Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

Chapter 6
Operation paperclip in
huntsville, alabama
Monique Laney
In 1984, arthur rudolph renounced his american citizenship and moved
back to Germany with his wife 30 years after becoming an american citizen.
previously, rudolph had enjoyed more than a 20-year career with the U.S.
army and NaSa from which he retired in 1969. rudolph was one of the
German rocket engineers who had been brought to the United States following
World War II under the secret military project that would come to be known
as “Operation paperclip.” he decided to leave the country after so many years
because he was being investigated by the OSI, which alleged that rudolph had
been involved in the horrifc and often deadly treatment of forced and slave
laborers from the Dora concentration camp who had been used to produce V-2
rockets at Mittelwerk in the last years of the war. Before rudolph passed away
in 1996, several attempts were made to bring him back into the United States,
and even today some of his former colleagues and friends want to see his name
cleared. 1 according to one of his former coworkers, huntsville responded to
the government action against rudolph with “unanimous disgust” and “did its
best to try to fght it.” 2
1. the rudolph case and attempts to have his name cleared have been covered extensively in local and
national newspapers and magazines since 1984.this case has evoked strong emotions where terms
such as “witch hunters” and “holocaust deniers” seem to be commonplace in an ongoing battle
over some form of truth.two authors who have interrogated the case at some length from opposite
sides of this controversy, refecting some of the accusatory and at times infammatory rhetoric, are
thomas Franklin (pseudonym), An American in Exile:The Story of Arthur Rudolph (huntsville, aL:
Christopher Kaylor Company, 1987) and Linda hunt, Secret Agenda:The United States Government,
Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945-1990 (New York, NY: St. Martin’s press, 1991).
2. Charles a. Lundquist interview, huntsville,aL, July 12, 2007. Lundquist was born and raised in
South Dakota. he was awarded his ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of Kansas in 1954. Due
to an earlier education deferment, he was then drafted to join the army Ballistic Missile agency
(aBMa) at redstone arsenal near huntsville, alabama. Lundquist left huntsville in 1962 to
work for astronomer Fred Whipple until 1973 at the Smithsonian astrophysical Observatory
(SaO) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. he returned to huntsville in 1973 as Director of the Space
Science Lab at the Marshall Space Flight Center.In 1981,Lundquist took the job of Director and
later associate Vice president for research at the University of alabama in huntsville (Uah).
although ofcially retired, he currently still helps out at the archives at Uah.