Hunt - Secret Agenda - The United States Government, Nazi Scientists and Project Paperclip, 1945 to

There is absolutely no evidence of connivance by others. In effect, Whalen used friendship as a vehicle to move conversations to a topic in which he had immediate interest in satisfying his handlers. These innocent parties were guilty of nothing more than a certain laxity in security in that they allowed themselves to, be duped into discussing sensitive material to which subject had no established need-to-know.32 Whalen took advantage of casual conversations with associates in the Pentagon to obtain information for the Soviets concerning the movement of troops and the reorganization of U.S. Army combat units.

Some of that information included data regarding mobile combat units equipped with Honest John rockets.33 Whalen met Edemski once a month in shopping center parking lots in Alexandria, Virginia, where they held operational planning meetings. On three or four occasions Whalen gave Edemski classified information about plans to evacuate U.S. civilians in West Germany in the event of a surprise attack by the Soviets. Several other times Edemski took notes on a threeby-five-inch pad of paper while Whalen made oral reports about the U.S. buildup or reduction of troops in Europe and defense plans for West Germany and France.34 Other oral reports to Edemski contained information from Washington Liaison Group projects in which Whalen had participated. He was the Department of Defense representative on the Liaison Group, whose purpose was to devise worldwide plans to evacuate and save the lives of U.S. citizens abroad in case of nuclear attack or imminent hostilities. The Liaison Group, headed by State Department representative Walter Mueller, met weekly in the State Department building. The members discussed the number of Americans living in foreign countries, the number of military personnel to be involved in evacuation plans, strategic evacuation "hot spots," such as West Germany and, particularly, Berlin, and other vital information. The JIOA's activities were extremely relevant to the Liaison Group's concerns, since there were plans to evacuate German scientists from Europe in case of war, and one main feature of Paperclip from the beginning was keeping track of scientists in Europe and their activities.35 Once Whalen told Edemski the details of meetings he had attended in Beirut, Lebanon, and Rome on the evacuation of U.S. civilians. On another occasion he disclosed information from an agreement between the departments of Defense and State that Whalen said had been written in part by him as a member of the Liaison Group. This agreement contained details of secret plans for the evacuation of U. S. civilians and military dependents worldwide and defined the responsibilities of the Defense and State Departments in executing those plans in the event of war with the USSR.36 During the time that Whalen spied for the Soviets, he not only was promoted to chairman of theJIOA but he passed a background investigation that cleared him for access to classified information.

A security investigation on October 22, 1959, cleared him for access to both top-secret and cryptologic information. Although the investigation reported that he "occasionally drank to excess and that between 1952 and 1959 he had recurrent financial problems," it did not uncover evidence that he was a spy.37 Lieutenant Colonel Norris said he did not notice Whalen "except for him walking around, beating on his chest, making rash statements." Other JIOA officers certainly were aware of his drinking problem, but that did not trigger enough of a concern to prompt anyone to report him as a security threat. "After this thing broke I had people I knew come up to me saying he drank, he borrowed money," recalled Colonel Christopher, who rejoined the project in 1962. "I said, `Why the hell didn't you tell somebody? That's an indication.' "3g Yet JIOA officer Gardner did consider a college student as being suspect simply because he was researching Paperclip. Clarence Lasby was a student at the University of California at Los Angeles and had decided to write his doctoral dissertation on Project Paperclip. As part of his research Lasby sent questionnaires to a number of Paperclip scientists, including Hans Ziegler at Fort Monmouth,