Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin

by American Prometheus: The Triumph;Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

  “Did you tell Colonel Pash,” Robb asked, “that microfilm had been mentioned to you?”

  Oppenheimer: “Evidently.”

  Robb: “Was that true?”

  Oppenheimer: “No.”

  Robb: “Then Pash said to you: ‘Well, now, I may be getting back to a little systematic picture. These people whom you mention, two are down with you now [in Los Alamos]. Were they contacted by Eltenton direct?’ You answered ‘No.’ ”

  Pash then said, “Through another party?”

  Oppenheimer: “Yes.”

  “In other words,” Robb summed up, “you told Pash that X [Chevalier] had made these other contacts, didn’t you?”

  Oppenheimer: “It seems so.”

  Robb: “That wasn’t true?”

  Oppenheimer: “That is right. This whole thing was a pure fabrication except for the one name Eltenton.”

  With his client now genuinely squirming, Garrison finally interrupted this painful interrogation to ask Gray, “Mr. Chairman, could I just make a short request at this point?”

  Gray: “Yes.”

  Garrison politely wondered “if it would not be within the proprieties of this kind of proceeding when counsel reads from a transcript for us to be furnished with a copy of the transcript as he reads from it. This, of course, is orthodox in a court of law. . . .”

  After some discussion, Gray and Robb agreed that perhaps at the end of the day a classification officer could make a determination about the release of the document—which of course, Robb was already selectively reading into the record.

  Garrison’s intervention was long overdue and overly solicitous—and it did nothing to help release his client from the trap that Robb had set.

  Soon Robb was back to quoting the Pash-Oppenheimer transcript with evident relish. “Dr. Oppenheimer . . . don’t you think you told a story in great detail that was fabricated?”

  Oppenheimer: “I certainly did.”

  Robb: “Why did you go into such great circumstantial detail about this thing if you were telling a cock-and-bull story?”

  Oppenheimer: “I fear that this whole thing is a piece of idiocy. I am afraid I can’t explain why there was a consul, why there was microfilm, why there were three people on the project, why two of them were at Los Alamos. All of them seem wholly false to me.”

  Robb: “You will agree, would you not, sir, that if the story you told to Colonel Pash was true, it made things look very bad for Mr. Chevalier?”

  Oppenheimer: “For anyone involved in it, yes, sir.”

  Robb: “Including you?”

  Oppenheimer: “Right.”

  Robb: “Isn’t it a fair statement today, Dr. Oppenheimer, that according to your testimony now, you told not one lie to Colonel Pash, but a whole fabrication and tissue of lies?”

  Feeling cornered, and perhaps panicky, Oppenheimer carelessly replied, “Right.”

  Robb’s relentless questioning had backed Robert into a corner. He didn’t recall his conversation with Pash at the level required to respond adequately to Robb’s interrogation. And so he accepted his tormenter’s selective presentation of the transcript. Had Garrison been an experienced trial-room counsel he would have insisted earlier that his client answer no further questions about his interview with Pash until he had had an opportunity to review the transcript, and he also would have objected to Robb’s strategic use of the transcript to ambush Oppenheimer. But Garrison left the door to the interview wide open, and Oppenheimer stoically walked through it.

  But Oppenheimer need not have capitulated so easily. There was an explanation for the convoluted story he had told Pash that was far less damaging than the interpretation that Robb maneuvered him into accepting. Recall that Eltenton told the FBI in 1946 that the Russian consular official, Peter Ivanov, had initially suggested that he contact three scientists associated with the Berkeley Rad Lab: Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and Luis Alvarez. Eltenton knew only Oppenheimer, and not well enough to ask him about sharing information with the Russians. But it seems entirely reasonable to suppose that Eltenton would have mentioned the three names to Chevalier—and that Chevalier might very well have specifically mentioned them to Oppenheimer, or at least noted that Eltenton had mentioned two (unspecified) others.

  So in recounting to Pash what he knew about Eltenton’s activities, Oppenheimer referred to three scientists. Of all the interpretations of Oppenheimer’s “cock-and-bull story,” this notion appears to make the most sense, supported as it is by evidence from the FBI’s own files. Tellingly, the official historians of the AEC, Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, reached a similar conclusion: “Oppenheimer’s story, although misleading, was accurate as far as it went; unfortunately, thereafter, it became confused and twisted.”

  Why?

  The clearest and most convincing explanation of why Oppenheimer presented Pash with such an elaborately confused representation of his kitchen conversation with Chevalier was offered by Oppenheimer himself the day before his security hearing was concluded. His explanation not only conforms with the most compelling known facts, but it also conforms with Oppenheimer’s character—especially, as he had confessed to David Bohm five years earlier, “his tendency when things get too much” to say “irrational things.” Responding to Chairman Gray’s query whether he might have been telling the truth in 1943 to Pash and Lansdale, and was, in fact, fabricating today about the Chevalier incident, Oppenheimer replied:

  The story I told Pash was not a true story. There were not three or more people involved on the project. There was one person involved. That was me. I was at Los Alamos. There was no one else at Los Alamos involved. There was no one at Berkeley involved. . . . I testified that the Soviet consulate had not been mentioned by Chevalier. That is the very best of my recollection. It is conceivable that I knew of Eltenton’s connection with the consulate, but I believe I can do no more than say the story told in circumstantial detail, and which was elicited from me in greater and greater detail during this was a false story. It is not easy to say that. Now when you ask me for a more persuasive argument as to why I did this than that I was an idiot, I am going to have more trouble being understandable. I think I was impelled by two or three concerns at that time. One was the feeling that I must get across the fact that if there was, as Lansdale indicated, trouble at the Radiation Laboratory, Eltenton was the guy that might very well be involved and it was serious. Whether I embroidered the story in order to underline the seriousness or whether I embroidered it to make it more tolerable, that I would not tell the simple facts, namely Chevalier had talked to me about it, I don’t know. There were no other people involved, the conversation with Chevalier was brief, it was in the nature of things not utterly casual, but I think the tone of it and his own sense of not wishing to have anything to do with it, I have correctly communicated.

  Oppie went on to elaborate,

  I should have told it [the story] at once and I should have told it completely accurately, but that it was a matter of conflict for me and I found myself, I believe, trying to give a tip to the intelligence people without realizing that when you give a tip you must tell the whole story. When I was asked to elaborate, I started off on a false pattern. . . . The notion that he [Chevalier] would go to a number of project people to talk to them instead of coming to me and talking it over as we did would have made no sense whatever. He was an unlikely and absurd intermediary for such a task . . . there was no such conspiracy. . . . When I did identify Chevalier, which was to General Groves, I told him of course that there were no three people, that this had occurred in our house, that this was me. So that when I made this damaging story, it was clearly with the intention of not revealing who was the intermediary.

  THE NEXT TOPIC Robb turned to was certain to humiliate Robert—his love affair with Jean Tatlock.

  “Between 1939 and 1944, as I understand it,” Robb asked, “your acquaintance with Miss Tatlock was fairly casual; is that right?

  Oppenheimer: “Our meetings
were rare. I do not think it would be right to say that our acquaintance was casual. We had been very much involved with one another and there was still very deep feeling when we saw each other.”

  Robb: “How many times would you say you saw her between 1939 and 1944?”

  Oppenheimer: “That is 5 years. Would 10 times be a good guess?”

  Robb: “What were the occasions for your seeing her?”

  Oppenheimer: “Of course, sometimes we saw each other socially with other people. I remember visiting her around New Year’s of 1941.”

  Robb: “Where?”

  Oppenheimer: “I went to her home or to the hospital. I don’t know which, and we went out for a drink at the Top of the Mark. I remember that she came more than once to visit our home in Berkeley.”

  Robb: “You and Mrs. Oppenheimer.”

  Oppenheimer: “Right. Her father lived around the corner not far from us in Berkeley. I visited her there once. I visited her, as I think I said earlier. In June or July of 1943.”

  Robb: “I believe you said in connection with that you had to see her.”

  Oppenheimer: “Yes.”

  Robb: “Why did you have to see her?”

  Oppenheimer: “She had indicated a great desire to see me before we left. At that time I couldn’t go. For one thing, I wasn’t supposed to say where we were going or anything. I felt she had to see me. She was undergoing psychiatric treatment. She was extremely unhappy.”

  Robb: “Did you find out why she had to see you?”

  Oppenheimer: “Because she was still in love with me.”

  Robb: “Where did you see her?”

  Oppenheimer: “At her home.”

  Robb: “Where was that?”

  Oppenheimer: “On Telegraph Hill.”

  Robb: “When did you see her after that?”

  Oppenheimer: “She took me to the airport, and I never saw her again.”

  Robb: “That was in 1943?”

  Oppenheimer: “Yes.”

  Robb: “Was she a Communist at that time?”

  Oppenheimer: “We didn’t even talk about it. I doubt it.”

  Robb: “You have said in your answer that you knew she had been a Communist?”

  Oppenheimer: “Yes. I knew that in the fall of 1937.”

  Robb: “Was there any reason for you to believe that she wasn’t still a Communist in 1943?”

  Oppenheimer: “No.”

  Robb: “Pardon?”

  Oppenheimer: “There wasn’t, except that I have stated in general terms what I thought and think of her relation with the Communist Party. I do not know what she was doing in 1943.”

  Robb: “You have no reason to believe she wasn’t a Communist, do you?”

  Oppenheimer: “No.”

  Robb: “You spent the night with her, didn’t you?”

  Oppenheimer: “Yes.”

  Robb: “Did you think that consistent with good security?”

  Oppenheimer: “It was, as a matter of fact. Not a word—it was not good practice.”

  Robb: “Didn’t you think that put you in a rather difficult position had she been the kind of Communist that you have described her[e] or talk[ed] about this morning?”

  Oppenheimer: “Oh, but she wasn’t.”

  Robb: “How did you know?”

  Oppenheimer: “I knew her.”

  Having suffered the indignity of testifying to an affair with Tatlock three years into his marriage to Kitty, Oppenheimer was then asked by Robb to name the names of his lover’s friends, and to state which of them were Communists and which were merely fellow travelers. It was a pointless question with respect to the purpose of the hearing, but it was not a question without a point. This was 1954, the apogee of the McCarthy years, and forcing former communists, fellow travelers and left-wing activists called before congressional committees to name names was precisely the McCarthyites’ political game. It was a humiliating experience in a culture that despised a “snitch,” a Judas, and that was the point: to destroy a witness’ sense of personal integrity.

  Oppenheimer gave Robb the names: Dr. Thomas Addis he thought was close to the Party, but he didn’t know if he had ever been a member; Chevalier was a fellow traveler; Kenneth May, John Pitman, Aubrey Grossman and Edith Arnstein were communists. Well aware of the degrading nature of the exercise he was being subjected to, Oppenheimer sarcastically asked Robb, “Is the list long enough?” As was often the case, the names were known. Robb’s relentless hammering was taking its toll. He was beginning to respond unthinkingly, “the way a soldier does in combat, I suppose,” he later recalled to a reporter. “So much is happening or may be about to happen that there is no time to be aware of anything except the next move. Like something in a fight—and this was a fight. I had very little sense of self.”

  Years later, Garrison would recall Oppenheimer’s mood during these torturous days: “From the beginning, he had a quality of desperation about him. . . . I think we all felt oppressed by the atmosphere of the time but Oppenheimer particularly so. . . .”

  ROBB GAVE STRAUSS daily reports on what was happening inside the privileged hearing room, and the AEC chairman was pleased with the way things were going. He wrote President Eisenhower: “On Wednesday, Oppenheimer broke and admitted, under oath, that he had lied. . . .” Gleefully anticipating victory, he informed Ike that “an extremely bad impression toward Oppenheimer has already developed in the minds of the Board.” Ike cabled him in reply from his Augusta, Georgia, retreat, thanking him for his “interim report.” He also informed Strauss that he had burned his interim report, apparently not wanting to leave any evidence that he or Strauss was inappropriately monitoring the security hearing.

  ON THE MORNING of Thursday, April 15—four days into the hearing— Gen. Leslie Groves was sworn as a witness. Questioned by Garrison, Groves praised Oppenheimer’s wartime performance at Los Alamos, and when asked whether he was capable of consciously committing a disloyal act, he said emphatically, “I would be amazed if he did. . . .” When asked specifically about the Chevalier incident, Groves testified: “I have seen so many versions of it, I don’t think I was confused before, but I am certainly starting to become confused today. . . . My conclusion was that there was an approach made, that Dr. Oppenheimer knew of this approach. . . .”

  Groves went on to explain that when he first learned of the story, he thought Robert’s reticence could be explained by “the typical American schoolboy attitude that there is something wicked about telling on a friend. I was never certain as to just what he was telling me. I did know this: that he was doing what he thought was essential, which was to disclose to me the dangers of this particular attempt to enter the project, namely, it was concerned with the situation out there near Berkeley—I think it was the Shell Laboratory at which Eltenton was supposedly one of the key members— and that was a source of danger to the project and that was the worry. I always had the impression that Dr. Oppenheimer wanted to protect his friends of long standing, possibly his brother. It was always my impression that he wanted to protect his brother, and that his brother might be involved in having been in this chain. . . .”

  Groves’ testimony “possibly” expanded the cast of characters associated with the Chevalier affair. Frank “might be involved,” Groves speculated, surely without malice and probably without a full realization of the potential consequences of his hypothesis. For if Frank had been involved, then not only had Robert lied to Pash in 1943, but he had lied to the FBI in 1946 and was lying now to the hearing board in 1954. Regardless of the extenuating circumstances—Robert’s desire to protect his younger brother, whom he knew to be innocent of any wrongdoing—Groves’ conjecture further undermined Robert’s veracity and, in the end, despite the lack of any evidence pointing to Frank’s participation, it deepened the mystery surrounding—and therefore the hearing board’s interest in—the Chevalier affair.

  Any effort to explain the source and tentative nature of Groves’ testimony connecting Frank to Chevalier lead
s back to what was recorded in Oppenheimer’s FBI dossier during the war. From there our attention will fast-forward ten years to a series of FBI interviews conducted in December 1953 in preparation for Oppenheimer’s appearance before the AEC’s Personnel Security Board. The interviewees were John Lansdale and William Consodine, wartime assistants to General Groves, Groves himself, and Corbin Allardice, who had succeeded William Borden as staff director of Congress’ Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE).

  These interviews played a critical role in shaping Groves’ testimony, for both Consodine and Lansdale reported to him what they had told the Bureau’s agents. Their recollections were disconcerting for Groves, who in several important ways had a different memory of what Oppie had told him. Furthermore, their communications with the FBI put him in a compromising position which forced him to acknowledge to the hearing board that in 1954 he could not support renewing Robert’s security clearance.

  As noted earlier, the first documented reference to Frank’s association with Chevalier to appear in the FBI’s files was in a memo of March 5, 1944, by agent William Harvey. Harvey had no independent information about the Chevalier affair but in composing a summary of it he identified Frank as the “one person” approached by Chevalier. However, Harvey failed to cite any evidence for this conclusion, an oversight that would baffle senior agents a decade later, when they reported to Hoover: “File review failed to reflect any info that Frank Oppenheimer was approached for data concerning MED [Manhattan Engineer District] project or that such info was ever reported by J. Robert Oppenheimer to MED or Bureau.”

  But on December 3, 1953—several weeks after Borden’s letter had been mailed—Frank’s name was again brought to the attention of the FBI by another purveyor of hearsay. Corbin Allardice, who was an AEC employee prior to replacing Borden at the JCAE, was apparently encouraged by someone unfriendly to Oppenheimer to rekindle the suspicion that Frank was Chevalier’s contact. Allardice reported having been “informed by a source whom he believed to be extremely reliable that J. Robert Oppenheimer had stated that his contact in the Eltenton–Haakon Chevalier espionage apparatus had been his own brother, Frank Oppenheimer.” Allardice further stated—which suggests that his informant had some familiarity with Oppenheimer’s FBI dossier—that he didn’t think this information was in the FBI’s record on the case. He suggested that if the FBI wished to check out his tip, they should interview John Lansdale, who was then practicing law in Cleveland.