Scribbling Villainous Orgs: NASA to Manticore

The other night, I was at dinner, talking about the government, history, and the way power really works, when someone hit me with a familiar accusation:

"You’re so cynical."

I get that a lot. Probably because I write a lot of bad guys.

When you spend years creating villainous organizations—shadowy spy networks, rogue agencies, secret societies—you start to notice something. The most outlandish ideas, the ones that feel like pure sci-fi or paranoid conspiracy, often have real-world precedents. The deeper you dig into history, the more you realize you don’t have to make up that much.

Take Citadel, the spy show I worked on for Amazon. When I was developing Manticore, the evil intelligence network in the series, I went down a research rabbit hole into how the U.S. quietly recruited Nazis after World War II. What I found didn’t just inform the story—it changed the way I thought about history. The Cold War wasn’t won with clean hands. Villainous organizations didn’t have to be invented; they already existed.

And some of them were on our side.

The Real-Life Villains Behind Fictional Bad Guys

If you’ve ever written a global conspiracy story, you’ve probably created something like Operation Paperclip without realizing it. The idea is classic spy-thriller stuff—after a war, a government recruits its former enemies, covering up their past crimes in exchange for their skills. Only, this wasn’t fiction.

Operation Paperclip: The U.S. and Nazi Scientists

At the end of WWII, the U.S. was in a race against the Soviet Union—not just for land or influence, but for brains. German scientists had pioneered rocket technology, chemical weapons, and advanced aviation. America wanted that knowledge, and they weren’t about to let a little thing like war crimes get in the way.

Through Operation Paperclip, over 1,600 Nazi scientists and engineers were brought to the U.S., including Wernher von Braun, an SS officer who designed the V-2 rockets that devastated London. He would go on to become the father of NASA’s space program. The official story framed these men as brilliant minds caught up in a bad system. The reality? Many were deeply complicit in Nazi atrocities, but their pasts were quietly scrubbed so they could work for the American war machine.

It’s a perfect setup for a fictional villain: the government, in its desperation to stay ahead, makes a deal with the devil. Only, in this case, it really happened.

Plum Island: A Nazi’s Legacy in U.S. Biowarfare Research

If you’ve ever heard of Plum Island, you probably associate it with rumors about secret experiments, bioengineered diseases, or even cryptid-style mutations like the Montauk Monster. While some of those theories spiral into sci-fi territory, the island’s real history is stranger than fiction.

Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a U.S. government research facility off the coast of New York, was founded after WWII as a bioweapons research lab. The man who helped set it up? Dr. Erich Traub, a Nazi scientist brought to America through Operation Paperclip.

Traub had been a leading biowarfare researcher for Nazi Germany, specializing in the study of viruses and diseases that could be weaponized against enemy livestock and populations. Before the war, he worked at the Rockefeller Institute in New Jersey, then returned to Germany to serve under Heinrich Himmler. His job? Running a secret bioweapons lab on Riems Island, testing ways to spread disease using insects and airborne pathogens.

After the war, instead of being prosecuted, Traub was recruited by the U.S. to advise on biological warfare programs. His research laid the foundation for Plum Island’s early work. Officially, the lab focused on studying animal diseases to protect American livestock. Unofficially, there were Cold War fears that the Soviets might develop bioweapons, and the U.S. wanted to be prepared.

The legacy of Plum Island has fueled endless speculation, particularly about whether Lyme disease originated from experiments there. While there’s no definitive proof, the fact that a former Nazi biowarfare scientist helped shape the lab’s early years doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

The Gehlen Organization: A Nazi Spy Network Turned CIA Asset

Another trope I’ve used before is the idea of a former enemy intelligence network being absorbed into a government’s ranks. That’s exactly what happened with The Gehlen Organization.

Reinhard Gehlen had been the Nazi intelligence chief on the Eastern Front, specializing in spying on the Soviets. After the war, he cut a deal with the U.S.—his entire spy network would continue operating, but now under American control. Instead of standing trial, Gehlen was given resources to keep his operation running, which later evolved into West Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

Imagine being a screenwriter in 1946 and pitching that: “Okay, what if the U.S. put a Nazi spymaster on the payroll because they thought he could help beat the Russians?” You’d get laughed out of the room for being too unrealistic. But there it is.

Operation Gladio: The Secret Armies of NATO

Another favorite trope in fiction is the stay-behind network—a secret army waiting for the right moment to strike. Operation Gladio was NATO’s real-life version of this.

The idea was to prepare for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. If the Red Army rolled in, these secret cells—trained and funded by the U.S. and its allies—would wage guerrilla warfare. The problem? Many of these operatives were former fascists and ex-Nazis.

And they weren’t just preparing for a Soviet invasion. In Italy, Gladio-linked operatives were tied to a series of bombings and assassinations designed to push the country toward right-wing rule. False flag operations, political sabotage, and shadow wars—this wasn’t a spy novel. It was policy.

The Mind Control Experiments: Bluebird & MKUltra

If there’s one villainous government program that has taken on a life of its own in fiction, it’s MKUltra. But long before the CIA started experimenting with LSD, hypnosis, and psychological torture, there was Project Bluebird.

In the early days of the Cold War, U.S. intelligence agencies were obsessed with mind control. They wanted to know if they could create sleeper agents, erase memories, and manipulate behavior through drugs and psychological conditioning.

Bluebird was the first step. Launched in 1950, it focused on using hypnosis and narco-interrogation techniques to make prisoners reveal secrets. When it evolved into MKUltra, the experiments got darker. People—many of them unwitting—were drugged, hypnotized, and subjected to brutal psychological torture. Some lost their minds. Some never recovered.

The idea of a shadowy government program manipulating people’s thoughts is a staple of fiction. But MKUltra wasn’t just a plotline. It was real. It ran for over 20 years, and when the program was exposed in the 1970s, the CIA destroyed most of the evidence.

History is Darker Than Fiction

There’s a comfort in thinking of history as black and white. Good guys win, bad guys lose, and justice is served. But the reality is messy. The United States, the country that fought to defeat fascism, turned around and recruited its former enemies to build its intelligence agencies, space program, and covert operations. It experimented on its own citizens, justified assassinations, and funded secret armies.

So, when I’m writing a villainous organization, I don’t start with comic book evil. I start with reality. With people who made terrible choices because they thought they were necessary. With governments that buried the truth because they were afraid of what their people might say.

Am I cynical for pointing that out? I don’t think so. If anything, I think it makes for better storytelling. Because the best villains—the ones that stay with you—aren’t monsters. They’re men who convinced themselves they were doing the right thing.

ABS. Always… Be… Scribbling…