After WWII, Nazi Party Scientists Were Given a New Life in the US
The end of WWII was exciting for the Allies and their efforts to defeat the Nazis, but the spillover into the Cold War led to some paranoid moves by the CIA and U.S. government that was ethically questionable and sometimes downright detestable. One example of this, in particular, was the pardoning of hundreds of high-ranking Nazi scientists for the exploitation of their knowledge; and it wasn’t just pardoning, but providing cushy jobs with not-so-modest salaries and a high standard of living.
Many of these scientists were quietly assimilated into American society, and some have even been commemorated with plaques, statues, and busts, in celebration of their contributions to science. The name of this project was Operation Paperclip, due to the CIA’s use of paperclips to indicate the most nefarious and malevolent Nazis when one would look through a dossier of their profiles. On one hand, their achievements led to NASA’s Apollo missions and the moon landing – on the other, some “achievements” led to the creation of our chemical weapons program and more notorious, clandestine operations like MKULTRA.
The impetus behind Operation Paperclip was to prevent advanced Nazi weapon technology from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union. The program, which brought in roughly 1600 scientists, was originally titled, Operation Overcast before the CIA realized it needed to gloss over the notoriously paperclipped Nazis. Many of these scientists were known to have committed horrendous war crimes, like experimenting on live humans with chemical and biological weapons, but few were prosecuted.
Mittelwork and the V2 Rocket
Toward the end of the war, when the Nazis were nearing defeat, they developed the V-2 rocket under the guidance of Wernher von Braun and Arthur L Rudolph. Both of these scientists eventually went on to develop the Saturn V rocket that was so critical to the success of the Apollo missions and bringing together mankind in the subsequent moon landings.
But the story was much different at the Mittelwork facility in Germany, where slave labor was used to develop the V-2, resulting in the death of roughly 20,000 people, and that doesn’t even include deaths from the use of the bomb itself.
The prisoners who were put to work at the factory were brought in from concentration camps, like Buchenwald, and forced to work 12-hour shifts under harsh conditions in underground factories. Many died from malnutrition, while others were hanged in front of their coworkers for not performing or sabotaging the rockets. Despite feigning shock when asked whether slave labor was used at his factories in Germany, Rudolph was eventually exposed and deported for his knowing involvement in Nazi war crimes.
But Rudolph was one of few who was actually persecuted for his crimes, and that persecution only resulted in deportation. In the case of von Braun, it is unclear whether he was sympathetic to the Nazi cause or if he simply abided by it for his own protection.
A German V2 rocket
Rudolph, on the other hand, was found to have placed orders for new workers when he knew his were sick and dying, and received daily strength reports on the status of his prisoners. He was even thought to have conceived and implemented the program, himself, after seeing prisoners used for slave labor in other German factories.
Von Braun anticipated the U.S. actions of Operation Paperclip and carefully plotted his escape from Nazi supervision to surrender himself and his team to American soldiers. Upon telling U.S. intelligence about his work and how it related to the American rocketry program under Robert Goddard, the U.S. quickly recruited him. He became one of the most important members of Paperclip and was given top security clearance throughout the 50s.
During this time, he was involved in many of the elite inner circles in Washington. And although von Braun, who was an SS officer, claims to have only worn his uniform once and didn’t ascribe to Nazi ideology, his development of the V-2 led to a tragic number of deaths.
Nazi Influence on Chemical and Biological Weapons
A more disturbing aspect of Operation Paperclip comes from developments made by the Army Chemical Corps. Nowadays, the Chemical Corps’ duty is to research biological and chemical weapons to protect against, but originally, it’s goal was to develop their use. The Nazi scientists who were recruited to work on these projects were typically those who had committed depraved experiments on live subjects.
One of these scientists, Kurt Blome, was the Deputy Surgeon General in the Third Reich and headed its biological warfare program. Under the guise of “cancer research,” Blome conducted experiments involving spreading disease through insects like mosquitos and lice. He also ran tests that involved dropping nerve gas and insecticides from planes as well as attempts at creating weaponized bubonic plague. It is likely that the work of Blome and his colleague Dr. Fritz Hoffmann helped the Army Chemical Corps. develop Agent Orange, the herbicide and defoliant that was so devastating in the Vietnam War.
Experiments under the guidance of Blome also included testing psychedelics like LSD for mind control and behavior modification. The experiments were run to develop LSD as a truth serum and were often conducted in countries, like Germany, where testing on humans wasn’t entirely condemned. This program was given the name Operation ARTICHOKE which inevitably became the infamous Project MKULTRA.
There is a long list of other Nazi scientists who were recruited in the program and went on to lead comfortable, undisturbed lives, despite having committed horrendous war crimes. And despite efforts by the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations to prosecute some of these former Nazis, many politicians claimed their scientific contributions exculpated them of previous atrocities. Some were given lifetime achievement awards, while others were even thought to be deserving of Nobel prizes.
Some view the negative consequences of their actions as being difficult to weigh against the positive. Would we have developed the horrific chemical weapons that were later used in Vietnam, requiring billions of dollars to clean up? Would we have landed on the moon and developed such an advanced space program? And which other government-funded projects in our society were the product of Nazi scientists who went on to lead exonerated lives?
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Black Knight 13,000-Year-Old Satellite Mystery Decoded?
Space debris or a 13,000-year-old satellite? A mysterious object, dubbed the Black Knight, orbits the Earth, puzzling scientists of the past and present. Some, like inventor and scientist Nicola Tesla, claim to have received radio signals from the orbiting figure. Astronaut Gordon Cooper was adamant that, in 1963, he saw it from his own spacecraft. The documented history of the existence of the Black Knight continues to mystify scientists.
Nicola Tesla and the Black Knight
Although Nicola Tesla’s inventions changed the way people live today, back in 1899 his peers viewed him as eccentric and somewhat of a mad scientist. When he built a laboratory and a 210-foot tower in Colorado Springs in order to experiment with electricity and record electromagnetic disturbances, his colleagues did not take him seriously. When he reported that he had received signals from extraterrestrials, the newspapers of the day mocked him.
Despite the ridicule of his peers, Tesla was excited about the signals he received, and came to fervently believe that he “had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another. A purpose was behind these electrical signals.” Researchers now believe the signals Tesla received likely came from the Black Knight.
Modern History of the Black Knight
Although there were some reports in the 1930s of astronomers around the world receiving strange radio signals, in 1954, the St. Louis Dispatch ran an article titled, “Artificial Satellites Are Circling Earth, Writer on ‘Saucers’ says.” The referenced writer was Donald E. Keyhoe who wrote about unidentified satellites orbiting the Earth. He claimed the government knew about them and was trying to discover their source.
Keyhoe later wrote a book, “Aliens in Space: The Real Story of Unidentified Flying Objects,” where he documented his knowledge of UFOs including what he knew about the Black Knight. Gaia’s Deep Space series discusses some of his work.
Scientists and astronomers reported seeing the satellite as it orbited the Earth. In 1953, a professor at the University of New Mexico saw a “blip of unknown origin.” In 1957, Dr. Luis Corralos, with the Communications Ministry in Venezuela, was taking pictures of the Russian satellite, Sputnik II, as it passed over Caracas. The Black Knight showed up in his photographs. This was the first known actual picture of the object.
In 1960, an American satellite showed the object following Sputnik 1, which was still orbiting the Earth. The UFO was in a polar orbit. At that time, neither the U.S. nor the Russians were capable of putting a satellite in that type of orbit. The object also appeared to be much larger and heavier than anything either country could launch.
In the 1960s, TIME magazine, as well as other news publications, reported on the Black Knight and referred to it as possibly having an extraterrestrial origin. Some North American Ham operators had detected signals coming from the object. Some even reported receiving coded messages. On September 3, 1960, the Black Knight showed up on radar for the first time. People on the ground viewing it with the naked eye could see it for about two weeks. The government reportedly established a committee to investigate the object, but no report was ever made public.
In 1963, Astronaut Gordon Cooper was orbiting the Earth when he said he saw a “glowing green light” ahead of his space capsule. At the same time, a tracking station in Australia, over which the spacecraft was orbiting at the time, reported seeing the object on radar. The evening news reported on Cooper’s sighting, and for the first time, the object was referred to as the Black Knight Satellite. The name stuck, but Cooper’s report did not.
NASA soon debunked Cooper’s UFO sighting, claiming there had been a malfunction in the space capsule which caused gases to emit what appeared glowing light. The result, said NASA, was that Cooper had a hallucination and did not see a UFO. Cooper later confirmed that he had definitely seen a UFO on his 1963 space orbit and that NASA had prohibited him from discussing it. Until his death in 2004, Cooper claimed that he did not have a hallucination in the spacecraft, but saw a UFO. He was very vocal during his lifetime about his belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life and his frustration that the U.S. government continued to cover up evidence of alien contacts.
In 1998, astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavor, on their way to the International Space Station (ISS), took photographs of the object. NASA again disagreed with the astronauts and claimed what they saw and photographed was not a UFO, but instead, just space debris, most likely a thermal blanket.
Black Knight Communications with Human Beings
Influential people and highly respected authors, movie producers, and directors and members of secret societies have claimed to receive communications from alien beings including signals from the Black Knight. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek television series and movies, is almost a household name. In 1973 to 1974 he was reportedly associated with a secret society called “The Council of Nine.” The Nine, in brief, were a group of prominent people who believed that the channeled messages received by their leaders were actually messages sent by extraterrestrials. Roddenberry allegedly based his Star Trek episodes on what he learned from the Nine, including the giveaway title he chose for a post Star Trek series called, “Deep Space Nine.” Many believed the source of the channeled messages was the Black Knight.
Author Philip K. Dick claimed to have communications with alien beings. The way he described his first encounter with the being in February 1974 is consistent with some of the captured coded messages from the Black Knight. Dick’s VALIS trilogy was, according to those who knew him or researched him, really a fictionalized autobiography and not science fiction. It pulled from his communications with an alien entity, which were likely from the Black Knight.
Is the Black Knight still with us?
Two separate people in different parts of the country who were each photographing the Blue Moon on July 31, 2015, captured what they believe is the Black Knight. The object was once again passing by the ISS. Is the Black Knight an ancient alien vessel? Could it be a satellite from somewhere in deep space that is trying to communicate with humans on earth? Or, is simply a piece of space debris left behind by spacecraft made by Earthlings? You decide.
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Don’t miss Deep Space on Gaia for more on the long and hidden history of Earth’s secret space program.
