Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion 20140308

All this and much more on booktv on cspan2 this weekend. For the full schedule, visit booktv. Org. Annie jacobsen is next on booktv. The author recounts the u. S. Governments clandestine program to employ german scientists following world war ii. The program, dubbed operation paper clip, brought several scientists and their families to the United States despite the fact many were accused of war crimes. This is a little under an hour. [applause] thank you so much. Good evening, everybody. I am annie jacobsen. I want to thank book passage for having me. Of its really delightful to be here, and thank you all so much for coming. Theres nothing that makes this author happier than meeting readers, so thank you. Tonight im going to be talking about operation paperclip, and im going to tell you a little bit about what the program was, a little bit about how i became interested in writing and researching and reporting operation paperclip, and then im going end by telling you some very what i think are interesting ways in which the story gets reported. So to start with, my book, operation paperclip, these gentlemen are 31 of approximately 21 of approximately 1600 german scientists who came to america to work for the u. S. Military and intelligence agencies after the war. I focus on these men because i found them to be particularly unique and interesting and somewhat nefarious on varying degrees. And i think its important to also realize that whenever youre reporting a story like this, its about riding on the heels of many important journalists and historians who have come before. So while i do bring lots of new information to the table, academics also have been involved in unearthing this story over the decades. But i think now theres really a light cast on operation paperclip that ahas not been shown before. The story for me began when i was reporting this book, area 51. And when i was working on that, i came across these two nazi aircraft designers named walter and rymar horton. And they were working on this aircraft which looks a lot like the b2 bomber. Hitlers weapons were very interesting to the allies during the war and immediately after. I found out when i was researching the horton brothers that he had a boss, and when he was at the lift waf that, he worked for herman gor goering. But in between them was this guy. And this is zig freed colonel cig field knemeyer, and he was one of the top ten pilots. He flew on spy missions over norway to decide which was the best places to bomb, and he was also an incredibly talented engineer. So as he rose up through the ranks, he caught the attention of goering who made him chief of all technical and engineering development. And goering felt that knemeyer was so important to him that he called him my boy. Now, i found out when i was researching knemeyer that he came to the United States and worked under this program which i at the time did not know anything about was called operation paperclip. And i thought to myself, how does this work . How do you go from having goering as a boss to having the pentagon as a boss . [laughter] and not only that, when knemeyer retired in the middle 1970s, he was given the distinguished civilian Service Award which is the highest award that the department of defense can give to a nonuniformed person. So operation paperclip, to understand you really must go back to the fall of 1944. And it was a very dark time. This is a map from william shirers rise and fall of the third reich. And you see that we have landed at normandy, and were pushing toward munich and before lin. And among the soldiers and berlin. And among the soldiers are scientists with the u. S. Military. And theyre part of a secret mugs. And the mission is to find what they called abc webs, atomic, biological and chemical weapons. And the real threat at the time was atomic weapons. But very quickly the head of the operation who was a particle physicist, he learned sitting in an abandoned apartment of one of the scientists in strasbourg, france in november of 1944 that the Atomic Program was nothing that we thought it was. And the reason was because, as hitler told his minister of armaments, atomic science is jewish science, so lets not concentrate on that. Im paraphrasing him, but you get the idea. But hitler was very interested in chemical weapons and biological weapons. And what samuel learned in that apartment was that the reich was experimenting with these weapons on humans that had been culled from concentration camps. And this was the first time that this information became available to American Military intelligence. The Mission Director came across this man in a letter, and this is dr. Kurt bloma, he was the Deputy Surgeon director of the third reich. Its very difficult to imagine that he later became part of operation paperclip, and certainly at the time that samuel found out this information, he probably would have never believed that and later he actually wrote in his memoirs that he could not believe that. Also in those documents that samuel came across was dr. Walter schreiber, Surgeon General of the third reich. Also later became part of paperclip and would wind up living in texas. Dr. Schreiber was in charge of Vaccine Program for the reich. So while blom was heading up the biological weapons division, the reich was trying to create abu bionic plague a bubonic plague weapon. But at the same time, the reich knew they needed to create a vaccine against such a weapon because were they to unleash this on the allied forces, their own soldiers would be, you know, subject to this kind of biological agent if they didnt have a vaccine. So schreiber here was in charge of the Vaccine Program, and to do that he was working with concentration camp inmates. So here we have with this man and hiltler in paris hitler in paris and this is goering, he was head of the Reich Research council. And the third part of this triangle which plays into operation paperclick is heinrich himmler, and here you see himmler whos the head of the ss, but hes also many charge of this vast network of statesponsored slavery which has been reinstituted. And the slaves are used to build weapons for the reich. Tame, it at the same time, it becomes apparent that the third reich is crumbling. And so stashes begin to happen. And these are, this is a very famous photograph of a huge trove of money that was found in a cave. But also across the third reich military Intelligence Officers begin stashing weaponry and, more importantly, documents related to how those weapons are built. So suddenly theyre look for weapons, theyre looking for documents, and theyre looking for scientists. Be you see this lit if you see this little innocuouslooking tunnel up there, thats an example of one of the slave labor facilities that the slaves that himmler was organizing and shipping off to the various scientific and weaponry departments, this up here is nordhawzen, and this is where the v2 rockets are being built. And you see here on the bottom, this is inside of that cave. Entire trains could go in, and they as i write in the book rocket parts would go in, and full rockets and bodies would come out because the laborers were worked to county. To death. So the scientists are rounded up, and theyre sent here to castle cranburg. Now the war is at its end, so were now moving into may of 1945, and the military is in charge of this castle, and its called dust have bin as a dust bin as a mix name. And the scientists are set up there, and they begin to be interrogated. And when i went to germany and went through a lot of the different archives, i was fascinated reading some of the original transcripts of these scientists, and these are sort of 70page documents which show in a very subtle way how this program began. So you have these mill tower Intelligence Officers military Intelligence Officers learning about hitlers nerve Agent Programs that we did not know about, learning about hitlers biological weapons programs that we did not know about, interviewing the scientists and is trying to find out all that we can. But also you see decisions being made, and that real decision comes down to this should this scientist be hanged, or should this sign tuft be hired . Scientist be hired . This here is castle cranburg. It was very interesting, the scientists were all Walking Around here. You had spear out in the garden Walking Around to himself, you had karl brant leading gymnastics. Some of the scientists would give lectures, and all the while theyre going in and out of these little rooms and being interrogated by these different more than military officers American Military officers. Underneath the castle and, remember, this was one of goerings headquarters during the war, now were in charge of it and under the castle there was this bunker which was where hitler planned to go with his inner circle in the event that the reich made the decision to use nerve agents, to use serin gas which plays an Important Role in operation paperclip. And, you know, why that nerve agent was never used remains one of the great mysteries of the war. We, allied intelligence, discovered these giant bunkers filled with bombs ready to be loaded onto lift waf that planes that con contained serin gas, but hitler never gave the order. He had albert spear design this bunker for him, this is where they were going to hang out. So again it was this great, sort of mysterious irony that this was where the scientists were held who invented these nerve agents. These are some of the guys who were in castle cranburg s and well get to their stories in a moment. Meanwhile, youve got Something Else going on at nord housen which is the rockets, and these officers that are there are realizing the incredible breadth and scope of the v2 rockets that were there. And they had orders to gather a hundred of these rockets and to 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 rocket, plural, but they come across the scientists. And this is von brown right after husband actually, he wasnt captured, he surrendered. He knew he would be valuable to intelligence, and he was right. And also theres general dornberger, he became an American Hero, and you see him in his leather dont that he liked to wear. Dor 234rbgsberger recruited for the pentagon, he would fly back and forth to germany looking for more german scientists. He had a top secret clearance into the middle 50s, and he was really a favorite in the washington inner circle. When i started reporting the program, this was one of the only photographs i could really find of the rocket scientists. And then there you have so you can get an idea how quickly we brought these rockets over and the scientists, and there it is. Just a couple years after the war, the first v2 rocket, thats an actual v2 rocket, carrying albert, the first monkey astronaut. Albert didnt survive. Back to the chemical weapons, so that serin gas by i was speaking of, this is dr. Otto ambrose. And i think i would have to say one of the more nefarious elements of operation paperclip. And im to not going to tell you all the narratives that are in the book, but i will tell you one briefly about dr. Ambros, and the reason i think his story so horrific, ambros was hitlers favorite chemist, and i say that literally. He also invented synthetic rubber which was extremely important because tanks need treads, aircrafts need wheels, and the synthetic rubber that was produced was so important to hitler, that he awarded ambros here a one million reichs marks bonus, a document i found in the National Archives which had never been written about before. Thats how important ambros was. And further, the reich was building synthetic rubber at auschwitz. So this here is a satellite photo from 1944, june, and you have auschwitz and the gas chambers up there. But down in the lower corner here you have a slave labor facility run by ig farvin who was making synthetic rubber down there, and ott to ambros was in charge of that facility. Of all the photographs that i came upon in researching this book, and we all know those, you know, horrific photographs of the bodies as cordwood, nothing disturbed me more than this photograph. And thats because of what it says. It says company Sporting Club ig our puts up top, and those are two of otto ambros colleague fencing as they would after what they thought was the end of a long day at auschwitz. As i learned from the fritz bauer institute, this was well within the view of the chimneys at auschwitz. So blom is captured, and he cooperates with allied intelligence. Hes the first high Ranking Member of hitlers inner circle that speaks of atrocities and gassing of jews. He becomes a key player in this story because hes the first person who cooperated. But at the same time, you have colonel Harry Armstrong who is a top physician for what was of then called the army air force, later the u. S. Air force. And armstrong was on a mission in berlin looking for nazi doctors. He called them german physicians. And for many years the idea, the fiction was that they were german physicians. But really i and others before me have put together the very color picture of clear picture of what most of these men were doing during the war. And you see them here, this photographs never been printed before. This is 34 of the top leading physicians who worked if a classified program, one of the very first programs that was part of operation paperclip inside germany in hiding berg, you know, starting days after the war ended. Because the Army Air Forces knew that to bring these men to the United States so quickly would never fly. And so they had them working there in heidlburg. Later, 34 of them would join Harry Armstrong at a facility in texas. Hubert [inaudible] the father of space medicine, well get to a little more about him in a moment. But in the meantime, as all those theres that i just showed you doctors that i just showed you were working under Harry Armstrong, another element of military intelligence kale knocking, and they had came knocking, and they had information that suggestion of these doctors were wanted for war crimes. And so six of them went off to nuremberg. These three would become part of paperclip. Some before, some after. This is dr. Theodore men zigger, he was taken away to nuremberg, but what i was so is really startled by was when i first read about him, i read his obituary in the New York Times which was published in 1999. And out spoke, it lauded his career for naval intelligence. He was a fizzologist for the navy, and it talked about how he invented the ear thermometer and what great contributions he had given to military medicine. But it never mentioned his wartime work. And what i found in berlin were documents that showed that benz inger was on the original list of criminals that were going to be tried at the nazi at the doctors trial at nuremberg, but he was mysteriously released just a few weeks before the trial. He was turned over to custody of the u. S. Airplane Army Air Forces, and he was brought to america. Thats the nazi doctors trial. You see bloome in the middle. He was acquitted, he would later work for paperclip. Dr [inaudible] i write about him at length in the book. And one of the only surviving witnesses to what went on in the concentration camps, karl harlanreiner. Its amazing how these little nuggets are lost to history. When i was with reading the trial transcripts, when he was put on the witness stand because the doctor that you just saw removed a piece of his liver without anesthesia, they were trying to test how long someone could survive in the ocean, a downed pilot and how long how much sea water you could drink. So they were simulating these tests written by the other doctors who would later come to texas. But he was so angry. He had a dagger hidden in his pocket, and he leapt off the witness stand, and he ran to the dock to try to stab the doctor. Its this incredible moment, i couldnt believe i had never heard of this before. And then the great tragedy of it was the judge, the american judge who really believed firmly that we were at nuremberg to show how democracy works put him in the prison with the very doctors who had done this to him. One doctor was in charge of all the nazi doctors, he became our father of space medicine, and there he is with the library that was named after him. Which was, ultimately, taken down. You know, the program went all the way up to the pentagon, and the joint chiefs of staff were in charge of the program. And when you when i would read over some of these documents, it was fascinating how you could really see the different, you could see some of the military generals who were reporting to the joint chiefs were just pained at having to bring these individuals here to the United States to work on our weapons programs. But it was also kind of shocking to me that some of the generals did not feel that way at all. They actually respected and admired some of the nazi scientists, and i was surprised to find that this was one of them, general lukes was in charge of the chemical corps. And i dont say this lightly, and i dont i mean, its very important that one has as a journalist one has the documents to back this up. The nerve Agent Program is still largely classified, but i traveled to the u. S. Army military History Institute in pennsylvania to look at general lukes papers, and it was there that i found these personal diaries that he wrote which told much of the story which i report in paperclip. There you see lukes at a party hes having. And it was in those papers that i discovered that ss brigade Walter Schreiber never known to be part of operation paperclip, but he was. He was so close to himmler, he was on himmlers personal staff. And he wore, you can see that little button there, thats actually the golden party badge. And that was given out by hitler to his closest entourage. And he was a chemist, and he became very friendly with general lukes who i just showed you the photograph of, and the two men exchanged christmas cards for many years which are also in the military institute in pennsylvania. Just to give you an idea of how close schreiber was to the top, these are photographs that the archive does not let one reprint, but im happy to show them here. Theres schreiber with spear, and there he is shaking hands with hitler. So those are general lukes diaries, and im just going to sort of end here with just a little bit about reporting a story which i think is interesting, i hope, about bringing new information to the table. Because so much of this has been, you know, gradually written about in bits and pieces over the years. But when you come across Something Like these diaries, its really incredible to me because i really do believe in the idea that more always gets revealed. And curiosity, you know, helps a journal withist. And if you look journalist. And if you look and look and youre willing to keep looking, you will find. And these are lukes journals. And in them, heres this incredibly classified program, so classified its still classified. And yet you have general lukes, you know, that human in all of us that sort of wants to write in our journal, you know, attended conference with dr. Walter schreiber, classified matters. And it was from this kind of information and it is from this kind of information that i am usually able to piece together the most entering part of my stories. Because interesting part of my stories. As a journalist, once you have the information you can go to the powers that be that are telling you, no, no, there is no information, and you can kick the door in a little bit and discover these documents by filing different kinds of freedom of information act requests based on facts that are known and very importantly dates as you see in this journal. And from that i was able to locate this document which is pretty much the high ranking war criminals that worked with hitlers nerve Agent Program. And that was the list of people that general lukes would have at his home on saturday afternoons as a round table discussion. And they would learn the secrets of the serin gas program which was then brought back to america and allowed the United States to build be up its serin gas program. And if anyone has been reading about syrias chemical weapons programs today, we know that the ones that are being dismantled now are serin gas end withs. Weapons. So this is a long legacy. I was also able to work with some of the children of hitlers inner circle by interviewing them in berlin, very brave individuals who, you know, as they are getting older, 70s and 80s most of the children are, you know, some of them were remarkably transparent with me and shared their parents personal papers. And that really allowed me to bring some interesting things to the table that i dont think have been reported before and also some photographs. This is. This is schieber, by the way, and by 1952 he was working for the cia. Some of the war criminals were sent to prison. This is landsberg prison where they went. Some of them were hung, those are the unmarked graves. They were able to pray in this lovely church, but ultimately, the cold war was getting hot, and john mccoy here with truman became u. S. High commissioner of germany, and he gave clemency to the majority of the the war criminals who were in landsberg prison, and they were released. And this here is otto ambros at nuremberg. Hes the chemist, hitlers favorite chemist with the one million likes mark bonus. When he was convicted of mass murder and slavery, he might have had some foresight, perhaps, which is whoo hes laughing that he would one day soon be released, but not only was he released, his finances were fully restored. This is the worlds, what i would call the cias first black site. Right after the war the cia well, actually in 1947 after the cia began, teamed up with naval intelligence, Army Intelligence and air force intelligence at this place and used some chemists and some chemistry that had been developed by the nazis and began enhanced interrogation techniques using lsd and street drugs on what was now soviet bloc prisoners because this was the cold war. The two physicians at that facility . None other than dr. Schreiber and dr. Kurt bloome. The reason bloome got the job was because schreiber was sent to texas, and schreiber worked for the air force inness, and its a long and tangles tale. You can read about it in the book, but its really astonishing that. Schreiber, the former Surgeon General of the third reich, was living in texas. But as i said, the cold war was heating up, and this was the threat. The threat was that the soviets who, by the way, had hair own program of german scientists, they got a lot of rocket scientists. But unlike our program, we sort of put the german scientists up on pedestals and treated them with great regard and made them sort of the top dogs of our program. The soviets really loapted the germans. Loathed the germans. There was deep animosity from the war, and so their german rocket scientists were kept at a second tier. And they were actually squeezed of the information and sent back to germany by the russians at which point the cia stepped in, grabbed up all those german scientists to try to learn what they could about the soviets missile program. But what they learned was nothing because the soviets didnt share with the german scientists that top toor of information. Tee tier of information. We moved forward with our biological weapons program. This is the 8 ball. Dr. Bloome consulted on this, and this is where we tested our bubonic plague weapon. Likewise, our serin gas weapons. And walter von braun became the head and the hero of the nasa space program. There he is with jfk. Arthur rudolph, father of the saturn rocket. I write at length about his story in operation paperclip. Its really just remarkable how he went from a guy without a College Education running the slave labor tunnels at nordhouseen to being father of the saturn rocket in the United States. Of hes one of the very few paperclips who was actually investigated, and in the 80s the department of justice got some information. Its funny that the department of justice would have to get information declassified, but they did. And they were able to see his complicity in war crimes in those tunnels, and they gave him an option as an old man, he could either stand trial in the United States this was in the mid 80s or he could return to germany. He chose to return to germany. And lastly and i think most peculiar to me is kurt debbes who just those dueling scars alone make him look slightly sinister. But many people regard him as an American Hero and told me so. I found out a very different story researching his thick dossier, declassified now. One of the myths of the german scientists is they were just trying to do science, and they were skirting around trying to stay out of the eye of the nazi party who was this big, bad wolf. But you find out in reading closely at the nowdeclassified documents about debas that he actually turned his superior, another scientist, over to the gestapo during the war for making antihitler remarks. And, again, that remarkable push and pull. When i was reading these documents, you could see one part of Army Intelligence saying to the pentagon, you know, we cant bring this guy to the United States. He was an ardent nazi. He turned a colleague over to the guess tap poe. This was gestapo. This was a malicious they use that word this was a malicious act. But then you see the pentagon saying we need him, and he came. There he is as the first director of the jfk space center, and every year still the National Space club gives out the kurt debus award. And when i recently interviewed the head of the space club and said i said but what do you say when someone asks you what about kurt debus . He wore the ss uniform to work. He turned over a colleague to the gestapo. He was an ardent nazi. What do you say to that . And the answer was, no one has ever asked me that question before. So id like to end with the idea that einstein really had it right, in my opinion. He left germany prior to hitlers armaments buildup, and he always maintained that the reason he left as a scientist buzz was because was because he was of not going to work for a raw and rabid nazi militia. There he is getting his citizenship, and hes one of the few people with power that petitioned truman not to have operation paperclip happen, but to no avail. And my last thought is this, which is written over the gate gate [speaking in native tongue] and its an old german proverb that says everyone gets what a they deserve. And when i was reporting this book and i was writing this book, i would often ask myself does everyone really get what they deserve . And i hope that you, if you choose to read operation paperclip, come to your own conclusion. Thank you very much. [applause] so i have some time for some questions. Yes. In your research beyond the lsd stuff, did you come across anything about the techniques used to split peoples personality and finish. [inaudible] did you find anything about that coming out of research that was started in the death camps . Well, i dont know about splitting personalities, but i do know that camp king, that photograph that i showed you excuse me that is where the Mk Ultra Program began. It had two operational code names prior to mk ultra. One was operation bluebird and one was art choke. Arty choke. And they began that scenario that i spoke of during the presentation, and i also write about it in the book. Yes. Yeah, two questions. What were the theories why the nerve gas was never used . I know you said you had questions about it. What were the theories . And to bring these people out were any vatican passports used . The first part of question about why chemical weapons werent used, i would say the prevailing theory is that because when hitler was a soldier in world war ii, he missed the end of the war because he was gassed. Mustard gas. And so allegedly, he had a deep aversion to chemical weapons. But the nazis produced tens of thousands of tons of nerve agent. So there were so many individuals under his command that really wanted to use those nerve agents, it really is nothing short of a miracle that it wasnt used. Your second question was if vatican passports were used to argentina and then back to the states. Well, unfortunately for operation paperclip, there was no need to do that because the nazi scientists who came to america were given good old american visas and later became u. S. Citizens. Yes, in the back. I have a real mixture of feelings. Im both slightly nauseous and also very cant wait to get my hands on your book. I was actually living in nordhausen when it was bombed because of the v2 option, and we left my father was also one that worked for von braun. And after the war in 1950, my mother was actually also a cic agent before it became the cia. To identify nazis as they were trying to leave the country. And, but my question was we left munich in 1950, and we, you know, my father, it was actually my stepfather, had stayed, gone back and forth to geneva because he was one of the scientists that either americans or russians were vying for. Uhhuh. And there are questions that i have. We left germany in 1950, 51. He didnt take either of the offers. He decided to go to damascus, syria. With ten other german rocket scientists who had worked with von braun, and ive never quite understood. I was only 10 years old at the time. I never first of all, we left with nongerman passports. We left with arabic passports. My name was finish. [inaudible] and every time the conductors came in to check passports, i had to look out the window. I wasnt my mother said, dont talk. So my question has always been, you know, theres so much that i dont know because as a child, you know, you just sort of live with it. An American Ambassador actually helped us leave damascus. My fair came to america with us my father came to america with us. We came when there was a coup in 1953 in syria, and he wound up looking for lockheed in the santa cruz mountains. One of the other sign tufts worked in sacramento scientists worked in sacramento for 40 years and was very instrumental in developing the cycle its so fascinating. Maybe you can stay afterwards and speak with me. Id love to. And did you have a question . Well, i wanted to know about how did the other german scientists, how did so many of them who did leave, no, how did they actually why did they use arabic passports, and why did they not was it because they were nazis . Come talk to me afterwards, the middle eastern connection is very interesting, and its not part of operation paperclip per se, but we can chat after. Thank you very much. Yes. Did you find any research at all about club island, new york, and what happened there around geneticallymodified organisms, lyme disease, that whole thing . Did you finish. General lukes, who became very friendly with the chemist was in charge of setting up plum island, and eric traub who worked under dr. Bloome was many charge of the weaponizeing rinder pest and also [inaudible] for the reich. And traub is often connected with plum island. He came to the United States, he worked for the navy, he worked for the department of agriculture, and theres a lot of suggestion that he also set up 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. Yes. Yeah. During the 960s, 66, 67, there were people in this country who were trying to confront the Justice Department to say we had a lot of nazi war criminals here, and why dont you find them and either put them on trial or deport them to jurisdictions where they should be put on trial and dealt with. And the Justice Department always said we tonight have any gnats we dont have any nazi war criminals in this country. And besides, you people who are asking the questions are leftist and communists, and were not interested in what you have to say. But they did have an office in the 1960s to address the issues of whether people were nazi or war criminal, they just couldnt find any. Im wondering did you come across any research yes, its a great point you wring bring up. Twofold answer. The state department was an important part of operation paperclip on this end because state department was the organization that had to give those visas. And there was a couple individuals, one in particular named samuel klaus, who was outraged by this program. But he was very quickly accused of being a communist, and he was moved out of the state department. The reason why, to answer the second part of your question, the reason why Arthur Rudolph was ultimately investigated by the Justice Department was that lo and behold Different Organization groups, often jewish organizations would sort of muck rake, so to speak, and try and get the Justice Department to look into this. And ultimately, hay did, and a special they did, and a special unit was created only in 980 that looked at these war criminals. Yes. Did the nazi scientists who were brought here, how how did they justify the work that they were doing . They were supposedly working for man kind, not killing it. As a scientist. And did they show any remorse for what had been done . Thats a great question. The first part is, no. Of remember, there was most there was not even a sliver of accountability on the part of the scientists. They always denied that they were part of it. I mean, dr. Bloome, although he originally started to talk to the military officers about what went on, very quickly it became what they did, not me. And that was always the position. Always, always, always. And as far as remorse is concerned, there was only one nazi physician out of all of the scientists that i looked at who showed any remorse, and that was a doctor named dr. Fritz fischer. And during the determine burg trials nuremberg trials after he heard a particularly gruesome bit of testimony by some survivors, he turned to one of Intelligence Officers, dr. Leopold alexander who east really one of the heros of book, and he said just hang me now. But that was it. Right here, yeah. Two with quick, or ill say em quick, you can take as long as you want. First is another notorious person from world war ii who was involved with expoormts and, of course, not part of any of his people part of paperclip was mention la. Using the information he garnered from his experiments, is your book touching that at all . Mention he i write about in my area 51 book but not in paper clip. As far as we know, you know, he was in germany for a while, then he went to south america. But the question you raise about the information used is extremely important. And what i will tell you is that theres a twopart air force physiology manual which is very difficult to get your hands on that actually used data from the concentration camps. And you see the credits and the footnotes go to those doctors that i showed you the photograph of that were hauled off to nuremberg. One of whom, dr. Herman becker, was actually sending notes for that u. S. Air force manual from his prison cell at landsberg prison. The other question is leeing the responsibility of the nazis leaving the possibility of the nazis who we brought over and coming to the americans who made it happen, lets go to the top. Is there anything you found about trumans awareness, approval or anything else . Im sorry if i left that out, and here we are on president s day. [laughter] you know, operation paperclip was a classified military program, but it had a benign public face. So the joint chiefs knew that if you started having, you know, upwards of 1600 german sign i terrorists running around finish scientists running around, somebody was going to catch on to the fact that this was going on, and so they propagated this myth that these were benign scientists. The myth that truman bought or was he in on the myth, is the question i guess im asking. I dont believe from my research that neither truman nor eisenhower really had access to the actual dossiers, you know . They would not as president have even asked to know. And certainly it would have been kept from them. So 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 callen da calendar, i never would have known about any of this. And so my question to you is in sort of 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 out word about this . Well, the book just published six days ago, and its doing remarkably well considering the storys 69 years old. So i give a lot of credit to my fellow readers who i just really think, i think were all a really interesting, educated bunch of people here in america for the most part and really just want to read and find out about things. Its why i write books that are seemingly, you know, obscure and secret but, ultimately, they find readers which i think is remarkable. Yes, right here. Is there any significance to the name that the operation was given . Oh, yes, great question. Well, we have the classified program, we have the benign public face, and you have the same thing going on in germany where these Intelligence Officers are tasked with interviewing the scientists and really trying to find out about them. And it needed to be kept secret, it being the darkhearted parts of some of these scientists pasts. And so a system was devised whereby very discreetly a paperclip would be placed on the top of the file in a certain position to indicate this is an important file that somebody needs to look at, that somebody being an individual who was pro the program. Im going to just take one more in the way back. Yeah. Maybe you said it and i missed it, but was this a did this program have a particular purpose, or was it just collecting random important german scientists and doctors, like what were the major object is . And was there one person who put it together . You mentioned this general lukes. So purpose and who organized it . Yes. Well, you know, the nazis almost won the war. I mean, there was a point where their weaponry was so much further along than other than ours was, hitler and goebbels called it wonder weapons. And there was of this idea that, you know, suddenly dawned on the u. S. Military, were really behind the curve here. And so as the war was ending, thats why that push came about which is we have to grab this science, and we need it for our own weaponry. I think one of most interesting conclusions i came to in reporting the book was that the cold war really began at the, you know, in the last months of world war ii. Did you find anything that comes forward to today, like scientists that are now at monsanto creating geneticallymodified organisms . Or nor ride, i have hundreds of people asking me to ask you, nor id. It seems of to have come, its in our water, but it came from the nazi scientists. Did you find any of that there too . Fascinating question. So 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 darpa which is the Defense Advanced Research project agency which is the subject of my next book. [laughter] shameless plug. Yes. [laughter] good, yes. You said that the russians returned their scientists back to germany again. Was there a reason for that . They couldnt stand the german scientists. [inaudible] thats an interesting, i never thought of that. That is a very interesting question. But they sent them back to germany, and but the fascinating part, we had a program, the cias program was called operation dragon return. And we scooped up anyone who had been in the soviet union working on their weapons programs and, you know, used them as intelligence assets. Yes. Is it true that alan dawes was, like, sort of a front man and it was actually ryan hart concern. [inaudible] who was setting up the cia . Great question. I write about galen at length. He was at camp king, and, you know, he was run by galen was the head of hitlers soviet, you know, program on the soviet union intelligence program. And he became a maw your player a major player in all of this, sadly. And his story is interwoven into paperclip. He was not part of paperclip, but he was at camp king with his, you know, team of ss officers and former intelligence agents, and they all worked they were run by Army Intelligence and then later the cia took them over. And so when we spoke of mk ultra, the soviet bloc spies who were tossed into the slammer at camp king and subjected to those enhanced interrogation programs were actually caught in galens web. One more. And one more. Would you care to speculate as to what impact the release of this new information might have of based on sort of inquiries . Im just wondering where you think this may lead. Well, its interesting. I really believe, as i said earlier, that, you know, more gets revealed. And i think that when people are interested, it just, it kind of creates a bigger web of information. And so hopefully my reporting, was its just the tip of because its just the tip of the iceberg, i dont one of the things that i mentioned i e think it was earlier today on a radio show was how ambros was a, you know, hitlers favorite chemist, convicted nazi war criminal. Came to the United States on a u. S. Department of energy contract. Came to the United States three times in the 1960s. And while i couldnt get any information declassified about what ambros was doing and what his program was on and by the way, as i write in the book, neither could president Ronald Reagan who asked about it but i thought to myself, well, wait a minute, ambros had to come to the United States. Hes a convicted nazi war criminal, so i foiad the state department to try to find out about his travels, how he came here and who was he was being who he was being sponsored by, but that information was lost or classified. I couldnt find it out, but i bet some curious journalist sometime in the future will. Thank you, annie. [applause] thank you all. If you have a book, please, come on up. If youd like to purchase one [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] suffice it to say, most of Health Policy really isnt Health Policy at all. It is, essentially, budget policy. And so the Congress Just ducks on so many of the big issues and ends up putting together something that in the parlance of washington might be called a patch. Maybe its an extension. Maybe its called a stopgap. But the fact is it ducks the big issues. It repeatedly ducks the big issues. And particularly on medicare when you have 10,000 people eligible for medicare every day, there is a very real cost attached with that. So now the challenge is to try to find a way to move beyond this fixation on budgeting. Itd be one thing if it was sound budget policy, but so often we, as i indicated, dont get at the structural kinds of issues and move beyond this sort of lurch from one kind of budget calamity to another and come up with some sensible budget policy. This weekend on cspan Senate Finance Committee Chair ron wyden on the challenges facing medicare and hospitals this morning at 10 eastern. And on booktv the historical and cultural ties between russia and ukraine, sunday at 5 45 on cspan2. And on cspan3s American History tv, the grounds and architecture of George Washingtons mount vernon, sunday night at 8. Heres a look at some books that are being published this week. George soros presents his thoughts on the mistakes the European Union has made but argues that it still has the ability to keep europe peaceful of and productive in the tragedy of European Union. In the people have spoken and they are wrong, nationallysyndicated columnist and Senior Editor of federalist, david harsanyi. In busted, Philadelphia Daily News reporters Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker recount the operations of a rogue narcotics squad in philadelphia. Paul marks provides a personal account of Cancer Research and reports on his growing optimism for finding a cure in on the cancer frontier one man, one disease and a medical revolution. In degrees of inequality how the politics of Higher Education sabotage the american dream, suzanne meddler, professor of american institutions at cornell university, examines the decline in College Graduates from low to middle income families. Look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future booktv and on booktv. Org. Up next, author and professor peniel joseph. The black Power Movement expert talks about the rewriting of postwar black history, misconceptions about the Civil Rights Movement and the obama eras place in race relations. Editor of five nonfiction books including waiting til the midnight hour, dark days, bright nights, and his 2014 release, stokely a life. Host peniel joseph, who is this . He was born on june 24, 1941 in trinidad