The FBI Files of Werhner Von Braun--Part 1
By Tom Carney
Reprinted with permission of Old Huntsville Magazine
The following material was obtained from the files of the FBI and Army Intelligence as well as personal interviews conducted in Huntsville, Alabama.
Director, FBI
August 16, 1948
Special Inquiry
This is to advise you that by memorandum dated July 26, 1948, Mr. Peyton Ford, the Assistant to the Attorney General, advised the Bureau that it is the desire of the Attorney General that the Bureau conduct a thorough investigation concerning Werhner von Braun with particular emphasis on the internal security aspects of the emigration of von Braun into the United States for permanent residence.
The El Paso Division is requested to obtain all pertinent information concerning von Braun, including his living habits and all available derogatory information which would indicate whether or not his presence in the United States is or might be a threat to the security of the United States.
With this note J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, set into motion an investigation and surveillance that would last more than three decades and fill thousands of pages with facts, but also gossip and often frivolous innuendo.
At the end of WW II, Werhner von Braun was considered to be the most eminent rocket scientist in the world. At the age of twenty he had been employed by the German military and within a few years was in charge of Peenemunde, a rocket research center in northern Germany employing over 15000 people. Although employed by the military to build weapons of war, von Braun and his team of scientists shared the dream of space flight, something most people considered sheer fantasy at the time.
Among many other projects, his group of German scientists had developed the V-2 rockets used to successfully bomb London. For better or worse, the V-2s brought von Braun to the attention of intelligence agencies around the world. With the end of hostilities in Europe a mad scramble was begun to recruit von Braun and his team. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that some of the Germans possessed what some people considered to be Nazi backgrounds.
Part 2--More Files
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