Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945-1990

This is the rare paperback edition of journalist Linda Hunt's classic "Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip," a controversial book that faced opposition from the halls of power.

Although Project Paperclip documentaries consistently fill cable TV slots today, the subject was still taboo in the 1990s. Despite such pre-internet suppression, luckily, today's reader can still enjoy the benefits of the intricate research herein.

From the book jacket:

The subject of this book is hauntingly familiar: a group of men in the Pentagon decide that they alone know what is the best for the country. Project Paperclip - their effort to bring German scientists, including known Nazis, to the U.S. after WWII - ran roughshod over official American policy; its details and deceits were then covered up for decades - until now.

Even before the war in Europe was over, U.S. intelligence agents were scouring Germany in search of the Reich's top scientists - to gain the "spoils of war" and keep them out of the hands of the Soviets. It did not matter that many of these scientists had been members of the Nazi party, or been accused or even convicted at Nuremberg, or that President Truman had issued a presidential directive forbidding the immigration of ardent Nazis.

The men who ran Paperclip simply cleansed the scientists' records and installed them in high-level military and industrial positions. "Secret Agenda" for the first time exposes the full story of Project Paperclip, from its earliest deceptions in the 1940s and 1950s to the work of Arthur Rudolph and Wernher von Braun on the Apollo program.

Thoroughly researched and fact-checked, "Secret Agenda" is an important and disturbing book about one of the darkest chapters in American history. Linda Hunt is a Washington-based reporter whose Paperclip stories received international attention and won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award in 1985. She is formerly executive producer of CNN's investigative unit.