Operation Paperclip was a secret US intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were taken from Germany to the United States, for U.S. government employment, primarily between 1945 and 1959. Conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), it was largely carried out by special agents of the US Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC). Many of these personnel were former members, and some were former leaders, of the Nazi Party.