"Cocktails with the CIA, Episode 8: Operation Paperclip" tells the story of the government operation designed to bring former Nazi scientists and doctors into the U.S. to help give us an advantage over the Soviet Union in terms of military capability and space exploration. Many had committed hideous medical experiments at Dacau and Auschwitz, but their history was whitewashed and they were saved from prosecution.

1. Cocktails With the
CIA
A Production of #BecomeUngovernable
Episode 8: Operation Paperclip

2. Operation Paperclip
● Secret U.S. Joint Intelligence Objectives
Agency (JIOA) program
● More than 1,600 German scientists,
engineers, and technicians brought to U.S.
● Many formerly registered with Nazi party
● Some had leadership roles
● Werner von Braun's rocket team

3. Operation Paperclip
● U.S. to gain a military advantage in Cold
War
● Advantage in the Space Race (later)
● Joint Chiefs established first program called
Operation Overcast
● In 1945, renamed Operation Paperclip
● Soviets more aggressive recruiting than us

4. Operation Paperclip
A group of 104 rocket scientists (aerospace engineers) at
Fort Bliss, Texas

5. Operation Paperclip

6. Operation Paperclip
● Targeted German rocket scientists working
on “V” weapons
– V-1 flying bomb, V-2 rocket, Messerschmitt
Me 262 Schwalbe
● First German scientists moved to the United
States on November 18, 1945
● Doctors, scientists in other fields of
research, such as brainwashing and torture

7. Operation Paperclip
● War criminals who conducted medical
atrocities on concentration camp inmates
● Backgrounds whitewashed, spared
prosecution at Nuremberg
● By 1955 more than 760 German scientists
had been granted U.S. citizenship
● Architects of the CIA's darkest experiments

8. Operation Paperclip
● Werner Von Braun
● Developed the lethal V-2 rocket
● Ft. Bliss, Texas and White
Sands Proving Ground, NM
● Assist Army with rocket
experimentation
● Later director of NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center
● Chief architect of Saturn V
launch vehicle

9. Operation Paperclip
● Dr. Friedrich “Fritz” Hoffman
– Initially recruited by the British under
Operation Matchbox
– Develop synthesized poison gases at
Porton Down
– Did not like UK; did not get along
– Initially posted at Camp Detrick and
Edgewood Arsenal

10. Operation Paperclip
● Dr. Herbert Bruno Gerstner
– M.D. Anderson Hospital for Cancer
Research in 1953
– Research in Nazi Germany made him a
perfect fit for the Air Force and CIA
objectives
– How many flights a pilot of a nuclear aircraft
could make without harmful radiation
exposure

11. Operation Paperclip
– How to treat radiation and chemical burns
on the skin
– Gerstner's Texas patients had no idea he
was doing them harm
– They were being administered an extreme
amount of X-ray dosages that would kill
them
– Constant vomiting, dehydration, skin
lesions, rapid weight loss

12. Operation Paperclip
● A World War II era postcard (left) showing Long Island Head,
Long Island Light, the keeper's house, Fort Strong and
associated buildings
● On the right is a diagram of Fort Strong

13. Operation Paperclip
● Smuggled scientists to Fort Strong, an old
Civil War fort a few miles from Boston
● Questioned about their work, what they
knew and what they could do for the U.S.
● Henry Kolm, 21-year-old Army intelligence
officer
● Former Nazi prisoner interrogator sent to
Boston to set up operation

14. Operation Paperclip
● Flown to Squantum, ferried to Fort Strong
under cover
● Met Germans at Nixes Mate, the smallest of
the harbor islands
● Assignment was to repackage von Braun
and his fellow engineers as “Americans”

15. Operation Paperclip
● Other programs under Operation
Paperclip
– Project CHATTER (1947)
– Project BLUEBIRD (1950)
● Renamed Project ARTICHOKE (1951)
● Project ARTICHOKE became Project
MKUltra in 1953 (Ep. 7: “Cocktails With the CIA”)
– Drugs, mind control, torture, brainwashing

16. Operation Paperclip

17. Operation Paperclip