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

by Annie Jacobsen

Dr. Blome’s wife, Bettina, a physician and bestselling author. Frau Blome meticulously researched experiments that were conducted by the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) during the war. This included malaria experiments on Terre Haute federal prison inmates. She also uncovered Dr. Walter Reed’s famous nineteenth-century yellow fever research for the U.S. Army, in which volunteer human test subjects had died. The defense counsel, Robert Servatius, picked up on this theme of U.S. Army human experimentation where Blome’s wife left off. Servatius had located a Life magazine article, published in June of 1945, that described how OSRD conducted experiments on eight hundred U.S. prisoners during the war. Servatius read the entire article, word for word, in the courtroom. None of the American judges was familiar with the article, nor were most members of the prosecution, and its presentation in court clearly caught the Americans off guard. Because the article specifically discussed U.S. Army wartime experiments on prisoners, it was incredibly damaging for the prosecution. “Prison life is ideal for controlled laboratory work with humans,” Servatius read, quoting American doctors