Thursday, June 04, 2020
Michael Pollan - Psychedelics and How to Change Your Mind | Bioneers
•Nov 26, 2018
Michael Pollan's new book "How To Change Your Mind" surveys the highly controversial terrain of the renaissance of both the science and popular usage of psychedelic substances. As one of our most brilliant and clear-eyed explorers of such topics as plant intelligence and how we feed ourselves, Michael will share his luminous insights from what began as investigative reportage and became a very personal interior journey into the mystery of consciousness and the nature of spirituality. Read an excerpt from Michael Pollan's book, How To Change Your Mind, at https://bioneers.org/how-to-change-yo... This keynote talk was delivered at the 2018 National Bioneers Conference. Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers Co-Founder and CEO. Bio: Michael Pollan, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine since 1987, Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and Director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism, is one of the nation's most influential writers and scientific and environmental investigative journalists. His many award-winning, best-selling books include: The Botany of Desire; The Omnivore's Dilemma; In Defense of Food; and, most recently, How to Change Your Mind. *** Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges. To find more talks like this one, along with engaging articles, interviews, podcasts and ways to take action, visit www.bioneers.org. Subscribe to the Bioneers Radio Series, available on iTunes and other podcast providers and on your local radio station. Support Bioneers today: www.bioneers.org/donate Please join our mailing list (http://www.bioneers.org/subscribe) Stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) Follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bioneers/)
•Nov 26, 2018
Michael Pollan's new book "How To Change Your Mind" surveys the highly controversial terrain of the renaissance of both the science and popular usage of psychedelic substances. As one of our most brilliant and clear-eyed explorers of such topics as plant intelligence and how we feed ourselves, Michael will share his luminous insights from what began as investigative reportage and became a very personal interior journey into the mystery of consciousness and the nature of spirituality. Read an excerpt from Michael Pollan's book, How To Change Your Mind, at https://bioneers.org/how-to-change-yo... This keynote talk was delivered at the 2018 National Bioneers Conference. Introduction by Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers Co-Founder and CEO. Bio: Michael Pollan, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine since 1987, Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and Director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism, is one of the nation's most influential writers and scientific and environmental investigative journalists. His many award-winning, best-selling books include: The Botany of Desire; The Omnivore's Dilemma; In Defense of Food; and, most recently, How to Change Your Mind. *** Since 1990, Bioneers has acted as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world's most pressing environmental and social challenges. To find more talks like this one, along with engaging articles, interviews, podcasts and ways to take action, visit www.bioneers.org. Subscribe to the Bioneers Radio Series, available on iTunes and other podcast providers and on your local radio station. Support Bioneers today: www.bioneers.org/donate Please join our mailing list (http://www.bioneers.org/subscribe) Stay in touch via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Bioneers.org) Follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/bioneers) Follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bioneers/)
“If the words ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.” ~ Terence McKenna
FRANKEN SCIENCE
A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry
In A Nuclear Family Vacation, husband-and-wife journalists Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger hit the road to explore the secretive world of nuclear weaponry. Weaving together first-class travel writing and crack investigative journalism, the pair pursues both adventures and answers: Why are nuclear weapons still on hair-trigger alert? Is there really such a thing as a suitcase nuke? And which nuclear power plants are most likely to be covers for weapons programs? Their itinerary takes them from the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan to the U.S.'s own top-secret "Site R," opening a unique perspective on the world's vast nuclear infrastructure and the international politics at play behind it.
Product description
Review
“[Hodge and Weinberger] succeed admirably in reminding us that nuclear weapons have "never really gone away" and in calling attention to the crucial public debates that are not taking place. The questions they pose are significant and overdue; the answers they receive unsettling…They remind us that the purpose and future of our nuclear arsenal are too important to be left to those whose jobs remain dependent upon its perpetuation.” —Chicago Tribune
“A Nuclear Family Vacation is an eye-opening read for anyone who thinks that nuclear weapons are a thing of the past.” —Nerve
“How are you spending your next holiday? Tired of the same old thing? You might want to pick a different destination from A Nuclear Family Vacation, a new book and travel guide by veteran defence reporters Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger. This husband-and-wife team take the reader on a rapid, darkly comic tour of nuclear weapons sites across the world. A rare achievement in a nuclear policy book, their narrative demystifies an intimidating topic for a broad audience without sacrificing substance. Instead of pontificating on thermonuclear war, Hodge and Weinberger give us an eye-level view, often through their car window…the book sparkles with anecdotes and insights. It is well worth the trip.” —Nature
“Some people trek to Machu Picchu, some dive on the Great Barrier Reef. Those of us interested in nuclear issues visit the monuments and precincts of the Bomb. Such are husband-and-wife journalists Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger.” —New Scientist
“In A Nuclear Family Vacation, a husband-and-wife duo of Washington, DC-based defense reporters takes a journey deep into the nation's nuclear weapons complex. But wait—this turns out to be a surprisingly fun road trip.” —Mother Jones
“In this off-the-uncontaminated-path adventure, Sharon Weinberger and Nathan Hodge make nuclear vacationing seem fun, in a weirdly exhilarating way. They are the slightly obsessed tour guides holding the microphones at the front of the security-cleared bus. Together, the experts lead us across a neglected, mismanaged, and forgotten past, pointing out the history of doomsday weaponry along the way. A Nuclear Family Vacation is a shocking reminder that the Cold War isn’t over; it’s just transformed into something else that we don’t have a name for yet.”—Robert Sullivan, author of Cross Country and Rats
“A vacation for some, a nightmare for others. Either way, well worth reading.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Exhibiting dark humor, defense journalists Hodge and Weinberger take a tour of America’s nuclear-weapons infrastructure, visiting labs, plants, bunkers, missile silos, and ground zeros of nuclear explosions.”—Booklist
“In this adventure in ‘nuclear tourism,’ the husband-and-wife authors…convey an acute sense of the incoherence of latter-day nuclear strategizing.”—Publishers Weekly
“Exhibiting dark humor, defense journalists Hodge and Weinberger take a tour of America’s nuclear-weapons infrastructure, visiting labs, plants, bunkers, missile silos, and ground zeros of nuclear explosions.”—Booklist
“In this adventure in ‘nuclear tourism,’ the husband-and-wife authors…convey an acute sense of the incoherence of latter-day nuclear strategizing.”—Publishers Weekly
“Nuclear tourism is an effective and interesting way of canvassing issues we face today. Reading A Nuclear Family Vacation is a good way to learn more about the history of nuclear weapons and become conversant with our current situation. Hodge and Weinberger have done the legwork to back up their common-sense conclusions.”—Defense Technology International
“Underlying their journey into our nuclear past is an earnest and thoughtful discussion of our nuclear present—and future…They identify a troubling lack of a cohesive national nuclear policy and remark that “much of the infrastructure supporting nuclear weapons continues to exist merely because no one has come up with a compelling reason to shut it down.” One can imagine an updated version of A Nuclear Family Vacation in which the two visit sites in Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, Israel, Russia, France, Great Britain, and heaven knows where else. The itinerary is not as finite as one would like; in fact, it seems to be growing. But there would be some comfort in having these sober and subtle observers as our guides.”—Bookforum
About the Author
Sharon Weinberger is a contributing writer for Wired’s national security blog, Danger Room. She was previously editor in chief of McGraw-Hill’s Defense Technology International and a writer for Aviation Week & Space Technology, a leading aerospace and defense magazine. She is the author of the recently published Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon’s Scientific Underworld, and writes frequently on national security and science for the Washington Post Magazine, Slate, and Discover.
Nathan Hodge is a Washington, D.C.-based writer for Jane’s Defence Weekly. A frequent contributor to Slate, he has reported extensively from Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Soviet Union. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and Details, among many other newspapers and magazines.
Nathan Hodge is a Washington, D.C.-based writer for Jane’s Defence Weekly. A frequent contributor to Slate, he has reported extensively from Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Soviet Union. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and Details, among many other newspapers and magazines.
FRANKEN SCIENCE
Technology and National Security: Maintaining America's Edge
Kindle Edition
Dr. Michael Hudson: Economic Lessons for 2020
•Jan 10, 2020 #crisisofpoverty #Dr #recession
Despite low unemployment rates and a rising stock market, 3 out of 4 economists are expecting a recession by 2021. We are already facing a #crisisofpoverty and economic precarity, where 140 million people are poor or low-income, the costs of living are going up and the chances of living are going down. What condition is our economy in today, more than ten years after the Great Recession of 2008, to withstand another economic downturn? What lessons have we learned – or failed to learn – over this past decade? What lessons can we draw from history to guide us in the months and years to come?
Join a conversation with economist Dr. Michael Hudson on the 2008 economic crisis, what’s happened over the past ten years, and what we can anticipate in 2020. #Dr.Hudson in the President of the Institute for the Study fo Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET) and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His has written extensively on the 2008 crisis, including the books, The Bubble and Beyond, Killing the Host, and J is for Junk Economics. He has also done groundbreaking research on debt and finance in antiquity, most recently in “….And Forgive Them their Debts,” revealing the long history of lending, foreclosure and redemption, and how “debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid.” The only question is on whose backs those debts will be carried.
FRANKEN SCIENCE
Humans, Gods and Technology | VPRO documentary | 2017
Nobody knows how our world will look like in 25 years. Perhaps our work is taken over by autonomous robots and we become the slaves of the technology we have created ourselves. The big questions about the future of man and his relation to technology are presented to two important thinkers of the moment: Kevin Kelly and Yuval Noah Harari. Kevin Kelly is a writer of influential works such as What Technology Wants and The Inevitable. Kelly sketches the inevitability of technology and even sees technology as an autonomous evolutionary system. Artificial intelligence becomes commonplace for everyone and will help us analyze difficult issues and challenge them to reflect on who we are. Kelly is convinced that we are already seen as Gods by technology and that robots will also believe in their own Gods. Yuval Noah Harari is a writer of books about the history of Homo Sapiens and Homo Deus. Harari sketches the history of tomorrow and analyzes the way in which we create our own illusions; illusory institutions such as religion, states and money. We believe in gods because we want to be them ourselves. Harari sees a society with inequalities where some people can upgrade themselves to gods and others will remain vulnerable and mortal. Originally broadcasted by VPRO in 2017. © VPRO Backlight October 2017
Annie Jacobsen: Inside The CIA's Secret History
COMMONWEALTH CLUB MAY 22, 2019
Surprise, Kill, Vanish Fred Burton and Annie Jacobsen for Pen and Sword 1
•May 23, 2019
In this episode of the Stratfor podcast, Annie Jacobsen and the CIA's most secret missions. "In a perfect world, the State Department is able to work out the conflicts that we're having with other nations. And the second option, traditionally, historically, is war. So only after 1947, after the national security act was this third option put into play, which is the CIA's hidden hand. So in essence if diplomacy fails and war is unwise, call on the CIA's Special Activities Division." Those are the words that investigative journalist and author Annie Jacobsen uses to describe the work of the CIA's paramilitary arm. And that work is the subject of Jacobsen's latest, Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins. In this episode of Stratfor Talks' Pen and Sword, host Fred Burton speaks with Jacobsen about her inspiration, how she conducted her research and what she learned about the element of U.S. foreign policy payed out in secret. Reading List: Surprise, Kill Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins Annie Jacobsen's Book List Annie Jacobsen's Facebook Page F
FRANKEN SCIENCE
Anne Jacobsen, "Operation Paperclip" AMERICA'S NAZI SCIENTISTS
The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America
"ITS OUR GERMAN SCIENTISTS AGAINST THEIR GERMAN SCIENTISTS"
ON THE SPACE RACE, FROM TOM WOLFE'S THE RIGHT STUFF
•Mar 15, 2014
Politics and Prose
Author Annie Jacobsen presents a fascinating topic from her new book, Operation Paperclip, and takes questions from the audience. This event was recorded February 26, 2014 at Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.
Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics & Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore and cultural hub, a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books. Politics & Prose offers superior service, unusual book choices, and a haven for book lovers in the store and online. Visit them on the web at http://www.politics-prose.com/
Willkommen
By Wendy Lower
Feb. 28, 2014
Among the trophies of the Second World War captured by Allied intelligence agents were Nazi scientists and their research on biological and chemical weapons. In a classified memorandum titled “Exploitation of German Scientists in Science and Technology in the United States,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff described these men as “chosen, rare minds whose continuing intellectual productivity we wish to use.” Such intellectual spoils were not to fall into Soviet hands. In 1945, Operation Overcast (renamed Operation Paperclip for the paper clips attached to the dossiers of the most “troublesome cases”) began. More than 1,600 Germans were secretly recruited to develop armaments “at a feverish and paranoid pace that came to define the Cold War.”
Although some of these men had been Nazi Party members, SS officers and war criminals, they were valued as vital to American national security. Thus it was O.K., American government officials reasoned, to ignore these scientists’ roles in developing biological and chemical weapons, in designing the V-2 rockets that shattered London and Antwerp and in the countless deaths of concentration camp inmates who fell victim to medical experiments at Dachau and Ravensbrück.
The journalist Annie Jacobsen’s “Operation Paperclip” is not the first unveiling of the program. The New York Times, Newsweek and other media outlets exposed Paperclip as early as December 1946. Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Rabbi Steven Wise publicly opposed the program, and according to a Gallup poll, most Americans at the time considered it a “bad” idea. But Jacobsen’s book is the first on the topic to appear since President Clinton signed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 1998, which pushed through the declassification of American intelligence records, including the F.B.I., Army intelligence and C.I.A. files of German agents, scientists and war criminals. Jacobsen’s access to these documents, along with her research in various special collections and her interviews with former intelligence personnel and relatives of the scientists, make her study the most in-depth account yet of the lives of Paperclip recruits and their American counterparts.
Jacobsen tracks 21 of these Nazi scientists and technicians. Eight of her subjects had worked directly with Hitler, Himmler or Göring; 15 were active Nazi Party members; 10 served in paramilitary squads like the SA and SS; and six were tried at Nuremberg. A few familiar figures pop up, including several pioneers in space exploration — Wernher von Braun, Hubertus Strughold, Walter Dornberger and Arthur Rudolph.
Image
Anne Jacobsen, "Operation Paperclip" AMERICA'S NAZI SCIENTISTS
The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America
"ITS OUR GERMAN SCIENTISTS AGAINST THEIR GERMAN SCIENTISTS"
ON THE SPACE RACE, FROM TOM WOLFE'S THE RIGHT STUFF
•Mar 15, 2014
Politics and Prose
Author Annie Jacobsen presents a fascinating topic from her new book, Operation Paperclip, and takes questions from the audience. This event was recorded February 26, 2014 at Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.
Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics & Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore and cultural hub, a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books. Politics & Prose offers superior service, unusual book choices, and a haven for book lovers in the store and online. Visit them on the web at http://www.politics-prose.com/
When the U.S. recruited Nazis for 'Operation Paperclip'
•Mar 31, 2014
Willkommen
OPERATION PAPERCLIP
The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to AmericaBy Wendy Lower
Feb. 28, 2014
Among the trophies of the Second World War captured by Allied intelligence agents were Nazi scientists and their research on biological and chemical weapons. In a classified memorandum titled “Exploitation of German Scientists in Science and Technology in the United States,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff described these men as “chosen, rare minds whose continuing intellectual productivity we wish to use.” Such intellectual spoils were not to fall into Soviet hands. In 1945, Operation Overcast (renamed Operation Paperclip for the paper clips attached to the dossiers of the most “troublesome cases”) began. More than 1,600 Germans were secretly recruited to develop armaments “at a feverish and paranoid pace that came to define the Cold War.”
Although some of these men had been Nazi Party members, SS officers and war criminals, they were valued as vital to American national security. Thus it was O.K., American government officials reasoned, to ignore these scientists’ roles in developing biological and chemical weapons, in designing the V-2 rockets that shattered London and Antwerp and in the countless deaths of concentration camp inmates who fell victim to medical experiments at Dachau and Ravensbrück.
The journalist Annie Jacobsen’s “Operation Paperclip” is not the first unveiling of the program. The New York Times, Newsweek and other media outlets exposed Paperclip as early as December 1946. Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Rabbi Steven Wise publicly opposed the program, and according to a Gallup poll, most Americans at the time considered it a “bad” idea. But Jacobsen’s book is the first on the topic to appear since President Clinton signed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 1998, which pushed through the declassification of American intelligence records, including the F.B.I., Army intelligence and C.I.A. files of German agents, scientists and war criminals. Jacobsen’s access to these documents, along with her research in various special collections and her interviews with former intelligence personnel and relatives of the scientists, make her study the most in-depth account yet of the lives of Paperclip recruits and their American counterparts.
Jacobsen tracks 21 of these Nazi scientists and technicians. Eight of her subjects had worked directly with Hitler, Himmler or Göring; 15 were active Nazi Party members; 10 served in paramilitary squads like the SA and SS; and six were tried at Nuremberg. A few familiar figures pop up, including several pioneers in space exploration — Wernher von Braun, Hubertus Strughold, Walter Dornberger and Arthur Rudolph.
Image
RIGHT CLICK TO ENLARGE
Nazi scientists, from top: Jürgen von Klenck, Fritz Hoffmann, Otto Ambros, Theodor Benzinger.Credit...Illustration by The New York Times; Photographs from National Archives and Records Administration
The “classified body of secrets and lies” behind Operation Paperclip is complex and crowded, and in some places the narrative becomes muddled, as infamous Nazis and American intelligence operatives appear alongside present-day historians and archivists who are unnecessarily cited to provide basic facts. To her credit, Jacobsen deftly untangles the myriad American and German government agencies and personnel involved, though not without repetitious reminders of who is who.
More gripping and skillfully rendered are the stories of American and British officials who scoured defeated Germany for Nazi scientists and their research. One well-known find was the Osenberg list of thousands of German scientists and facilities, which was retrieved from a toilet at Bonn University. Another was a huge cache of tabun (a sarin-like chemical). While searching the I. G. Farben laboratories on the German-Polish border, British soldiers uncovered 175 forested bunkers storing aerial bombs with a powerful organophosphorus nerve agent. They called in American Army chemists, who tested the chemical and found that just a drop on the skin would kill a rabbit in minutes. In 1945, 530 tons of tabun were shipped to various locations in the United States including Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.
There, Jacobsen writes, American soldiers became unknowing guinea pigs for Dr. L. Wilson Greene, an American. In a gassing chamber, soldiers were exposed to low levels of tabun. Greene was pleased with the effects: Though the soldiers were “partially disabled” for one to three weeks, they eventually recovered. Thus nerve agents and hallucinogenic drugs could serve as more “gentle” weapons, immobilizing the enemy but, Greene hoped, avoiding the “wholesale killing of people or the mass destruction of property.” Greene assigned his colleague, the German chemist Fritz Hoffmann, to research other toxic agents for military use. Hoffmann (who died in 1967) studied everything from street drugs to Mongolian hallucinogenic mushrooms, and may have contributed his research to the development of Agent Orange. Hoffmann’s daughter remembered that her father was interested in producing a substance that could defoliate trees in Vietnam “so you could see the enemies.” In an interview with Jacobsen, she remarked: “Agent Orange turned out not only to defoliate trees but to cause great harm in children. Dad was dead by then, and I remember thinking, Thank God. It would have killed him to learn that. He was a gentle man. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
American intelligence agents, Jacobsen argues, were blinded by brinkmanship. Some became consumed by the search for weapons and were double-crossed by German scientists. One such man was Gen. Charles E. Loucks, chief of intelligence for chemical warfare stationed in Heidelberg. So dedicated was Loucks that he found the task of securing the German arsenal of chemical weapons for his country to be “more interesting than going down to Paris on weekends.” He became charmed by the notorious SS Brig. Gen. Walter Schieber, who eventually worked as a chemist for the American Army’s Chemical Corps and then for the C.I.A. Schieber turned out to have been a Soviet mole and international weapons dealer, as Jacobsen discovered in the declassified files.
There are few satisfying explanations in Jacobsen’s account of this “tawdry group of amoral war opportunists, many of whom were linked to war crimes.” In the end, it is not clear who was exploiting whom — the Nazi scientists or their American recruiters. What is clear is that contemporary public opinion had it right: Operation Paperclip was a bad idea. By shining light on the human, ethical and monetary costs of the program, Jacobsen’s book reveals just how bad. Nazi scientists were generously remunerated for developing biological and chemical weapons whose cleanup and disposal took decades and cost approximately $30 billion. American experimentation on humans continued during the Cold War in violation of the Nuremberg Code. A lethal chemical might have been developed for warfare, with terrible consequences.
Jacobsen ends her study by asking Gerhard Maschkowski, a Jewish survivor of the I. G. Farben camp at Auschwitz, “What matters, what lasts?” In response, Maschkowski reveals his blue-ink tattoo. Yet certain truths are obscured in Jacobsen’s disturbing account. She writes that the Germans didn’t use any chemical or biological weapons in World War II. Although they may not have deployed such weapons on the battlefield, the Germans did use carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B, a pesticide) in mobile gas vans and gas chambers. In 1942-43, the Allies threatened retaliation if the Germans used chemical weapons. Apparently this warning applied only to Allied soldiers in combat and civilians in Allied cities, not to the Jews, Soviet P.O.W.s and others who were murdered in Auschwitz, Birkenau and other Nazi extermination sites.
OPERATION PAPERCLIP
The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America
By Annie Jacobsen
Illustrated. 575 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $30.
Wendy Lower is the author of “Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields,” a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award.
A version of this article appears in print on March 2, 2014, Page 16 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Willkommen. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
The “classified body of secrets and lies” behind Operation Paperclip is complex and crowded, and in some places the narrative becomes muddled, as infamous Nazis and American intelligence operatives appear alongside present-day historians and archivists who are unnecessarily cited to provide basic facts. To her credit, Jacobsen deftly untangles the myriad American and German government agencies and personnel involved, though not without repetitious reminders of who is who.
More gripping and skillfully rendered are the stories of American and British officials who scoured defeated Germany for Nazi scientists and their research. One well-known find was the Osenberg list of thousands of German scientists and facilities, which was retrieved from a toilet at Bonn University. Another was a huge cache of tabun (a sarin-like chemical). While searching the I. G. Farben laboratories on the German-Polish border, British soldiers uncovered 175 forested bunkers storing aerial bombs with a powerful organophosphorus nerve agent. They called in American Army chemists, who tested the chemical and found that just a drop on the skin would kill a rabbit in minutes. In 1945, 530 tons of tabun were shipped to various locations in the United States including Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.
There, Jacobsen writes, American soldiers became unknowing guinea pigs for Dr. L. Wilson Greene, an American. In a gassing chamber, soldiers were exposed to low levels of tabun. Greene was pleased with the effects: Though the soldiers were “partially disabled” for one to three weeks, they eventually recovered. Thus nerve agents and hallucinogenic drugs could serve as more “gentle” weapons, immobilizing the enemy but, Greene hoped, avoiding the “wholesale killing of people or the mass destruction of property.” Greene assigned his colleague, the German chemist Fritz Hoffmann, to research other toxic agents for military use. Hoffmann (who died in 1967) studied everything from street drugs to Mongolian hallucinogenic mushrooms, and may have contributed his research to the development of Agent Orange. Hoffmann’s daughter remembered that her father was interested in producing a substance that could defoliate trees in Vietnam “so you could see the enemies.” In an interview with Jacobsen, she remarked: “Agent Orange turned out not only to defoliate trees but to cause great harm in children. Dad was dead by then, and I remember thinking, Thank God. It would have killed him to learn that. He was a gentle man. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
American intelligence agents, Jacobsen argues, were blinded by brinkmanship. Some became consumed by the search for weapons and were double-crossed by German scientists. One such man was Gen. Charles E. Loucks, chief of intelligence for chemical warfare stationed in Heidelberg. So dedicated was Loucks that he found the task of securing the German arsenal of chemical weapons for his country to be “more interesting than going down to Paris on weekends.” He became charmed by the notorious SS Brig. Gen. Walter Schieber, who eventually worked as a chemist for the American Army’s Chemical Corps and then for the C.I.A. Schieber turned out to have been a Soviet mole and international weapons dealer, as Jacobsen discovered in the declassified files.
There are few satisfying explanations in Jacobsen’s account of this “tawdry group of amoral war opportunists, many of whom were linked to war crimes.” In the end, it is not clear who was exploiting whom — the Nazi scientists or their American recruiters. What is clear is that contemporary public opinion had it right: Operation Paperclip was a bad idea. By shining light on the human, ethical and monetary costs of the program, Jacobsen’s book reveals just how bad. Nazi scientists were generously remunerated for developing biological and chemical weapons whose cleanup and disposal took decades and cost approximately $30 billion. American experimentation on humans continued during the Cold War in violation of the Nuremberg Code. A lethal chemical might have been developed for warfare, with terrible consequences.
Jacobsen ends her study by asking Gerhard Maschkowski, a Jewish survivor of the I. G. Farben camp at Auschwitz, “What matters, what lasts?” In response, Maschkowski reveals his blue-ink tattoo. Yet certain truths are obscured in Jacobsen’s disturbing account. She writes that the Germans didn’t use any chemical or biological weapons in World War II. Although they may not have deployed such weapons on the battlefield, the Germans did use carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B, a pesticide) in mobile gas vans and gas chambers. In 1942-43, the Allies threatened retaliation if the Germans used chemical weapons. Apparently this warning applied only to Allied soldiers in combat and civilians in Allied cities, not to the Jews, Soviet P.O.W.s and others who were murdered in Auschwitz, Birkenau and other Nazi extermination sites.
OPERATION PAPERCLIP
The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America
By Annie Jacobsen
Illustrated. 575 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $30.
Wendy Lower is the author of “Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields,” a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award.
A version of this article appears in print on March 2, 2014, Page 16 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Willkommen. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)