Part 1: Air Force Teaching Guide Minimizes History of Recruiting Nazis

Why does the United States Air Force, in their teaching materials provided to ICBM missile combat crew at Air Force Global Strike Command, present such a sympathetic portrayal of former Nazi scientist and SS officer Wernher von Braun, and why does the Air Force limit their discussion about Nazi involvement in the U.S. space program to "only one man," von Braun?

The reason is simple, but shocking to many, as the history has been largely covered-up, or relegated to out-of-print history books: the U.S. missile program, and much of its military science program in the post-World War II period, was imported wholesale from the Nazis, including their leading scientists.

A jaw-dropping new article by Jason Leopold at Truthout discusses the use of Christian religious ideology in the teaching of the Air Force nuclear missile combat crew. As outrageous as that fact is, a further search of FOIA documents linked in the Truthout article shows that the reference to Von Braun in an Air Force slide presentation on "Ethics" is no anomaly. The documents include a revisionist history of the U.S. missile program, presented as a series of readings provided to students in the class that trains the operators of America's nuclear missile arsenal.

According to Leopold, "The Air Force documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and provided to Truthout by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a civil rights organization."

(Disclosure: I have worked closely with Jason Leopold on a number of articles at Truthout, including on DoD human experimentation policies, the administration of drugs to Guantanamo detainees, the SERE-linked CIA/DoD torture program, and revelations surrounding DoD's Joint Forces Intelligence Command's aborted search for Osama bin Laden and intelligence about pre-9/11 attack planning that included the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.)

In one of the Air Force documents, titled "Space History," "chapter one" of an "Air University Space Primer," there is a brief discussion of the U.S. recruitment of Von Braun, who went on to become the director of the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and later the head of the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama. The Air Force's track record in covering-up their history with Nazis is on display at Von Braun's biography at the Marshall Space Flight Center website, which mentions his involvement with the development of the V-2 rocket at Peenemünde in Germany.

The MSFC biography cites the use of "forced labor" at the factory, but never mentions that Nazi slave labor from the Dora concentration camp involved over 60,000 slave laborers, or that 20,000 of them -- Jews, Russian prisoners, Poles, French partisans, and more, including an African-American U.S. soldier -- died in the underground Mittelwerk V-2 rocket factory, where Von Braun was a key figure, some of them publicly hanged for "sabotage." The site only notes, "Scholars are still reassessing his role in these controversial activities."

According to the Air Force's "Space History," "German rocket development... between 1932 and 1945 involved only one man, Wernher von Braun." The Air Force deletes from history Arthur Rudolph, the Operations Director and engineer at Mittelwerk, another key Nazi brought to the United States after World War II as part of a top secret program known as Operation Overcast, and later Operation Paperclip. As we shall see, he is only one figure among scores disappeared from the Air Force record, which presents Paperclip as primarily an operation to bring Von Braun and a few co-workers to America and save precious technology from falling into the hands of the Soviets. Moreover, outrageously, it is presented as a religious decision.

Arthur Rudolph and Operation Paperclip

According to a website that documents the history of the Dora concentration camp:

Faced with shortages of labor, Arthur Rudolph, the chief V–2 production engineer, in a memo of April 12, 1943, recommended that the missile program at Peenemünde adopt the exploitation of SS camp labor like that he saw at an aircraft factory. The first prisoners arrived at Peenemünde on June 17. Following the Royal Air Force bombing of the site, von Braun, technical director of the V–2 project, chaired a staff meeting on August 25 that recommended producing missiles underground with camp labor.

Rudolph became technical head of V–2 production at the underground Mittelwerk factory; he and von Braun requested that the SS provide more prisoners for V–2 production, most clearly in an August 15, 1944, memo in which von Braun described his trip to the Buchenwald concentration camp to select prison workers and arrange their transfer to Dora....

Despite the complicity of some engineers, the United States did not include the engineers in the 1947 Nordhausen trial or any other war crimes trials. As later US citizens, von Braun and Rudolph later earned awards for work on the Saturn V launch vehicle that took men to the moon.

By 1950, Rudolph, safe in the United States, became director of the Pershing Missile program at the Ordnance Guided Missile Center at Redstone Arsenal. Meanwhile, ignored was Rudolph's interrogation file. After his capture his interrogator assessed Rudolph, a later recipient of the US Army's Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service, as documented in former CNN reporter Linda Hunt's book, Secret Agenda - The United States Government, Nazi Scientists and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990 (large PDF): "100% NAZI, dangerous type, security threat... ! ! Suggest internment." (Emphasis in original.)

Rudolph subsequently became the project director of the Saturn V rocket program.

But later, in the 1980s, an Office of Special Investigations investigation at the Department of Justice uncovered his Nazi connections and his role in the slave labor at Mittelwerk, and he fled the U.S. His case became a cause célèbre. The Germans held a bogus investigation, clearing Rudolph, and granting him German citizenship after his U.S. citizenship was taken from him.

Von Braun, of course, was famously a major Nazi figure, despite attempts to minimize his role under the Nazis. According to Hunt, Von Braun "had joined the SS at the personal behest of SS chief Heinrich Himmler and had risen to the rank of major." He conspired with other major figures to withhold information from U.S. officers, so that the U.S. interrogator screening the rocket scientists for trustworthiness before they left Germany, judged granting these criminals security clearances was "an obvious absurdity."

American officers in Europe were trying to locate V-2 rocket diagrams they believed were still hidden in Germany. When asked about the documents, von Braun told the Army he knew nothing about their location. Dornberger later told von Braun's brother that Army officers didn't trust von Braun and that officers had even told him that von Braun had lied to them. Von Braun then sent a map to his family in Europe showing the location of a burial place where sketches stuffed in a cigarette box were hidden. He told them to deliver the map to Dornberger's wife, since the general still was being held in a British POW camp. The way this scheme was supposed to work, the documents then would be located and given to German scientists, who would turn them over to von Braun when they arrived in the United States under Paperclip.

U.S. officers reported that von Braun "apparently intended to use the location of certain hidden documents as a bargaining lever with U.S. officials."

But, according to a Powerpoint presentation given to students in the Air Force rocket crew program, Von Braun is quoted as saying he and his colleagues gladly gave Nazi rocket documents to the U.S. "because we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured." (According to the Wikipedia webpage on Von Braun, he quote is attributed to an interview with Mike Wallace in a television biography of Von Braun in the late 1950s-early 1060s.)

The Air Force portrays Von Braun as "pressured" by the Nazis to work on their missile program. But the documentation shows Von Braun was an adamant Nazi, "joined the SS at the personal behest of SS chief Heinrich Himmler and had risen to the rank of major" (Hunt).

Rudolph and Von Braun were only part of the Mittelwerk Nazi rocket scientists transferred by Paperclip. General Walter Dornberger, the head of the entire V-2 program was also brought to the U.S. According to the Spartacus website, it was Dornberger who recruited Von Braun to the Nazi rocket program, and in 1937 took charge of the secret work at Peenemunde. The V-2 rocket became operational late in the war. From 1944-45, over 5,000 V-2s were fired on Britain. However, only 1,100 reached their target. These rockets killed 2,724 people and badly injured 6,000."

The Atlas missile, the first U.S. ICMB missile, was based on modifications to the V-2 design.

Dornberger was interrogated by the British War Crimes Investigation Unit for the use of slave labor at Mittelwerk, and spent two years in internment in South Wales. But he was released under Paperclip and brought to the United States, where the Air Force used him in the development of guided missiles. He subsequently became a major figure at Bell Helicopters. According to his Wikipedia entry, which cites a 1957 Time magazine article, he also helped develop a surface-to-air missile for the Strategic Air Command.

Another Air Force recruited Nazi was V-2 rocket scientist Kurt Debus, who became the first director of the Kennedy Space Center in 1962, and was, according to Hunt, another "member of the SS, the SA, and two other Nazi groups." He earlier worked as assistant technical director to von Braun at the Redstone Arsenal. Today, the the National Space Club of Florida presents an annual Debus Award "to recognize significant aerospace achievements in Florida."

Tomorrow, Part Two considers the use of Nazi scientists brought to the U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip, expanding the coverage to those used in government military/intelligence programs other than rocket or space science, including the government mind control program known as MKULTRA.

Originally posted at FDL/The Dissenter

Torture-linked Shrink's Army Program Labels Some Soldiers "Spiritually Unfit"

Originally posted at Firedoglake

Jason Leopold has posted a new article at Truthout, describing how an "experimental, Army mental-health, fitness initiative" called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) is drawing criticism from civil rights groups and rank-and-file soldiers by testing military personnel for "spiritual fitness."

CSF appears to be the brainchild of Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum and Dr. Martin Seligman, the psychologist who developed the theories of "learned helplessness" and "learned optimism." Jane Mayer, Scott Shane, and others have connected Seligman to talks at San Diego's SERE school in May 2002, where he discussed, in Seligman's own words, "how American troops and American personnel could use what is known about learned helplessness and related findings to resist torture and evade successful interrogation by their captors." Notorious SERE/CIA interrogator-psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were present at the Seligman talk. Former Air Force Colonel Steve Kleinman told Jane Mayer that he knew Mitchell for years, and "learned helplessness was his whole paradigm."

According to Jason Leopold, five months prior to the May 2002 SERE lecture:

... Seligman hosted a meeting at his house that was attended by Mitchell, along with the CIA's then-Director of Behavioral Science Research, Kirk Hubbard, and an Israeli intelligence agent. Seligman has claimed he was totally unaware his theory on Learned Helplessness was being used against detainees after 9/11 and denied ever engaging in discussions about the Bush administration's torture program with Mitchell, Jessen, or any other government official.

But Seligman's SERE days appear to be behind him, and he has repackaged himself as "Dr. Happy." His new "learned optimism" theories, supposedly sold in program format (for millions of dollars) to the Army as a way to reduce PTSD and suicide rates, are instead packaging conformist and religious ideologies in the name of resiliency "fitness" for the Army.

CSF examines "spiritual fitness" with questions like "I am a spiritual person, my life has lasting meaning, I believe that in some way my life is closely connected to all humanity and all the world." One soldier tested last month told Truthout that he was labeled "spiritually unfit" because he answered the "not like me at all" box. As a result, the Army has told him he "may lack a sense of meaning or purpose in his life." Presumably, like other soldiers with low spirituality scores, he'll have to attend remedial courses and "be forced to participate in exercises that use religious imagery to 'train' soldiers up to a satisfactory level of spirituality."

According to the Truthout article, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has sent letters to the Army demanding it "immediately cease and desist administering the 'spiritual' portion of the CSF test.

The fact the Army is enforcing religious ideology upon soldiers is already outrageous enough, but the piquant irony by which the primary theorist of the program is also one of the primary theorists behind the use of certain techniques to break down and torture people, and whose theories were used by DoD/CIA psychologists to devise a diabolical torture program, well... one's head could spin for days processing the internal contradictions. But that's America today, a torturing country that uses huckster psychology to promote ersatz spirituality in soldiers sent to invade foreign countries for the purpose of selling arms and controlling oil and gas supplies.

What's next? Will atheism be pronounced a new form of "material support to terrorism"? Will Elmer Gantry replace Robert Gates as next Secretary of Defense? Gates has been President Obama's Secretary of Defense nearly as long now as he served as same in the administration of George W. Bush.

Truly, nothing can be considered strange anymore.

Right-Wing Evangelicals Target U.S. Military

Troutfishing has a very good article over at Daily Kos on the near-takeover by right-wing Christian evangelicals of the U.S. Air Force Academy. Religious ideology and imagery has long mingled with military rhetoric, as my article yesterday on General Matthew Ridgway and the Korean War demonstrates. But as recent investigations make clear, there is an organizational effort to maximize religious influence in the U.S. military, something beyond the chiliastic comments of a 1950s Cold War general.

In a July 12, 2005 interview with the New York Times, Brig. Gen. Cecil Richardson, Air Force deputy chief of chaplains, stated, "...we reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched." For over a decade, the official [US Air Force] academy newspaper ran ads stating: "We believe that Jesus Christ is the only real hope for the World. If you would like to discuss Jesus, feel free to contact one of us! There is salvation in no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." The ads were signed by 16 department heads, nine permanent professors, both the incoming and outgoing deans of faculty, the athletic director and more than 200 academy senior officers and their spouses.

[from an article published on Truthdig, The Cancer From Within, by Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) board member and decorated Vietnam War pilot David Antoon]

U.S. Air Force Academy Chaplain, Captain Melinda Morton, who was removed from her post for complaining about Christian proselytizing among recruits, explained what happened to her when she complained about undue influence at the Academy by evangelicals in a Washington Post article:

"They fired me," said Capt. Melinda Morton, a Lutheran minister who was removed as executive officer of the chaplain unit on May 4. "They said I should be angry about these outside groups who reported on the strident evangelicalism at the academy. The problem is, I agreed with those reports"....

"The evangelicals want to subvert the system," Morton said. "They have a very clear social and political agenda. The evangelical tone is pervasive at the academy, and it's aimed at converting these young people who are under intense pressure anyway."

In his Daily Kos piece, Troutfishing summed up the situation:

In short, US Basic training facilities of the United States military are being co-opted, by fundamentalist organizations, such as Campus Crusade For Christ, to indoctrinate military personnel and basic training recruits in a form of Christianity that is almost certainly heavily politicized, if quietly so.

This should concern all Americans; as I've recently described, the Founder Of Campus Crusade For Christ rejected the Theory Of Evolution (and even co-authored a book in "Intelligent Design" and held that American public education had been co-opted as part of a vast "anti-God" conspiracy that went back to the Renaissance and included communist and socialist ideology, atheism, and the ACLU.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation released a report last October 31 on Government Paid Missionaries for Christ. The report details the activities of the Military Ministry of the Campus Crusade for Christ, which reportedly seeks to "Evangelise and Disciple All Enlisted Members of the U.S. Military":

Describing their ministries at Lackland Air Force Base and Fort Sam Houston, the Military Ministry website states:

"Responsibilities include working with Chaplains and Military personnel to bring lost soldiers closer to Christ, build them in their faith and send them out into the world as GOVERNMENT PAID MISSIONARIES."

I looked, and couldn't find this quote at the website itself, though I have no reason to doubt MRFF's truthfulness. Here's a few quotes from MilitaryMinistry.org that were there when I looked today:

Picture yourself as a new recruit in Basic Training, or in Advanced Training, or in a Senior Service School for further training. What are your needs? Basic Training and Advanced Training are tough, rigorous, demanding experiences. You’ll come out of it knowing you can be and do much more than you ever dreamed. You’ll be ready for more than you ever imagined. But what about spiritual readiness–will you gain that, too?

Spiritual readiness means having the inner resources to face all that life has to throw at you, and even all that death could throw at you besides. It means being connected with the God of the universe in such a way that you know, whatever happens, you are ready.

Military Ministry has staff at many of the basic and advanced training locations in the Armed Forces, and we want to help you be ready.]

For more on this right wing group, go look at their video online, "Global War on Terror, Winning the Long War", with Bob Dees, U.S. Major General, Retired, and Executive Director of Military Ministry. Notably, Dees was, up until a few years ago, Executive Director of Defense Strategies at Microsoft Corporation.

The blog, The Blue Voice, reviews the video, explaining:

[Dees] presents a highly ideological version of the "global war on terror" with generous snippets from some FOX News propaganda film. It's very clear in this talk that Dees' right wing view of the "war on terror" as a religious war against Islam is an integral part of his version of the Christian message. It's a highly, explicitly political message, political as in a very narrow, conservative ideological view of foreign and military policy.

Dees says, "These troops that are gathering before a patrol in Baghdad, they're not worried about being politically correct, they are worried about being God-correct." And, "Our mission is to transform the nations of the world through the militaries of the world starting with the United States armed forces."

I encourage all my readers to pursue in some detail the links herein. The mixture of apocalyptic religious evangelism and militarist imperialism, both in the hands of a government that has thousands of nuclear weapons, constitutes a force that threatens the entire planet.