Pandora's Keepers

by Brian Van DeMark

  The afternoon of Friday, October 28, 1949, was gray and drizzly when the GAC convened in a cavernous conference room on the second floor of AEC headquarters at 19th Street and Constitution Avenue on the Mall near the White House. * The wood-paneled room looked out on the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, but no one was in the mood to peer out the windows that day. Oppenheimer began the meeting by stating the matter to be considered: the prospects and implications of developing a superbomb. The GAC spent the rest of the afternoon talking with top experts. George Kennan, director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and an influential and experienced specialist in Soviet affairs, told the committee that it might be possible to negotiate an arms control agreement with Russia. Next they heard from Bethe, who stressed that many technical problems relating to the superbomb remained to be solved. He also talked about his fear that a war fought with superbombs would destroy what it was intended to preserve.

  Oppenheimer opened the next morning’s session by reading aloud Seaborg’s letter. He then asked each committee member to express his view about what to do. Not everyone had made up his mind, and Oppenheimer was careful not to lead or to influence them. A member of the GAC recalled:

  Dr. Oppenheimer did not express his point of view until after all the rest of the members of the committee had expressed themselves. It was clear, however, as the individual members did express their opinions as we went around the table, that while there were differing points of view, different reasons, different methods of thinking, different methods of approach to the problem, that each member came essentially to the same conclusion, namely, there were better things the United States could do at that time than to embark upon this super program…. Each person took five to ten minutes or thereabouts to express his views. 30

  Oppenheimer spoke last. “There was a surprising unanimity—to me very surprising—that the United States ought not to take the initiative at that time in an all-out program,” he said. Then: “I am glad you feel this way, for if it had not come out this way, I would have had to resign as chairman.” 31 The fact that there was a consensus on such a contentious issue underscored the physicists’ moral qualms about building a superbomb. (But there was not unanimity, since Seaborg, in his letter, favored going ahead.)

  Four of the five AEC commissioners then joined the GAC at this point. * For an hour the two groups discussed the superbomb. It was a soul-searching session. Many GAC members said they could not see how any country could go from one weapon of mass destruction to another a thousand times more destructive and retain any normal perspective with regard to other countries and world peace. They felt as if they were being asked to endorse an undertaking that might prove to bring down the curtain on human civilization.

  At 11:00 A.M. the Joint Chiefs arrived. They came with a very different perspective. Without the superbomb, they asserted, there would be nothing the U.S. military could do to deter or prevent Russia from overrunning Western Europe. They considered a war with the Soviet Union “likely” in four to five years. “Further negotiation with the Russians,” they sniffed, “is useless.” But they had great difficulty articulating the actual military value of a superbomb. When Oppenheimer asked the JCS chairman, army general Omar Bradley, what military advantages he could see in a superbomb over the largest atomic bombs, Bradley answered, “Only psychological.” When Lilienthal asked air force general Lauris Norstad why not simply increase the production of atomic bombs instead of building an even more destructive weapon, Norstad had no answer. The group then broke for lunch.

  When discussion resumed in the afternoon, GAC member Hartley Rowe expressed strong opposition to the superbomb on moral grounds. “We built one Frankenstein,” he muttered. Oppenheimer nodded in agreement. Speaking carefully as his eyes swept the room, Fermi said the superbomb should be explored but not necessarily developed. “One must explore it and do it,” said Fermi, but added, “That doesn’t foreclose the question: should it be made use of?” 32 Rabi felt a decision to go ahead was probably foreordained, if for no other reason than domestic politics; the only open question would be who was willing to join in it. The sense of momentum, and inevitability, made Conant recall the development of the atomic bomb, and the parallel made him uneasy. A chemist who had begun his service to the state making poison gas during World War I and then had helped direct the Manhattan Project, Conant had had enough—he wanted nothing more to do with weapons of mass destruction. “This whole discussion makes me feel I’m seeing the same film, and a punk one, for the second time,” Conant announced. 33 Conant’s and the other scientists’ qualms boiled down to this: it was one thing to develop the atomic bomb in wartime; it was quite another to develop a weapon so destructive that it had no rational military use and to introduce it into a world at peace.

  At the end of their deliberations, the GAC members sat down to write a report. Emotions were running high and the eight men stayed up late that night drafting the document. The body of the report addressed mainly technical issues, but also larger concerns. They agreed that a superbomb would probably be technically feasible, but that it was unnecessary because the Soviet Union had few large cities and the United States could use atomic bombs against them if necessary. As Oppenheimer later explained: “We thought it was something to avoid because we were infinitely more vulnerable [because more of the American population lived in large cities than did the Russian population] and infinitely less likely to initiate the use of these weapons and because the world in which great destruction has been done in all civilized parts of the world is a harder world for America to live with than it is for the Communists to live with.” From a strategic standpoint, the superbomb made no sense. Moreover, even if the Soviets developed the superbomb, the United States would still have more than enough atomic bombs for adequate deterrence or, if deterrence failed, punishing retaliation. Moral and military logic argued against building anything bigger.

  To these scientists, however, the practical and strategic liabilities of the superbomb were subordinate to a more fundamental concern. The majority of the committee’s members opposed the superbomb per se. They emphasized the single most distinctive characteristic of a fusion, as opposed to a fission, weapon: if it could be built, it would have unlimited destructiveness. This distinguished the superbomb from even such horrific weapons as atomic bombs—the superbomb was “a weapon of genocide”:

  It is clear that the use of this weapon would bring about the destruction of innumerable human lives; it is not a weapon which can be used exclusively for the destruction of material installations of military or semi-military purposes. Its use therefore carries much further than the atomic bomb itself the policy of exterminating civilian populations.

  This was surprisingly strong language coming from many of those who had put the atomic bomb in the hands of the United States during World War II. “In determining not to proceed to develop the superbomb,” they concluded, “we see a unique opportunity of providing by example some limitations on the totality of war and thus of limiting the fear and arousing the hopes of mankind.” 34

  They did not say that following their advice would prevent the development of a Soviet superbomb. Rather, they argued that foregoing the superbomb was a necessary precondition for persuading the Russians to do the same; and that America’s atomic stockpile was such that doing so would not entail any substantial risk of upsetting the balance of power. All of this was done in the hope that restraint would replace an ever-deadlier arms race.

  There were some divisions. Oppenheimer and most other GAC members opposed any development of the superbomb. But Fermi and Rabi, suspecting that a GAC recommendation against development would be ignored by the White House, suggested a more practical alternative: coupling American forbearance on the superbomb with a Soviet pledge to do the same. Fermi and Rabi laid out their proposal in a minority annex to the report:

  We believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public, and t
he world, that we think it wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate a program of development of such a weapon. At the same time it would be appropriate to invite the nations of the world to join us in a solemn pledge not to proceed in the development or construction of weapons of this category. If such a pledge were accepted even without control machinery, it appears highly probable that an advanced stage of development leading to a test by another power could be detected by available physical means. Furthermore, we have in our possession, in our stockpile of atomic bombs, the means for adequate “military” retaliation for the production or use of a “super.” 35

  Their hope, said Fermi later, was “to outlaw the thing before it was born.” 36 Rabi explained what he and Fermi had in mind: “Fermi and I said that we should use this as an excuse to call a world conference for the nations to agree, for the time being, not to do further research on [superbombs]. We felt that if the conference should be a failure and we couldn’t get agreement to stop this research and had to go ahead, we could then do so in good conscience.” 37

  But despite this, it was not clear whether Fermi’s and Rabi’s consciences could be untroubled in any circumstances relating to the superbomb. They behaved uncertainly—favoring the superbomb at the outset of the GAC’s deliberations, but conditionally opposing it at the end. And while willing to countenance an American superbomb if the Russians would not forgo one of their own, both clearly condemned the weapon’s immorality:

  Necessarily such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide.

  It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality and dignity even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country. It is evident to us that this would be the view of peoples in other countries. Its use would put the United States in a bad moral position relative to the peoples of the world.

  Any postwar situation resulting from such a weapon would leave unresolvable enmities for generations. A desirable peace cannot come from such an inhuman application of force. The postwar problems would dwarf the problems which confront us at present….

  The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons we believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public, and the world, that we think it wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon.

  Fermi and Rabi’s minority annex showed not just moral passion but political imagination. It sought to use the Soviet atomic test as a lever for restarting nuclear arms control talks instead of letting it serve as a stimulus for the development of even more destructive superbombs. The United States could simply agree with the Soviets on a “no superbomb” pledge even without on-site inspection, relying upon atmospheric and seismic detection to monitor compliance. The Soviets in all likelihood could not produce a superbomb without testing, and American detection was very likely to pick up any evidence of cheating.

  The effect of Fermi and Rabi’s annex, however, was marginal; it was the majority’s call for total renunciation of the superbomb that got noticed. Some of this was their fault. “We just wrote our report and then went home, and left the field to the others,” said Rabi. “That was a mistake. If we hadn’t done that, history might have been different.” 38

  Not only had the GAC majority report said that the superbomb was the wrong answer—it had also challenged Teller and Lawrence. This challenge had been political, but it was hard not to see some personal elements in it. Oppenheimer had grown estranged from both men by 1949. The latent friction that had marked Oppenheimer and Teller’s first encounter in 1937 had surfaced under the wartime strain at Los Alamos and deepened after Teller began promoting the superbomb in the wake of the Soviet test.

  Oppenheimer’s relationship with Lawrence was deeper and more complicated. A mixture of personal affection and professional one-upmanship had characterized their association from the beginning. Their relationship, already weakened when Oppenheimer left Berkeley for Princeton, had been severely strained when Oppenheimer’s brother, Frank, had gotten in trouble for his communist past and Lawrence, stung by the exposure of his Rad Lab as a hotbed of Soviet sympathizers, had exiled Frank from the place where he had worked so hard and effectively during the war. Lawrence’s treatment of Frank wounded Frank’s sensitive and protective older brother, and shredded all but a vestige of Lawrence and Oppenheimer’s long-standing friendship. “I think there was probably warmth between us at all times,” Oppenheimer said later, “but there was bitterness which became very acute in ’49 and which was never resolved.” 39 Lawrence felt that bitterness, too. Distinguishing now between “working scientists” like himself and “talkers,” Lawrence observed acidly that “those who once thought the atomic bomb was a terrible thing now have no such scruples about it but have transferred their sense of horror to the H-bomb.” 40

  This mutual bitterness led Oppenheimer to belittle Lawrence and Teller around this time in a private letter as “two experienced promoters” 41 and served to blind him to the merit of Fermi and Rabi’s proposal. Oppenheimer had recognized, as he had written privately, that “it would be folly to oppose the exploration of this weapon. We have always known it had to be done; and it does have to be done.” Then he added: “But that we become committed to it as the way to save the country and the peace appears to me full of dangers,” failing to recognize that Fermi and Rabi’s idea might have allowed the exploration he considered inevitable without the commitment he considered dangerous. 42 Thus a potentially promising avenue went unexplored and the contentious issue became even more personalized.

  Once Teller learned the GAC had reached a verdict, he was anxious to know what it was. A few days after the decision, he left Los Alamos for Washington, stopping in Chicago along the way to see if Fermi might give him an inkling of the GAC’s verdict. Fermi was aware of Teller’s concern, but the GAC report was classified and Fermi refused to discuss its contents. He did not have to. The tone of Fermi’s voice and his body language told the story. “It was clear from the tenor of his remarks,” Teller later wrote, “that certainly Fermi and possibly the entire GAC did not favor an all-out crash program.” 43 Fermi even scolded Teller for joining a “fascist like Lawrence” in pushing for the superbomb. 44

  Fermi’s words “thoroughly frightened” Teller, as he confided in a letter to another friend a short time later. Although he had known and liked the Italian for years, Fermi’s about-face—he had originally proposed the idea of a superbomb to Teller in 1941—made Teller angry. “Enrico does not know what I think of him,” he wrote. “But—unfortunately—he has an inkling.” Teller’s words revealed how emotionally invested he had become in the superbomb, an emotional investment that eclipsed even long-standing friendships. 45

  Teller’s conversation with Fermi reinforced his fear that Oppenheimer’s persuasive powers spelled doom for the superbomb project. When Teller finally saw the GAC report and the minority annex on November second, he became “morose and almost silent (very unusual),” recalled John Manley, associate director of Los Alamos and secretary to the GAC, who had shown him the report. Teller thought the superbomb project was all but dead—and with it, America as he knew it. “Edward offered to bet me that unless we went ahead with his Super… he, Teller, would be a Russian prisoner of war in the United States within five years,” Manley recalled. 46 Teller suspected a conspiracy, complaining that there were “mysterious actions in the GAC and even higher places.” “What disturbs me most,” he wrote fellow Hungarian John von Neumann, “is that apparently Enrico is at least temporarily convinced that the action of the GAC is reasonable. One thing is qui
te clear, that the really fine and unanimous enthusiasm which was building up in Los Alamos [for the superbomb] is now checked at least temporarily.” 47 Teller believed that anyone—like Oppenheimer—who opposed the superbomb had become suspect.

  Teller had always disliked routine and was ill at ease under any imposed discipline. This maverick streak, combined with his overwhelming ambition and intense commitment to the superbomb, led Teller to mount a countercharge to gain support for the proposed weapon. He had learned after the war that it was necessary for him to become very political in order to accomplish his goals, and so he had become very smart at aligning himself with the powers in Washington. He spent much of the next few months after the GAC report lobbying military officers and congressmen. His excited gestures showed his sincerity, and his anticommunism struck the right patriotic note. Teller had no doubt that his campaign to build a superbomb would require a great deal of effort and work on his part and that of many others—but so, he was fond of saying, had the atomic bomb. “I wonder to how many people it happens that they are sent back where they have been before and that they get a second chance,” he wrote to a confidante at the end of the year. “But this time I love the job I am going to do—I shall even love to fight if it must be.” 48