Opposition to Operation Paperclip gained momentum with America’s scientific elite. On February 1, 1947, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) met in New York City to ask President Truman to put an end to it. The American scientists saw the Nazi scientist program as a “drastic step in the search for military power.” When it was learned that some of the one thousand additional German scientists on the Paperclip recruiting list were being hired for short-term military work followed by longer-term positions at American universities, many were outraged. “Certainly not wishing to jeopardize the legitimate needs of the national defense, and not advocating the policy of hatred and vengeance toward our former enemies, we nevertheless believe that a large-scale importation of German scientists… is not in keeping with the best objectives of American domestic and foreign policy,” the members of FAS wrote. One American scientist was more forthright. “Certainly any person who can transfer loyalties from one idealology [sic] to another upon the shifting of a meal ticket is not better than Judas!” he said.
Albert Einstein was the most esteemed figure to publicly denounce Operation Paperclip. In an impassioned letter, written on behalf of his FAS colleagues, Einstein appealed directly to President Truman. “We hold these individuals to be potentially dangerous.… Their former eminence as Nazi Party members and supporters raises the issue of their fitness to become American citizens and hold key positions in American industrial, scientific and educational institutions.”
Another important figure among the opposition was the nuclear physicist Hans Bethe. Bethe had fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and had worked on the Manhattan Project during the war. In the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Bethe and Dr. Henri Sack, a colleague from Cornell University, posed a series of simple questions about Operation Paperclip. “Was it wise, or even compatible with our moral standards to make this bargain, in light of the fact that many of the Germans, probably the majority, were die-hard Nazis?” Bethe and Sack asked. “Did the fact that the Germans might save the nation millions of dollars imply that permanent residence and citizenship could be bought? Could the United States count on [the German scientists] to work for peace when their indoctrinated hatred against the Russians might contribute to increase the divergency between the great powers? Had the war been fought to allow Nazi ideology to creep into our educational and scientific institutions by the back door?” Their final question struck at the dark heart of the Nazi scientist program. “Do we want science at any price?”
The condemnation of Operation Paperclip by these leading American scientists and others had a ripple effect on the general public. Reporters began searching for leads about individual German scientists’ wartime activities, but this proved an almost impossible effort given the program’s classified nature. Frustrated by the lack of information, some Americans sent threatening letters addressed to the German scientists at Wright Field and Fort Bliss. The army tightened security and surveillance. In Washington, D.C., the War Department was rightly concerned that intense opposition and bad publicity had put the entire program in jeopardy of collapse, and in the winter of 1947 the War Department forbade the further release of information about the program.