American Prometheus (95 page)
I personally think that our failure to clear Dr. Oppenheimer will be a black mark on the escutcheon of our country. His witnesses are a considerable segment of the scientific backbone of our Nation and they endorse him.
Whether Evans’ dissent was written entirely by his own hand or edited by Robb, it is a remarkable document. In the two short paragraphs quoted, it demolishes points 1, 2 and 4 of the “considerations” above that Gray and Morgan presented as the basis for their verdict. Nonetheless, it fails to confront point 3, the issue that precipitated this “train wreck,” as Oppenheimer later referred to his ordeal. “We find his conduct on the hydrogen bomb program sufficiently disturbing . . . ,” Gray and Morgan wrote.
Why was his conduct with respect to the hydrogen bomb program disturbing? Oppenheimer had opposed a crash program to develop a hydrogen bomb, but so had seven other members of the GAC; and they all had explained their reasons clearly. What Gray and Morgan were actually saying was that they opposed Oppenheimer’s judgments and they did not want his views represented in the counsels of government. Oppenheimer wanted to corral and perhaps even reverse the nuclear arms race. He wanted to encourage an open democratic debate on whether the United States should adopt genocide as its primary defense strategy. Apparently, Gray and Morgan considered these sentiments unacceptable in 1954. More, they were asserting in effect that it was not legitimate, not permissible, for a scientist to express strong disagreement on matters of military policy.
Strauss was relieved that the panel had narrowly handed down the equivalent of a guilty verdict—but now he feared the possibility that Evans’ dissent could persuade the AEC commissioners to reverse it. The verdict, after all, was only a recommendation, which the AEC commissioners had the option of confirming or rejecting. Oppenheimer’s lawyers assumed that standard procedures would be followed and the AEC’s general manager, Kenneth Nichols, would merely pass to the commissioners the Gray Board’s report. But Nichols—who viewed Oppenheimer as a “slippery sonuvabitch”—sent the commissioners a letter that was actually a fullfledged brief. Nichols’ letter written under the guidance of Strauss, Charles Murphy (the
Fortune
magazine editor), and Robb, put an entirely new spin on the panel’s report.
The Nichols letter presented an entirely new argument for why Oppenheimer’s security clearance should not be reinstated. His speculations went far beyond the Gray Board’s verdicts. Drawing on Strauss’ research in Oppenheimer’s FBI dossier during the three months he had kept it in his office, Nichols argued, first, that Oppenheimer was not merely a “parlor pink” fellow traveler. “His relations with these hardened Communists were such that they considered him to be one of their number.” Citing the cash contributions that Oppenheimer had passed through the Communist Party, Nichols concluded, “The record indicates that Dr. Oppenheimer was a Communist in every respect except for the fact that he did not carry a party card.”
Although the Gray Board’s verdict had emphasized Oppenheimer’s opposition to a crash program to develop the H-bomb, Nichols dismissed this politically awkward part of the indictment and astutely added that it was not the intention of the AEC to question the right of a scientist like Dr. Oppenheimer to express his “honest opinions.”
Instead, Nichols shifted the emphasis to the Chevalier affair. But he embraced an interpretation of this murky business quite different from the one presented by the Gray Board. The panel had accepted Oppenheimer’s admission that he had lied to Colonel Pash in 1943 when he first spoke of the Chevalier-Eltenton incident. Nichols rejected this conclusion and, in an astonishing and perhaps even extralegal maneuver, completely reinterpreted the incident. In effect, Nichols retried Oppenheimer, dismissed the Gray Board’s majority opinion, and presented the AEC commissioners with an entirely new basis for removing Oppenheimer’s security clearance.
After reviewing the sixteen-page transcript of that fateful encounter between Oppenheimer and Colonel Pash on August 26, 1943, Nichols argued, “it is difficult to conclude that the detailed and circumstantial account given by Dr. Oppenheimer to Colonel Pash was false and that the story now told by Dr. Oppenheimer is an honest one.” Why, asked Nichols, would Oppenheimer “tell such a complicated false story to Colonel Pash?” Rejecting Oppenheimer’s quite plausible explanation, that he had sought to divert attention from both Chevalier and himself, Nichols pointed out that Oppenheimer “did not give his present version of the story until 1946, shortly after he had learned from Chevalier what Chevalier himself had told the FBI about the incident. . . .” Withholding from the commissioners the critical fact that Eltenton’s interview with the FBI—conducted simultaneously with the FBI’s interview with Chevalier—had irrefutably confirmed the 1946 Chevalier–Oppenheimer version of the Chevalier affair, Nichols concluded that Oppenheimer had lied in 1946 to the FBI and again in the 1954 hearings.
Nichols had unearthed no additional facts; indeed, he had suppressed facts. He merely asserted that Oppenheimer lied to protect his brother, a theory that, as we have seen, has scant evidence to support it. Curiously, the Gray Board made no effort to obtain testimony from Frank Oppenheimer— nor, for that matter, from the two principals, Haakon Chevalier and George Eltenton. (Chevalier was then living in Paris and Eltenton had long since returned to England, but both men could have been interviewed abroad.)
Nichols’ letter contained only a supposition, a personal interpretation, and one that had not been raised by the Gray Board. Why at this late date was he introducing another theory? The answer is obvious: Arguing that Oppenheimer had lied in 1954, to the hearing board, was far more damning than the claim that he had lied eleven years earlier to a lieutenant colonel.
Since it is impossible to imagine that Nichols presented this radical interpretation without Strauss’ approval, it is clear that Strauss feared that the ambiguities in the majority’s decision, combined with the clarity of Evans’ dissent, might lead the AEC commissioners to overrule the Gray Board.
Oppenheimer’s lawyers knew nothing of Nichols’ letter. Garrison might have learned of it if he had been given the opportunity to present an oral argument before the AEC commissioners. The one commissioner sympathetic to Garrison’s request, Dr. Henry D. Smyth, warned, “If we give Dr. Oppenheimer’s attorneys no opportunity to comment on Nichols’ letter, we will be open to grave criticism when the letter is published.” But once again, Strauss prevailed, and Garrison’s request was flatly turned down without explanation.
OPPENHEIMER’S LAWYERS briefly hoped that the five AEC commissioners would reverse the Gray Board’s recommendation. There were, after all, three Democrats (Henry De Wolf Smyth, Thomas Murray and Eugene Zuckert) and only two Republicans (Lewis Strauss and Joseph Campbell) on the Commission. Initially, Strauss himself feared a three-to-two vote in Oppenheimer’s favor. But as chairman, Strauss was in a position to influence his fellow commissioners. He understood how power worked in Washington, and he had no qualms about offering his colleagues tangible rewards for seeing things his way. He treated them to lavish lunches and talked to Smyth about lucrative employment opportunities in private industry. At one point, Smyth wondered whether Strauss was trying to buy his vote. Harold P. Green, the AEC lawyer who had been called upon to write the original letter of charges against Oppenheimer, thought Strauss was playing hard-ball. Green knew that Zuckert was initially inclined to find Oppenheimer innocent. In fact, on May 19, Strauss was informed that, “Gene Zuckert would welcome the opportunity not to stand up and be counted on the vote making final disposition of the security case.” But at some point, Zuckert flipped. He was scheduled to resign his post as a commissioner of the AEC on June 30—the day after signing on with the majority decision against Oppenheimer—to start a private law practice in Washington. Green firmly believed that something untoward was happening, especially after he learned that Strauss subsequently transferred a lot of his legal business to Zuckert. Green didn’t know it, but Zuckert also signed a contract with Strauss to serve as the latter’s “personal adviser and consultant.”
By the end of June, Strauss had the votes of all but one commissioner. The only scientist on the Commission, Professor Smyth had made it clear that he thought Oppenheimer’s security clearance should be restored. As the author of the 1945 “Smyth Report,” an unclassified scientific history of the Manhattan Project, Smyth was familiar with both Oppenheimer and the security issues at stake. On a personal level, he didn’t particularly care for Oppenheimer; they had been Princeton neighbors for ten years, and Oppenheimer had always struck him as a vain and pretentious man. What mattered was that Smyth didn’t find the evidence convincing. In early May, he and Strauss had lunch and proceeded to argue about the verdict. At the end of their lunch, Smyth said, “Lewis, the difference between you and me is that you see everything as either black or white and to me everything looks gray.”
“Harry,” Strauss snapped back, “let me recommend you to a good oculist.”
A few weeks later, Smyth told Strauss he was determined to write a dissenting report. Working late each night until midnight, Smyth waded through the Gray Report and the hearing transcript, a stack of papers four feet high. To help him in this task, he requested the assistance of two AEC staff aides. Nichols warned one of these aides, Philip Farley, that the job would harm his career, but Farley courageously went to work for Smyth anyway. By June 27, Smyth had produced a draft of his dissenting opinion—only to learn that the final majority opinion had been so completely rewritten as to require him to redraft his own.
Beginning at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, June 28, Smyth and his assistants began writing a completely new dissent. He had merely twelve hours to meet the AEC’s self-imposed deadline for submission of the final opinion. As they worked through the night, Smyth could see through the window a car parked outside his house; two men were sitting inside the car, watching the house. Smyth thought someone from the AEC or the FBI had sent them to intimidate him. “You know it’s funny I should be going to all this trouble for Oppenheimer,” he told one of his assistants late that night. “I don’t even like the guy much.”
At ten that morning, Farley took Smyth’s dissenting opinion downtown to the AEC office and stood by to make sure that it was reproduced in full. That afternoon, Smyth’s dissent and the majority opinions were made available to the press. The commissioners voted four to one that Oppenheimer was loyal and four to one that he was a security risk. Gone from the majority opinion was any reference to the hydrogen bomb issue—even though that had been a central theme of the Gray Board’s decision. Drafted by Strauss, the majority decision focused on Oppenheimer’s “fundamental defects” of character. Specifically, the Chevalier affair and his past associations with various students in the 1930s who had been communists took center stage. “The record shows that Dr. Oppenheimer has consistently placed himself outside the rules which govern others. He has falsified in matters wherein he was charged with grave responsibilities in the national interest. In his associations he has repeatedly exhibited a willful disregard of the normal and proper obligations of security.”
OPPENHEIMER’S SECURITY CLEARANCE was thus rescinded just one day before it was due to expire. After reading the AEC commissioners’ verdicts, David Lilienthal noted in his diary: “It is sad beyond words. They are so wrong, so terribly wrong, not only about Robert, but in their concept of what is required of wise public servants. . . .” Einstein, disgusted, quipped that henceforth the AEC should be known as the “Atomic Extermination Conspiracy.”
Earlier in June, using as an excuse that a copy of the transcript had been stolen from a train (it was soon located in New York’s Pennsylvania Station’s lost-and-found office), Strauss persuaded his fellow commissioners to have all 3,000 typewritten pages of the hearing transcript published by the Government Printing Office. This violated the Gray Board’s promise to all the witnesses that their testimony would remain confidential. But Strauss felt that he was not winning the public relations battle and so he brushed aside this concern.
Comprising some 750,000 words in 993 densely printed pages,
In the
Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer
soon became a seminal document of the early Cold War. To be certain that the initial news stories embarrassed Oppenheimer, Strauss had the AEC staff highlight the most damaging testimony for reporters. Walter Winchell—the right-wing mudslinging syndicated columnist—obligingly wrote: “. . . Oppenheimer’s testimony (which most people skip over) included the name of his mistress (the late Jean Tatlock), a fanatical ‘Redski’ with whom he admitted associations after his marriage ‘of the most intimate kind.’ . . . This when he was working on the Big Bomb and knew his Doll was an active member of a Commy apparatus. . . .”
Radically conservative organs such as the
American Mercury
hailed the downfall of this “longtime glamour-boy of the atomic scientists” and criticized Oppenheimer’s supporters as men who would “coddle potential traitors.” When the Commission’s ruling was announced on the floor of the House of Representatives, some congressmen stood and applauded.
IN THE LONG RUN, however, Strauss’ strategy backfired; the transcript revealed the inquisitorial character of the hearing, and the corruption of justice during the McCarthy period. Within four years, the transcript would destroy the reputation and government career of Lewis Strauss.
Ironically, publicity surrounding the trial and its verdict enhanced Oppenheimer’s fame both in America and abroad. Where once he was known only as the “father of the atomic bomb,” now he had become something even more alluring—a scientist martyred, like Galileo. Outraged and shocked by the decision, 282 Los Alamos scientists signed a letter to Strauss defending Oppenheimer. Around the country, more than 1,100 scientists and academics signed another petition protesting the decision. In response, Strauss replied that the AEC’s decision was “a hard one, but the proper one.” The broadcaster Eric Sevareid noted, “He [Oppenheimer] will no longer have access to secrets in government files, and government, presumably, will no longer have access to secrets that may be born in Oppenheimer’s brain.”
