FIAT continued TIIC's work, combing the mountains of papers found in factories and hideaways, to ferret out the scientific secrets, the mechanical devices, and the special techniques developed by the Germans in the decades following World War I.
Chief among its interests would be "the securing of the major, and perhaps only, material reward of victory, namely, the advancement of science and the improvement of production and standards of living in the United Nations by proper exploitation of German methods in these fields."
Although Clay, Bowles, and Maunsell envisioned FIAT as having exclusive "control and actual handling of operations concerning enemy personnel, documents, and equipment of scientific and industrial interest," they discovered before long that to set up an agency with such sweeping authority in the bureaucratic thickets of SHAEF was not possible.
In its charter, issued at the end of May, FIAT was authorized to "coordinate, integrate, and direct the activities of the various missions and agencies" interested in scientific and technical intelligence but prohibited from collecting and exploiting such information on its own responsibility.
[3] Never the high-powered intelligence unit Stimson had wanted and, after SHAEF was dissolved, an orphan shared administratively by the US Group Control Council and USFET without being adopted by either, FIAT eventually came by its distinctive role in the occupation almost inadvertently.
In the summer of 1945, from its office in Frankfurt and branches in Paris, London, and Berlin, it provided accreditation, support, and services to civilian investigators from the Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee (Foreign Economic Administration) then arriving in Europe in large numbers to comb German plants and laboratories for information on everything from plastics to shipbuilding and building materials to chemicals.
As military units that had been engaged in gathering technical intelligence were redeployed beginning in the late summer, FIAT frequently also became the custodian of the documents and equipment they had collected.
As the military intelligence projects were completed and phased out in late 1945 and early 1946, the volume of civilian investigations increased; FIAT microfilming teams ranged across Germany, and the Frankfurt office screened, edited, and translated reports before shipping them to the United States.
[9] The main result of the FIAT was to make public many of the technical and scientific advances made by the German and Axis government during World War II.
These scientists were part of the SS Ahnenerbe, which included specialists in race, biologists, physicians, historians, botanists, zoologists, geneticists and plant breeders.
Although Heinz Brűcher cooperated with the Allies at the end of the war, and even wrote some articles for the US Army Field Information Assistance Technical Unit (FIAT), the seed collections remained hidden away until he could retrieve them in 1947, and take them first to Sweden, then to South America.
A report made by the Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT) in August 1945 noted that many of the library books were removed to the basements of the University of Heidelberg buildings.
Branches of the Field Information Agency, Technical, USA (FIAT), processed over 29,000 reports, confiscated 55 tons of documents, and made over 3,400 trips within Germany to investigate the so-called "targets" of interest through June 30, 1946.
Considering the transatlantic transportation problems they were already experiencing, the Americans preferred to seize "lightweight" goods, such as documents, as compensation for their participation in World War II.