Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer

by Ray Monk

  Lilienthal, surely rightly, saw the hand of Strauss at work in Murphy’s attack on Oppenheimer, but at times it was the hand of Griggs that was most evident. Take, for example, this retelling of Griggs’s paranoid version of the Lincoln summer school: under the byline ‘ZORC Takes Up the Fight’, Murphy wrote:

  A test of Teller’s thermonuclear device was scheduled for late 1952 at Eniwetok. Oppenheimer tried to stop the test. In April 1952, Secretary Acheson appointed him to the State Department Disarmament Committee of which he became chairman. Here was generated a proposal that the President should announce that the United States had decided on humanitarian grounds not to bring the weapon to final test and that it would regard the detonation of a similar device by any other power as an act of war.

  Mr Truman was not persuaded. That project cost Oppenheimer his place on the General Advisory Committee. When his term expired that summer he was not reappointed. Neither were DuBridge nor Conant who supported him throughout. Now came a shift in tactics. At a meeting of scientists in Washington that spring there formed around Oppenheimer a group calling themselves ZORC, Z for Jerrold R. Zacharias, an MIT physicist; O for Oppenheimer; R for Rabi; and C for Charles Lauritsen.

  The previous slur campaigns against Oppenheimer had been more or less confined to the secluded corridors of power. This Fortune article was the first shot in a public campaign against him, the beginning of a concerted effort to bring the disputes between Oppenheimer and the US military establishment out into the open. One predictable consequence was that Oppenheimer’s case came to the attention of Joseph McCarthy. On 11 May, an FBI memo written by assistant director L.B. Nichols records that McCarthy’s aide, Roy Cohn, had called him to ask what he thought about the McCarthy committee (the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, to give it its official name) ‘calling in Oppenheimer and launching an investigation’. Nichols, the memo records, told Cohn ‘not to be precipitous’. The next day, Cohn and McCarthy visited J. Edgar Hoover to discuss the possibility of investigating Oppenheimer. In an internal FBI memo, Hoover explained how he had put McCarthy off by telling him that ‘a great deal of preliminary spade work’ would need to be undertaken before going public with an investigation of someone as eminent and influential as Oppenheimer. Strauss, with whom Hoover was working closely with regard to Oppenheimer, subsequently wrote to Senator Robert Taft, asking him to block any attempt by McCarthy to investigate Oppenheimer. ‘The McCarthy committee is not the place for such an investigation,’ Strauss wrote, ‘and the present is not the time.’ Strauss was determined to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance and did not want his carefully laid plans ruined by the far less meticulous operations of the senator for Wisconsin.

  Oppenheimer’s one-year contract as a consultant to the AEC was due to expire at the end of June 1953, and Strauss was very concerned to see that it was not renewed. In this he had a powerful ally in the FBI, the surviving files of which record what amounts to a conspiracy to oust Oppenheimer from government. On 25 May, another assistant director, D.M. Ladd, wrote to Hoover to tell him that ‘Admiral Strauss’ had been to see him because he is ‘still concerned about the activities of J. Robert Oppenheimer’. In particular, Ladd wrote, Strauss was concerned to see that Oppenheimer had an appointment to see President Eisenhower that week. ‘The Admiral was wondering whether there was any objection to his briefing President Eisenhower very generally with reference to Oppenheimer’s background when he, Strauss, sees the President at 3.30 this afternoon.’ Ladd had told Strauss that the Bureau ‘certainly had no objection to his briefing the President’, and that, of course, he was welcome to use Oppenheimer’s FBI file for that briefing.

  That afternoon, at his meeting with the President, Strauss was invited to become the next chairman of the AEC. Having provided Eisenhower with a ‘briefing’ about Oppenheimer’s background, Strauss replied that he ‘could not do the job at the AEC if Oppenheimer was connected in any way with the program’. Two days later, when Oppenheimer arrived for his appointment at the White House, he, in turn, gave the President a briefing, this time about Operation Candor. In the light of his earlier conversation with Strauss, however, Eisenhower’s enthusiasm – both for Operation Candor and for Oppenheimer – was on the wane, and, sometime after Oppenheimer had left, Eisenhower told his aide C.D. Jackson (who happened to be the publisher of Fortune magazine) that he ‘did not completely trust’ Oppenheimer.

  In his war against Oppenheimer, Strauss was winning. He did not have it all his own way, though. It was still, officially, government policy to pursue (or at least to investigate the viability of pursuing) both Operation Candor and the other recommendations of the Disarmament Panel, which is why on 5 June it was decided, despite Strauss’s vigorously and repeatedly expressed objections, to renew Oppenheimer’s consultancy contract with the AEC for another year. He would thus have security clearance and, potentially, some influence on US atomic policy until 30 June 1954. The day that decision was taken, say the authors of a long and detailed history of the AEC, ‘was perhaps the most fateful date in Robert Oppenheimer’s life’. Their remark is based on an observation of Lewis Strauss, who pointed out: ‘It was this contract which involved the AEC in the clearance of Dr Oppenheimer and which required that the Commission, rather than some other agency of the Government, be made responsible to hear and resolve the charges against him.’

  Despite what he had said to Eisenhower, Strauss did accept the chairmanship of the AEC even though Oppenheimer was still connected with it. According to an FBI memo, Strauss ‘reluctantly agreed to accept the post of chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission effective July 1, 1953’, but only after the President had ‘drafted’ him ‘against his wishes’:

  Strauss was advised that the Bureau desired to work closely with him in his new duties with the AEC. He commented that the only bright part in his taking over these new difficult duties was the fact that the FBI had been most cooperative with him and he felt he could rely on the Director and the Bureau in matters of mutual interest.

  Within a week of taking up his duties as chairman Strauss ordered the removal from Oppenheimer’s office at Princeton of all classified AEC documents, ostensibly to save the expense of hiring a security guard to protect them.

  Menwhile, in an effort to keep the recommendations of the Disarmament Panel alive, Oppenheimer had his New York lecture, ‘Atomic Weapons and American Policy’, published in two separate places in the summer of 1953. It appeared in the July issues of both Foreign Affairs and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the journals being chosen, no doubt, in order to maximise the exposure of his views to both politicians and scientists. What the appearance of the Fortune article in May signalled, however, was that Strauss was winning his war against Oppenheimer among the media as well as among the politicians, for the owner and editor-in-chief of Fortune was Henry Luce, who was also owner and editor-in-chief of both Time and Life. The days of those two latter magazines carrying long, admiring profiles of Oppenheimer were over.

  Indeed, on the occasion of Strauss’s appointment as chair of the AEC, Time published an admiring, albeit short, profile of him. Under the heading ‘Dissenter’s Return’, the piece made clear where the magazine’s sympathies now lay in the battle between Strauss and Oppenheimer:

  To Dissenter Strauss, more than any other man, the US owes its possession of the hydrogen bomb. In 1950, after a long fight against the combined forces of prestige-heavy atomic scientists such as Dr Robert Oppenheimer and all other Atomic Energy commissioners save Gordon Dean, Strauss persuaded Harry Truman that the US should proceed with construction of the H-bomb.

  Weary of his constant battle with the other commissioners, Strauss resigned from the AEC in 1950, and returned to New York to become financial adviser to the Rockefellers. Last week, as he prepared to move back into the AEC building, Lewis Strauss was hailed by Democrats and Republicans alike as one of the President’s best appointments.

  Oppenheimer’s campaign for openness, disa
rmament and dialogue with the Soviet Union received a devastating setback in August 1953, when it was announced that the Soviets had tested their first hydrogen bomb. Nicknamed ‘Joe 4’, the Soviet device, having a yield of ‘only’ 400 kilotons, was a puny thing compared to the ten-megaton Mike blast, but, in other respects, it was possible to argue that the Soviets were ahead in the arms race. For Joe 4 used lithium-6 deuteride as its fuel, which meant that, unlike Mike, it was a deployable bomb. On the other hand, its basic design was crude compared to the technical ‘sweetness’ of the Ulam–Teller bomb, and some comfort could be taken from the fact that, until the Soviets discovered what Ulam and Teller had discovered – namely that radiation, rather than neutrons, should be used to bring about the fusion reaction – they would not be able to develop a ‘true’ H-bomb – that is, one with a yield in the megaton range. However, whatever comfort this provided was dispelled by the realisation that it was only a matter of time before the Soviet scientists discovered the principle of the Ulam–Teller design, and the sheer fear induced by the brute fact that the Soviet Union had the H-bomb. Those who had argued that the US should develop the Super quickly before the Soviets got there, it now seemed, had had their view confirmed.

  In the wake of the news of the Soviet H-bomb, the chances of Oppenheimer getting a sympathetic hearing for Operation Candor shrank to almost zero. The 7 September edition of Life magazine carried an editorial discussing Oppenheimer’s ‘Atomic Weapons and American Policy’, which it characterised as presenting ‘the opposition to present US policy’. What was meant by ‘present US policy’, it seems, was massive retaliation:

  We have supposed the only major deterrent to atomic aggression is our ability to hit back even harder – to apply swift and terrible retribution. But this policy Dr Oppenheimer implies is a spur or a goad to the Soviet Union. As an alternative, Dr Oppenheimer calls for a heroic effort to improve our atomic defences . . .

  His argument is an echo of an old line of appeasement for which there is in the world a curious lingering nostalgia . . . no purely defensive effort, however mighty, can ever deter an aggressor bent on atomic attack.

  This would seem to leave us no choice at all but steadily to build our air fleets and our atomic stockpiles. Any change in accent or emphasis that detracts from our power to hit back weakens our hand in the world.

  A month later, following Eisenhower’s statement that, in light of the fact that ‘the Soviets now have the capability of atomic attack on us’, the US did not intend ‘to disclose the details of our strength in atomic weapons of any sort’, the Life editorial declared:

  First, it can be inferred, hopefully, that we have heard the end of ‘Operation Candor.’ That half-baked phrase, implying that the public have hitherto been deceived, had two versions. One, recommended by J. Robert Oppenheimer, would have disclosed military secrets, such as the size of our atomic stockpile, which Chairman Strauss says would be much more meaningful to Soviet strategists than to American opinion. This Eisenhower has decided against.

  Two weeks later the cover of Time magazine featured none other than ‘US Atom Boss Lewis Strauss’. The article accompanying the front cover began with a description of the ‘radioactive air mass from Siberia’ that indicated the Russians had exploded a thermonuclear bomb. ‘To a quiet, courtly Virginian of deep religious faith and independent character,’ the article went on, ‘the cloud was a vindication of a rather lonely fight.’

  Had it not been for Strauss’s personal convictions about Russian intentions, back in late 1949, the US might have had no thermonuclear superbomb of its own. Conceivably, the new Russian bomb could have been hurled on the world as an unchallengeable ultimatum, could by this week have changed the political balance of power around the world.

  At the end of October 1953, the commitment of the US government to a policy of massive retaliation was made official when the President gave his approval to the policies outlined in the National Security Council policy document NSC 162/2. The ‘primary threat to the security, free institutions, and fundamental values of the United States’, the document says, is posed by the Soviet Union. Stalin may have died, and there may continue to be in the short term some uncertainty about who will replace him, but: ‘The Soviet leaders can be expected to continue to base their policy on the conviction of irreconcilable hostility between the bloc and the non-communist world.’

  In addition: ‘The capability of the USSR to attack the United States with atomic weapons had been continuously growing and will be materially enhanced by hydrogen weapons.’ Air defence will be useful, ‘but will not eliminate the chance of a crippling blow.’ In the face of the Soviet threat, the policy document declares, the security of the United States requires the development and maintenance of ‘a strong military posture, with emphasis on the capability of inflicting massive retaliatory damage by offensive striking power’. The ideas that Oppenheimer had spent the last four years arguing against were now explicitly embodied in US policy. Meanwhile, those who considered Oppenheimer to be not simply mistaken, but actually treasonous, were moving in for the kill.

  * * *

  fn62 Within the next two decades this would grow to more than 200.

  fn63 In 1950, in an unprecedented and unrepeated foray into biology, he published a short, co-written article entitled ‘Internal Conversion in the Photosynthetic Mechanism of Blue Green Algae’.

  fn64 It is a surprise to many, particularly in the UK (whose Royal Air Force was established in 1918), that the US Air Force only became a separate branch of the US military as late as September 1947. Before that the air service had been part of the army.

  fn65 That phrase was remembered by Teller. Whatever else was in the letter is lost to history, since, rather oddly, it does not survive among the many boxes of correspondence that Oppenheimer diligently filed and preserved. Conant’s biographer, James G. Hershberg, has speculated – plausibly, to my mind – that Conant asked Oppenheimer to destroy it.

  fn66 This burden seems also to have influenced other members of the GAC. Conant, for example, said at the meeting that he felt he was ‘seeing the same film, and a punk one, for the second time’, while Rowe remarked: ‘We built one Frankenstein.’

  fn67 Though this talk is not generally allusive, this mention of an atomic clock is an allusion. It alludes to the ‘doomsday clock’ that appeared on every cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists from June 1947 onwards. The closer the clock is to midnight, the closer the threat of global nuclear war. The February 1953 issue of the Bulletin showed the clock at two minutes to midnight, the closest it had ever been.

  18

  Falsus in unofn68

  WILLIAM BORDEN’S TIME as executive director of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy finished at the end of May 1953. A week or two before he left, while he still had security clearance, he was given Oppenheimer’s AEC security file by Strauss in order to make a close study of it. After he left the committee he no longer had any kind of government job, and should therefore have given the file back. However, quite illegally, Strauss let him keep it for a further three months. Ever since Strauss had been told that Klaus Fuchs had not acted alone, that there had been another Soviet spy at Los Alamos, he had suspected that Oppenheimer was that second spy, and he was hoping that Borden would be able to substantiate that claim sufficiently well for a solid case to be made for stripping Oppenheimer of his security clearance.

  As he studied the FBI file, Borden became obsessed with the details of the case, which, he came to believe, pointed to the conclusion that Oppenheimer was indeed a Soviet agent. In the autumn of 1953 Borden prepared his own summary of the evidence, which, at just three and a half pages, was much shorter than the various FBI summaries and, Borden believed, much clearer. On 7 November, he sent his summary to J. Edgar Hoover, telling him: ‘The purpose of this letter is to state my own exhaustively considered opinion, based upon years of study of the available classified evidence, that more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agen
t of the Soviet Union.’ His summary organises the evidence into four groups, though it is not entirely clear what the organising principle is. The first group lists all the evidence that Oppenheimer – through his friends, his colleagues, his brother, his wife and his ‘mistress’ (Jean Tatlock) – had close links with the Communist Party. The second group consists mostly of things that have little or no bearing on the question of whether or not he was a Soviet agent (for example, ‘In April 1942 his name was formally submitted for security clearance’), except the last, which accuses Oppenheimer of having lied to Groves and the FBI. The third group is mostly about the sharp difference between Oppenheimer’s attitudes to the atomic and hydrogen bombs before the war (when he was enthusiastic about them) and after the war (when his enthusiasm for them evaporated). And the fourth group concerns Oppenheimer’s alleged use of his influence in the post-war period to retard US defence projects, most notably the development of the hydrogen bomb.

  None of this, of course, amounted to evidence that Oppenheimer had acted as a Soviet agent, and nor was any of it news to Hoover. Perhaps for that reason Hoover waited nearly three weeks before doing anything with Borden’s letter. During that time, suspicions about Oppenheimer were being raised all over Washington and beyond. On 12 November, the Evening Star newspaper ran a story under the heading ‘FBI report on vast spy ring shocked US leaders in 1945’, which contained the statement: ‘A top atomic scientist was a Communist and had been approached to furnish atomic bomb secrets from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco through professors at the University of California.’ As an FBI memo of 18 November concedes, this information came from a 1945 summary of Soviet espionage in the United States that the FBI had leaked to HUAC. ‘In addition,’ the memo says, ‘it appears members of the press have been informed of the material appearing in the summary.’