Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer

by Ray Monk

  Q. You have no reason to believe she wasn’t a Communist, do you?

  A. No.

  Q. You spent the night with her, didn’t you?

  A. Yes.

  Q. That is when you were working on a secret war project?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Did you think that consistent with good security?

  A. It was, as a matter of fact. Not a word – it was not good practice.fn49

  ‘Not good practice’ hardly does justice to the scale of Oppenheimer’s lapse in judgement at this point. Taking everything we know about Oppenheimer and Jean Tatlock at this time, it seems extremely unlikely that what they talked about that night was the work being conducted at Los Alamos, but, to a mind full of suspicion (of both communists in general and of Oppenheimer in particular), it was natural to imagine that Oppenheimer might be using Tatlock as a go-between, in order to pass on to the Soviet Union details of the Manhattan Project.

  Certainly such thoughts occurred to Pash, who, on 29 June 1943, two weeks after Oppenheimer’s trip to Berkeley and San Francisco, made a formal recommendation to the Pentagon to refuse security clearance to Oppenheimer on the grounds that he ‘may be connected with the Communist Party’, citing in evidence Oppenheimer’s visit to Jean and his decision to appoint Hawkins as his assistant. Pash recommended not only that Oppenheimer be replaced as scientific director of Los Alamos, but also that he be thoroughly investigated and interviewed.

  Fortunately for Oppenheimer, Groves trusted Pash’s judgement less than that of John Lansdale. At about the same time as he wrote to the Pentagon recommending Oppenheimer’s dismissal, Pash wrote a memo to Lansdale suggesting that, if Oppenheimer was not fired, then he should be summoned to Washington to be told that the security services knew all about his communist connections and warned that the authorities would not tolerate any attempt by Oppenheimer to pass classified information to members of the Communist Party. Pash considered Oppenheimer to be potentially disloyal to his country, but, like Steve Nelson, he also saw how important it was to Oppenheimer to be heading an important government project and thought that the threat of losing his high-profile job, his reputation and his honour would be enough to keep him in check. ‘Consequently,’ Pash concluded, ‘it is felt that he would lend every effort to cooperating with the Government in any plan which would leave him in charge.’

  Lansdale’s view of Oppenheimer differed sharply from Pash’s. He had by this time met Oppenheimer and Kitty at Los Alamos several times and had come to the conclusion that Oppenheimer was neither a communist nor a threat to security. When he was asked at Oppenheimer’s security case in 1954 why, in 1943, he had formed the judgement that Oppenheimer was not a communist, Lansdale gave the following interesting reply:

  My working definition of a Communist is a person who is more loyal to Russia than to the United States. That is the definition I formed very early during my work on the Communist problem in the War Department, and which I still think is a sound definition. You will note that has nothing to do with political ideas.

  Unquestionably Dr Oppenheimer was what we would characterize and as hide-bound a Republican as myself characterizes as extremely liberal, not to say radical. Unfortunately, in this problem of determining who is and who is not a Communist, determining who is loyal and who is not, the signs which point the way to persons to be investigated or to check on are very frequently political liberalism of an extreme kind. The difficult judgment is to distinguish between the person whose views are political and the person who is a Communist, because communism is not a political thing at all.

  Lansdale, as he later emphasised in the same testimony, considered Oppenheimer to be a loyal American citizen who would put the interests of his own country first, and was therefore, according to the above definition, not a communist. Asked whether he had formed the same impression about Kitty, he replied:

  Mrs Oppenheimer impressed me as a strong woman with strong convictions.

  She impressed me as the type of person who could have been, and I could see she certainly was, a Communist. It requires a very strong person to be a real Communist.

  However, Kitty’s strength of personality was, Lansdale came to think, a force acting in favour of Oppenheimer’s trustworthiness:

  I formed the conviction over many interviews with her and many discussions with her that she had formed the conviction that Dr Oppenheimer was the most important thing in her life and that his future required that he stay away from Communist associations and associations with people of that ilk.

  It was my belief that her strength of character – I think strength of character is the wrong word – her strength of will was a powerful influence in keeping Dr Oppenheimer away from what we would regard as dangerous associations.

  In other words, Lansdale had come to exactly the same conclusion as Steve Nelson: influenced by Kitty, Oppenheimer was quite prepared to separate himself from his old communist friends and comrades in order to maintain the trust of the US government and therefore hold on to his position as head of an important military project.

  In a memo to Groves written in July 1943, Lansdale outlined this view of Oppenheimer and his wife. While listing all the ‘derogatory information’ that the FBI and G-2 had gathered about Oppenheimer – his connections with communist front organisations, his friendship with leading Communist Party members, his personal connections with Jean Tatlock and Haakon Chevalier (‘believed to be a Communist Party member’), and reliable reports from within the Communist Party that he was considered a member – and conceding that this information was troubling, Lansdale opposed Pash’s recommendation that Oppenheimer should be denied clearance and fired. As an alternative he recommended Pash’s fall-back position, but instead of placing the emphasis where Pash had placed it – on the use of the derogatory information to intimidate Oppenheimer into refusing to have anything to do with espionage – Lansdale emphasised the possibility that their information, and the possibly dire consequences it might have for Oppenheimer, could be used to persuade him to turn informant. Oppenheimer, Lansdale suggested, should be told that there were doubts about his loyalty ‘because of his known interest in the Communist Party and his association with and friendship for certain members of the Communist Party’ and invited to prove his loyalty by providing Groves and Lansdale with information about any threats to security that he might have heard about. In other words, Oppenheimer should be made to feel that, in order to demonstrate his loyalty to his country, he would have to betray his old friends in the Communist Party.

  In the light of Lansdale’s assessment, Groves took a characteristically decisive step. On 20 July 1943, he issued the following instructions to the US District Engineer:

  In accordance with my verbal instructions of July 15, it is desired that clearance be issued for the employment of Julius Robert Oppenheimer without delay, irrespective of the information which you have concerning Mr Oppenheimer. He is absolutely essential to the project.

  Oppenheimer was thus granted his clearance, though this, of course, did not put an end to the matter. Pash and de Silva were still convinced that he was aiding and abetting Soviet espionage, while Groves and Lansdale, convinced that he was not, were determined to use him to reveal further information about people who were. At precisely the time when experimental work at Los Alamos could begin, therefore, Oppenheimer spent much of his time involved in various ways with issues of security. This no doubt contributed to his feeling, which he conveyed at this time to Robert Bacher, that he was not equal to the task with which he had been charged. In response, Bacher told him what Groves also clearly believed: he had no alternative but to continue, since there was no one else capable of doing the job.

  Oppenheimer’s resolve to carry on was surely fortified by a letter he received at the beginning of July 1943 from President Roosevelt himself, asking him to assure the scientists working at Los Alamos that their efforts were appreciated: ‘I am sure we can rely on their continued wholehearted and unselfish labor
s. Whatever the enemy may be planning, American science will be equal to the challenge.’ In his reply, Oppenheimer took the opportunity to emphasise to the President how importantly he took the security of the project:

  You would be glad to know how greatly your words of reassurance were appreciated by us. There will be many times in the months ahead when we shall remember them.

  It is perhaps appropriate that I should in turn transmit to you the assurance that we as a group and as individual Americans are profoundly aware of our responsibility, for the security of our project as well as for its rapid and effective completion. It is a great source of encouragement to us that we have in this your support and understanding.

  That Oppenheimer was not entirely trusted by those for whom he worked was made clear in a letter that he received from General Groves written on 29 July 1943, telling him that henceforth he was requested: a) to ‘refrain from flying in airplanes of any description’; b) that he should be accompanied by ‘a competent, able bodied, armed guard’ acting as chauffeur during any road trip ‘above a few miles’; and c) that, in driving about Los Alamos, ‘a guard of some kind should be used, particularly during hours of darkness’.

  This letter was evidently part of a tightening of security that was soon to have the drastic and lasting consequences mentioned earlier for those ex-students of Oppenheimer’s who were identified as actual or possible communist spies. The first affected was Lomanitz, who on 27 July was told by Ernest Lawrence that he had been promoted to group leader at the Rad Lab, having responsibility for overseeing the building of Calutrons at Oak Ridge. Three days later, before he could take up his new position, Lomanitz received a letter telling him that he had been drafted into the army. ‘It was really a sort of a strange thing,’ Lomanitz later explained, ‘because Dr Lawrence had just had a talk with me about some new work that he wanted me to undertake which was supposedly more important, which was to go out to Oakridge and be a liaison man between Berkeley and Oakridge while Oakridge was building a couple of hundred of these machines.’

  Neither Lomanitz nor Lawrence, of course, knew that the FBI had been listening to Lehmann’s indiscreet conversation with Steve Nelson back in October 1942, or that Lomanitz’s comradely photograph with Weinberg, Friedman and Bohm had led to all four of them being identified as members of an espionage ring. Both were puzzled. According to Lomanitz, Lawrence’s initial reaction was: ‘Oh, there has to be a mistake. I’ll take care of it.’ But, Lomanitz discovered: ‘It turned out that it was not a mistake and he was not able to take care of it.’ Not that he didn’t try. Lansdale remembers: ‘Ernest Lawrence yelled and screamed louder than anybody else about us taking Lomanitz away from him.’ In his desperation, Lomanitz phoned Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, who immediately sent off a telegram to the Pentagon saying that a ‘very serious mistake is being made. Lomanitz now only man at Berkeley who can take this responsibility.’ On 31 July 1943, Oppenheimer cabled Lomanitz, saying: ‘Have requested in proper places reconsideration of support for your deferment. Cannot guarantee outcome but have made strong request.’

  As Oppenheimer, Lomanitz and Lawrence all discovered, however, the army was implacable in its decision not to allow Lomanitz to work on the atomic-bomb project and to enlist him. Towards the end of his life, in 2001, Lomanitz gave an interview in which he revealed that, nearly sixty years after the event, he still believed that the purpose in getting him out of Berkeley was not to prevent a security leak, but rather to weaken and then to close down the Rad Lab branch of the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians (FAECT), which he and Oppenheimer had helped to establish and to run.

  In fact, it was the other way round: the authorities were indeed keen to close down the Rad Lab branch of FAECT, but this was because they saw it as a communist front organisation and a threat to the security of the bomb project. Removing Lomanitz was part of an attack not on trade unionism, but specifically on the Communist Party and, more specifically, on the use made of communist members of FAECT by Soviet intelligence to gain information on US military programmes. It was Lansdale’s hope that Oppenheimer’s vulnerability with regard to his past associations with the Communist Party would allow him to be exploited by the security services to aid them in that attack.

  Some confirmation that Lansdale’s hopes might be well founded in this respect came from a meeting he had with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos on 10 August 1943, a full report of which is contained in a memo he sent Groves two days later. Lansdale told Groves he had made it clear to Oppenheimer that it was no use asking the authorities to defer Lomanitz’s draft, since ‘he had been guilty of indiscretions which could not be overlooked or condoned’. Oppenheimer – perhaps assuming, like Lomanitz, that what the authorities had against his ex-student was his involvement in political (rather than espionage) activities – told Lansdale that he had insisted very strongly to Lomanitz that, if he joined the atomic-bomb project, ‘he must forego all political activity’. He also told Lansdale ‘he knew that Lomanitz had been very much of a Red as a boy when he first came to the University of California’, but professed to have no knowledge of his political activities since then. When told by Lansdale that the investigation of Lomanitz had revealed that he had certainly not foregone any political activity, Oppenheimer, according to Lansdale, replied: ‘That makes me mad.’ Lansdale goes on:

  There then ensued a general discussion of the Communist Party. Oppenheimer was told that from a military intelligence standpoint we were quite unconcerned with a man’s political or social beliefs, and we were only concerned with preventing the transmission of classified information to unauthorized persons, wherever that person’s loyalties might lie, or whatever his social, political, or religious beliefs might be.

  At this point in the conversation, Oppenheimer endeavoured to give Lansdale the impression that he himself took a rather tougher line against Communist Party members than that taken by the army:

  [He] stated that he did not agree with us with respect to the Communist Party. He stated that he did not want anybody working for him on the project that was a member of the Communist Party. He stated that the reason for that was that ‘one always had a question of divided loyalty’. He stated that the discipline of the Communist Party was very severe and was not compatible with complete loyalty to the project. He made it clear he was not referring to people who had been members of the Communist Party, stating that he knew several now at Los Alamos who had been members. He was referring only to present membership in the Communist Party.

  ‘Oppenheimer gave every appearance of sincerity in this discussion,’ Lansdale concluded, telling Groves that his own view was that ‘what Dr Oppenheimer was trying to convey was, in the case of Lomanitz, that Lomanitz had been worried about his obligations to the party, and that Oppenheimer had told him that he must give up the party if he came on the project.’ He also ‘had the definite impression that Oppenheimer was trying to indicate that he had been a member of the party, and had definitely severed his connections upon engaging in this work.’ ‘On the whole,’ Lansdale’s memo ends, ‘it seemed that Oppenheimer, in a rather subtle way, was anxious to indicate to this officer his position in that regard.’

  On 12 August, the day that Lansdale wrote his memo about Oppenheimer to Groves, FBI agents watched as Bohm, Friedman and Lomanitz arrived at a meeting at Weinberg’s apartment that was also attended by Steve Nelson and his Communist Party assistant, Bernadette Doyle. The surveillance of Lomanitz and his friends was part of an extensive FBI operation entitled ‘CINRAD’ – ‘Communist Infiltration of the Radiation Laboratory’ – which was eventually to build up files on more than 300 Communist Party members in Berkeley. So seriously was the threat to security posed by the group of communists at the Rad Lab taken that it was discussed at the highest possible level. On 17 August, Groves, after presenting a progress report on the atomic-bomb project to the US government’s Top Policy Group, went on to summarise the army’s investigation of what he called the ‘Calif
ornia trouble’. On the same day he had delivered to Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, a draft memo for the President advising that FAECT should be ordered to stop all activity regarding the Radiation Laboratory. Within a few months the memo achieved its end when FAECT’s Rad Lab branch was forced to close.

  Lansdale’s conversation with Oppenheimer of 10 August evidently persuaded Oppenheimer that it was not enough for him to distance himself from his old communist friends and comrades; he also had to be seen to be active in combating the threat to security that they represented. The clumsy attempt by Chevalier to enlist his aid in George Eltenton’s espionage activities, about which he had previously been entirely quiet, now seemed to him to offer a relatively harmless way of giving the security forces what they wanted: information on communist espionage attempts. Not that Oppenheimer wanted to inform on Chevalier, but Eltenton seemed a promising target. After all, Eltenton was no friend of his and he had, much to Oppenheimer’s annoyance, actively sought to involve both him and Chevalier in espionage. A few days after his conversation with Lansdale, therefore, Oppenheimer went to see Groves and gave him Eltenton’s name as someone who needed to be watched.

  About a week later, on 25 August 1943, Oppenheimer went to Berkeley with, it seems, the intention of addressing the problems that Lansdale had discussed regarding security at the Rad Lab. He first went to the secret office of Lieutenant Lyall Johnson and asked him whether it would be all right to speak to Lomanitz, who at that time was still on campus, continuing to hope that his draft into the army could be deferred. Johnson granted Oppenheimer permission to speak to Lomanitz, though he stressed that in his opinion Lomanitz was dangerous. As he was leaving Johnson’s office, Oppenheimer told him (as he had previously told Groves) that there was a man called George Eltenton of whom the security officers in Berkeley should be aware. Eltenton, Oppenheimer told Johnson, worked for Shell and was an active member of FAECT.