Underneath the castle, and this was one of gorings Head Quarters during the war and now we are in charge of it. Under the castle, there was this bunker which is where hitler planned to go with his inner circle in the event the third reich made the decision to use nerve agents. And why that never agent was never used remains a great mystery of the war. We, allied intelligence, discovered these bunkers filled with bombs that contained serin gas but never gave the order. But we had a bunker so in case he did the order they would go there. So it was irony this is where the scientist went that developed the nerve agents. You have Something Else going on meanwhile which is the rockets. These officers there are realizing the incredible breath and scope of the v2 rockets that were there. They had orders to gather a hundred of the rockets and bring them back to the United States so they could be launched out in new mexico. But then suddenly they come across not only the rockets but the scientist. And this is von bron after he surrendered and he knew how important he would be to allied intelligence. And general dorm burger is let out but he became an american hero. He like today wear that coat because the boss war that. He recruited for the pentagon. He had a top secret clearance in the middle 50s and he was a favorite in the washington inner circle. When i started reporting the program this was the only photographs of the Rocket Scientist i could find. And then there you have so you can get an idea of how quickly the rockets and skins scientist came over. That is an actually v2 rocket carrying albert the first monkey and he didnt survive. Back to the gas, this is one of the more nefarious elements of operati operation paperclip. He was hitlerss chemist and invented the serin gas and also synthetic rubber because tanks need tread, aircraft needs wheels. And the synthetic rubber produced was so important to here he awarded him a 1 million third reichs bonus. A document i found in the archives that was never wrirtte. That is how important ambros was. Here is a satellite photo from 1944 in june. And you have the gas chambers down there and down into the lower corner you have a slave labor facility run by the Chemical Companies that were making synthetic rubber and ambros who became part of paperclip was in charge of that facili facility. In all of the paragraphs i came across and we know the horrific ones of the bodies but nothing disturbed me more than this photograph that says companies Sporting Club ig up top. And those are two of auto ambros fencing after what they thought was a long day. But as i learned from colleagues who gave me the permission to p p publish this was that this is wellwon within the view of the chimneys. The first highranking member of hitlers circle speaks of atrocities here and mass sterilization of jews. He is a key player in the story because he is the first that cooperated. At the same time you have colonel Harry Armstrong who is a top physician for what was then called the Army Airforces and later the u. S. Airforce. Arm strong was an on a mission in berlin looking for nazi doctors. He called them german physicians. And for many years the idea, the fiction was they were german physicians. But really i and others before me have put together the very clear picture of what most of these men were doing during the war. You see them here. This photograph has never been printed before. This is 34 of the top leading physicians that worked inside days after the war ended because of the Army Airforces knew to bring the men to the United States quickly would never fly. So they had them working there in heidelberg. Later, 34 of them would join Harry Armstrong at a facility in texas. Hubertus strughold, the father of space medicine, we will get to more about him in a moment. But in the meantime, as the doctors i showed you the paragraph of were working at heidelberg another arm of military intelligence came knocking and they had information that six of these doctors were wanted for war crimes so six of them went off and these three were part of the pap paperclip some before and some after. This is doctor theodore benzer and when i first read about him it was his obitry and it talked about his career for the navy. It talked about how he invented the ear thermomter. But it never mentioned his war time work. I found documents showing he was on the original list of criminals that were going to be tried at the doctors trial. But he was released two weeks before the trial, turned over to the United States forces and brought to america. That is the doctor nazi trials. You see in the middle that man was acquitted and later worked for paperclip. And one of the only surviving witnesses to what went on in the camps. Amazing story in the book. Very dramatic. It is amazing how these little nugg nuggets were lost. I discovered they were trying to test how long someone could survive in the ocean and how much sea water you could drink. They were similating test but he was so angry he had a dagger hidden in his pocket and he leapt off the stand and tried to stab the other doctor. The tragedy is the american judge that believes we were there to show how democracy works. Put him in the prison with the doctors who had done this to him. Dr. Hubertus strughold became the father of space medicine and there he is with a library that was named after him which was ultimately taken down. The program went all the way to the pentagon and when i would read over the documents it fascinating that you can see the details to the joint chief and it was pained that the individuals were brought here to work on the weapon programs. But it was shocking some of the generals didnt feel that way at all. They respected and admired some of the nazi scientist and i was surprised to find general lukes who was in charge of the chemical core. It is very important that one has documents to back this up. The nerve Agent Program is classified but i went to the u. S. History institute in pennsylvania to look at general lukes papers and i found these personal diaries he wrote and i tell much of the story and report in paperclip. Here is a party. It was in the papers i discovered that scheiber was so close to hemler he was on his personal staff. And he wore, you can see that button there, that is actually a party badge. And that was given out by hitler to his group. He was friendly with general luke and the two men exchanged christmas cards for year and they are in the institute in pennsylvania as well. These are photographs that you cannot reprint but i am happy to show him. They they r shaking hands with hitler. That is general lukes diary. And i will end here with a little bit about reporting a story which i think is interesting and bringing new information to the table because so much of this has been gradually written about in bits and pieces but when you come across Something Like these diaries it is incredible. I believe more gets reveal and if you look and look you will find if you are willing to keep looking. These are lukes journals and here is this classified program so classified it is still classified and yet you have general lukes that human in all of us that wants to write in our journal, attended conference with dr. Scheiber. It was this inferential and this kind of information that i am usually able to piece together the most interesting part of my stories because as a journalist once you have a bit of information you can go to the powers that be that are telling you no, no, no there is no information and you can kick the door in and discover documents my filing freedom of information act requests based on facts that are known and very importantly dates as you see in the journal. And from that i was able to locate this document which is pretty much the highest ranking war criminals that worked with hitlers nerve Agent Program and that was the list that general luke had at his home an the afternoons on the weekend at a round table and they would learn the secrets of the serin gas program and allow the United States to build up their program. If anyone is reading about syrias chemical weapons we know the ones being dismantled are this type of gas. So this is a long legacy. I was able to work with some of the children of hitlers inner circle by interviewing them in berlin. Very brave individuals who as they are getting older, 70s and 80s, some of them were remarkablely transparent and shared their parents personal papers and that allowed me to bring interesting things to the table that i dont think have been reported before and photographs as well. This is scheiber by the way. By 1952, he was working for the cia. Some of the war criminals were sent to war prisons. Some were hung. Those are the unmarked graves. Ultimately the cold war was getting hot and john mccoy with truman became high commissioner of germany and gave clemanceancy to the majority of war criminals and they were released. Here is hitlers favor chemist. He was convicted of mass murder and slavery. He was released and also his finances were fully restored as well. This is the worlds, what i would call the cias first black sight. After the war, the cia, well actually in 1947, after the cia teamed up with naval and army and Airforce Intelligence and used chemist and chemistry that was developed by the nazi and began enhanced interrogation techniques using lsd on what was soviet black prisoner because this was the cold war. The two physicians at the fill facility were the doctors. Shriber went to texas and that is a long and tangled tail tale the cold war was heating up and this was the threat. The threat was the soviets, who by the way had their own german Scientist Program but unlike our program that put them on p pedstools and made them the top guard. The soviets loathed them and their scientist were kept at a second tier and squeezed of the information and sent back to germany by the russians and the then cia stepped in and tried to grab them so they could learn about the soviets program but they didnt learn anything because the soviets didnt share the top tier of information. We moved forward with our biological weapon program. This is the eight ball and where we tested our bubonic weapons and our serin gas weapons. And von bron was the head and hero of the nasa space program. Arthur rudolph father of the saturn rocket. I write about his story and it is just remarkable how he went from a guy without a College Education running the slave labor tunnels to being father of the saturn rocket in the United States. He is one of the few paperclips that was investigated. In the 80s, the department of justice got information and it is funny the department of justice would have to get information declassified but they did. They were able to see his complicity in war crimes and gave him an option that he could stand trial in the United States as an old man and this was in the mid 80s or return to germany. He chose to return to germany. And lastly is kurt debus who with the dueling scars alone make him line sinister. Many people view him as an american hero. I found out a different story researching his documents. One of the myths of the german scientist was they were just trying do science and stay out of the nazi party who was a big bad wolf but you find out about kurt debus that he turned his superior, another scientist, over for making antihitler remarks. You could see one part of Army Intelligence telling the pentagon we cannot bring this guy to the United States. He was a nazi and turned a colleague over and this was a u bad act but then the pentagon says we need him. And he came. There he is as the first director of the jfk space center and still every year they give out the kurt debus award. And i interviewed the head and said what about kurt debus who wore the ss uniform to work and turned over a colleague and he was a nazi . What do you say to that . And the answer was no one has ever asked me that question before. So, i would like to end with the idea that einstein had it right in my opinion. He left german prior to hitlers armament buildup and maintains the reason he left as a scientist was because he wasnt going to work for a raw and r rabid nazi militia. He is one of the people with power that petitioned truman not to let operation paperclip happen but to no avail. And my last picture is this. This is an old german proverb that says everyone gets what they deserve. When i was writing and reporting this book i would ask myself does everyone get what they deserve. I hope if you chose to read operation paperclip you will come to your own conclusion. Thong thank you very much. So i have time for questions. Yes . In your research, beyond the lsd stuff, did you come across anything about the techniques used to split peoples personality . Did you find anything about that coming out of research that was started in the death camps . Well, i dont know about splitti splitti splitti splitti splitti splitti splitting personality but i know where the code name began. Operation blue bird was one and one was artichoke. And they began that scenario that i spoke of during the presentation and i write about it in the book as well. Yes . What were the theories why the nerve gas was never used . I know you said you had questions. What were the theories . And to bring these people out were any vatican passports used . The first question i would say the prevailing theory is when hitler was a soldier in world war i he missed the end of the war because he was mustered gas he he had a deep eversion to chemical weapons. But the nazis produced tens of thousands of tons of nerve agent. There were so many individuals under the command that wanted to use those nerve agents it is nothing short of a miracle wasnt used. Your second question was . Were vatican passports used . Unfortunately for operation paperclip there was no need to do that because the nazi scientist who came to america were given american visas and later became u. S. Citizens. Yes in the back . I have a real mixture of feelings. I am feeling sick but cant wait to get my hands on your book. I was living in germany and i was there during the bombing of the v2 operation. My father worked for bron. After the war in 1950, my mother was a cic agent before becoming the cia to identify nazi. We left munich in 1950. And my father, well it was my stepfather went back and forth to geneva because he was a scientist that americans or russians were vying for. And there are questions that i have. We left germany in 19501951. He decided to go to syria instead with ten other Rocket Scientists. I have never understood. I was ten years at the time. We left with arabic passports. When they came to check them, i had tlook to look out the window. My question is there is so much i dont know because as a child you live with it. An American Ambassador helped us leave damascus. We came to the United States and he started working for lockede. And another scientist worked for aero jet for 40 years and was instrumental in developing the biking cycle this is facscinatinfascinati. Maybe you can stay and speak with me. Did you have a question . How did the other german scientist why did they use the arabic passports . Come talk to me after wards. The middle east part is we can chat after this. Did you find information about plum island and what happened there about genetically modified organisms and lyme disease. A chemist was in charge of setting up plum island. And a doctor was in charge of of weaponizing the reminder pass and another disease for the third reich. And doctors are associated with plum island there. There is a lot of suggestion that he also setup plum island and worked there. But i could find no official documents that made that connection sound. But it certainly is reasonable speculation. Good question. 6667 there were people in this country who were trying to confront the Justice Department to say we had a lot of nazi war criminals and find them and put them on trial or deport them to a jurisdiction where they should be put on trial and dealt with. And the Justice Department always said we dont have any nazi war criminals in this country and you people who are asking the questions are leftist and communist. But they had an office to address this but couldnt find any. Did you come across any research . That is a great question you bring up. A number of individuals in the state department because they were an important part of operation paperclip because they had to give the visas. And samual klaus was outraged by this but he was moved out of the state department. The reason that Arthur Rudolph was investigated by there Justice Department is that low and behold during the 60s and 70s, organizes would muck rack and try to get the Justice Department to look into this. They did and a special unit was created only in 1980 that looked at these war criminals. Did the nazi skins scientist brought here, how did they justify that they were working for mankind and not killing it as a scientist and did they show remorse for what had been done . That is a great question. The first part is no. Remember, there was mostly even a sliver of accountability on the part of the scientist. They also denide denied they were part of it. Very quickly it became what they did not me. And that was always the position. Always. Always. And as far as remorse is concerned there was only one nazi physician out of all of the scientist i looked at who showed any remorse and that was a doctor named dr. Fritz fischer and after the trials and he heard a gruesome bit of testimony by survivors he turned to one of the Intelligence Officers dr. Alexander who is one of the heroes of the book and said just hang me now. But that was it. Two quick questions. Or you can say as long as you want. First is another notorious person from world war ii who was involved in experiments but not part of these people was mangala and now there is moral issues about using his experiment. Does your book touch on that . Only in area 51. I didnt come across any information on him. The question you raise about the information used is extremely important. There is a twopart u. S. Airforce manual that is very difficult to get your hands on that actually used data from the camps and you see the credits and the footnotes go to the doctors that i showed you the photograph of. Dr. Becker was sending notes to dr. Strughold for that u. S. Manual from his prison cell. The other question was leaving the responsibility of the nazi who we brought over and coming to the americans who made it happen lets go to the top. Anything you found about trumans awareness approval . Truman approved the president. I am sorry if i left that out. This is president s day. This was a classified military program but it had a benign public faith. They knew if you had 1600 german scientist returning around someone would figure it out. So they propagated the myth. Was truman in on the myth . I dont believe trumann had actually access to the documentsidocument documents. They would not have asked to know and they approved the program as it was sold to them from my understanding. Way in the back. This is fascinating. And important. And had i not stumbled upon the blurb in the book passage calendar i would never had known about this any of this. So my question to you is in the broader context of the short Attention Span circus that we call the media, mainstream media, what has been your experience in trying to get the word out about this . The book just published six days ago and it is doing remarkably well considering the story is 69 years old. I give credit to my fellow readers who i think we are an interesting educated bunch of people in america and really want to read and find out about things. It is why i write books that are secret but find readers which i think it is remarkable. Is there any significance to the name that the operation was given . Great question. We have the classified program. We have the benign public faith and the same thing in germany where these Intelligence Officers are tasked with interviewing the scientist and trying to find out about them. It needed to be kept secret and it being the dark hearted parts of some of the scientist past chat chat. So a system was devised where paperclip would be placed to indicate this is an important file that someone needs to look at and that individual was someone who was pro the program. I will take one more in the way back. Maybe you said it and i missed it. But was this a program have a particular purpose or was it just collecting random, important german scientist and doctors . What were the major objectives . And was there one person that put to together. You mentioned general lukes. Purpose and who organized it. Well, you know, the nazis almost won the war. There was a point where their weaponry was so much further along than ours was. They called it wonder weapons. And there was this idea that you know, suddenly dawned on the u. S. Military we are behind the curve here. As the war was ending, that is why the push came about and we have to grab this science and we need it for or own weaponry. I think one of the most interesting conclusions was that the cold war really began in the last months of world war ii. Did you find anything that comes forward to today . Like scientist that are now at monsanto creating genetically modified organisms or flouride. I have hundreds of asking about this. It came in the water but it came from the nazi scientist. Fascinating question. The nazi Scientist Program was eventually rolled up into another element of the department of defense which is the office of research and engineering. And that became the Defense Advanced Research project agency which is the subject of my next book. Shameless plug. You said early on that the russians returned their scientist back to germany again. Was there a reason for nat that . They could not stand the german scientist. That is a very interesting questions. They sent them back to germany and we had a program, the cias program was called operational dragon return. And we scooped up anyone who had been in the soviet union working on their weapon programs and used them as intelligence assets. It is true that alan daws was the front man and ryan heart gayland was setting up the cia . Great question. I write about gayland at length. He was at camp king and was the head of hitlers soviet Intelligence Program on you know the soviet unions Intelligence Program. And he became a major player in this sadly. He wasnt part of paperclip but was at camp king with his team of ss officers and foreign intelligence agents. They were run by the Army Intelligence and the cia took them over later. So mk ultra, the soviet blocked spies who were tossed into the slammer at camp king and subjects to those enhanced interrogation programs were caught in gaylands web. Would you care to talk about what impact this new information might have based on questions and where you think it may lead . That is interesting. I believe more is getting revealed and i think when people are interesteded it creates a bigger web of information. And so hopefully my reporting, because it is just the tip of the iceberg one of the things i mentioned, i think earlier today on a radio show was how m ambros, hitlers favorite criminal came to the United States on a n Energy Contract ad three times in the United States. I could not get nfrinformation his program and as i wrote in the book neither could ronald reagan. I thought he is a convicted nazi criminal and i requested a freedom of action request about this travellars and who he was being sponsored by and that information was lost or classified. It probably isnt. Yk i could not figure it out but i bet a curious future journalist will. Thank you. If you have a book come up and if you would like to purchase one they are behind the register. [inaudible conversations] tomorrow night on cspan 2. Booktv looks at the conservative idea. And author of 11 principles of a reagan conservative and then amy bind on becoming right and michael kimages book the conservative turn. Tomorrow night beginning at 8 eastern on cspan 2. Now we examine the relationship between pope pius 11. The pope is found in his office. He is ailing and elderly. He is in firm. He begs god to give him a few more days to live. He has something he needs to say and has realized he has very little time left on the earth. For years the pope had been in good health, known as the robust mountaineer pope who climbed many high alpine peaks. He was known as demanding while scholarly and devout. He insisted on knowing every detail of everything going on in the vatican and making all the decisions. But now every day was a challenge and every step caused him pain. He was unable to sleep at night. He had terrible varicose veins and as he lay awake at night he was troubled most of all not so much by his pains, his aches and pains by the thought that something had gone terribly wrong. In the daytime in his office light would stream in through the three large windows that looked out on st. Peters Square Button out was evening so he sat at his desk with a yellow lamp, alike from his lamp on his desk and would carefully write in his hand, trembling hand on the sheets of paper. The pope had summoned all the bishops of italy. There were over 300 bishops in italy to st. Peters for an occasion that was to take place in 10 days time on february 11. Several of and 1939 would be the tenth anniversary. This was the historic agreement between the Italian Government in this case between mussolini and the fascist regime and the vatican which established the city as a sovereign city and did away with the separation of church and state in italyan