Operation Paperclip was the code name for a monumental, illegal, importation of more than 1,600 high level fervent Nazi scientists, engineers, aerospace and munitions experts, chemists and physicians who developed Hitler’s deadly military technology. These men held pivotal positions in the Third Reich; they were the technocrats who had planned, designed, tested and produced Hitler’s weapons for genocidal mass murder. They were the architects of the Nazi military invasions of Europe, and of the use of V-2 rockets to blitzkrieg London and Antwerp. They were the engineers who set up slave labor camps to manufacture military weapons and equipment, and built underground tunnels to store the weapons arsenals, literally working the slave laborers to death.

Operation Paperclip was “without precedent, entirely unprincipled, and inherently dangerous” (Jacobsen, 2014). It was a tacit conspiracy by officials of the joint military intelligence; the CIA and the FBI. The officials involved were proponents of the belief that the ends justify the means; they were convinced that their cause — obtaining German scientific technology in order to beat the Soviets in an arms race — served a higher purpose than preserving democracy. They operated behind impenetrable walls of secrecy conducting their clandestine, often dubious intelligence operations without regard for the human consequences in the knowledge that they will not be held accountable.

The layers of secrecy that continue to shield both the activities of the transplanted Nazis and the officials who engineered their safe haven suggest that their clandestine, illegal activities are carried over to this day. Most Americans do not grasp the extent to which the importation of high ranking Nazi criminals who were shielded from prosecution at Nuremberg — or had their sentences commuted by U.S. intelligence officials, then brought secretly to America — influenced and shaped nefarious U.S. policies during and far beyond the Cold War.

“If the Greek philosopher Heraclitus is right and war is the father of all things, then America’s Nazi scientist program was a nefarious child of the Second World War. Operation Paperclip in turn created a host of monstrous offspring, including Operations Bluebird, Artichoke, and MKULTRA.”  (Annie Jacobsen. Operation Paperclip, 2014

By fomenting fear and exaggerating threats to national security, the CIA trampled American laws and civil liberties with the approval of the Justice Department; initiating massive covert intelligence surveillance operations of Americans and using torture in interrogation of prisoners. (Read about CIA’s Mind-Control Experiments)

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