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

by Annie Jacobsen

Blome’s American counterpart in wartime plague-weapon research was a left-leaning bacteriologist named Dr. Theodor Rosebury. During the war, the biological weapons work Rosebury conducted was so highly classified that it was considered as secret as atomic research. He had worked at a research facility outside Washington, D.C., called Camp Detrick. It was like Posen, only bigger. Detrick had 2,273 personnel working on Top Secret biological warfare programs. Like Blome, Rosebury worked on bubonic plague. Rosebury’s colleagues worked on 199 other germ bomb projects, including anthrax spore production, plant and animal diseases, and insect research, in an effort to determine which bugs were the most effective carriers of certain diseases. Almost no one in America had any idea that the U.S. Army had been developing biological weapons until January 3, 1946,