Fred was one of those sent to Huntsville by Edison Electronics. Fred could hardly object to that, given his job description, but he really had no idea how he would react to seeing von Braun in person. On the one hand, Fred wanted to confront him, then alert the press and expose von Braun’s Nazi history, but on the other he knew that whether anyone believed him or not, it would be disastrous for his career and perhaps his company as well. So could he just ignore it, as if nothing had ever happened, while standing on feet of fire?
Several sarcastic, biting comments were floating around in his mind at the arrival meet-and-greet. But when Fred saw Dr. von Braun making the rounds, shaking hands with the representatives and generally playing the role of the welcoming celebrity, his mind went completely blank. All Fred managed to do when von Braun reached Fred and shook his hand, was to look him in the eyes and say, “Nice to see you again.” Von Braun continued on his way, but his face was momentarily blank, as if he was trying to place a face without success. Fred was disappointed at first, wishing he had been able to come up with something better. On further reflection, he decided it was probably for the best. From his expression, von Braun had no idea where he’d seen Fred before, but if he had a guilty conscience, the comment might give him something to worry about.
Later that year, Fred was given the role of Director of Marketing, largely because his ability to connect with potential clients was unsurpassed. People instinctively liked him, and conversations were easy and congenial. He was in great demand, which led to a chaotic travel schedule and multiple strategic planning sessions. It paid off, and Edison Electronics continued to thrive. The success of the Apollo program was a feather in the corporate cap, and in 1970, Fred was promoted to Vice President for Instrumentation Products, the pinnacle of his career. His salary was $21,000 per year, the equivalent of $68,000 today (this was obviously before the days of runaway executive compensation). At his annual physical, his blood pressure had risen to 140/90 despite powerful medication. He was still mercurial at home, he was still plagued with occasional nightmares, and he still struggled to get his aching feet into shoes each day, but such things were kept in the family.
WERNHER VON BRAUN
Wernher von Braun’s records had now been classified Secret for 15 years. On 5 January 1961, a memo was sent to the commanding general of the US Army Intelligence Center by Colonel Claude Barton, the chief of the Security Division. The topic was the continued classification of Wernher’s dossier, which included the Shröder depositions and reports. The heart of the memo said:
The material contains derogatory information relating to one of our most important German scientists who have immigrated to the United States since World War II. This material requires a high degree of protection in the interest of national defense particularly since a US estimate of the security threat involved in this scientist’s immigration is included. The unauthorized disclosure of such information would be particularly damaging to the current Defense Scientists Immigration Program (DEFSIP).
DEFSIP was the new name given to Project Paperclip in 1957. Nothing but the name changed, and German scientists were still being recruited and contracted for transfer to the US regardless of any restrictions imposed by the German government. The security restrictions and classification would continue to be maintained for the indefinite future.
The Marshall Space Center was now structured to mirror Peenemünde, although lacking the relevant files, the NASA administration may not have realized it. Wernher was Director of the Center, Arthur Rudolph was the Project Director for the Saturn program, and Kurt Debus was Director of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket team was definitely in the spotlight now, which would make it all the more catastrophic if Project Paperclip was exposed. Wernher gave President Kennedy a personal tour of the Space Center, and rode in the motorcade by Kennedy’s side. Would Kennedy have enjoyed the tour as much if he had realized that this was just what Wernher had done for Hitler at Peenemünde?
Wernher was now promoting a grandiose vision that would give the US space superiority. He had once thought $1.5 billion would be sufficient, but he revised that figure just to be on the safe side. He was still overselling the project and understating the likely cost. The original proposal draft gave a figure of $7 billion, but James Webb, NASA’s director at the time, realized that this was ridiculous. He increased the budget to $20 billion before submitting it for approval. The actual cost was even higher. Getting the first men to the moon eventually required $24 billion, 400,000 people, and more than 20,000 companies and institutions.
Wernher had to apply for a security clearance, required under the Atomic Energy Act. This time, the FBI was given access to Army Intelligence (G-2) files on von Braun, albeit for five days only. The FBI objected, but to no avail. The FBI summary noted that Wernher had been the subject of complete or partial government security checks in 1947, 1948, 1953, 1954, 1958, and 1959. They proceeded to re-interview the same people they had questioned in 1953 — Dornberger, Debus, Dannenberg, and the rest — and received predictably glowing recommendations, plus the same cautionary note from Dr. Porter. As before, Wernher received his security clearance.
The next step for NASA was Project Mercury, a manned orbital program. The Soviets again beat the US, putting Yuri Gagarin into orbit. After a test flight to near orbit with Alan Shepherd onboard, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the globe, on 20 February 1962. That same year, the JIOA was disbanded and the oversight of the Paperclip/DEFSIP program transferred from the Joint Chiefs to the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, a branch of the Department of Defense.171 However, the Army remained in charge of ongoing DEFSIP programs, and security protocols were unaffected.
Wernher continued to add to his collection of shiny awards. In October 1962, the Franklin Institute awarded him the Elliott Cresson Medal for technological invention or improvement. Had Wernher’s history not been classified, the Institute might have reconsidered, given that Elliott Cresson was a Quaker who campaigned against slavery. And even with his records under wraps, it was becoming more and more difficult to avoid questions about his wartime activities. The layers of secrecy were cracking. An East German magazine ran a series of articles using excerpts from a forthcoming book by Julius Mader, Secret of Huntsville: The true career of rocket baron Wernher von Braun. Fortunately for Wernher and for NASA, the articles were in German and the book was written in Czech. The problem was that the cover had a painting of Wernher in an SS uniform wearing his Knight’s Cross, and the narrative included coverage of Dora and the Mittelwerk. Buchenwald, the Mittelwerk, and Peenemünde were in the Russian zone of occupied Germany, and the East Germans could hardly care less about the security concerns of the US Defense Department. But when the US media mentioned the German articles and the book, published in 1963, little credence was given to the content. The government had assured the press that anything coming from East Germany should be dismissed as a fabrication intended to cripple the US space program. After all, Dr. von Braun was a great hero, and his background had been thoroughly vetted multiple times by multiple agencies. Wernher was for the moment still protected, but the defenses were under siege.
In 1965, Wernher’s past was again spotlighted when Tom Lehrer’s comedy music record included a song about him with the line: “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department, says Wernher von Braun.” Many people laughed — it was a clever reminder that Wernher had worked on the rockets used by the Nazis — but the fact that he’d been a Nazi party member and an SS officer was still a closely kept secret.
Later the same year, a French group representing the Dora/Mittelwerk survivors wrote letters to the magazine Paris Match, to protest Wernher’s celebrity status. Wernher responded immediately, saying that he was horrified by their accusations and that the US government had investigated his past and found him to be blameless and uninvolved in Nazi crimes.
In January 1967, a deadly fire in the
Apollo capsule killed three famous astronauts. Operations were suspended for months while an incident analysis was done, and more detailed reviews continued for some time afterward. The cause of the fire was never determined, but a number of design flaws were found, and investigators were blunt in their analysis of the failings in terms of safety equipment and procedures. During the review, inspection teams came and went, and contractors showed up for interrogation armed with test results and specifications. Wernher attended as many of those sessions as he could, meeting dozens of executives and forgetting most of them immediately.
While this was going on, another foreign movie, Frozen Lightning, was released in Europe. The movie, filmed in East Germany with a substantial budget, was stimulated by the success of Mader’s book about von Braun. Fearing lawsuits, Wernher’s name wasn’t used, and the main character was an unidentified Nazi rocket baron, but it included graphic scenes in the Mittelwerk.
Although few in the US heard about Frozen Lightning, Wernher felt compelled to put any rumors to rest. He issued a statement that said the accusations and portrayals in the film were completely false. He added that in his visits to the Mittelwerk, he never saw a dead prisoner, nor a beating, nor a hanging, and he never participated in any prisoner abuse. He assured everyone that claims to the contrary coming from survivors of the Dora camp were cases of mistaken identity. This was the first time in 21 years that he said the word “Mittelwerk” in public, and the first time he admitted to the press that he had been there. The official government opinion was unchanged — anything originating in East Germany was a fabrication with political motivations — and journalists covering the story neglected to ask why Wernher had visited the Mittelwerk.
Wernher had contacts all over the world, and to his delight, he continued to be showered with honors. From Germany, he collected an honorary degree from a prestigious German university, a medal from the German Society of Inventors, and an award for promoting the public understanding of science. In the US, he received the Langley Medal from the Smithsonian, the same medal given to the Wright Brothers. He went on hunting and fishing trips with corporate chiefs and congressmen, and he gave talks for hefty fees ($7,000 each) that promoted NASA and the space program. No doubt the more awards he received and the greater the public demand for his lectures, the less credence he felt would be given to rumors about his past.
By the end of the summer, the Apollo capsule and its safety systems had been redesigned, and after six test flights and an orbital mission, Apollo 8 headed skyward on 21 December 1968, and the crew returned safely after orbiting the moon. After two more test flights to practice protocols for landing and retrieving personnel, the Apollo 11 crew landed on the moon, returning home on 24 July 1969.
Two weeks later, Wernher wrote a letter to retired Major General Julius Klein, who was active in lobbying to promote reconciliation between Germany and the Jewish community. Wernher’s letter discussed allegations that had been appearing in the press over the last decade, most recently in a 15 July column by Drew Pearson. In his letter, Wernher admitted being a member of the SS but asked that this information be kept confidential to avoid affecting his work at NASA.
Wernher had reasons for concern. Another Dora war crimes trial was underway, and West German prosecutors wanted him to testify. Sending Wernher to a packed courtroom in Germany seemed to be a very bad idea for all sorts of reasons, press coverage among them. So the US government negotiated an agreement with West Germany. The West German court was told that Wernher could not leave the US for national security reasons, but he could be interviewed under oath in the West German embassy in New Orleans. That location happened to be as far from the paparazzi gang as possible, minimizing coverage by the US media. In his sworn testimony, Wernher admitted going to the Mittelwerk “approximately 15 times” and admitted that he had been in the tunnels in 1943 while the prisoners were living and working there. But he stuck by his claim that he had never seen a dead prisoner, or an execution, or any abuse or maltreatment of laborers.
Asked about sabotage reports routed to him by Sawatski and recovered at Peenemünde, Wernher replied that he didn’t remember ever seeing them. He also stated under oath that there had been no slave laborers at Peenemünde. If the attorneys had challenged this assertion — there was irrefutable documentation and testimony confirming slave laborers at Peenemünde — he could have been charged with perjury.172
Six more Apollo missions followed, but none had the worldwide impact of the first. It was certainly a grand moment for all involved, but the future wasn’t looking all that bright. By the time the first Apollo blasted off, there were problems with budget allocations, as the Russian space program seemed to have stalled. Now that Kennedy’s goal was reached, enthusiasm for the space program and tolerance for the huge expenditures involved both began to fade. NASA began to cut back aggressively. Apollo missions continued until 1972, and there was talk of a space shuttle and a space station, but things would have to be done at lower cost and with fewer employees. Efficiency became the order of the day.
The team that Wernher had held together for 25 years started to fall apart. Some retired on pensions, but many took positions with private industry. Von Braun was put behind a desk in Washington, DC, as Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA and tasked to do future planning. He hated losing his team, and he was being forced into a role where he could propose projects without being directly involved and without any assurance that funding would follow. As public enthusiasm for space waned, more disturbing questions were being asked. Holocaust survivor groups were becoming active, and during a TV appearance, he had to field probing questions about the V-2 strikes on London and his relationship with the Third Reich. Albert Speer’s memoirs were published, and they included some comments on von Braun’s history as well as his charismatic promotional skills. In Speer’s opinion, Wernher had charmed and deluded Hitler’s inner circule into believing he could deliver on impossible promises.
Some combination of optimism and self-delusion was certainly involved. Given the modest payload of the V-2 (2,000 pounds vs the 8,000 pound bomb load of a B-17 or the 12,000 pound bomb load of a British Lancaster), and the fact that bombers can be reused while V-2s cannot, the only justification for the program would be using V-2s to deliver the chemical, biological, or atomic weapons that were under development in Germany at the same time. Fortunately, the war ended before a decision was made to launch missiles armed with chemical or biological weapons, and before Germany’s atomic bomb program produced an operational device.
Funding was drying up, his team was falling apart, and his image was under siege. Wernher’s rocket launches might be going fine, but down on terra firma, things were not looking so good.
166 Eisenhower hated Nazis and despised war criminals. It seems unlikely that he was fully aware of the backgrounds of Project Paperclip employees, especially Wernher von Braun, but he was clearly not one of Wernher’s fans.
167 The Jupiter-C was a three-stage rocket. The first stage was a modified Redstone, which used liquid fuel, and the second and third stages were smaller and burned solid fuel.
168 In retrospect, Speer felt that the labor, money, and materials committed to the V-2 should have been used to build jet fighters and anti-aircraft rockets that could clear the skies of enemy aircraft.
169 Whenever von Braun appeared on TV in a news report about NASA, Tibor Munk, a survivor of the Mittelwerk, would say to his daughter “Why do they say NASA, he is NAZI.”
170 Grenier Field was one of the stops made by Crashwagon on the way to the ETO in 1944
171 The best known branch of this agency today is DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which funds research projects that have potential military, intelligence, or national security applications.
172 From the outset, all of the Germans brought with Wernher in the Paperclip program had made the same assertion, although repetition and truth were in this case entirely different things.
CHAPTER
23
Unraveling
1971-1977
FRED MARTINI
FRED’S NEW POSITION AS VICE President for Instrumentation at Edison Electronics became effective on 1 January 1971, and he moved into a larger office with a secretary outside his door, making appointments and filtering calls. Fred traveled extensively and was heavily involved in decision-making at the corporate level. He conferred often with Ed Allman, both officially and unofficially over meals or games of golf at the Manchester Country Club. By 1973, transition plans were being discussed in anticipation of Ed’s eventual promotion to a position with the parent company, McGraw-Edison, headquartered in Chicago. It was generally assumed and accepted that Fred would be heir apparent and take over as president when Ed left.
Fred and Betty had long conversations about this. Betty had never been particularly fond of the weather in New Hampshire — she didn’t play golf, she hated cold weather, and she really missed beaches near waters warmer than the Gulf of Maine. Their son, who was completing his doctorate at Cornell, had done much of his research work at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota. Like Betty, he hated cold weather, and they expected him to move there eventually. Sarasota was near where Fred’s sister Liz, recently widowed, was living with her four children, and Lucille and Eddie spent winters in a condo near Liz’s house. They weren’t getting any younger. Fred’s blood pressure was already way too high, and if he took Ed’s job the stress levels would be even higher. After much discussion, Fred decided to quit while he was ahead. In early 1974, he and Betty threw their bags in the car, leaving most of their belongings in the house, and drove south. They stayed with Liz for a brief period before getting a mortgage on a house on a saltwater canal in the outskirts of Bradenton.
Fred dusted off his resume and started looking for part-time work, but the only jobs available were as a traveling sales rep, which was out of the question because, in addition to his chronic foot problems, his legs were now bothering him. Walking even a short distance was tiring and painful. While at loose ends, he started doing unpaid work for the local VFW, POW, Purple Heart, Disabled American Veterans, and American Legion groups.
Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences Page 37
