Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America

by Annie Jacobsen

The analysis revealed that tabun was a revolutionary killer that could decimate enemy armies. General William N. Porter, chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, requested that five 260-kg tabun-filled bombs be shipped from the Robbers’ Lair to the United States “by air under highest priority” for field tests. Separately, General Porter asked the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Army Ordnance to conduct their own feasibility studies to determine if tabun bombs could be used in combat by U.S. troops. Most people looked upon chemical warfare as abhorrent. In a June 1943 speech, President Roosevelt himself had said that using chemicals to kill people was immoral and inhumane. The president had denied Chemical Warfare Service officials their request to change the service’s name to the Chemical Corps because of the permanence the name change suggested. And yet here was the interesting news for the Chemical Service. When German nerve gas entered into the world of chemical warfare, it brought with it the assurance of a U.S. chemical warfare program in peacetime. According to chemical weapons expert Jonathan B. Tucker, “In 1945, in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service decided to focus its research and development efforts on the German nerve agents, the technological challenges of which promised to ensure the organization’s survival through the period of postwar demobilization and declining military budgets.”