# Operation Paperclip

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Operation Paperclip," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/operation-paperclip/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The program by which the CIA's predecessor brought Nazi scientists to the United States after World War II; John Kiriakou notes the FBI opposed it, that the Nazis surrendered to the U.S. fearing the Soviets, and that V-2 rocket father Wernher von Braun is buried near his home in Virginia.*

- **What:** Bringing Nazi scientists to the U.S.
- **FBI stance (per Kiriakou):** Opposed it

**Operation Paperclip** was the program by which the CIA's predecessor brought Nazi scientists to the United States after World War II. [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) notes the FBI opposed it, but the CIA — already looking ahead to the Soviet threat — welcomed them; the Nazis gave themselves up to the Americans precisely because they were *"petrified of the Russians"* and calculated the U.S. would *"lay out the red carpet."*[1][2] The denazification process, he says, became a formality one could pay through. Wernher von Braun, father of the V-2 rocket, went on to NASA and is buried in Alexandria, Virginia, near Kiriakou's home.[3][4]

## As an argument about why fascism was never rooted out

Kiriakou puts Paperclip to a second use: as the reason he thinks postwar Europe was never made to confront its collaborators. Discussing why Austria and Ukraine never conducted a reckoning comparable to Germany's, he argues the incentive ran the other way, because both of the states that might have insisted on one were themselves recruiting. His compressed version of 1945 is that the United States said *"Hey, all you Nazis, we're happy to take you guys… the doctors, the engineers, the rocket scientists, we have this thing called Operation Paperclip, come on in. We're going to take all of you."*[5]

He then makes the parallel that is the point of the passage — that the new state of Israel applied a comparable test, screening for identity rather than politics: *"And then the Israelis say, 'Oh, you're Jewish, but still kind of Nazi. That's okay. We can work with that. Come on to Israel. So long as you're Jewish, we don't care what kind of politics you have.'"* Having laid out both, he characterises the subsequent American posture as *"just self-flagellating and wondering how in the world we got ourselves in this position."*[5][6]

## See also

- [Founding of the CIA (1947)](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-founding-1947)
- [Allen Dulles](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/allen-dulles)

## Sources

1. Ex-CIA John Kiriakou: The US Government Is Destroying Itself (2026) (2026-02-12), at 38:03. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9qRSlRIqFM&t=2283s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-12-austin-and-matt-us-destroying-itself/
2. Ex-CIA John Kiriakou: The US Government Is Destroying Itself (2026) (2026-02-12), at 38:29. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9qRSlRIqFM&t=2309s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-12-austin-and-matt-us-destroying-itself/
3. Ex-CIA John Kiriakou: The US Government Is Destroying Itself (2026) (2026-02-12), at 39:00. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9qRSlRIqFM&t=2340s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-12-austin-and-matt-us-destroying-itself/
4. Ex-CIA John Kiriakou: The US Government Is Destroying Itself (2026) (2026-02-12), at 39:31. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9qRSlRIqFM&t=2371s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-12-austin-and-matt-us-destroying-itself/
5. Israel and Al-Qaeda CIA Whistleblower Exposes the Alliance (2026-04-02), at 20:19. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k0Rz71HCIE&t=1219s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-04-02-kim-iversen-israel-and-al-qaeda-cia-whistleblower-exposes/
6. Israel and Al-Qaeda CIA Whistleblower Exposes the Alliance (2026-04-02), at 20:49. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k0Rz71HCIE&t=1249s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-04-02-kim-iversen-israel-and-al-qaeda-cia-whistleblower-exposes/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/operation-paperclip/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt