Force of Nature- The Life of Linus Pauling

by Thomas Hager

  Then he fell silent again. It quickly became clear that the early days of the Eisenhower administration were not the time to raise his profile as a leftist. Eisenhower seemed intent on outdoing Truman as an anti-Communist. He appointed right-wingers to a number of government posts, including replacing Dean Acheson at State—the department was still under constant attack as a stronghold of left-wing sympathizers—with the fervently anti-Communist John Foster Dulles. Another of his appointees was Oveta Culp Hobby, a woman who, as secretary of the new Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), quickly began withholding federal moneys from suspected Communists.

  Hobby's ascension had a direct effect on Pauling. Sometime in the late fall of 1953, he was notified, without further explanation, that his research grants from the Public Health Service—about sixty thousand dollars to support his work with oxypolygelatin and the structure of proteins—were being suspended. The USPHS was a subunit of Hobby's new HEW.

  Confused by the canceling of his grant, Pauling called the USPHS to ask for more information.

  Eventually he was put in contact with a sympathetic manager who advised Pauling to reapply, but in a new way. Instead of one large grant request with multiple authors (including Pauling), he told Pauling to send in separate smaller requests under the names of individual researchers. When Pauling tried it, preparing one under Dan Campbell's name and another under Corey's, both were immediately funded—for longer periods of time and for more money than requested. When he tried one under his name, however, his application was ignored.

  Pauling was not the only scientist apparently blacklisted by the USPHS. The funds of other left-wing researchers at Caltech were also cut off, prompting the school's administration to warn Washington that they would sue for breach of contract if something was not done. At least forty scientists nationwide were punished for their political beliefs through the cancellation of USPHS grants; there is no record of how many more were denied approval of their initial applications.

  It is an indication of both a surprising naiveté in Pauling's political vision and the degree of his separation from the Caltech administration that he did not immediately realize the reasons behind the USPHS's actions. It was not until he told Beadle about the agency's odd behavior that things became clear. After giving Pauling a long look, Beadle told him that of course it was all political. "Don't you know what has happened?" he asked. "They just don't want your name on the list of grant recipients." Pauling was dumbfounded. Despite his substantial experience with the domestic side of the Cold War, it was still unimaginable that a government office dedicated to scientific funding could be tainted by anti-Communist mania. As he later said, "You see how unsophisticated I was even at that time."

  Pauling's USPHS grant request was delayed for more than two years, until he received notice of its approval—the day that Oveta Culp Hobby resigned.

  - - -

  Still he maintained his political silence. The granting of his passport had now become a long-running farce. Every time he applied, Ruth Shipley would recommend denial. Pauling would send a series of polite reminders about his departure date, followed by more urgent reminders. Shipley, after many delays, would be overruled. Pauling would pack his bags and wait, and his passport would be validated a day or two before he was to leave.

  This was the routine that preceded his trip to Israel a few weeks after the big Pasadena protein conference in the fall of 1953. Pauling had been invited to participate in the dedication of the new Weizmann Institute for scientific research, and his short trip allowed him to see a new nation in which he was quite interested and to meet Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and his wife at a reception at the King David Hotel.

  But his Mideast trip rang alarm bells at Dulles's Department of State. A new head of passport security had just been appointed, an ex-FBI agent and hard-line anti-Communist named R. W. Scott McLeod, who quickly found that he and Shipley thought alike. Together they started tightening restrictions on the right to travel. McLeod opened lines of communication with HUAC and Senator McCarthy as well as the FBI, and from every source he began hearing about Linus Pauling. McLeod made sure that Pauling's trip to Israel was monitored closely by army intelligence; his suspicions were lessened only slightly by the report that Pauling had said nothing remotely controversial.

  A few days after returning in early November, Pauling reapplied for an around-the-world trip he wanted to take with Ava Helen, including spending some time in India, where he had been invited by the government to attend the Indian Science Congress, deliver several weeks of scientific talks, and dedicate a new laboratory in Bombay. The plan was to leave in mid-December. The Paulings were eager to see India, which under Nehru was becoming a leader of the so-called Third World, the emerging nations aligned with neither the United States nor the USSR. Pauling saw hope in Nehru of a way to a middle road between communism and capitalism.

  The State Department was interested in India, too, for much the same reasons, but with a less sanguine attitude. Its analysis was that India was moving leftward, out of the Western orbit. Given that situation, it would do no good to have dissident Americans like Pauling traveling there to paint a dismal picture of the United States, especially considering that the science congress he would be attending would also feature a dozen Russian scientists. Shipley's recommendation to deny Pauling's passport was given a fresh look.

  When he heard nothing back about his passport by early December, Pauling enlisted the help of Detlev Bronk, the president of the National Academy of Sciences. Concerned about the impression a new passport refusal to Pauling would have on world scientific opinion, Bronk met with Shipley. It was a chilly conversation. Shipley told him that India was "a sensitive spot" and that any decision about Pauling's trip would include the opinions of others, such as security chief McLeod. She could not say when the decision would be final. Bronk called Pauling with the news, warning him that McLeod was one of McCarthy's men. A few hours after Bronk's call, a State Department official called Pauling to say that no decision would be made in time for his planned departure date.

  Incensed, Pauling called Shipley directly. Trying to control his temper, he explained that the trip was purely for science and pleasure, that he would not be giving any political talks. She responded by asking him how he could explain recommending clemency for convicted atomic spies. He told her about the bad publicity that would result if his passport was denied. She told him that it was in the hands of higher-ups.

  This had now gone beyond the usual delays. Still, Pauling could not imagine that Shipley's office would make the same mistake they had made in 1952, risking the wrath of the world scientific establishment by refusing him the right to travel. In addition, he had controlled himself, cutting his ties with Communist-front groups and abandoning his political talks. Surely he would not be denied a passport now.

  He and Ava Helen canceled some early dates and rearranged their departure for a week later, on the twenty-second. Pauling wrote Dulles and offered to come to Washington to talk anytime during the week before Christmas. There was no reply. He wrote again, relaying his flight schedule and noting that he would inquire at the New York passport office at 9:00 a.m. on the day of departure. There was no reply.

  On December 21, the Paulings flew into New York, their bags packed for a three-month trip. The next morning, Pauling appeared at the passport office. There was no passport, and there was no explanation. Seething, he returned to his hotel and put in a call to John Foster Dulles. The secretary of state, he was told, could not speak to him. Pauling talked instead with the department's science adviser, who told him that a final decision about his passport had been made but that he could not tell him what it was.

  Later that afternoon, two hours after the Paulings' flight had taken off without them, a representative of the State Department called to say that his passport was being refused. Pauling could, he was told, appeal the decision in writing to the chairman of the board of passport appeals.

 
; Pauling had no intention of doing that. He talked with his lawyer—who told him that an informal hearing with State officials would be set up on the twenty-ninth—and he and Ava Helen flew to Washington, D.C. He tried unsuccessfully to set up a meeting with Shipley. Then he spent a joyless Christmas with Ava Helen at the Hay-Adams House waiting for his hearing.

  In the meantime, he asked Vannevar Bush and Karl Compton to vouch for him; both men wrote the secretary of state, assuring Dulles of Pauling's integrity and loyalty despite the fact that "some years ago he went off the deep end in political activities." When the day finally came for his hearing, Pauling and Ava Helen arrived expecting to finally talk with Shipley, but they were ushered instead into a room where one of her underlings, sitting at a table behind a large pile of papers, "would leaf through them once in a while and ask a question," Pauling remembered. Pauling was asked about his membership in Communist-front groups; he explained that he had quit them. He was asked about the Rosenbergs; he explained that he was concerned about the manner in which their trial had taken place, not with supporting the Communist cause. He was asked about sending ten dollars to a defense fund for an academic who had been fired for being a Communist; he explained that he had sent a similar amount to help intellectual refugees behind the Iron Curtain. He was asked again if he had joined the Save the Redwoods League. Perhaps Pauling rolled his eyes.

  The next day, he and his lawyer prepared an affidavit countering each of the State Department's concerns. He was then told, on December 31, that there were many other concerns going back many years. He was asked to answer for everything in his political past, in detail and in writing.

  There was no way he could do that on short notice, Pauling said; he had no idea that he would be asked to make so comprehensive a review. All of his records and papers were in Pasadena. There was no way he could respond in time to make his appointments in India.

  He and Ava Helen withdrew their passport application and flew home.

  - - -

  "A miserable time," Pauling remembered. The whole affair cost them two weeks and two thousand dollars spent on fruitless travel.

  But this time there was no international outcry. This time Pauling kept quiet about his troubles, stayed away from the press, and limited his protest to a few letters to influential people, such as former Supreme Court justice Owen Roberts, now president of the American Philosophical Society. "I think that it is possible that the action of the State Department is the result of fear of McCarthy," Pauling wrote Roberts in January, "but perhaps more likely that it is just the result of a feeling of irritation on the part of Mrs. Shipley because of the action of the Secretary of State in over-ruling her about my passport in the spring of 1952."

  He planned to play by the rules, lining up invitations to speak professionally in Japan, Greece, and Thailand around the end of 1954 as part of a strategy of making another run at a passport, only this time applying well ahead of time and with all his supporting documentation in hand. He would play this hand quietly, with as little controversy as possible. He would keep DuBridge and the trustees happy.

  There was good reason not to rock the boat. The Rockefeller Foundation, to almost everyone's surprise, approved Pauling and Beadle's $1.5 million grant request, clearing the way for completion of the Church Laboratory. This was the largest grant that Pauling had ever obtained, an affirmation of his continuing clout at Caltech and a great piece of news, but somehow it seemed an anticlimax. He still had no focus on exactly what he wanted to do in his new building. He spent much of January and February, the months he had expected to be traveling around the world, looking for new molecular approaches to disease; poking away at the frustrating collagen problem; arranging a few details on the outfitting of his new building. He read a bit about the chemical functioning of the brain, a wide-open research area that might be fruitful. He chaired a symposium on hemoglobin at the 125th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, leading the meeting's keynote speaker, former president Harry Truman, to quip the next day that Pauling might be better off if he stuck to the study of white blood cells rather than red. The joke got a round of applause from the audience and a small laugh from Pauling. But here was another example of how little good it did to stay away from politics. After more than two years denying himself the right to speak as a citizen, his grants were still canceled, his right to travel still denied; he was still the butt of jokes.

  He was tired of being silent. In the spring of 1954 he spoke again.

  - - -

  The trigger was another bomb. On March 1, the United States obliterated an entire Pacific island, Bikini Atoll, by exploding a device that surprised almost everyone with its power.

  On the day of the test, ninety miles from the bomb site, undetected by American observers, a Japanese tuna boat called the Lucky Dragon rolled on the Pacific. The fishermen saw the sky light up. Hours later the skies misted over, odd on a sunny day, and a fine white ash began to fall. Soon the boat and its crew were covered with a hard-to-remove residue. By the time they reached their home port two weeks later, the crewmen were nauseous and fevered, gums bleeding, skin darkened and burned, hair coming out in clumps—the classic symptoms of radiation poisoning. Japanese authorities hospitalized the sickest crew members and impounded their catch, but a radiation scare swept over the islands. The people of Japan, remembering what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, demanded that their fish be tested with Geiger counters. Anti-American student demonstrations flared up.

  Then came even worse news. Japanese physicians and scientists told the world that radioactive dust from the American bomb test, particles that had apparently been sucked up into the high levels of the atmosphere by the explosion, was being carried around the earth by high-altitude winds. It could fall anywhere. Its effects were unknown. A new word entered the lexicon of the press: fallout.

  As the Japanese reports filtered into the American press, it quickly became clear that the Bikini explosion involved a bomb much bigger than anything previously tested. The public began demanding more details, and at a press conference on March 24, President Eisenhower did nothing to allay fears when he said: "It is quite clear that this time something must have happened that we have never experienced before, and must have surprised and astonished the scientists."

  It certainly surprised Pauling. And it roused him from his self-imposed silence. The exorbitant amounts and exotic varieties of radioactive by-products being measured by the Japanese indicated that this was no simple H-bomb. It was something new, something much more dangerous. On April 15 he delivered his first talk on bomb policy in two and a half years. Before a crowd of a thousand listeners at the Los Angeles Unitarian Church, he went over the new bomb scare, talked about the reckless increase in the power of weaponry represented by this new Bikini-style "super bomb," and stressed that this unbridled rush toward unlimited killing capacity made it necessary to once again take up the causes of peace and disarmament. Much of his talk centered on the themes that had been sounded by the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists after Hiroshima—the need for world government, the importance of opening a dialogue with the Communist nations—but there was a new sense of urgency spurred by the high levels of radiation released at Bikini.

  Warming to his topic, Pauling expanded his speech to a related topic. He and J. Robert Oppenheimer had had a long, rocky, and fraught relationship, but found common ground at last in politics. Oppenheimer was again under attack, being blacklisted, denied access to classified materials, and brought up before a security board. The reasons, it appeared, were a rehash of old charges—the same Communist associations that had spurred the 1947 FBI investigation in which Pauling had vouched for Oppenheimer's loyalty—and one new charge: that Oppenheimer had hindered the development of the H-bomb by counseling a go-slow policy. Oppenheimer had been lionized for his work on the Manhattan Project, and the prospect of having the security clearance stripped from a scientist of his stature made national headlines throughout the early m
onths of 1954.

  Pauling felt strongly about the Oppenheimer case. Although eight years before, he had recommended against Oppenheimer being nominated for the AEC board—because, he said, of an impression of unreliability associated with what he called Oppenheimer's "personal characteristics"—he now sympathized with his former friend's situation. Everyone who knew Oppenheimer was certain he was a leftist. By the early 1950s, the FBI had compiled a file, which took up ten feet of shelf space, detailing Oppenheimer's sympathies toward, and associations and friendships with, Communists. While there was no indication of espionage, there was evidence that at various times Oppenheimer had hidden facts or lied to make himself seem more conformist than he was—a "lack of candor," as those investigating him put it. Had Oppenheimer been a nonentity, a scientific underling, he would have been denied a security clearance years earlier. But he was too important a scientist, too vital to the national effort, to be treated like a nonentity. Despite his record, he was given a complete security clearance for years. Then Eisenhower came into office.

  It seemed ridiculous to pillory Oppenheimer now, and it seemed to Pauling that the reasons were strictly political: Oppenheimer was seen as an impediment to the production of more and bigger bombs. As Oppenheimer defended himself and the affair blossomed into a national debate, Pauling joined scores of scientists flocking to his defense. Having found his political voice again, Pauling wrote a short, impassioned piece that ran in the Nation on May Day, 1954. "The suspension as a security risk of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer . . . constitutes a disgraceful act on the part of the government of the United States," he wrote. "The conclusion that Dr. Oppenheimer is a loyal and patriotic American must be reached by any sensible person who considers the facts. It must have been reached by the officials of the AEC, and by President Eisenhower himself. We are accordingly forced to believe that the recent action is the result of political considerations—that Dr. Oppenheimer has been sacrificed by the government." Pauling then urged the United States to lead a concerted scientific and political search for "a practical alternative to the madness of atomic barbarism."