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 unif