In June 1950, North Korean forces, supported by Communist benefactors, moved across the 38th parallel, marking the start of the Korean War. The idea that the Communists were also about to invade Western Europe took hold in the Pentagon. On July 14, 1950, the commander at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base sent an urgent memo to Operation Paperclip’s in-house champion, Colonel Donald Putt: “Due to the threat of impending hostilities in Europe and the possibility that forces of the USSR may rapidly overrun the continent, this command is concerned with the problem of the immediate implementation of an evacuation program for German and Austrian scientists.” Were these scientists to “fall into enemy hands… they would constitute a threat to our national security.” Air force intelligence recommended to JIOA that it initiate a “mass procurement effort” in Germany. JIOA agreed and began making formal plans with the high commissioner’s office to effect this.
The Korean War sparked a new fire under Operation Paperclip. Inside the high commissioner’s office, McCloy maintained a group called the Scientific Research Division that was specifically dedicated to the issue of German scientists. The head of the division was Dr. Carl Nordstrom, and ever since McCloy had taken office Nordstrom had been trying to expedite the procession of German scientists to America. Dr. Nordstrom maintained a thick file labeled “Allocation of German Scientists and Technicians” and had sent many eyes-only memos to McCloy in “support of certain research projects” he foresaw as valuable to national interest. Now, in light of the Korean War, Nordstrom got a new job from JIOA. He was assigned to be the German liaison to a new JIOA program being fast-tracked out of the Pentagon, named Accelerated Paperclip but called Project 63 in the field: A number of Germans had soured on the name Paperclip. The premise of the Accelerated Paperclip program was to move “especially dangerous top level scientists” out of Germany in a “modified Denial Program” that needed to be kept away from the Soviets at all costs. The high commissioner’s office began working with army intelligence to “evacuate” 150 of these scientists, code-named the “K” list, from Germany to the United States. A group of American officers called the Special Projects Team would be dispatched to recruit the “K” list scientists. The Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a prodigious $1 million procurement budget to help entice these “especially dangerous top level scientists” to come to America, the equivalent of approximately $10 million in 2013.
Accelerated Paperclip, or Project 63, meetings were held at the high commissioner’s offices in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt, with Dr. Carl Nordstrom keeping notes. Representatives from JIOA, the army, the air force, EUCOM, and the CIA attended. Because many on the “K” list did not have a job offer already in place, the JIOA decided to set up a clandestine office in New York City, at the Alamac Hotel, where the scientists could live while they waited for assignments. The Accelerated Paperclip project director in America, Colonel William H. Speidel (no known relation to the Wilhelm Speidel war criminal at Landsberg Prison or his lawyer brother), maintained an office there. An entire block of rooms was set aside in the nineteen-story hotel, on Seventy-first Street and Broadway, for a yet-unnamed group of German scientists scheduled to arrive at a future date. A welcome brochure was printed up and kept on file at the high commissioner’s office. “To insure your comfort, convenience and interest in general,” it read, “a competent officer, assisted by a carefully selected staff… will serve your interests from the time of your arrival until the time of your departure to enter employment.” The officer “will maintain an office at the hotel in which you reside and be prepared to complete, or make provisions for, all arrangements incident to housing, restaurant facilities, securing medical services, and the administrative details of the project.” The U.S. Army’s “primary interest,” the scientists were told, “is in providing for your comfort, contentment, happiness and security [and] efforts will be directed to help you in attaining these goals with a minimum [of] friction, distraction, and delay.”
But the program did not take off like fire in dry grass, as Dr. Nordstrom had hoped it would. Much to everyone’s surprise, the offers made under Accelerated Paperclip were rejected by many of the German scientists who were approached. When JIOA requested an explanation from the high commissioner’s office as to why, Nordstrom reported that some on the “K” list were simply “too old, too rich, too busy and too thoroughly disgruntled with past experiences with Americans,” to see a free room at the Alamac Hotel in New York City as a career move. Besides, Germany had its own chancellor now, and for the first time in five years, many German scientists saw that a prosperous scientific future was possible in their own country.
Others could not wait to come to America. With Accelerated Paperclip’s newest policy in place, Class I offenders could now be put on a JIOA list. This included Dr. Schreiber, still serving as post physician at Camp King. Another Class I offender was Dr. Kurt Blome, former deputy surgeon general of the Third Reich and Hitler’s biological weapons expert. The sword and the shield.
Finally, there was Dr. Otto Ambros, the war criminal convicted at Nuremberg of slavery and mass murder. In the winter of 1951, Otto Ambros was placed on the JIOA list for Accelerated Paperclip even though he was still incarcerated at Landsberg Prison.