Brotherhood of the Bomb

by Gregg Herken

  David Griggs was a Harvard-educated geophysicist who had taught at Caltech and worked for the RAND Corporation. The previous September, Griggs had been appointed the air force’s chief scientist.51 Smart, conservative, and energetic to the point of fanaticism, Griggs combined a bulldoglike tenacity with unorthodox thinking. (In 1952, Griggs proposed overflying the Iron Curtain with an ultralight spy plane powered by radioactive polonium. The idea advanced far in RAND and air force circles until it was pointed out that a crash would make a large area almost permanently uninhabitable, and that one-third of the nation’s reactor capacity would be required to make the plane’s fuel.)52

  A quick and early convert to the campaign for a second lab, Griggs volunteered to keep the Joint Committee surreptitiously informed of developments at the Pentagon. Since Griggs’s relationship with the civilian committee was illicit, Borden identified him as “Mr. X” in memos to McMahon.53

  Within days of Griggs’s arrival at the Pentagon, Strauss had brought the young scientist and Teller together.54 When Edward agreed to join the air force’s Science Advisory Board, Griggs introduced him to its most senior member, General James “Jimmy” Doolittle, hero of the famed thirty-second raid on Tokyo. After spending only a few hours with Teller during an advisory board meeting in Florida, Doolittle, too, had become an active partisan for the second lab.55

  That spring, Doolittle and Griggs arranged for Teller to brief top officials in the Pentagon. Except for members of the Military Liaison Committee, most of those in uniform had thus far remained silent on the question of the second lab. The air force’s civilian secretary, Thomas Finletter, had yet to enter the fray. Defense Secretary Robert Lovett, on the other hand, wrote McMahon in March that he thought taking H-bomb research away from Los Alamos was a “move in the wrong direction.”56

  A few days earlier, Teller had given Finletter an hour-long briefing on the new Super. Assisted by RAND physicist Ernie Plesset and a collection of colored charts, Teller spoke of the blast and radiation effects of hypothetical 5-megaton and 25-megaton hydrogen bombs.57 At first silent and seemingly distracted, Finletter grew animated as Teller explained how such weapons could be used to wipe out an entire enemy army group and stop a Soviet invasion of western Europe.58 A more detailed presentation by Teller and Plesset got an even more enthusiastic reception from the Air Council five days later. At Finletter’s suggestion, Teller briefed Lovett and the service secretaries on March 19, 1952.59

  The impact of Teller’s whirlwind briefings was prompt and decisive. Lovett and the service chiefs urged that the question of the second lab be brought before the National Security Council as soon as possible.60 Alerted to this sudden change of fortune by a telephone call from Arneson at the State Department, Gordon Dean reacted less with anger than bemusement.61 Dean promised Arneson that he would expose Teller’s next audience “to a few facts of life.”62

  Instead, the AEC chairman sat silent and grim-faced in a Pentagon office on April 1 while Teller recounted a brief and one-sided history of the H-bomb project which emphasized delays, missteps, losses due to espionage, and ended with a frank plea for the second lab. After Teller had left the room, Dean urged Acheson and Deputy Defense Secretary William Foster to withhold judgment until they had heard “the other side of the question.”63

  Ironically, Finletter and Foster had recently gone to Los Alamos and done just that. But Bradbury’s ill-advised effort to exclude Plesset from the meeting and an unusually laconic briefing on H-bomb progress by Theoretical Division leader Carson Mark had instead made the visitors determined converts to the second lab.64 Warned by Acheson that Teller’s next audience was likely to be the president, Dean yielded. He promised to explore the possibility of a second lab with Lawrence.65

  * * *

  Thus far, not even the lobbyists for the second lab agreed on its location or its scale. Griggs and the air force favored the University of Chicago’s Midway Laboratory, where the Pentagon already had a classified project under way.66 But Teller was still sensitive to Fermi’s moral qualms about the H-bomb.67 For his part, Libby feared that Berkeley bore the taint of the loyalty oath controversy, which would make recruiting for Livermore difficult. Teller told LeBaron that he worried more about Lawrence than Livermore. “If EOL project is started, things will go in grand style but with little understanding,” LeBaron wrote in his diary following a meeting with Edward.68

  After a visit to the Rad Lab in early March, however, Murray had come away persuaded that Livermore was the location and Lawrence the man to lead the effort.69 Only a few weeks earlier, during a meeting at the Bohemian Club, the regents had unanimously approved a five-year extension of the university’s contracts with the AEC. With the war in Korea still raging, the issue had occasioned little debate.70

  Murray telephoned Lawrence in early April to report “the first break in the long battle.”71 Ernest hoped that a decision by the AEC to put the new lab at Livermore might also rescue his embattled MTA. He promised Murray that, if needed, he would return to Washington “at a moment’s notice.”72

  * * *

  Back in Washington by mid-April to give his now well-practiced H-bomb briefing to the State Department and the NSC, Teller stopped off at the AEC building to see Dean. No longer feeling obliged to be conciliatory, Teller told him he had rejected any possibility of “piecemeal” solutions in his discussions with the Joint Committee, where he had insisted upon the “most vigorous sort of competitive and unified second laboratory.”73 Were the committee to now ask the Pentagon brass whether they wanted a second laboratory, Edward boasted, “the answer would be entirely different.”74

  The second-lab issue had “suddenly come to a boil,” Borden notified McMahon. The military, he wrote, “bought Teller hook, line and sinker.”75

  Emboldened by his debut at the Pentagon, Teller wanted the new lab not merely to build bombs but to explode them—at the newly established Nevada Test Site, a domain hitherto exclusive to Los Alamos. (Teller’s escalating demands troubled even his allies, among them the deputy director of the AEC’s Division of Military Application, Admiral John “Chick” Hayward. Hayward wrote in his diary of a futile attempt to rein in Edward’s enthusiasm during a recent visit to Livermore: “Much heat but little light. Long arguments with Dr. Teller.… Many martinis and then on to Trader Vics.”)76

  In late April 1952, the juggernaut that Teller’s briefings had set in motion collided with a familiar obstacle: Oppenheimer’s GAC. Protesting that “a fairly technical decision was being forced by high pressure methods,” Oppie acknowledged that the AEC would probably have to yield to the pressure for a second lab. Privately, however, Oppenheimer told his colleagues that it was still “not clear” whether a second laboratory was inevitable.77

  Dean, too, was suddenly “backtracking” on the second lab, Murray complained to his fellow commissioners.78 Yet it was not the AEC chairman whom Murray blamed for “roadblocks,” but Oppenheimer.79 During a dinner at the Brookings Institution on May 19, Strauss confided to Murray that he “had very good information to the effect that the 2nd laboratory was being sabotaged. He thought that if some aggressive action was not taken the 2nd laboratory would never be built.”80

  * * *

  In one of his clandestine meetings with the Joint Committee, Griggs had bluntly asked “what [they] were doing to get Oppenheimer off the GAC.”81 The terms of the GAC’s three charter members—Oppenheimer, Conant, and DuBridge—would expire that summer, unless the men were reappointed by Truman. (“Three men—one soul” was how Teller described the trio.) Griggs had told the Joint Committee that the air force considered Oppenheimer’s removal from the GAC “an urgent and immediate necessity.”82

  For allies in their campaign to oust Oppenheimer from the GAC, Murray, Griggs, and the Joint Committee turned to Berkeley. During Murray’s visit to the Rad Lab that spring, Lawrence had recounted the story of how he had gradually become disillusioned with Oppie, Frank, and mutual associates like Serber. He opposed Oppie�
��s continuing on the GAC, Ernest told Murray.83

  In March, just weeks after giving up his post at the AEC, Pitzer had made a speech to the American Chemical Society that blamed delays in the H-bomb project on the GAC. Following the speech, Pitzer had lunch with Borden, who urged the chemist to share his views with the FBI. Pitzer told bureau agents the following week that, contrary to his earlier opinion, he was “now doubtful as to the loyalty of Dr. Oppenheimer.” Pitzer suggested that Edward Teller could provide the names of those whom Oppie had dissuaded to work on the Super, “if Teller decides to talk.”84

  Teller, too, subsequently unburdened himself to bureau agents, at their request. Claiming that Oppenheimer had always swayed opinions against the Super, he said he was satisfied with Oppie’s loyalty but was reluctant to be quoted—lest he be subjected “to considerable cross-examination on this point.” Should his views become public, Teller cautioned, his position in the H-bomb project might well become untenable.85

  Alvarez had already been to the FBI about Oppenheimer—on the same day, in fact, that the GAC had recommended against proceeding with the Mark II. Prior to his interview with bureau agents, Luie had met in the Pentagon with Finletter, Griggs, and LeBaron, for whom Alvarez described how he had originally been lured to wartime Los Alamos by Oppenheimer with a promise to work on the Super. “Although Dr. Alvarez was agitated, he apparently added nothing to the FBI file,” a disappointed aide informed Borden.86

  At the annual meeting of the American Physical Society that spring, Oppenheimer’s friends were perplexed and upset by the “vitriolic talk” directed against the physicist—“notably from some of the University of California contingent.”87 Until then, Oppenheimer, like Dean, had tended to dismiss such ad hominem attacks as simply part of “the rather tense atmosphere that still prevail[ed] at Berkeley.”

  In late May, Hoover couriered the bureau’s recent interviews with Pitzer, Libby, and Teller to the White House, the Justice Department, and the AEC’s Division of Security.88 Included in the thick dossier was Teller’s admission to the FBI that “he would do most anything to see [Oppenheimer] separated from General Advisory Committee because of his poor advice and policies regarding national preparedness and because of his delaying of the development of H-bomb.”89 Strauss had already talked privately with Truman, asking that the president not reappoint Oppenheimer.90

  McMahon decided against sending Truman an “eyes only” letter, which Borden had drafted, pleading that Oppenheimer not be reappointed.91 The senator also canceled a long-planned personal meeting with the president. Neither McMahon nor Strauss wanted Oppenheimer’s departure from the GAC to seem forced, lest it become a cause célèbre in the nation’s scientific community.92

  Thus far, among those who knew Oppenheimer, only Pitzer had gone so far as to actually question the physicist’s loyalty.93 While Griggs ominously ascribed delays in the H-bomb program to “almost literally criminal negligence,” he had refrained from identifying Oppie as the suspect. Strauss and Borden, too, had been cautious in their efforts to end Oppenheimer’s influence in Washington. While both men thought the Crouches’ story of a secret Communist meeting at Oppie’s house “inherently believable,” they confessed to a mutual “feeling of utter frustration about the possibility of any definite conclusion.” Strauss told Borden that he thought it impossible “to confirm or deny these fears through the use of any intelligence methods,” since “the ‘barber’”—Oppenheimer’s friend, AEC attorney Joseph Volpe—was in a position to warn Oppie about possible telephone taps.*94

  * * *

  But those who had become the target of this attack could no longer be heedless of the danger. “Some of the ‘boys’ have their axe out for three of us on the GAC of AEC,” wrote Conant in his diary on May 9, 1952, following a dispirited lunch at the Cosmos Club with Oppenheimer and DuBridge.95 “Claim we have ‘dragged our heels’ on H bomb. Dark words about Oppie!”96

  A week later, the Weinberg case provided an unexpected opportunity for those hoping to rid themselves of Oppenheimer. On May 16, Dean telephoned Oppenheimer at Princeton to warn that the Kenilworth Court incident “was going to pop again.” Government prosecutors were planning a perjury indictment of Weinberg, who had continued to deny under oath any association with Steve Nelson. Dean had learned that the Crouches’ story was also to be included in the indictment. Oppenheimer would probably be called to testify at Weinberg’s trial and might even be indicted for perjury himself, if the prosecution believed the Crouches.97

  Dean summoned Oppenheimer and Volpe to his office three days later. Oppenheimer, steadfastly denying that the Kenilworth Court meeting had ever taken place, reaffirmed that he had never been a member of the Communist Party.98 Following a telephone conversation later that day between Dean and the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, the government’s lawyer agreed to temporarily drop the Kenilworth Court incident from the Weinberg indictment.99 On May 23, 1952, the indictment handed down in Washington’s district court made no mention of Oppenheimer or the incident.

  Although he had escaped being dragged into the Weinberg trial, Oppenheimer realized that he might yet be called to testify in the case. For Oppie, this latest sword hanging over his head may have been sufficient reason to take the step that he had been contemplating anyway. On June 12, Oppenheimer informed Dean that he intended to resign from the GAC before the question of his reappointment came before the president.100

  Conant and DuBridge were also stepping down. Conant’s ebullient diary entry of June 14, following his last GAC meeting, clearly showed his relief: “Lee DuBridge and I are through as members of the GAC!! 10½ years of almost continuous official conversations with a bad business now threatening to become really bad!!”101

  Oppenheimer’s own feelings were more bittersweet. In July, Oppie wrote to Frank that he hoped someday to return to his first love: “Physics is complicated and wondersome, and much too hard for me except as a spectator; it will have to get easy again one of these days, but perhaps not soon.”102

  15

  DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM

  EVEN AFTER FORCING him off the GAC and blacklisting him with the air force, Oppenheimer’s foes discovered that they were still not rid of the physicist. On June 27, 1952, just before trooping over to the White House with Oppie to deliver what the physicist was calling his and Conant’s “swan song” to the president, Dean approved a contract extending Oppenheimer’s top-secret Q clearance. Oppie was to remain a consultant to the commission for another year.1

  Oppenheimer also continued to advise the army and the navy on military matters. It was in that capacity that two old friends, Robert Bacher and Lee DuBridge, called upon him to settle a dispute that had arisen in a Pentagon-funded Caltech study known as Project Vista.2 Vista’s blue-ribbon panel of scientists had disagreed over the role that tactical nuclear weapons might play in countering a Soviet invasion of western Europe. The task of writing that portion of the top-secret report fell to Oppenheimer.

  Griggs’s fear that Vista would downplay the importance of the Strategic Air Command and the H-bomb was confirmed in preliminary briefings by the Caltech panel.3 (“We have found no great new weapons—and we believe we can get along with those we have,” read the controversial chapter, written by Oppenheimer.)4 Griggs’s anxiety had risen to near-panic in December 1951, when Oppenheimer and DuBridge eluded an air force ban and gave a briefing on Vista to General Dwight Eisenhower, NATO’s supreme commander in Europe.5 In desperation, Finletter ordered all copies of the Vista report returned to his office and destroyed, on the pretext that it contained security violations.6

  What was supposed to have been a fence-mending meeting between Griggs and Oppenheimer, subsequently arranged by Rabi, ended instead in mutual recrimination: Oppie accused Griggs of setting Vandenberg and Finletter against him; Griggs charged Oppenheimer with spreading a libelous tale—that Finletter had boasted of using the H-bomb to rule the world. An attempted rapprochement with the air for
ce secretary, over lunch in Finletter’s private dining room in the Pentagon, ended just as badly. Oppie sat stone-faced throughout the meal, virtually ignoring Finletter and his aides—who afterward told the Joint Committee that they thought it a legitimate question “whether [Oppenheimer] was a subversive.”7

  * * *

  Whereas Vista had further poisoned Oppenheimer’s relations with the air force, Griggs believed that the physicist was behind a far more nefarious plot: a campaign to stop the Mike test.

  For Oppie’s foes, the first sign of trouble had been Acheson’s appointment of Oppenheimer to the State Department’s Panel of Consultants on Disarmament in late April 1952.8 Inevitably, Oppie was promptly elected the panel’s chairman. Oppenheimer, in turn, persuaded a reluctant Vannevar Bush, since returned to Washington’s Carnegie Institution, to join the group.

  At their inaugural meeting, in mid-May, Bush had spoken vaguely but earnestly—and with “some urgency,” the note taker recorded—of a “test case” that would determine, once and for all, whether the United States and the Russians were serious about reining in the thermonuclear genie.9 In sessions to come, Bush outlined a radical proposal: a joint Soviet-American ban on thermonuclear tests. Similar to the idea that Rabi and Fermi had put forward almost three years earlier, Bush’s proposal likewise required no inspection, since any violation would be quickly detected by the same methods that had ferreted out Joe-1. Without an actual test, Bush argued, neither side could be assured that its H-bomb would work. Bush dubbed his plan a nuclear “standstill.”10

  The disarmament panel honed the standstill idea over the summer, in discussions at Princeton, Harvard, and the Cosmos Club. Not least of the arguments in favor of postponing Mike was the fact that Soviet scientists, too, were likely to find valuable data in fallout from the test—including details about the design of the radiation-implosion device. Testing Teller’s bomb, ironically, would give its secret away.11