“On television last weekend, former head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center Jose Rodriguez graphically described “black site” prisons and “enhanced interrogation techniques,” aka or torture. When Lesley Stahl said, “This is Orwellian stuff. The United States doesn’t do that?” he blithely responded, “Well, we do.”
How such truth still shocks the American people is beyond me. While certain precedents were set in the wake of 9/11, the history of American operations entirely counter to its principles is by no means short. Readers might want to spend some time familiarizing themselves with “Operation Paperclip” – the OSS program conduced by the JIOA that covertly recruited German scientists at the end of World War 2, offering them safe haven in the United States and elsewhere. In some instances, those recruited were persons classified by the United States prior to the end of the war as dangerous to the security of Allied Forces. Among them were Wernher von Braun, Arthur Rudolph, and Hubertus Strughold. Von Braun, an aerospace engineer, was responsible for heading the V-2 rocket program - which was responsible for the deaths of thousands of allied soldiers and civilians, as well as some 12,000 forced laborers that lost their lives building the weapons. Interestingly, many Americans are more familiar with von Braun for something entirely different – as the architect of the Saturn V project, a quintessential part of the US space program in the 60’s and the rocket used to send the Apollo missions to the Moon. Von Braun was also responsible for helping develop the US IRBM program. In 1975 he was awarded the National Medal of Science – the same man that had designed the V-2 rocket for Hitler.
Like von Braun, Rudolph was also an aerospace engineer that worked on the V-2 project. Like von Braun he also worked on the Saturn V project, as well as developing the Pershing missile. Unlike von Braun, he was eventually investigated for war crimes and, in the early 80’s, was forced to renounce his US citizenship and return to Germany. In short, Rudolph was no longer of any use and, given von Braun’s notoriety, could be shuffled off.
The real kicker, though, was Strughold, a prominent psychologist and medical researcher responsible for carrying out experiments at Dachau in the field of Aeromedical research. In short, if you’ve ever seen video or photographs of experiments being carried out on prisoners in an attempt to, for example, determine the effects of frigid water and other environmental hazards on pilots – Strughold had some hand in it. Despite that, he would go on to earn the distinction in the United States as “the father of space medicine”. It wouldn’t be until after his death in 1986 that his wartime criminality was properly scrutinized. Somehow the Americans happened to “miss that” for over forty years.
Von Braun, Strughold, and Rudolph are three famous examples. The reality is that Operation Paperclip, which initially began as Operation Overcast, was responsible for covertly appropriating approximately 1,600 German scientists. Those among them that possessed special skill sets that went to the US were initially deferred to various detention centers, where some were interrogated for months. All of it was done under the auspices of “intellectual reparations” owed the US.
Of the lesser know scientists spared the gallows by Operation Paperclip was Kurt Blome, who, in 1943, conducted experiments involving various plague vaccines on concentration camp prisoners. While conveniently acquitted at the “Doctors' Trial” in 1947, it was well known that Blome had been involved with experimenting with Sarin gas at Auschwitz. Blome would eventually work with the US Army Chemical Corps, Project 63, in the area of chemical warfare at European Command Intelligence Center, Oberursel, West Germany.
Of those snagged by the OSS, there is little doubt that some went on to work on Project MKULTRA. The project, and its web of sub-programs, would have far ranging implications, including the use of Canadian University facilities to conduct psychological experiments on patients without their knowledge. Americans were also used as unwitting participants in various initiatives, many of them to do with the illegal administration of various drugs.
To this day, MKULTRA remains a thing of mystery in many ways, and its existence little known to most Americans. The contents of the program were so damaging, in fact, that in 1973, Richard Helms, then Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, ordered all files to do with it destroyed. The only reason that anything significant is known about the program is that 20,000 documents were misfiled prior to the order and were exposed following a 1977 Freedom Of Information Act request that would lead to Senate hearings and ultimately the findings of the Church Committee.
So what does any of that have to do with Jose Rodriguez’s response to Lesley Stahl? First, it demonstrates just how naïve many are with regards to what the US intelligence community is capable of. Second, that compared to programs like MKULTRA, and a plethora of other operations conducted over the last 60 years, the existence of Black Sites and the use of torture should surprise absolutely no one.
One of the more interesting things that I’ve read in the last few days comes from a piece by Kenneth Roth published in the New York Times…
“On September 11, 2001, I sat in my office in the Empire State Building, then New York City’s third tallest building, with a direct view of the two tallest, the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Shortly after the second jet crashed into them, I evacuated the building, aware that it might easily be targeted as well.
A neighbor, the father of three, died in the World Trade Center, and my city was traumatized. It was thus with a great personal interest that I looked forward to the alleged masterminds of this horrendous crime being brought to justice. But as I sat in the Guantánamo courtroom this weekend for the arraignment of the five leading suspects, I couldn’t help but feel cheated.
President Obama had the right idea in 2009 when his Justice Department sought and obtained grand-jury indictments against the five in federal court in southern Manhattan. Having worked as a prosecutor in that courthouse for four years before joining Human Rights Watch, I knew that even the toughest, most difficult cases could be handled there fairly and safely. However, after various objections to civilian trials were voiced, Obama soon reversed course and returned the case to a military commission in Guantánamo.”
Think what you will of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, better known in US intelligence circles as KSM, the fact remains that his confession was obtained after he was waterborded 183 times – and now that fact has been rendered a secondary issue.
In the end, there is criminality that suits ones purposes, such as nabbing German scientists guilty of war crimes and integrating them into various research and development programs, and criminality that doesn’t. Thus, the questions is not “where do you draw the line”, but far more sinister – who draws that line when it presents benefit, and who draws it when it doesn’t?
While Khalid Sheik Mohammed may have been one of the masterminds behind the 9/11 attacks, which resulted in the deaths of just under 2,000 innocent people – keep one thing in mind. That a man that experimented with Sarin gas at Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people were slaughtered, ended up working for the US Army Chemical Corps. While he would eventually be arrested by French authorities and sentenced to 20 years in prison, one of his subordinates, Eugen von Haagen, who worked for the Soviets in Berlin at the Institute for Medicine and Biology before being apprehended by the French – this after the British let him go in exchange for appearing as a witness for the prosecution at the Buchenwald Trial – was shielded from further prosecution by the US from 1955 on, and worked on their behalf at the at the Federal Institute of Viral Pathology in West Germany.
During the war, von Haagen, along with Hans Voegt and Arnold Dohmen, conducted experiments on concentration camp prisoners involving hepatitis and nephritis. Prior to the war, in the 30’s, von Haagen worked at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, where he did virology and typhus research. The Rockefeller Institute is now Rockefeller University.
Unfortunately for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, after graduating from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University with a degree in mechanical engineering, he chose to go to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. When it comes to numerous ex-Mujahedeen from that period, how that story ends is now all too familiar.
Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 3:24PM