Chapter 8, Ratlines, the CIA and the Nazis 381 Such wishful thinking can be deadly. as in the appearance of Lyme disease in Connecticut in the mid-1970s, Two miles offshore from Old Lyme, Conn., is Plum Island, home of Lab 287, where secret biological experiments are conducted with the most deadly strains of bacteria and viruses. After WWII the Army turned over control of the island to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The initial charter from Congress mandated the study of animal diseases, such as hoof and mouth disease, directed to eradicating them from the nation’s livestock. In 1954, the laboratory took an aggressive turn to biowarfare, secking ways to inflict widespread disease in Sovict herds to cause a famine, Cuba alleges that bioweapons from Plum Island were used against its agriculture in the 1960s—70s, Plum Island appears to be the site where Nazi scientists conducted experiments with disease-infested ticks. One of them was Dr, Erich Traub who received a fellowship from the Rockefeller Institute in Princeton, N.J., before the war: was involved in Nazi activities in the United States during the 1930s, and was a member of Camp Siegfried and Berpmetl NSKK, the Nazi Motor Corps. During the war, Traub served as lab chief at a secret Nazi biological warfare facility in the Baltic Sea. He served direct! under Himmler, packaging weaponized hoof-and-mouth disease virus, which was disper: a Lufiwaffe bomber onto cattle and reindeer in Russia. At Himmler’s request, traveled to Turkey to find a lethal strain of rinderpest virus for use against the Allies. In 1949, Traub and his family escaped from East Germany to West Berlin, He immediately applied to work under the Paperclip Program. Within months. Traub was invited for a talk with germ warriors from Fort Detrick, the Army's biological warfare headquarters in Frederick, Md. A former declassified summary confirms the meeting occurred, but the CIA denies the summary exists and claims that if it did, it would withhold it for reasons of national security. Almost all documents concerning ‘Traub and the Army’s browarfare at Plum Island have been destroyed or remain deeply buned in the government's secret vaults. The few documents that remain show that worked with more than 40 lethal viruses on large test animals. He was at Plum Island from 1949-33 and remained an active collaborator thereafter. Reports of a Nazi scientist releasing infected ticks come from a former employee of Plum Island, The island also may be the source of the outbreak of the West Nile virus. Both the Lyme and West Nile diseases first appeared in the general area. The George W. Bush administration transferred control of the site to the Department of Homeland Security with a mission to protect the nation from bioweapons Scientific American dismisses the possibility of a “Nazi scientist” link to Plum Island, but documents reveal Traub was a founding member of the biowarfare program. Scientific American is published by Von Holtzbrinck, a firm with firm roots in the Third Reich. Von Holtzbrinck also owns Henry Holt Publishing. St. Martin's Press, MacMillan and several other major U.S. publishers. Tn the race to entice Nazi scientists to the United States and thereby deprive the Sovicts of their knowledge, security and screening methods were lax. The Soviets penetrated the project from the start.’* Donald Maclean was the first secretary of the British Embassy and a Soviet mole who helped recruit Nazi scientists. Maclean supplied a list of scientists he claimed were of no value to recruit. Among them were Otto Hahn and Carl von Weizsacker, who were as well known in scientific circles as Churchill or Roosevelt in political circles. Hahn went on to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry.” ‘One of the myths about Paperclip is that German scientists were closely watched by the military, but nothing could be further from the truth. Security was lax to say the least. Often they were permitted to travel freely, Their mail was rarely checked and their phones were not tapped or monitored. For example, in the second test firing of the GE Hermes II missile, several German scientists were positioned at a distance surrounding the site to