The ravages of the highly toxic defoliant Agent Orange are well documented, felling American G.I.‘s and Vietnamese and Laotian combatants and civilians. The toll is ever-mounting as dioxin is part of the Southeast Asian landscape and waterscape now, and a variety of horrors continue to plague the residents of that area.
What has not received as much publicity is the documented fact that the poison was developed by Friedrich “Fritz” Hoffman, one of the Third Reich alumni brought to the U.S. under Project [or “Operation”] Paperclip.
” . . . . Under the umbrella of the CIA’s Security Research Services, [CIA organization] Morwede was among the front organizations protecting Nazi chemists transported to the US, including Dr. Friedrich ‘Fritz’ Hoffman, a major beneficiary of the largesse of the Paperclip pipeline.
“In the late ‘50s, Hoffmann’s work for the CIA and Fort Detrick included development of lethal chemical agents to be used as weapons in Vietnam, proof that the dishonorable was just over the horizon when John Kennedy took office. One of these weapons, the horrific and now-infamous Agent Orange, was authorized for use in Vietnam in November 1961 (implemented in ’62 under Operation Ranch Hand) . . . By 1962, . . . Dow Chemical, was mass-producing Agent Orange under specifications perfected by Hoffmann and his team at Fort Detrick. . . .”
Hoffman’s imprint on the research continues to be felt, guiding those on the pathway to obtaining compensation for the poison’s destructive effects.
“. . . . Fritz Hoffman was one of the earliest known U.S. Army Chemical Corps scientists to research the toxic effects of dioxin—possibly in the mid-1950s but for certain in 1959—as indicated in what ha become known as the Hoffmann Trip Report. This document is used in almost every legal record pertaining to litigation by U.S. military veterans against the U.S. government and chemical manufacturers for its usage of herbicides and defoliants in the Vietnam War. . . .” (more...)
Project Paperclip and Agent Orange
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