Operation Paperclip

by Annie Jacobsen

  Greene was not proposing to use low levels of tabun gas on the battlefield. He was talking about using other kinds of incapacitating agents, drugs that could immobilize or temporarily paralyze a person, “hallucinogenic or psychotomimetic drugs… whose effects mimic insanity or psychosis.” “There can be no doubt that their will to resist would be weakened greatly, if not entirely destroyed, by the mass hysteria and panic which would ensue,” Greene explained.

  Greene proposed that an immediate “search be made for a stable chemical compound which would cause mental abnormalities of military significance.” He sought drugs that made people irrational. In his monograph, Greene provided the army with a list of “61 materials known to cause mental disorders.” These sixty-one compounds, he said, should be studied and refined to determine which single compound would be the best possible incapacitating agents for U.S. military use. Greene requested a budget of fifty thousand dollars, roughly half a million dollars in 2013, which was granted. Research began. Greene assigned his colleague and friend Fritz Hoffmann the job of researching a multitude of toxins for potential military use.

  Fritz Hoffmann was by now recognized at Edgewood as one of the most gifted organic chemists in the Chemical Corps. If anyone could find and prepare the ideal incapacitating agent for the battlefield, Hoffmann could. He began a broad spectrum of research on everything from well-known street drugs to highly obscure toxins from the third world. There was mescaline, obtained from the peyote cactus and used by Native American Indians, with side effects ranging from divination to boredom. He studied fly agaric, a hallucinogenic mushroom found on the barren slopes of Mongolia and rumored to facilitate contact with the spirit world, and piruri, a toxic vegetable leaf from Australia, used by Aborigines, that was found to suppress thirst. Yaxee and epena, from Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil, caused people to see things that weren’t really there. It was a drug that for centuries had been “used by primitive tribes to escape the realities of their plight by using hallucinogenic properties.” Soon Hoffmann would travel the world in search of these incapacitating agents on behalf of the Chemical Corps.

  Dr. Greene’s idea of psychochemical warfare would have a profound effect on the future of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps, but it would also greatly affect the direction of the newest civilian intelligence organization in Washington, the CIA. The Agency had deep pockets and big ideas. For the CIA, using drugs to incapacitate individuals had many more applications than just on the battlefield, and the Agency began developing programs of its own. Fritz Hoffmann and L. Wilson Greene were at the locus of a growing partnership being forged between the Chemical Corps and the CIA. Soon, biological warfare experts from Camp Detrick would also be brought into the fold. This particular biological weapons program, which would be run by a group called Special Operations Division, or SO Division, was fueled by Operation Paperclip and would develop into one of the most controversial and collaborative efforts in the history of the CIA.

  It had been a year and a half since the Merck Report on the biological weapons threat had been released, and an influx of congressional funding had transformed Camp Detrick into a state-of-the-art bioweapons research and development facility. The army purchased 545 acres of land adjacent to what had been called “Area A” and created a new area, designated “Area B,” where some of Detrick’s first postwar field tests with crop dusters and spray hoses would occur. During the war, dangerous pathogens like anthrax and “X” had been tested and cultured inside Detrick’s germ lab, a rudimentary wooden building covered in black tarpaper and nicknamed the Black Maria by scientists. During the war, an industrial-size boiler, used for fermenting, sat on the lawn outside the germ lab. Now, given the scope of work planned for the immediate future, Detrick needed an aerosol chamber that was bigger and better than anything else like it in the world. The job of designing such a structure was assigned to a bacteriologist named Dr. Harold Batchelor.

  Detrick’s British counterparts, at Porton Down, had an excellent chamber of their own, but it fit only two or three mice. What Batchelor came up with was a monstrous spherical one-million-liter chamber called the Eight Ball, shaped like a giant’s golf ball and held upright by iron “legs.” The Chicago Bridge and Iron Works was commissioned to build the Eight Ball to specifications that made it airtight and bombproof. The Eight Ball was to have portholes, doors, and hatchways and steel walls of one and a half inches.

  Inside the Eight Ball, airflow would simulate weather systems, with scientists on the outside controlling temperatures on the inside within a range of 55 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Humidity could be controlled inside the Eight Ball to fluctuate between 30 and 100 percent. This state-of-the-art environmental control would allow Detrick’s scientists to understand how aerosolized biological agents would work at different altitudes in the open air. The sphere would weigh more than 131 tons and would stand four stories tall. A catwalk around its center would allow scientists to observe, through portholes, the test subjects sitting inside as they were exposed to the world’s deadliest germs. The Chicago Bridge and Iron Works agreed to a delivery date of 1949.

  With the chamber’s design complete, Dr. Batchelor prepared to travel to Germany. There was an important German scientist who was just now becoming available for an interview. This was a man who knew more than almost anyone else in the world about biological weapons. He was particularly knowledgeable about weaponized bubonic plague.

  The physician was Dr. Kurt Blome, the former deputy surgeon general of the Third Reich. He had just been acquitted of war crimes at the Nuremberg doctors’ trial. Now he was back on the Paperclip list.

  The doctors’ trial had been over for forty-two days. It was October 2, 1947, and a message from Heidelberg, marked “Secret-Confidential,” arrived on the desk of the chief of the Chemical Corps. It read: “Available now for interrogation on biological warfare matters is Doctor Kurt Blome.”

  A meeting was arranged for November 10, 1947, between Blome and Batchelor. Present alongside Dr. Batchelor were Detrick doctors Dr. Charles R. Phillips, a specialist in desterilization, Dr. Donald W. Falconer, an explosives expert, and Dr. A. W. Gorelick, a dosage expert. Lieutenant R. W. Swanson represented the U.S. Navy and Lieutenant Colonel Warren S. LeRoy represented the army’s European Command Headquarters. An interpreter and a stenographer were also present. Dr. Blome was told in advance that everything discussed would be classified.

  Dr. Batchelor spoke first, setting the tone for the all-day affair. “We have come to interview Dr. Blome personally as well as professionally,” Batchelor said. “We have friends in Germany, scientific friends, and this is an opportunity for us to enjoy meeting [Dr. Blome] and to discuss our various problems with him.” To begin, Batchelor asked, “Would it be possible for Dr. Blome to give us an overall picture of the information that he has? The nature of the world under discussion?”

  Blome spoke in English, pausing on occasion for the interpreter to help him with a word. “In 1943 I received orders from Goering for all the research of Biological Warfare,” Blome explained, “all the research for BW [would fall] under the name Kanserreseach.… Cancer Research had already started long before that, and I was already working all the time but in order to keep this development secret [the Reich] disguised it.”

  Dr. Blome laid out the command structure of those involved in biological weapons work under Himmler, and where the men were now. It was a surprisingly small group of “around twenty” men. As head of the Reich Research Council, Blome explained, Göring was at the top, as the Reich’s dictator of science. There were three men in equal positions directly under Göring, Dr. Blome explained. Blome was in charge of all research and development of pathogens. Doctors and scientists working in this area reported to him. Major General Dr. Walter Schreiber—the Russians’ surprise witness at Nuremberg and the man who had pointed the finger at Blome—was in charge of vaccines, antidotes, and serums for biological weapons. All doctors and scientists working in these areas ultimately reported to S
chreiber. Finally, Blome explained, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel oversaw the Lightning Rod Committee, Blitzableiter, the code name for the ordnance experts who worked on delivery systems for biological bombs. Anyone conducting tests with these kinds of weapons had to go through Keitel.

  Göring had committed suicide and Keitel had been hanged at Nuremberg after the trial of the major war criminals. Major General Walter Schreiber was working for the Russians now. It appeared that Dr. Blome was the last available man standing with extensive inside knowledge of the Third Reich’s bioweapons program.

  Dr. Gorelick asked, “Can Dr. Blome give us actual locations of various laboratories?”

  Blome spoke of the Reich’s outpost on the island of Riems, a facility that specialized in “Sickness of Cattle” research, including rinderpest and foot-and-mouth disease. Blome said that because “the isle was completely isolated except by wire,” it was a perfect place to conduct this kind of dangerous research. The scientist in charge of the laboratory was Professor Otto Waldmann and his assistant was Erich Traub “of international fame.” Blome was referring to the fact that before the war, Traub spent several years in America doing research at the Rockefeller Institute, in New Jersey.

  Rinderpest was a terrible disease, Blome said. In many ways it was the biological weapon he feared most. “Germany depended on milk and butter for 60% of her fat resources,” said Blome. “In 1944 it would have resulted in a great catastrophe if foot-and-mouth disease had been used against Germany. It would have been the greatest catastrophe ever faced,” according to Blome, “[i]f a country relies on all its fat resources to get milk and butter. Once the disease starts there is no stopping it.” The Detrick scientists were very interested to learn more.

  How did the Reich acquire and develop the pathogen, Batchelor asked? Blome had already explained this to the Operation Alsos interrogators, but that was two years ago, before the doctors’ trial, and apparently these Detrick scientists were not familiar with what Blome had said when he was at Dustbin. “By international law it was prohibited to have the virus for this sickness in Europe,” Blome said. “The virus was in Turkey and Himmler ordered that for the Isle.” Blome confirmed that Dr. Erich Traub went to Turkey on direct orders from Himmler and acquired a strain of the dangerous virus there. At Riems, Traub then succeeded in producing a dry form of the virus. Dry forms were the deadliest of all, said Blome. “After a period of seven months based on experimentation on the Isle, this virus was still effective. After seven months they still spread and the cattle were all infected.”

  Blome then spoke of experimental tests conducted by Luftwaffe pilots in Russia, where the disease was sprayed from low-flying aircraft over fields of grazing cattle.

  “Positive results,” said Blome.

  Where were Dr. Traub and Dr. Waldmann now?

  “I believe that they have been taken prisoner of the Russians and they are still active in their research for the Russians,” Blome said.

  The conversation shifted to plague research at Posen, where Blome had set up an institute during the war. “Perhaps we would like to talk about the human angle,” Dr. Phillips asked, trying to veil the uncomfortable subject by using the royal “we.”

  Dr. Blome had been acquitted of war crimes charges five weeks earlier. Seven of his codefendants were to be hanged. Clearly, the subject of experiments on humans was not something he was going to discuss. The question was rephrased: What did Blome believe was the most groundbreaking biological weapons work conducted by the Reich? Blome said that at Posen, he had been working at dispersing biological agents in a “combination with gas that [a]ffects the throat. When membranes are hurt [that is, damaged]… bacteria have a better chance to infect,” Blome said.

  Dr. Phillips rephrased his question again. Everyone wanted to know about the human experiments; it was the ultimate forbidden knowledge the Nazis possessed. “Perhaps we would like to talk about the human angle, which was, I think, Kliewe’s work,” he said.

  Blome was no fool. “Professor Kliewe has not worked himself with experiments,” Blome said. Heinrich Kliewe performed intelligence work. He was in charge of keeping tabs on the biological weapons programs being pursued by nations at war with the Reich. “Kliewe investigated Polish and Russian sabotage,” Blome said. “The activity here was not to cause an epidemic amongst the population, merely to kill certain people.”

  The Detrick doctors were intrigued by this line of conversation and asked Dr. Blome to explain further.

  During the war, Polish resistance fighters in Posen had succeeded in assassinating “about twenty people,” Blome said, most of whom were SS officers. “A lot of cases of Typhoid,” said Blome. “The waiters in restaurants took fountain pens filled with the inoculum and injected the inoculum into the soup or the food on their way to and from the dining room. This has been proved. Polish resistance movement was heading all these activities. A German-Polish woman doctor was working in the hospital and got hold of the bacteria and forwarded it to the other people.”

  “Were any preventative measures taken?” Dr. Phillips asked.

  Blome explained that there was an extensive and well-funded Reich research program going on in the field of vaccines, antidotes, and serums—against many pathogens and diseases, from cholera to parrot virus to plague. But Blome explained that the holy grail of biological weapons research was the plague. “I believe the only thing of danger to Germany would have been the plague. Because for propaganda reasons the plague got more attention tha[n] any others,” Blome added. “People all over the world believe it is the worst sickness there is.”

  Dr. Phillips wanted to learn more about the use of “live vaccines” in Blome’s plague research.

  “Schreiber, as the head of the department [epidemics] had very good vaccine material on hand for typhoid, paratyphoid, cholera, diphtheria and Ruhr,” Blome explained. “For the plague, they had serum on hand but the serum was not very powerful, it was very weak. They did not have any vaccine so I started to build an institute which has never been completed.” On occasion, Blome said, he worked in concert with Schreiber’s vaccine research laboratory to provide them with “good vaccine material,” meaning the germs.

  “Which laboratories?” asked Dr. Falconer.

  “In the Medical Laboratory in Berlin,” said Blome. “There was an official appointed only for research of epidemics. Prof. Schreiber.”

  “Was he under Kliewe?” Dr. Phillips asked, apparently still unaware that Professor Schreiber was the same Dr. Schreiber who had testified at Nuremberg. If, at Nuremberg, the Russians meant to send a message to American biological weapons makers with Schreiber’s testimony, this had gone over the head of these bacteriologists from Camp Detrick.

  Blome repeated that Schreiber was “in the same position as I would be under Göring for my cancer researches, so this man was [directly] under Göring.” Meaning Blome and Schreiber were equals in the Reich’s chain of command. They were also archenemies. “Schreiber is a Russian PW [prisoner of war] and everybody who knew Schreiber is convinced he is working for them,” said Blome. In this world of intense suspicion, of deviance and trickery, it was impossible to know who was lying and who was telling the truth.

  The time came to have a meal. “In closing this particular angle we express our gratitude to Dr. Blome for his wholehearted cooperation,” Dr. Batchelor said. He suggested that they all have dinner together. Pleasant talk. “During that time we will not discuss this matter,” Batchelor said. As if the Americans had not just tried to hang Dr. Blome for war crimes. As if Blome had not been a hard-core Nazi ideologue and member of the inner circle, or had not worn the Golden Party Badge. Pleasantries were exchanged and the meeting was adjourned.

  After the meeting, the Detrick doctors requested from the Army Chemical Corps everything they knew about Dr. Erich Traub. That Dr. Blome said he was most afraid of an outbreak of cattle plague was serious news. Traub was the world’s leading expert in the disease. Now the U.S. Army wanted him as their
own.

  Dr. Traub was a virologist, microbiologist, and professor and a doctor of veterinary medicine. He had been the second in command at the Reich’s State Research Institute at Riems since 1942. He was also an expert in Newcastle disease, a contagious bird flu, that he was rumored to have weaponized. The Chemical Corps knew Traub spoke fluent English, that he had dark brown hair, gray-brown eyes, and two pronounced saber scars on his face—on the forehead and upper lip. And they knew that from 1932 until 1938, Traub had been a staff member at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, in New Jersey. But after meeting with Dr. Blome, the Chemical Corps wanted more information on Traub, and they tracked down two of his former American colleagues for interviews. One of them, Dr. Little, described Traub as a “domineering German and a surly type individual with a violent temper.” Another colleague, Dr. John Nelson, found that despite “long training in the care of animals, [Traub] went out of his way to be cruel to animals.” This troubled Nelson, who felt that “any person who is cruel to animals shows little distinction and difference to his treatment of his fellow human beings.”

  Before the war, Traub was given the opportunity to stay in America and continue his research full-time. He chose to return to Germany, citing loyalty to the Reich. In 1939, Traub was drafted into the Wehrmacht, Veterinary Corps, and in 1940, he was elevated to captain and fought in the campaign against France. He was a member of several Nazi organizations, including the Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrerkorps (NSKK), or National Socialist Motor Corps; the National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV); and the Reichsluftschutzbund (RLB), or State Air Protection Corps. Dr. Traub’s talents as a virologist had been identified, and he had been pulled back from the front lines and assigned to biological weapons work. According to Blome, Traub was the most talented scientist working on anti-animal research—biological weapons designed to kill the animals that a nation relies upon most for food. At the end of the war, when the Riems lab fell to the Russians, with it went Dr. Traub, his wife, Blanka, and their three children. The laboratory was renamed the Land Office II for Animal Epidemic Diseases and the Soviets put Traub back to work on bioweapons research. Now, in 1947, the Army began a plan to lure Traub away.