AIDS; The Hidden Agenda

THE HIDDEN AGENDA BEHIND HIV

by Bryan J. Ellison

Bryan has impressed us all in the past, but perhaps nothing is so explosive as his revelation that the U.S. Public Health Movement is full of doctrinaires, dogmatists, tyrants, and public policy disasters. This piece is derived from some of the material in his new book (with Dr. Duesberg), INVENTING AIDS, sold to Addison-Wesley (who chickened out at the last moment) and then finally bought by St. Martin's, possibly due for release in August. Can we get advance copies? Probably not yet. This article is sure to generate strong feelings, both positive and negative-let us hear your opinions! Despite all assurances to the contrary, the AIDS establishment continues to fund only research on HIV. Peter Duesberg inadvertently proved this blackout on all alternative research when he recently submitted a grant proposal to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The Institute's clinical director of AIDS research had personally invited the proposal, which outlined a plan to test the long-term effects of nitrite inhalants, or "poppers," on the immune systems of mice. The answer came back in December: the anonymous referees had not only turned it down, but had refused to give the proposal more than a cursory review. Why does such a political correctness continue to dominate the War on AIDS? After all, public health officials cannot yet demonstrate they have saved any lives from the syndrome, while its death toll rises steadily. The scientific predictions have also failed miserably. In contrast to the predicted spread of AIDS in the United States, the epidemic has remained strictly confined to risk groups; nine of every ten AIDS cases have been male, and ninety percent of all AIDS victims have been linked to heavy drug use, whether intravenously or as "fast track" homosexuals. Indeed, epidemiologists have yet to establish that any epidemic at all has struck among blood transfusions recipients. Even individual AIDS diseases prefer specific risk groups, such as Kaposi's sarcoma among homosexuals and the near-absence of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia among Africans, whose lungs all contain the microbe. And some thirty-nine percent of AIDS diseases in America have nothing to do with immune deficiency-witness Kaposi's sarcoma, various lymphomas, wasting disease, and dementia, for example. In short, AIDS is not an infectious disease. The obsession with an "AIDS virus" has little to do with science or medicine. Writing in NATURE in 1991 (June 21), British HIV researcher Robin Weiss and American CDC official Harold Jaffe hinted at the real purpose in an attack on Peter Duesberg: "But if he and his supporters belittle 'safe sex,' would have us abandon HIV screening of blood donations, and curtail research into anti-HIV drugs and vaccines, then their message is perilous." To whom? If AIDS is not infectious, such recommendations would simply save the taxpayer money and anxiety. But perhaps this is the point. A 1989 report by the National Research Council more explicitly revealed the hidden agenda. Originally sponsored by the Rockefeller and Russel Sage Foundations and then funded by the Public Health Service, AIDS: Sexual Behavior and Intravenous Drug Use laid out a plan for social engineering on a massive scale-using AIDS as the excuse. "The devastating effect of an epidemic on a community can evoke strong political and social responses," the committee duly noted, "An epidemic necessitates the rapid mobilization of the community to counter the spread of illness and death" (p. 373). The power of such a method to force changes in cultural values is based on careful manipulation of fear. "Ideally, health promotion messages should heighten an individual's perceptions of threat and his or her capacity to respond to that threat, thus modulating the level of fear...What is not yet known is how to introduce fear in the right way in a particular message intended for a particular audience. Acquiring that knowledge will require planned variations of AIDS education programs that are carefully executed and then carefully evaluated," stated the committee coolly(pp.267-8). The report then identified one of the major targets of change--Judeo-Christian moral values. "Historically, there has been a strong social reluctance in the United States to speak or write about sexuality in explicit terms. Despite recent indications of greatly increased tolerance for sexual explicitness in the media and literature, that reluctance remains strong in much of the population; it is particularly strong in instances that involve the education of children and adolescents"(p.379). The fear of a supposedly infectious AIDS epidemic, however, could be used to fix such problems. As the report declared, "The committee believes that, during an epidemic, politeness is a social virtue that must take second place to the protection of life"(p.379). Other public health officials have been even more forthright. As an officer of the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Francis had in 1984 drafted the CDC's proposed AIDS strategy. In his 1992 retirement speech at the agency's Atlanta, Georgia headquarters, Francis voiced the ambitions held by many of his fellow officers in describing "the opportunity that the HIV epidemic provides for public health" (JAMA, 9/16/92). He stated in no uncertain terms the radical nature of the plan: The cloistered caution of the past needs to be discarded. The climate and culture must be open ones where old ideas are challenged. Those who desire the status quo should seek employment elsewhere. The American HIV prevention program should be the place where the best and the brightest come, where the action is, where history is being made. This is the epidemic of the century, and every qualified person should want to have a piece of the action. The "action" described by Francis was a set of programs that would, as he fully recognized, need strong political protection from angry taxpayers and voters. For example, he bitterly attacked public opposition to condom distribution programs, and called for powerful legal measures to bypass parental discretion. "The ongoing controversies involving abstinence and condoms typify the morass into which schools can fall," Francis complained, "If, in the opinion of those far more expert than I, schools cannot be expected to provide such programs, then health departments should take over, using as a justification their mandate to protect the public's health." Francis also included proposals for dealing with the AIDS risk of intravenous drug use--including a call for "prescription of addicting drugs" with Federal government sponsorship. Even libertarians who advocate legalizing drugs would balk at such notions, which would ultimately create a massive bureaucracy encouraging drug use. "Following a more enlightened model for drug treatment, including prescribing heroin, would have dramatic effects on HIV and could eliminate many of the dangerous illegal activities surrounding drugs," he insisted, knowing that only fear of the AIDS epidemic might make such proposals tolerable to the public. Ignoring the toxic, and possibly AIDS inducing, effects of drugs, Francis emphasized that "In addition to treatment, safe injection [!] must be stressed both for those in treatment programs and those out of treatment. The provision of sterile injection equipment for drug users should be the standard of public health practice in the United States." Most chillingly of all, Francis saw the possibilities in harnessing other epidemics to advance similar agendas. As he put it, "if we establish new mechanisms to handle the HIV epidemic, [these] can serve as models for other diseases." The common denominator of these and similar plans is that they originate with the Federal government's Public Health Service, and especially from its frontline public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control. Public perceptions often paint the CDC as a minor office that gathers and publishes dull statistics on disease. The truth is shockingly different. A sophisticated $2 billion-per-year operation, the CDC employs a staff of thousands who see themselves as having an activist mandate. They view epidemics as opportunities for control and for imposing lifestyle changes on the population. The CDC has traditionally specialized in contagious disease. Its initials, in fact, originally stood for the Communicable Disease Center, from its formation in 1946 until its name changed in 1970. And therein lies its bias, for it tends to interpret almost any epidemic as being infectious. Certainly the CDC has plenty of raw material with which to work; each year at least one thousand outbreaks, or "clusters," of disease strike in the United States--one every eight hours. These can range from flus and pneumonias to closely-occurring cancers, but most outbreaks involve no more than a handful of people each; since the polio epidemic, none have posed serious threats to the general public. However, by falsely labeling any arbitrarily chosen outbreak as infectious and blaming it on a virus or other microbe, the CDC can quickly generate public fear and political mobilization behind almost any agenda. The CDC has actually engineered a number of false alarms or misdirected campaigns over the past four decades, neutralizing scientific dissent and calmer voices when necessary. AIDS, though not the first example, has now become the most successful epidemic by far. Two powerful weapons in the agency's arsenal, both unknown to the public at large, have made this possible: a semi-secret wing of the CDC known as the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), and a quiet "partnership" program with private organizations. The Epidemic Intelligence Service Among epidemiologists, it is often half-jokingly referred to as the "medical CIA." Founded in 1951 by public health professor Alexander Langmuir, the EIS was first designed to act as an elite biological-warfare countermeasures unit of the CDC. Langmuir was hired because he also served as one of the select advisors to the Defense Department's chemical and biological warfare program. The first EIS class of 21 recent medical or biological graduates underwent several weeks of intense training at the CDC's Atlanta headquarters, before being dispatched on their two-year assignments on loan to various state or local health departments around the country. They acted as the eyes and ears of the CDC, carefully monitoring for any possible outbreak of war-induced disease. While on their tours of duty, each EIS officer could be sent elsewhere in the country on a 24 hour-a-day basis. In case of war, the EIS would operate under any emergency powers granted the CDC--potentially including quarantines, mass immunizations, or other drastic measures. In an article written for the American journal of Public Health(March, 1952), Langmuir made clear that membership in the EIS did not end with the two year assignment, but was permanent. He wrote that, "As a result of their experience, many of these officers may well remain in full-time epidemiology or other public health pursuits at federal, state, or local levels. Some, no doubt, will return to civilian, academic, or clinical practice, but in the event of war they could be returned to active duty with the Public Health Service and assigned to strategic areas to fulfill the functions for which they were trained." Every year since 1951 has seen a new crop of EIS recruits, some classes over one hundred members in size. The nearly 2,000 alumni have gone on to high positions in society, though rarely advertising their affiliation. Indeed, the CDC has now made the EIS more secretive than ever, having suppressed the public availability of the membership directory since last year. Members can be found in the Surgeons General's office and elsewhere in the Federal government, as well as in the World Health Organization, state and local health departments, universities, pharmaceutical companies, tax-exempt foundations, hospitals, and even as staff writers, editors, or news anchormen for major newspapers, scientific journals, and television news departments. In these positions, EIS alumni act not only as the CDC's surveillance arm and emergency reserve, but also as seemingly "independent" advocates for CDC policies. In time, the fear of artificial disease epidemics faded. But Langmuir and other top CDC officials had always held bigger plans for the EIS. Langmuir, for example, an apostle of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, involved the EIS in the population control movement by the 1960s. The CDC has gained most, however, from EIS activities in natural disease epidemics, to which its "disease detectives" have turned their attention. The flu, being truly an infectious disease, often proved itself most valuable to the CDC. Although the winter following the end of World War I was the last time a flu epidemic caused widespread death, the CDC has pushed annual flu vaccinations up to the present day. At times, the agency has even rung the alarm over an impending flu crisis, hoping to use memories of the 1918 epidemic to gain emergency powers and impose mass vaccinations. By using such tactics in 1957 over the Asian flu, the CDC managed to wrangle extra money out of Congress to expand the EIS and crash-produce a vaccine. But the flu season was already winding down by the time the vaccine was ready, and the flu itself turned out to have been as mild as in any other year. By 1976, CDC director David Sencer wanted to try again, though on a grander scale. After one soldier in Pennsylvania died of a flu-related pneumonia in January, Sencer predicted that a pig-borne human virus, nicknamed the "swine flu," would soon devastate the United States. Panicked with visions of impending doom, Congress moved to authorize the CDC's immunization plan for every man, woman, and child in the country. Unexpectedly, the legislation suddenly stalled when the insurance companies underwriting the vaccine discovered that it had seriously toxic side effects. Sencer had to do something fast. He immediately set up a "War Room" in Auditorium A at the CDC headquarters, and put the EIS network on full alert to search for any disease outbreak that might resemble the flu. Within weeks, the War Room received word of a pneumonia cluster among men just returning home from the Philadelphia convention of the American Legion. Several Philadelphia-based EIS officers and alumni had detected the outbreak, and acted as a fifth column that not only helped arrange an invitation for the CDC to come in, but also took their orders from the arriving team of CDC and EIS officers. Even the New York Times staff writer sent to cover the story, Lawrence Altman, was himself an EIS alumnus. The CDC team allowed media rumors to circulate that this Legionnaires' disease was the beginning of the swine flu. Within days, Congress decided to pass the vaccine bill. Only later did the CDC admit that the legionnaires had not been infected by the flu virus, too late to stop the immunization program. Some 50 million Americans received the vaccine, leading to more than a thousand cases of nerve damage and paralysis, dozens of deaths, and lawsuits awarding almost $100 million in damages. In the ultimate irony, no swine flu epidemic ever materialized; the only destruction left behind by the phantom swine flu resulted from the CDC's vaccine. The agency later blamed Legionnaires' disease on a common soil bacterium, one that clearly fails Koch's postulates for causing the disease and is therefore actually harmless. The legionnaires' deaths are not so hard to understand, since the pneumonias struck elderly men, many of whom had undergone kidney transplant operations, and who had become particularly drunk during the Bicentennial celebrationthe classic risks for pneumonia. Thus "Legionnaires' disease" is not an infectious condition, but merely a new name for old pneumonias. Using its EIS network, the CDC has applied similar tactics to other outbreaks of disease. During the 1960s, for example, the EIS helped fuel the National Institute of Health's growing Virus-Cancer Program by tracking down every small cluster of leukemia cases, trying to create the impression that some virus was responsible for the cancer. Robert Gallo was one of the many scientists so impressed with the CDC investigations that he devoted the rest of his career to finding a human leukemia virus. More recently, the CDC managed to have a team of EIS officers invited into New Mexico to investigate a cluster of pneumonia cases among Navajo Indians. By June of 1993, the CDC began insisting that the brief and relatively small outbreak was caused by a rat fecal virus, the Hantavirus. But as a letter in the January 1 issue of the Lancet pointed out, most of the affected Navajos actually tested negative for the virus. And unlike a contagious disease, this pneumonia never spread beyond the first few dozen victims. Again, the CDC's "disease detectives" used a high-profile investigation to create media publicity and frighten the general population, rather than troubling themselves with the scientific method and its more boring answers. Of all the epidemics mismanaged by the CDC, AIDS proved the most spectacular in achieving political success. By 1981, the EIS had so thoroughly penetrated the medical and public health institutions in the United States that it could now detect even the smallest and most loosely-connected "clusters" of diseases, no matter how far apart the victims were in time and space. The original AIDS cases were all found in homosexual men in the "fast track" lifestyle-those having hundreds or thousands of sexual contacts and using enormous amounts of hard drugs to make such promiscuous activity possible. For the CDC, the trick was to make the illness seem contagious; a simple drug-induced epidemic among homosexuals would hardly have frightened the public, nor have allowed the CDC to accomplish its radical public health agenda. The epidemic officially began in 1980 after Michael Gottlieb, a new immunologist at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, decided to test the brand new T cell-counting technology. He put out an informal request to fellow physicians to refer cases of immune deficiency to him. Over the next several months, colleagues sent him four such cases, all male homosexuals with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. Sensing that the CDC might take an interest, Gottlieb called active EIS officer Wayne Shandera in the Los Angeles health department. Shandera had heard an isolated report of a fifth homosexual with the same problem, and compiled a report for the CDC. Ordinarily, each of the five cases would have been seen by separate doctors, leaving nothing to suggest the word "epidemic" to anyone. But having a pre-positioned EIS agent like Shandera certainly helped the CDC gather such cases together as a potential cluster. Shandera's report fell on the desk of James Curran, an official in the CDC's venereal diseases division; the 1987 book And the Band Played On records that Curran wrote "Hot stuff. Hot stuff." on the report (p. 67). He had the agency publish it immediately. By the time the report appeared on June 5, 1981, Curran was already organizing a special Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections (KSOI) task force to lead an investigation of the fivevictim epidemic. EIS members Harold Jaffe and Mary Guinan, also from the venereal diseases division, helped run the task force. The first order of business was to find as many similar patients as possible, thereby causing the epidemic to "grow." Next was to explain the syndrome; to the CDC, this meant trying to find an infectious agent. This would be no simple task, since essentially all of the first fifty cases admitted to heavy use of poppers, a drug preferred by homosexuals as a means of facilitating anal intercourse. Even if this toxic drug presented itself as the obvious explanation, the CDC investigators had no intention of letting the evidence interfere. According to historian Elizabeth Etheridge, "While many of the patients were routine users of amyl nitrites or 'poppers,' no one in the KSOI task force believed the disease was a toxicological problem" (Sentinel for Health, 1992, p.326). So the EIS was activated to prove AIDS infectious. EIS officer David Auerbach and others confirmed that these extremely promiscuous homosexuals were often linked to one another through long chains of sexual encounters. To prove that AIDS was "spreading" to other people , other officers scoured hospitals to find heroin addicts with opportunistic infections, and blamed their needle-sharing rather than the heroin use, itself a classic risk factor for pneumonias and other illnesses. Bruce Evatt and Dale Lawrence, both members of the EIS, discovered one hemophiliac in Colorado with an opportunistic pneumonia as a side effect of internal bleeding, but rediagnosed the patient as an AIDS case. Even Haitians in Florida and Haiti were interviewed by EIS officer Harry Haverkos, who renamed their endemic tuberculosis as AIDS. Not understanding the loaded nature of such investigations, the outside world completely bought the CDC line. Soon the race was on for scientific researchers to find the guilty virus. But this search, too, had been rigged. Donald Francis, an EIS member himself since 1971, decided just eleven days after the original Shandera report that the syndrome should be blamed on a retrovirus--with a latent period, no less. Using his various contacts in the retrovirus field, Francis spent the next two years pushing Robert Gallo to isolate a new retrovirus. Eventually Gallo did take a interest, and claimed credit for finding HIV. With his April 23, 1984, press conference, Gallo completed the crusade begun by the CDC and its EIS. As the tapes rolled and the cameras flashed, Gallo and Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler launched the nation into a War on AIDS. Few people knew the true story behind the announcement, or of the political agenda that Don Francis and others were preparing to foist on the American people. The Partnership Program The CDC's second major weapon for mobilizing public support lay in its assistance programs for private organizations By funding or otherwise supporting groups not affiliated with the CDC, the agency could create apparently spontaneous mass movements. Spokesmen claiming to represent various communities could all simultaneously advocate policies identical to those of the CDC, while allowing the agency to remain quietly in the background and avoid direct criticism. In 1984, the CDC began forming "partnerships," based on "cooperative agreements," with large numbers of "community-based organizations," for the purpose of AIDS "education" (read: indoctrination). At first the funding was channeled through the United States Conference of Mayors, which dispersed the money to a growing network of AIDS activist groups. By 1985, the CDC was giving over $1 million to state governments, influencing their response to AIDS. After 1986, the money began flowing freely, and the CDC's corresponding influence expanded quickly. The American Red Cross alone received over $19 million from 1988 to 1991, cementing CDC control among medical institutions. Millions more were targeted to such groups as the American Medical Association, the National Association of People with AIDS (which operates as a coordinating center for much of the AIDS activist and gay rights movements), Americans for a Sound AIDS Policy (which generates CDC-approved materials for evangelical Christians), the National Education Association (the major teachers' union), the National PTA, the National Association of Broadcasters (which represents most television and radio stations and their networks), the National Conference of State legislators, and dozens of others. Even such groups as the National Urban League, the National Council of La Raza, and the Center for Population Options receive CDC grants and other technical aid. Man specifically AIDS-related groups actually depend on CDC money for their very existence. Naturally, the CDC has established mechanisms for ensuring that its money and other aid are used for the intended purposes. Organizations wishing to receive grants must not only file applications, but are pre-screened by having to send representatives to CDC workshops on how to apply. These meetings allow the CDC to meet and judge applicants directly. Furthermore, any organization receiving aids winds up having CDC supervision of its AIDS-related "educational" activities. It is little wonder there is so much political pressure, from all sides, to defend both the virus-AIDS hypothesis and the CDC's public health agenda. As with so many non-contagious diseases in the past, the CDC has persuaded the public that AIDS is infectious. Thus the taxpayer is manipulated with fear to acquiesce to the radical measures being pushed by the agency. Where "safe sex" programs, sterile needle exchanges, Federal subsidies of drug addiction, and other CDC proposals would normally be thrown out--along with the officials who proposed them--many Americans suspend judgment. Most people do not yet realize that the entire campaign has been orchestrated mostly by a single agency of the Federal government, rather than being a spontaneous decision by independent experts and activists. As intended, the CDC has been able to mobilize the scientists, the medical institutions, political bodies, the news media, and a bewildering array of AIDS organizations behind its hidden agenda. All such groups will lose their credibility once the public discovers the real source of the campaign, and honest skepticism will spread faster than AIDS itself. Signs of imminent change are appearing. The CDC's public health measures--condoms, sterile needles, contact tracing, and the like-have failed to prevent the steady growth of AIDS. As this bad advice is recognized for what it is, more voices are joining the chorus of dissent against the HIV-AIDS hypothesis. The CDC may soon have to hold HIV research meetings all by itself. That is, if Congress doesn't abolish the CDC first.

Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (Post WW II Reccruitment of German Scientists)

DISCLAIMER

The following is a staff memorandum or other working document
prepared for the members of the Advisory Committee on Human
Radiation Experiments. It should not be construed as representing
the final conclusions of fact or interpretation of the issues.
All staff memoranda are subject to revision based on further
information and analysis. For conclusions and recommendations of
the Advisory Committee, readers are advised to consult the Final
Report to be published in 1995.






MEMORANDUM

TO: Members of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation
Experiments

FROM: Advisory Committee Staff

DATE: April 5, 1995

RE: Post-World War II Reccruitment of German
Scientists--Project Paperclip



The Air Force's School of Aviation Medicine (SAM) at Brooks Air
Force Base in Texas conducted dozens of human radiation experiments
during the Cold War, among them flashblindness studies in connection
with atomic weapons tests, and datagathering for total-body
irradiation studies conducted in Houston. (These have been the subject
of prior briefing books.) Because of the extensive postwar recruiting
of German scientists for the SAM and other U.S. defense installations,
and in light of the central importance of the Nuremberg prosecutions
to the Advisory Committee's work, members of the staff have collected
documentary evidence about Project Paperclip from the National
Archives and Department of Defense records. (The departments of
Justice and Defense, as well as the Archives staff, have provided
substantial assistance in this effort.)

The experiments for which Nazi investigators were tried included
many related to aviation research. These were mainly high-altitude
exposure studies, oxygen deprivation experiments, and cold studies
related to air-sea rescue operations. This information about air crew
hazards was important to both sides, and, of course, continued to be
important to military organizations in the Cold War.

Background of Project Paperclip

Project Paperclip was a postwar and Cold War operation carried
out by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA).1 [Operation
Paperclip's code name was said to have originated because
scientific recruits' papers were paperclipped with regular immigration
forms. The JIOA was a special intelligence office reporting to the
Director of Intelligence in the War Department, comparable to the
intelligence chief of today's Joint Chiefs of Staff.] Paperclip had
two aims: to exploit German scientists for American research, and to
deny these intellectual resources to the Soviet Union. At least
1,600 scientists and their dependents were recruited and brought to
the United States by Paperclip and its successor projects through
the early 1970s. The most famous of these was Wernher von Braun.


1


In recent years, it has been alleged that many of these
individuals were brought to the United States in violation of American
government policy not to permit the entrance of "ardent Nazis" into
the country, that many were security risks, and that at least some
were implicated in Holocaust-related activities.

The secondary literature on Paperclip includes Linda Hunt, Secret
Agenda (1991) and Tom Bowers, The Paperclip Conspiracy (1989). The
following is drawn from these sources and material retrieved from the
National Archives and DOD files.

Nuremberg and Postwar Recruitment of Scientists

At the time of its inception, Paperclip was a matter of
controversy in the War Department, as demonstrated by a November
27,1946 memorandum from General Groves, director of the Manhattan
Project, relating to the bringing to the United States of the eminent
physicist Otto Hahn.

Groves wrote that the Manhattan Project

does not desire to utilize the services of foreign
scientists in the United States, either directly with the
Project or with any affiliated organization. This has
consistently been my views. (sic) I should like to make it
clear, however, that I see no objection to bringing to the
United States such carefully screened physicists as would
contribute materially to the welfare of the United States
and would remain permanently in the United States as
naturalized citizens. I strongly recommend against foreign
physicists coming in contact with our atomic energy program
in any way. If they are allowed to see or discuss the work
of the Project the security of our information would get out
of control. (Attachment 1)

Biomedical Scientists at American Facilities

A number of military research sites recruited Paperclip
scientists with backgrounds in aeromedicine, radiobiology and
ophthalmology. These institutions included the SAM, where radiation
experiments were conducted, and other military sites, particularly the
Edgewood Arsenal of the Army's Chemical Corps.

2

The portfolio of experiments at the SAM was one that would
particularly benefit from the Paperclip recruits. Experiments there
included total-body irradiation, space medicine and bedrest studies,
and flashblindness studies. Herbert Gerstner,2 [The Committee has no
documents at this time indicating that Dr. Gerstner engaged in human
experimentation in Germany.] a principal investigator in TBI
experiments at the SAM, was acting director of the Institute of
Physiology at the University of Leipzig; he became a radiobiologist
at the SAM. (Attachment 2)

The Air Force Surgeon General and SAM officials welcomed the
Paperclip scientists. In March 1951, the school's Commandant, O.O.
Benson Jr., wrote to the Surgeon General to seek more

first-class scientists and highly qualified technologists
from Germany. The first group of paperclip personnel
contained a number of scientists that have proved to be of
real value to the Air Force. The weaker and less gifted ones
have been culled to a considerable extent. The second group
reporting here in 1949 were, in general, less competent than
the original paperclip personnel, and culling process will
again be in order. (Attachment 3)

General Benson's adjutant solicited resumes from a Paperclip
prospect list, including a number of radiation biology and physics
specialists. The qualifications of a few scientists were said to be
known, so curricula vitae were waived. The adjutant wrote, also in
March 1951: "In order to systematically benefit from this program this
headquarters believes that the employment of competent personnel who
fit into our research program is a most important consideration."
(Attachment 4)

The Head-Hunting Competition with the Soviet Union

Official U.S. government policy was to avoid recruitment of
"ardent Nazis." Many of the Paperclip scientists were members of Nazi
organizations of one sort of another. The documentary record
indicates, however, that many claimed inactive status or membership
that was a formality, according to files in the National Archives.

The director of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, Navy
Captain Bosquet N. Wev, bluntly put the case for recruitment in a
April 27,1948 memo to the Pentagon's Director of Intelligence:
"Security investigations conducted by the military have disclosed the
fact that the majority of German scientists were members of either the
Nazi Party or one or more of its affiliates. These investigations
disclose further that with a very few exceptions, such membership was
due to exigencies which influenced the lives of every citizen of
Germany at that time." Wev was critical of over-scrupulous

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investigations by the Department of Justice and other agencies as
reflecting security concerns no longer relevant with the defeat of
Germany, and "biased considerations" about the nature of his recruits'
fascist allegiances. (Attachment 5)

The possibility of scientists being won to the Soviet side in the
Cold War was, according to Captain Wev, the highest consideration. In
a March 1948 letter to the State Department, Wev assessed the
prevailing view in the government: "[R]esponsible officials ... have
expressed opinions to the effect that, in so far as German scientists
are concerned, Nazism no longer should be a serious consideration from
a viewpoint of national security when the far greater threat of
Communism is now jeopardizing the entire world. I strongly concur in
this opinion and consider it a most sound and practical view, which
must certainly be taken if we are to face the situation confronting us
with even an iota of realism. To continue to treat Nazi affiliations
as significant considerations has been aptly phrased as `beating a
dead Nazi horse.'" (Attachment 6)

In his April 27,1948 report to his superiors, he again cited the
Soviet threat:

In light of the situation existing in Europe today, it is
conceivable that continued delay and opposition to the
immigration of these scientists could result in their
eventually falling into the hands of the Russians who would
then gain the valuable information and ability possessed by
these men. Such an eventuality could have a most serious and
adverse affect on the national security of the United
States. (Attachment 5)

Hubertus Strughold and the SAM

Perhaps the most prominent of the Paperclip physicians was
Hubertus Strughold, called "the father of space medicine" and for whom
the Aeromedical Library at the USAF School of Aerospace Medicine was
named in 1977. During the war, he was director of the Luftwaffe's
aeromedical institute; a Strughold staff member was acquitted at
Nuremberg on the grounds that the physician's Dachau laboratory was
not the site of nefarious experiments.

Strughold had a long career at the SAM, including the recruitment
of other Paperclip scientists in Germany. His background was the
subject of public controversy in the United States. He denied
involvement with Nazi experiments and told reporters in this country
that his life had been in danger from the Nazis. A citizen for 30
years before his death in 1986, his many honors included an
Americanism Award from the Daughters of the American Revolution.

4

An April 1947 intelligence report on Strughold stated: "[H]is
successful career under Hitler would seem to indicate that he must be
in full accord with Nazism." (Attachment 7) However, Strughold's
colleagues in Germany and those with whom he had worked briefly in the
United States on fellowships described him as politically indifferent
or anti-Nazi.

In his application to reside in this country, he declared:


Further, the United States is the only country of liberty
which is able to maintain this liberty and the
thousand-year-old culture and western civilization, and it
is my intention to support the United States in this task,
which is in danger now, with all my scientific abilities and
experience. (Attachment 8)

In a 1952 civil service form, Strughold was asked if he had ever
been a member of a fascist organization. His answer: "Not in my
opinion." His references therein included the Surgeon General of the
Air Force, the director of research at the Lovelace Foundation in New
Mexico, and a colleague from the Mayo Clinic. (Attachment 9)

In September 1948, Strughold was granted a security certificate
from the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency director, Captain Wev,
who in the previous March had written to the Department of State
protesting the difficulty of completing immigration procedures for
Paperclip recruits.

Follow-up Research

The staff believes this trail should be followed with more
research before conclusions can be drawn about the Paperclip
scientists and human radiation experiments. That the standard for
immigration was "not an ardent Nazi" is troubling; in Strughold's
case, investigators had specifically questioned his credentials for
"denazification."

It is possible that still-classified intelligence documents could
shed further light on these connections. Staff is attempting to
identify sites that may continue to hold this material. The Department
of Defense has supplied a number of documents and the Central
Intelligence Agency has been asked to search its files. Staff has been
sifting declassified files at the National Archives and plans to
inspect further classified files on this subject.

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