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These seg­ments dis­cuss a remark­able Ger­man com­pany which leased thou­sands of square miles in Zaire in the 1970s. This com­pany, an exten­sion of the (then) West Ger­man aero­space indus­try, had com­plete auton­omy and func­tioned as, in effect, a state-within-a-state. The prin­ci­pal fig­ures involved with OTRAG were vet­er­ans of the Nazi rocket devel­op­ment pro­gram dur­ing World War II, many of whom had gone to work for the United States after the war. Although the stated pur­pose of their oper­a­tion was to develop inex­pen­sive rocket deliv­ery vehi­cles for civil­ian satel­lites, the vehi­cles they were devel­op­ing had mil­i­tary applic­a­bil­ity and, as such, may have been ille­gal. In addi­tion, there is con­sid­er­able evi­dence that the com­pany was func­tion­ing as a NATO front orga­ni­za­tion for a vari­ety of pur­poses includ­ing pro­vid­ing logis­ti­cal sup­port for U.S. covert oper­a­tions in cen­tral Africa. Per­haps the most omi­nous aspect of OTRAG’s oper­a­tions con­cerns the pos­si­bil­ity that the com­pany may very well have been involved in joint research with Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions under­tak­ing the devel­op­ment of genetically-altered, immune system-destroying mon­key viruses. This research may have led to the devel­op­ment of AIDS and Ebola. (Recorded on 1/5/97.)