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| Science & Technology |
| WWII secret interrogators break their silence |
| 2006-08-20 |
| For more than 60 years, they kept their military secrets locked deep inside and lived quiet lives as account executives, college professors, business consultants and the like. The brotherhood of P.O. Box 1142 enjoyed no homecoming parades, no VFW reunions, no embroidered ball caps and no regaling of wartime stories to grandchildren sitting on their knees. Almost no one, not even their wives, in many cases, knew the place in history held by the men of Fort Hunt, alluded to during World War II only by a mailing address that was its code name. But the declassification of thousands of military documents and the dogged persistence of Brandon Bies, a bookish park ranger determined to record this furtive piece of history, is bringing the men of P.O. Box 1142 out of the shadows. One by one, some of the surviving 100 or so military intelligence interrogators who questioned Third Reich scientists, submariners and soldiers at one of the United States's most secretive prisoner camps are, in the twilight of their lives, spilling tales they had dared not whisper before. "It's good. Very good to talk about all this, at last," Fred Michel said last week, steadying himself on his cane as he looked over the rolling, green land along the Potomac River in Fairfax County that once was home to prison cells and interrogation rooms embedded with hidden microphones. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #4 60 years and some still believed in keeping the secret. My how times have changed. Truly American heroes one and all God bless them |
| Posted by: djohn66 2006-08-20 20:45 |
| #3 They're not as secretive, but the Army Counterintelligence Corps retirees tend to have interesting stories along these lines too. |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-08-20 17:24 |
| #2 Cool, I really hope Bies publishes a book. Sounds like these guys interrogated the Paperclip scientists. A few of them were chemists, one of whom, I'm 99% certain, was my thesis advisor at Cornell. He's 80-ish, Austrian, and his specialty happens to coinicide with what you'd need to know to design nerve agents. He told me he "refused" a commission in the US Army in the 50s, spent 2 years as a sergeant in technical intelligence, and observed some rather bizzare things. He's been tucked away in prestigious posts, contributing to American medical advances for the last 50 years, and he's as nice as could be -- but damn, am I curious about what he was up to before 1952. |
| Posted by: ST 2006-08-20 17:10 |
| #1 Thanks much for the post Moose. Almost seems surreal in an era of almost weekly intelligence community "leaks"...know all-tell all, etc. We owe these patriots a huge debt. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-08-20 12:11 |