by American Prometheus: The Triumph;Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Robert then told MacLeish of his midnight walk in the snow with Niels Bohr earlier that year, in which the Dane had expounded his philosophy of openness and complementarity. Bohr, he thought, provides “that new insight into the relations of the individual and society without which we can give an effective answer neither to the Communists nor to the antiquarians nor to our own confusions.” MacLeish welcomed Robert’s letter: “It was extraordinarily kind of you to write me at such length. The point you raise is, of course, the central point of the whole business.”
Some of his friends on the left were not quite sure what to make of this transformation. But those who had all along thought of Oppenheimer as a Popular Front Democrat had no reason to think his political spots had changed. Rather, the issues had changed: With the war against fascism won (except in Franco’s Spain), and the Depression over, the Communist Party was simply no longer the magnet it had once been for politically active intellectuals. To his noncommunist liberal friends like Robert Wilson, Hans Bethe and I. I. Rabi, Oppie was the same man, with the same motivations.
Significantly, Frank Oppenheimer’s transformation was less abrupt. While no longer a communist, he did not think the Russians really threatened America. On this issue the two brothers had some of their most serious political arguments. Robert told his brother that he believed “the Russians were ready to march if they were given the opportunity.” He favored Truman’s hard line against the Soviets now, and when Frank tried to argue with him, “Robert would say that he knew things that he couldn’t report, but they convinced him that the Russians could not be expected to cooperate.”
In their first reunion after the war, Haakon Chevalier also noted the change in Oppie’s outlook. Sometime in May 1946, Oppie and Kitty visited the Chevaliers in their new oceanfront home at Stinson Beach. Oppie made it clear that his political sympathies had moved, at least in Haakon’s view, “considerably to the right.” Chevalier recalled being shocked at some of the “very uncomplimentary” things he had to say about the American Communist Party and the Soviet Union. “Haakon,” Oppie said, “Haakon, believe me, I am serious, I have real reason to believe, and I cannot tell you why, but I assure you I have real reason to change my mind about Russia. They are not what you believe them to be. You must not continue your trust, your blind faith, in the policies of the USSR.”
Moreover, Chevalier continued to hear things about his old friend that confirmed his observation. One evening in New York, Chevalier ran into Phil Morrison on the street, and they talked about all that had happened since the outbreak of the war. Chevalier regarded Morrison as a former comrade. But he also knew Morrison as one of Oppie’s closest friends before the war and as one of the key physicists who had followed him to Los Alamos.
“What about Opje?” Chevalier asked.
“I hardly see him any more,” Morrison replied. “We no longer speak the same language. . . . He moves in a different circle.” Morrison then related how he and Oppenheimer had been talking one day and Oppie kept referring to “George.” Finally, Morrison had interrupted to ask who this George was. “You understand,” Morrison said to Chevalier, “General [George C.] Marshall to me is General Marshall, or the secretary of state—not George. This is typical. . . .” Oppenheimer had changed, Morrison said: “He thinks he’s God.”
CHEVALIER HAD suffered numerous disappointments since he had last seen Oppenheimer in the spring of 1943. His efforts to obtain war-related work were stymied in January 1944, when the government refused him a security clearance for a job in the Office of War Information. His FBI file contained “unbelievable” allegations, said a friend working in OWI: “Someone obviously has it in for you.” Mystified by this news, Chevalier stayed in New York and found occasional free-lance work as a translator and magazine writer. In the spring of 1945, he returned to his teaching post at Berkeley. But soon after the war ended, he was hired by the War Department to serve as a translator at the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal. He flew to Europe in October 1945 and did not return to California until May 1946. By then, Berkeley had denied him tenure. Devastated by this blow to his academic career, Chevalier decided to work full-time on a novel he had under contract with the publisher Alfred A. Knopf.
On June 26, 1946, about six weeks after his first reunion with Oppie, Chevalier was at home working on his novel when two FBI agents knocked on his door. They insisted that he accompany them to their office in downtown San Francisco. On that same summer day, at about the same hour, FBI agents also appeared at George Eltenton’s home and asked him to accompany them to the FBI field office in Oakland. Chevalier and Eltenton were simultaneously questioned for about six hours. During the ensuing interrogations it became clear to both men that the agents wanted to know about the conversations that they had had regarding Oppenheimer in the early winter of 1943.
Although each was unaware of the other’s interrogation, both men gave similar stories. Eltenton acknowledged that sometime late in 1942, when the Soviets were barely containing the Nazi onslaught, Peter Ivanov from the Soviet Consulate approached him and asked whether he knew Professors Ernest Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer, and one other individual whom Eltenton could not fully recall—but he thought the name might be Alvarez. Eltenton replied that he knew only Oppenheimer, and not very well. But he volunteered that he had a friend who was close to Oppenheimer. The Russian then asked if his friend might ask Oppenheimer whether he could share information with Soviet scientists. Eltenton said he made the inquiry to Chevalier and told him that his Russian friend had assured him that such information “would be safely transmitted through his channels which involved photo reproduction. . . .” In the event, Eltenton confirmed to the FBI that a few days later, Chevalier “dropped by my house and told me that there was no chance whatsoever of obtaining any data and Dr. Oppenheimer did not approve.” Further, Eltenton denied having approached any other individuals.
Chevalier confirmed to the FBI the broad outlines of Eltenton’s statement. But to his surprise, the FBI agents pressed him repeatedly about approaches to three other scientists. Chevalier denied approaching anybody other than Oppenheimer. After nearly eight hours of interrogation, Chevalier reluctantly agreed to sign an affidavit: “I wish to state that to my present knowledge and recollection I approached no one except Oppenheimer to request information concerning the work of the radiation laboratory.” But then he carefully qualified this categorical statement: “I may have mentioned the desirability of obtaining this information for Russia with any number of people in passing. I am certain that I never made another specific proposal in this connection.” He later wrote in his memoirs that he left wondering how the FBI had heard about his conversations with Eltenton and Oppenheimer. Neither could he understand why they believed he had approached three scientists.
Some time later, perhaps in July or August 1946, Chevalier and Eltenton happened to attend the same luncheon in the Berkeley home of a mutual friend. It was the first time they had seen each other since 1943. Chevalier told him about his encounter in June with the FBI. After comparing notes, they realized that they had both been questioned on the same day. How, they wondered, had the FBI gotten wind of their conversation?
Several weeks later, Oppenheimer invited the Chevaliers to a cocktail party at Eagle Hill. They came early, as requested, so that the old friends could have a chance to visit before the other guests arrived. According to Chevalier’s account in his memoir, when he broached the topic of his recent encounter with the FBI, “Opje’s face at once darkened.”
“Let’s go outside,” Robert said. Hoke took this as an indication that his friend thought his home was wiretapped. They walked into the back garden on a wooded corner of the property. As they paced, Chevalier gave a detailed account of his interrogation. “Opje was obviously greatly upset,” Chevalier wrote in 1965. “He asked me endless questions.” When Chevalier explained that he had been reluctant to tell the FBI about his conversation with Eltenton, Oppenheimer reassured him that it had been the righ
t thing to do. “I had to report that conversation, you know,” Oppenheimer said.
“Yes,” Chevalier replied, although he wondered to himself whether it had really been necessary. “But what about those alleged approaches to three scientists, and the supposed repeated attempts to get secret information?”
In Chevalier’s account, Oppenheimer gave no reply to this critical question.
As Oppenheimer stood in his Eagle Hill garden, trying to reconstruct what he had told Pash in 1943, he became more and more agitated. Chevalier thought he seemed “extremely nervous and tense.”
Eventually, Kitty called, “Darling, the guests are arriving, and I think you’d better come in now.” Oppie replied abruptly, saying that he would come in a minute. But he continued his pacing and had Chevalier repeat his story again. Minutes passed and Kitty came out a second time, calling out that he really must come now. When Oppie replied curtly, Kitty persisted. “Then, to my utter dismay,” Chevalier wrote, “Opje let loose with a flood of foul language, calling Kitty vile names and told her to mind her goddamn business and to get the . . . hell out.”
Chevalier had never seen his friend behave so intemperately. Even then, he seemed reluctant to end the conversation with Chevalier. “Something was obviously bothering him,” Chevalier wrote, “but he gave no hint as to what it was.”
SOON AFTER this troubling conversation with Chevalier, on September 5, 1946, agents of the FBI paid a visit to Oppenheimer’s Berkeley office. Not to his surprise, they wanted to question him about his 1943 conversation with Chevalier. Gracious as always, he explained that Chevalier had informed him about Eltenton’s scheme and that he had rejected it outright. He remembered telling Chevalier that “to do such a thing was treason or close to treason.” He denied that Chevalier was trying to solicit information on the bomb project. On further questioning, “Oppenheimer said that due to the lapse of time since the incident, he was vague in his mind as to the exact words used by him and Chevalier in their conversation, and any present effort on his part to reconstruct their conversation would be pure guess-work, but he did definitely recollect having used either the word ‘treason’ or ‘treasonous’ to Chevalier.”
When the FBI agents pressed him about three other approaches to scientists connected to the Manhattan Project, he told them that this part of the story had been “concocted” in order to protect the identity of Chevalier. “Oppenheimer stated that in previously reporting this matter to MED [Manhattan Engineer District], he tried to protect Chevalier’s identity and in an effort to do so he ‘concocted a completely fabricated story’ which he later described as a ‘complicated cock and bull story,’ which was to the effect that three unidentified associates had been approached on Eltenton’s behalf for information.”
Why did Oppenheimer say such a thing? Why would he admit to lying about what he had said in 1943? An obvious explanation is that this version of the story was the truth; he had panicked when confronted by Pash in 1943, and had embellished his account with three fictional scientists to dramatize its importance and divert attention from himself. Another explanation is that during his garden conversation with Chevalier he learned that his friend had not approached three other scientists as he had originally thought. After all, Eltenton had mentioned Oppenheimer, Lawrence and, perhaps, Alvarez to Chevalier as potential targets, making it entirely plausible that Chevalier had related this to Oppenheimer in their kitchen conversation. Yet another possibility is that he had told some version of the truth in 1943—but now felt compelled to change his story in order to protect both Chevalier and the unnamed scientists. His enemies would insist at the 1954 security clearance hearing that this was the case, but it is the least plausible of all the explanations. He had long ago informed on Chevalier, and Lawrence and Alvarez hardly needed his protection. The only person in need of protection now was Robert Oppenheimer, and admitting to the FBI in 1946 that he had lied to military intelligence in 1943 was not the best way to protect oneself—unless it was the unvarnished truth. But all of these explanations—and others—would be raised again, and challenged, eight years later, during Robert’s security hearing. The contradictions in these two stories would be devastating.
LATE IN 1946, Lewis Strauss, one of Truman’s appointees to the new Atomic Energy Commission, flew out to San Francisco and was met at the airport by Ernest Lawrence and Oppenheimer. Before discussing AEC business, Strauss took Oppenheimer aside and said he had something else to talk to him about. Strauss had met Oppenheimer only once before, late in the war. Pacing about on the concrete tarmac, Strauss explained that he was a trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. At the moment, he chaired the trustees’ search committee for a new director of the Institute. Oppenheimer’s name was at the top of a list of five candidates, and now the trustees, Strauss said, had authorized him to offer Oppenheimer the post. Oppenheimer expressed interest in the idea, but said that he needed time to think about it.
About a month later, in late January 1947, Oppenheimer flew to Washington, and over a long breakfast he listened to Strauss pitch him the job. On the phone later that day, Oppenheimer told Kitty that he had not made up his mind but felt “rather good” about the idea. Strauss, he said, “had very nice ideas” about what Oppenheimer could do with the Institute—although they were not too realistic. Oppie remarked that there “wasn’t a scientist there in any science business,” but he could “soon change all that.”
The Institute was most famous as the home and intellectual refuge of Albert Einstein. When Strauss had pressed Einstein to describe the ideal kind of man for the job of director, he had replied, “Ah, that I can do gladly. You should look for a very quiet man who will not disturb people who are trying to think.” For his part, Oppenheimer had not always thought of it as a place for serious scholarship. After visiting the Institute for the first time in 1934, he had written derisively to his brother: “Princeton is a madhouse: its solipsistic luminaries shining in separate & helpless desolation.” But now he saw it differently. “It would take some thought and some concern to do a decent job,” he told Kitty, but “it was a thing he could do rather naturally.” He assured her that if they moved to Princeton, they would still keep their Eagle Hill home for summers in Berkeley. Besides, he was tired of the long commutes to Washington. “It is impossible for me to live as I have been living this last winter—in airplanes.” That year alone he had made fifteen transcontinental flights between Washington and California.
Still undecided, Oppenheimer consulted one of his new Washington friends, Justice Felix Frankfurter, who had himself once been a trustee of the Institute. Frankfurter discouraged Oppenheimer, saying, “You won’t be free for your own creative work. Why don’t you go to Harvard?” When Oppie bristled at this suggestion, saying he knew why he shouldn’t go to Harvard, Frankfurter referred him to another friend who knew Princeton well; this individual advised Oppenheimer, “Princeton was an odd sort of place, but if one had an idea of what to make of it, it was fine.”
Oppenheimer was inclined to accept this new challenge. It played to his administrative talents, it promised to leave him ample time to pursue his extracurricular government responsibilities, and its location was perfect— short train rides from both Washington and New York City. Yet he took his time to mull it over, until finally, according to one report, the Oppenheimers heard a news broadcast on their car radio announcing that Robert Oppenheimer had been appointed director of the Institute for Advanced Study. “Well,” Robert said to Kitty, “I guess that settles it.”
The New York Herald Tribune applauded the appointment as “strikingly fit” in an editorial: “His name is Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, but his friends call him ‘Oppy.’ ” The Tribune’s editorialists fairly gushed with praise, describing him as a “remarkable man,” a “scientist among scientists,” a “practical man” with a “streak of wit.” One of the Institute’s trustees, John F. Fulton, had lunch with Robert and Kitty in their home and afterwards scribbled his imp
ressions of the new director in his diary: “In physical appearance, he is slender with rather slight features, but he has a piercing and imperturbable eye, and a quickness in repartee that gives him great force, and he would immediately command respect in any company. He is only forty-three years of age, and despite his preoccupation with atomic physics, he has kept up his Latin and Greek, is widely read in general history, and he collects pictures. He is altogether a most extraordinary combination of science and the humanities.”
Lewis Strauss, however, was annoyed that Oppenheimer had taken so long to make up his mind. A self-made millionaire, Strauss had started out life as a traveling shoe salesman, with a high school education. In 1917, when he was just twenty-one years old, he landed a job as an assistant to Herbert Hoover, an engineer and up-and-coming politician with a reputation as a “progressive” Teddy Roosevelt Republican. At the time, Hoover was running President Woodrow Wilson’s food relief programs for refugees in war-torn Europe. Working alongside such other Hoover protégés as Harvey Bundy, a bright young Boston Brahmin lawyer, Strauss used the food relief job as a springboard to Wall Street. After the war, Hoover helped Strauss obtain a coveted position at the New York investment banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb. Hardworking and obsequious, Strauss soon married Alice Hanauer, the daughter of a Kuhn, Loeb partner. By 1929 he himself was a full partner, making more than a million dollars a year. He survived the 1929 crash relatively unscathed. During the 1930s he became an ardent foe of the New Deal, but nine months before Pearl Harbor he persuaded the Roosevelt Administration to give him a job in the Navy Department’s Bureau of Ordnance. Later he served as a special assistant to Navy Secretary James Forrestal, and he left the war with the honorary rank of rear admiral. By 1945, Strauss had used his Wall Street and Washington connections to carve out a powerful position for himself in America’s post–World War II establishment. Over the next two decades, he would exercise a baleful influence over Oppenheimer’s life.
