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

by Annie Jacobsen

There were more problems afloat in Washington, this time coming from the FBI. If Nazi scientists were going to work for the U.S. military, the Department of Justice said it needed to perform background checks. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI looked into Dr. Wagner’s past, based on information collected by army intelligence in Europe, and learned that Dr. Wagner had “once belonged to the German SS,” the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party run by Himmler. This meant that Wagner was an ardent Nazi. If he had stayed in Germany, as a former SS member and per the laws of the occupying forces, he would have been arrested and subject to a denazification trial. But the FBI was made aware of how badly the navy needed Wagner, and they labeled him “an opportunist who is interested only in science.”