After the retirement of von Braun, Udet became one of NASA’s most senior managers, and he recently directed the development of the Saturn VB enhanced rocket booster. The VB will be used to launch the Ares manned mission to Mars, and has already been launched successfully several times to deliver components of the Mars ship to Earth orbit.

Now, the Justice Department has told Udet that he must surrender his U.S. citizenship and leave the country or face charges that he had been involved in a forced labor camp at Nordhausen in Germany where the V-2 was manufactured. The department is apparently acting on information that has been in the hands of the government for forty years.

Udet has apparently not been accused of committing atrocities, but of being aware of them, and failing to acknowledge that fact in his application for U.S. citizenship.

Udet maintains his innocence, but says that because of his age and financial situation, he will not undertake the prolonged legal battle that the government suit would entail.

Under an agreement with the Department of Justice Udet left the U.S. in January.

Senior colleagues within NASA have spoken out in Udet’s defense, calling the Justice Department action “cynical” and “shabby.” The feeling is that the Justice Department stayed its hand on this matter until after Udet had served out a lifetime of useful service for the government.

Among those who campaigned on behalf of Udet within NASA was Dr. Gregory Dana, father of dead Apollo-N astronaut James Dana, and a scientist who, this newspaper can reveal, was himself a conscript laborer at Nordhausen during the war… New York Times, Friday, March 8, 1985

Frederick W. Michaels, 76, NASA Administrator

Fred Michaels, who was NASA’s Administrator during its turbulent post-Apollo decade, died Tuesday at his home in Dallas, Texas. He was 76.

Born in Dallas in 1909, Michaels received a BA in education from the University of Chicago in 1933. He studied law and was admitted to the District of Columbia bar in 1939. He worked in private business from 1939 to 1963, save for a 4-year spell in the Bureau of the Budget. In this period he rose to become President of the Umex Oil Company, assistant to the President of Morgan Industries, and a member of the board of Southpaw Airlines. He joined NASA in 1963.

He served as Administrator of NASA from 1971 to 1981, when he resigned subsequent to the loss of the Apollo-N test mission and the death of its astronaut crew.

Michaels’s reign at NASA was characterized by political astuteness. His stewardship was much more worldly than that of his predecessor, the visionary but ineffectual Thomas O. Paine. Michaels effectively managed both the internal conflicts between centers, which have plagued NASA from its inception, and external pressures from political, budget, and aerospace interests and such lobbies as the universities.