Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency

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The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) was the organization directly responsible for Operation Paperclip, a program to bring German scientists to the United States at the end of World War II. The JIOA was established in 1945 as a subcommittee of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Armed Forces. It was composed of one representative of each member agency of the JIC, and an operational staff of military intelligence officers from the different military services. Among the JOIA's duties were administering the Paperclip program's policies and procedures, compiling dossiers, and serving as liaison to British intelligence officers operating a similar project. It was also responsible for collecting, declassifying, and distributing Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS) and other technical intelligence reports on German science and industry. In addition, the JOIA took over many of the activities of CIOS when that organization was terminated. The JOIA was disbanded in 1962.

[edit] Foreign Scientist Case Files 1945-1958

The JOIA maintained personnel dossiers on over 1,500 German and other foreign scientists, technicians, and engineers who were brought to the United States under Project Paperclip and similar programs. These dossiers were eventually transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Among the dossiers are those on Georg Rickhey, a former official at the Nordhausen Mittelwerk underground V-2 rocket factory who arrived in 1946 but who left the United States in 1947 when he was tried (and acquitted) for war crimes by a U.S. military tribunal; Walter Schreiber, who had been instrumental in medical experiments on concentration camp inmates and who fled the United States to Argentina in 1952 after the appearance of a newspaper column about his activities; and, Arthur Rudolph who had been a V-2 project engineer and who left the United States in 1984 following the Department of Justice's discovery of his role in the persecution of prisoners at the Nordhausen factory. Not included among the dossiers is one for rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. It was never transferred to NARA.