Oppenheimer security hearing
Encyclopedia
The Oppenheimer security hearing was a 1954 inquiry by the United States Atomic Energy Commission
into the background, actions and associations of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist who had headed the Manhattan Project
that developed the atomic bomb for the United States during World War II
. The hearing resulted in Oppenheimer's top secret security clearance being revoked.
The hearing was a product of longstanding doubts about Oppenheimer's loyalty, and suspicions that he was a member of the Communist Party and might even have spied for the Soviet Union. The concerns about him were exacerbated by personal conflicts between Oppenheimer and others in the atomic community, including Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and Edward Teller
, with whom he had clashed over the development of the hydrogen bomb.
Proceedings were initiated in 1954, since Oppenheimer refused to voluntarily give up his security clearance and was still working as an atomic weapons consultant for the government, under a contract due to expire at the end of June. A number of Oppenheimer's colleagues testified at the hearings, and as a result of the 2 to 1 decision of the hearings' three judges, Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance shortly before his consultant contract was due to expire. The panel found that Oppenheimer was unusually discreet with atomic secrets, but that he was a "security risk."
Oppenheimer's trial, which marked the end of his formal relationship with the government of the United States, generated considerable controversy regarding whether the treatment of Oppenheimer was fair, or an expression of anti-Communist hysteria.
Oppenheimer's hearing is the subject of a play, and several article and book-length studies.
organizations and was associated with Communist Party members, including his wife and his brother. His associations were known to Army Counterintelligence at the time he was made director of the Manhattan Project. Postwar anti-Communist sentiment highlighted those concerns.
The hearing took place at a time of heightened concern over Communist infiltration of the U.S. government, at the height of the era of McCarthyism
.
. In early 1943, after he had been named director of the Manhattan project, Chevalier had a brief conversation with Oppenheimer in the kitchen of his home. Chevalier told Oppenheimer that there was a scientist, George Eltenton, who could transmit information of a technical nature to the Soviet Union. Oppenheimer rejected the overture, but failed to report it for eight months.
Oppenheimer failed to promptly report the conversation. Instead, in August 1943, Oppenheimer volunteered to Manhattan Project
security officers that three men at Los Alamos National Laboratory
had been solicited for nuclear secrets on behalf of the Soviet Union
, by a person he did not know who worked for Shell Oil, and who had Communist connections. He gave that person's name: George Eltenton. However, when pressed on the issue in later interviews with General Groves, who ordered him to give the names of these men and promised to keep their identity from the FBI, he finally identified the only contact who had approached him, as his friend Haakon Chevalier
, a Berkeley professor of French literature
who he said had mentioned the matter privately at a dinner at Oppenheimer's house. Oppenheimer would be asked again in 1947 for interviews related to the "Chevalier incident", and he gave contradictory and equivocating statements, telling government agents that actually only one scientist had been approached at Los Alamos, and that person was himself. This was by Chevalier, who at the time had supposedly said that he had a potential conduit through Eltenton for information which could be passed to the Soviets. Oppenheimer claimed to have invented the other contacts in order to conceal the identity of Chevalier, whose identity he believed would be immediately apparent if he named only one contact, but whom he believed to be innocent of any disloyalty. General Groves during the war had thought Oppenheimer too important to the ultimate Allied goals to oust him over this suspicious behavior; he was, Groves reported, "absolutely essential to the project." The 1943 fabrication and the shifting nature of his accounts figured prominently in the 1954 inquiry.
had been following his activities since before the war, when he showed Communist sympathies as a radical professor. They were willing to furnish Oppenheimer's political enemies with incriminating evidence about Communist ties. These enemies included Lewis Strauss, an AEC commissioner who had long harbored resentment against Oppenheimer both for his activity in opposing the hydrogen bomb and for his humiliation of Strauss before Congress some years earlier, regarding Strauss's opposition to the export of radioactive isotopes to other nations. Strauss and Senator Brien McMahon
, author of the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, pushed President Eisenhower
to revoke Oppenheimer's security clearance. This came following controversies about whether some of Oppenheimer's students, including David Bohm
, Joseph Weinberg, and Bernard Peters, had been Communists at the time they had worked with him at Berkeley.
Oppenheimer was called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee
, where he admitted that he had associations with the Communist Party in the 1930s, but he refused to name members. Frank Oppenheimer
was subsequently fired from his university position, could not find work in physics for many years, and became instead a cattle rancher in Colorado
, and later the founder of the San Francisco Exploratorium
.
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Oppenheimer had also found himself in the middle of more than one controversy and power struggle, in the years from 1949 to 1953. Edward Teller
, who had been so uninterested in work on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos during the war that Oppenheimer had (instead of firing him) actually given him time instead to work on his own project of the hydrogen bomb, had eventually left Los Alamos to help found, in 1951, a second laboratory at what would become the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
. There, he could be free of Los Alamos control to develop the hydrogen bomb. This laboratory would go on to develop long-range jet-bomber delivered thermonuclear "strategic weapons" (city-destroyers) which would necessarily be under control of the new Air Force
. By contrast, Oppenheimer had for some years pushed for smaller "tactical" nuclear weapons which would be more useful in a limited theater against enemy troops, and which would be under control of the Army
. As these two branches of the service fought for control of nuclear weapons, often allied with different political parties, the Air Force, with Teller pushing its program, had begun to gain ascendence in the Republican controlled government, after the election of Eisenhower in 1952.
The letter was based upon the government's massive investigative dossier on Oppenheimer, which had included "eleven years' minute surveillance of the scientist's life." His office and home had been bugged, his telephone tapped and his mail had been opened.
Borden's letter stated as follows:
The letter also pointed out that Oppenheimer had worked against development of the hydrogen bomb, and had worked against postwar atomic energy development, including nuclear power plants and nuclear submarines. The letter concluded:
The contents of the letter were not new, and some had been known when Oppenheimer was first cleared for atomic war work. Yet that information had not prompted anyone to seek Oppenheimer's removal from government service.
Despite the lack of new evidence, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered that a "blank wall" be placed between Oppenheimer and the nation's atomic secrets.
. It began on April 12, 1954, and lasted four weeks. The AEC was represented by Roger Robb
, an experienced prosecutor in Washington, and Arthur Rolander, while Oppenheimer's legal team was headed by Lloyd K. Garrison
, a prominent New York attorney. The chairman of the Personnel Security Board was Gordon Gray, president of the University of North Carolina
. The other members of the hearing panel were Thomas Alfred Morgan, a retired industrialist, and Ward V. Evans, chairman of the chemistry department at Northwestern University
. The hearing was not open to the public and initially was not publicized. At the commencement of the hearing, Gray stated the hearing was "strictly confidential," and pledged that no information related to the hearing would be released. However, a few weeks after the conclusion of the hearing, contrary to this assurance, a verbatim transcript of the hearing was released by the AEC. Oppenheimer and Garrison also breached the confidentiality of the hearing, by communicating with New York Times journalist James Reston
, who wrote an article on the hearing that appeared on the second day of the hearing.
Garrison applied for an emergency security clearance prior to the hearing, as one had been granted to Robb. However, no clearance was granted during the course of the hearing, which meant that Oppenheimer's attorneys were not granted access to the secrets that Robb was able to see. On at least three occasions, Garrison and his co-counsel were barred from the hearing room for security reasons, leaving Oppenheimer unrepresented, in violation of AEC regulations. During the course of the hearing, Robb repeatedly cross-examined Oppenheimer's witnesses utilizing top-secret documents unavailable to Oppenheimer's lawyers. He often read aloud from those documents, despite their secret status.
The AEC's former general counsel Joseph Volpe had urged Oppenheimer to retain a tough litigator as his attorney. However, Garrison's demeanor was gentle and cordial, while Robb was adversarial. Garrison voluntarily provided the board and Robb with a list of his witnesses, but Robb refused to extend the same courtesy. This gave Robb a clear advantage in his cross-examination of Oppenheimer's witnesses.
Members of the hearing panel met with Robb prior to the hearing to review the contents of Oppenheimer's FBI file. This was because the "blank pad rule," which was applied to most federal agencies in 1946, did not apply to the hearing. Garrison asked for the opportunity to review the file with the panel, which was rejected.
Oppenheimer testified for a total of 27 hours. His demeanor was far different than it had been in his previous interrogations, such as his appearance before the House Un-American Activities. Under cross-examination by Robb, who had access to top-secret information such as surveillance recordings, Oppenheimer was "often anguished, sometimes surprisingly inarticulate, frequently apologetic about his past and even self-castigating."
One of the key elements in this hearing was Oppenheimer's earliest testimony about George Eltenton's approach to various Los Alamos scientists, a story that Oppenheimer confessed he had fabricated to protect his friend Haakon Chevalier
. Unknown to Oppenheimer, both versions were recorded during his interrogations of a decade before, and was surprised on the witness stand with transcripts of these, which he had had no chance to review. Under questioning by Robb, Oppenheimer admitted that he had lied to Boris Pash, an Army counterintelligence officer, concerning the approach from Chevalier. Asked why he had fabricated a story that three people had been approached for espionage, Oppenheimer responded, "Because I was an idiot."
The questions from Robb probed into Oppenheimer's private life, including his affair with his former girlfriend Jean Tatlock
, a Communist with whom he stayed the night while he was married.
General Leslie Groves
, testifying as a witness for Oppenheimer, reaffirmed his decision to hire Oppenheimer. Groves said that Oppenheimer's refusal to report Chevalier was "the typical American school boy attitude that there is something wicked about telling on a friend." Under questioning from Robb, Groves said that under the security criteria in effect in 1954, he "would not clear Dr. Oppenheimer today."
Much of the questioning of Oppenheimer concerned his role in the hiring for Los Alamos of his former students Rossi Lomanitz and Joseph Weinberg, both members of the Communist Party.
Edward Teller was opposed to the hearing, feeling it was improper to subject Oppenheimer to a security trial, but was torn by longstanding grievances against him. He was called by Robb to testified against Oppenheimer, and shortly before he appeared he showed Teller a dossier of items unfavorable to Oppenheimer. Teller testified that he considered him loyal, but that "in a great number of cases, I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act - I understand that Dr. Oppenheimer acted - in a way which for me was exceedingly hard to understand. I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues and his actions frankly appeared to me confused and complicated. To this extent I feel that I would like to see the vital interests of this country in hands which I understand better, and therefore trust more." Asked whether Oppenheimer should be granted a security clearance, Teller said that "if it is a question of wisdom or judgment, as demonstrated by actions since 1945, then I would say one would be wiser not to grant clearance." This led to outrage by many in the scientific community and Teller's ostracism and virtual expulsion from academic science.
Many top scientists, as well as government and military figures, testified on Oppenheimer's behalf. Among them were Enrico Fermi
, I.I. Rabi, Hans Bethe
, John J. McCloy
, James B. Conant and Vannevar Bush
, as well as two former AEC chairmen and three former commissioners.
Also testifying on behalf of Oppenheimer was John Lansdale, a former Army counterintelligence officer who was involved in the Army's surveillance and investigation of Oppenheimer during the war. Lansdale testified that Oppenheimer was not a Communist, and that he was "loyal and discreet."
Oppenheimer's clearance was revoked by a 2-1 vote of the panel. Gray and Morgan voted in favor, Evans against.
The board rendered its decision on May 27, 1954, in a 15,000-word letter to Nichols. It found that 20 of the 24 charges were either true or substantially true. The board found that while he had been opposed to the bomb and that his lack of enthusiasm for it had affected the attitude of other scientists, that he had not actively discouraged scientists from working on the H-bomb, as had been alleged in Nichols' letter. It found that "there is no evidence that he was a member of the [Communist] party in the strict sense of the word," and concluded that he is a "loyal citizen." It said that he "had a high degree of discretion, reflecting an unusual ability to keep to himself vital secrets," but that he had "a tendency to be coerced, or at least influenced in conduct, for a period of years."
The board found that Oppenheimer's association with Chevalier "is not the kind of thing that our security system permits on the part of one who customarily has access to information of the highest classification."
The board concluded that "Oppenheimer's continuing conduct reflect a serious disregard for the requirements of the security system," that he was susceptible "to influence which could have serious implications for the security interests of the country," that his attitude toward the H-bomb program raised doubt about whether his future participation "would be consistent with the best interests of security," and that Oppenheimer had been "less than candid in several instances" in his testimony.
In a brief dissent, Evans argued that Oppenheimer's security clearance should be reinstated. He pointed out that most of the AEC charges were in the hands of the AEC when it cleared Oppenheimer in 1947, and that "to deny him clearance now for what he was cleared for in 1947, when we must know he is less of security risk now than he was then, seems to be hardly the procedure to be adopted in a free country." Evans said that his association with Chevalier did not indicate disloyalty, and that he did not hinder development of the H-bomb. Evans said he personally thought that "our failure to clear Dr. Oppenheimer will be black mark on the escutcheon of our country," and expressed concern about the effect an improper decision may have on the country's scientific development.
On June 29, 1954, the AEC upheld the findings of the Personnel Security Board, with five commissioners voting in favor and one opposed. The decision was rendered 32 hours before Oppenheimer's consultant contract, and with it the need for a clearance, was due to expire.
In his majority opinion, Strauss said that Oppenheimer had displayed "fundamental character defects." He said that Oppenheimer "in his associations had repeatedly exhibited a willful disregard of the normal and proper obligations of security," and that he "has defaulted not once but many times upon the obligations that should and must be willingly borne by citizens in the national service."
Despite the promise of confidentiality, the AEC released the full transcript of the hearing in June 1954, after press publicity of the hearing.
to McCarthyism
, an intellectual and liberal who was unjustly attacked by warmongering enemies, symbolic of the shift of scientific creativity from academia into the military. Wernher von Braun
summed up his opinion about the matter with a quip to a Congressional committee: "In England, Oppenheimer would have been knighted."
Most popular depictions of Oppenheimer view his security struggles as a confrontation between right-wing militarists (symbolized by Edward Teller) and left-wing intellectuals (symbolized by Oppenheimer) over the moral question of weapons of mass destruction. Many historians have contested this as an oversimplification.
In 1964, when a German playwright produced a play on the hearing, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer reacted bitterly to his portrayal a martyr. He said, "The whole damn thing [his security hearing] was a farce, and these people are trying to make a tragedy out of it."
Time magazine literary critic Richard Lacayo, in a 2005 review of two new books about Oppenheimer, said of the hearing: "As an effort to prove that he had been a party member, much less one involved in espionage, the inquest was a failure. Its real purpose was larger, however: to punish the most prominent American critic of the U.S. move from atomic weapons to the much more lethal hydrogen bomb." After the hearing, Lacayo said, "Oppenheimer would never again feel comfortable as a public advocate for a sane nuclear policy."
Cornell University
historian Richard Polenberg, noting that Oppenheimer testified about the left-wing behavior of his colleagues, speculated that if his clearance had not been stripped, he would have been remembered as someone who had "named names" to save his own reputation.
Oppenheimer died of cancer in 1967, having received the 1963 Enrico Fermi Award
from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, but still without security clearance.
The play premiered on Broadway
in June 1968, with Joseph Wiseman
in the Oppenheimer role. New York Times theater critic Clive Barnes
called it an "angry play and a partisan play" that sided with Oppenheimer but portrayed the scientist as a "tragic fool and genius."
The hearing also figured prominently in the 1980 BBC TV movie Oppenheimer
, with Sam Waterston
as the title character and David Suchet
as Edward Teller.
United States Atomic Energy Commission
The United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S...
into the background, actions and associations of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist who had headed the Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
that developed the atomic bomb for the United States during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The hearing resulted in Oppenheimer's top secret security clearance being revoked.
Edward Teller
Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb," even though he did not care for the title. Teller made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy , and surface physics...
, with whom he had clashed over the development of the hydrogen bomb.
Proceedings were initiated in 1954, since Oppenheimer refused to voluntarily give up his security clearance and was still working as an atomic weapons consultant for the government, under a contract due to expire at the end of June. A number of Oppenheimer's colleagues testified at the hearings, and as a result of the 2 to 1 decision of the hearings' three judges, Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance shortly before his consultant contract was due to expire. The panel found that Oppenheimer was unusually discreet with atomic secrets, but that he was a "security risk."
Oppenheimer's trial, which marked the end of his formal relationship with the government of the United States, generated considerable controversy regarding whether the treatment of Oppenheimer was fair, or an expression of anti-Communist hysteria.
Oppenheimer's hearing is the subject of a play, and several article and book-length studies.
Background
The hearing, by an AEC Personnel Security Board, was a culmination of incidents in Oppenheimer's life dating back to the 1930s, when Oppenheimer was a member of numerous Communist frontCommunist front
A Communist front organization is an organization identified to be a front organization under the effective control of a Communist party, the Communist International or other Communist organizations. Lenin originated the idea in his manifesto of 1902, "What Is to Be Done?"...
organizations and was associated with Communist Party members, including his wife and his brother. His associations were known to Army Counterintelligence at the time he was made director of the Manhattan Project. Postwar anti-Communist sentiment highlighted those concerns.
The hearing took place at a time of heightened concern over Communist infiltration of the U.S. government, at the height of the era of McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
.
The Chevalier incident
One of his Communist associates in the years before World War II was a colleague at the University of California at Berkeley, a professor named Haakon ChevalierHaakon Chevalier
Haakon Maurice Chevalier was an author, translator, and professor of French literature at the University of California, Berkeley best known for his friendship with physicist J...
. In early 1943, after he had been named director of the Manhattan project, Chevalier had a brief conversation with Oppenheimer in the kitchen of his home. Chevalier told Oppenheimer that there was a scientist, George Eltenton, who could transmit information of a technical nature to the Soviet Union. Oppenheimer rejected the overture, but failed to report it for eight months.
Oppenheimer failed to promptly report the conversation. Instead, in August 1943, Oppenheimer volunteered to Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
security officers that three men at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
had been solicited for nuclear secrets on behalf of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, by a person he did not know who worked for Shell Oil, and who had Communist connections. He gave that person's name: George Eltenton. However, when pressed on the issue in later interviews with General Groves, who ordered him to give the names of these men and promised to keep their identity from the FBI, he finally identified the only contact who had approached him, as his friend Haakon Chevalier
Haakon Chevalier
Haakon Maurice Chevalier was an author, translator, and professor of French literature at the University of California, Berkeley best known for his friendship with physicist J...
, a Berkeley professor of French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
who he said had mentioned the matter privately at a dinner at Oppenheimer's house. Oppenheimer would be asked again in 1947 for interviews related to the "Chevalier incident", and he gave contradictory and equivocating statements, telling government agents that actually only one scientist had been approached at Los Alamos, and that person was himself. This was by Chevalier, who at the time had supposedly said that he had a potential conduit through Eltenton for information which could be passed to the Soviets. Oppenheimer claimed to have invented the other contacts in order to conceal the identity of Chevalier, whose identity he believed would be immediately apparent if he named only one contact, but whom he believed to be innocent of any disloyalty. General Groves during the war had thought Oppenheimer too important to the ultimate Allied goals to oust him over this suspicious behavior; he was, Groves reported, "absolutely essential to the project." The 1943 fabrication and the shifting nature of his accounts figured prominently in the 1954 inquiry.
Postwar conflicts
In his role as a political adviser, Oppenheimer made numerous enemies. The FBI under J. Edgar HooverJ. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
had been following his activities since before the war, when he showed Communist sympathies as a radical professor. They were willing to furnish Oppenheimer's political enemies with incriminating evidence about Communist ties. These enemies included Lewis Strauss, an AEC commissioner who had long harbored resentment against Oppenheimer both for his activity in opposing the hydrogen bomb and for his humiliation of Strauss before Congress some years earlier, regarding Strauss's opposition to the export of radioactive isotopes to other nations. Strauss and Senator Brien McMahon
Brien McMahon
Brien McMahon, born James O'Brien McMahon was an American lawyer and politician who served in the United States Senate from 1945 to 1952...
, author of the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, pushed President Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
to revoke Oppenheimer's security clearance. This came following controversies about whether some of Oppenheimer's students, including David Bohm
David Bohm
David Joseph Bohm FRS was an American-born British quantum physicist who contributed to theoretical physics, philosophy, neuropsychology, and the Manhattan Project.-Youth and college:...
, Joseph Weinberg, and Bernard Peters, had been Communists at the time they had worked with him at Berkeley.
Oppenheimer was called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
, where he admitted that he had associations with the Communist Party in the 1930s, but he refused to name members. Frank Oppenheimer
Frank Oppenheimer
Frank Friedman Oppenheimer was an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, was a target of McCarthyism, and was later the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. He was the younger brother of J...
was subsequently fired from his university position, could not find work in physics for many years, and became instead a cattle rancher in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, and later the founder of the San Francisco Exploratorium
Exploratorium
The Exploratorium is a museum in San Francisco with over 475 participatory exhibits, all of them made onsite, that mix science and art. It also aims to promote museums as informal education centers....
.
Edward Teller
Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb," even though he did not care for the title. Teller made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy , and surface physics...
, who had been so uninterested in work on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos during the war that Oppenheimer had (instead of firing him) actually given him time instead to work on his own project of the hydrogen bomb, had eventually left Los Alamos to help found, in 1951, a second laboratory at what would become the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...
. There, he could be free of Los Alamos control to develop the hydrogen bomb. This laboratory would go on to develop long-range jet-bomber delivered thermonuclear "strategic weapons" (city-destroyers) which would necessarily be under control of the new Air Force
Air force
An air force, also known in some countries as an air army, is in the broadest sense, the national military organization that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an army, navy or...
. By contrast, Oppenheimer had for some years pushed for smaller "tactical" nuclear weapons which would be more useful in a limited theater against enemy troops, and which would be under control of the Army
Army
An army An army An army (from Latin arma "arms, weapons" via Old French armée, "armed" (feminine), in the broadest sense, is the land-based military of a nation or state. It may also include other branches of the military such as the air force via means of aviation corps...
. As these two branches of the service fought for control of nuclear weapons, often allied with different political parties, the Air Force, with Teller pushing its program, had begun to gain ascendence in the Republican controlled government, after the election of Eisenhower in 1952.
The Borden letter
In November 1953, J. Edgar Hoover was sent a letter concerning Oppenheimer by William Liscum Borden, former executive director of Congress' Joint Atomic Energy Committee. In the letter, Borden stated his opinion "based upon years of study, of the available classified evidence, that more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union."The letter was based upon the government's massive investigative dossier on Oppenheimer, which had included "eleven years' minute surveillance of the scientist's life." His office and home had been bugged, his telephone tapped and his mail had been opened.
Borden's letter stated as follows:
The letter also pointed out that Oppenheimer had worked against development of the hydrogen bomb, and had worked against postwar atomic energy development, including nuclear power plants and nuclear submarines. The letter concluded:
The contents of the letter were not new, and some had been known when Oppenheimer was first cleared for atomic war work. Yet that information had not prompted anyone to seek Oppenheimer's removal from government service.
Despite the lack of new evidence, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered that a "blank wall" be placed between Oppenheimer and the nation's atomic secrets.
The hearing
On Dec. 21, 1953, Oppenheimer was told by Lewis Strauss that his security file had been subject to two recent re-evaluations because of new screening criteria, and because a former government official had drawn attention to Oppenheimer's record. Strauss said that his clearance had been suspended, pending resolution of a series of charges outlined in a letter, and discussed his resigning. Oppenheimer chose not to resign, and requested a hearing instead. The charges were outlined in a letter from Kenneth D. Nichols, general manager of the AEC. Pending resolution of the charges, Oppenheimer's security clearance was suspended. Oppenheimer told Strauss that some of what was in Nichols' letter was correct, others incorrect.Board composition and procedures
The hearing was held at a temporary building near the Washington Monument housing offices of the Atomic Energy CommissionUnited States Atomic Energy Commission
The United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S...
. It began on April 12, 1954, and lasted four weeks. The AEC was represented by Roger Robb
Roger Robb
Roger Robb was a United States federal judge and trial attorney, who prosecuted J. Robert Oppenheimer in a celebrated Atomic Energy Commission hearing in 1954....
, an experienced prosecutor in Washington, and Arthur Rolander, while Oppenheimer's legal team was headed by Lloyd K. Garrison
Lloyd K. Garrison
Lloyd Kirkham Garrison was an American lawyer. He was Dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School, but also served as chairman of the "first" National Labor Relations Board, chairman of the National War Labor Board, and chair of the New York City Board of Education...
, a prominent New York attorney. The chairman of the Personnel Security Board was Gordon Gray, president of the University of North Carolina
University of North Carolina
Chartered in 1789, the University of North Carolina was one of the first public universities in the United States and the only one to graduate students in the eighteenth century...
. The other members of the hearing panel were Thomas Alfred Morgan, a retired industrialist, and Ward V. Evans, chairman of the chemistry department at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
. The hearing was not open to the public and initially was not publicized. At the commencement of the hearing, Gray stated the hearing was "strictly confidential," and pledged that no information related to the hearing would be released. However, a few weeks after the conclusion of the hearing, contrary to this assurance, a verbatim transcript of the hearing was released by the AEC. Oppenheimer and Garrison also breached the confidentiality of the hearing, by communicating with New York Times journalist James Reston
James Reston
James Barrett Reston , nicknamed "Scotty," was an American journalist whose career spanned the mid 1930s to the early 1990s. He was associated for many years with the New York Times.-Life:...
, who wrote an article on the hearing that appeared on the second day of the hearing.
Garrison applied for an emergency security clearance prior to the hearing, as one had been granted to Robb. However, no clearance was granted during the course of the hearing, which meant that Oppenheimer's attorneys were not granted access to the secrets that Robb was able to see. On at least three occasions, Garrison and his co-counsel were barred from the hearing room for security reasons, leaving Oppenheimer unrepresented, in violation of AEC regulations. During the course of the hearing, Robb repeatedly cross-examined Oppenheimer's witnesses utilizing top-secret documents unavailable to Oppenheimer's lawyers. He often read aloud from those documents, despite their secret status.
The AEC's former general counsel Joseph Volpe had urged Oppenheimer to retain a tough litigator as his attorney. However, Garrison's demeanor was gentle and cordial, while Robb was adversarial. Garrison voluntarily provided the board and Robb with a list of his witnesses, but Robb refused to extend the same courtesy. This gave Robb a clear advantage in his cross-examination of Oppenheimer's witnesses.
Members of the hearing panel met with Robb prior to the hearing to review the contents of Oppenheimer's FBI file. This was because the "blank pad rule," which was applied to most federal agencies in 1946, did not apply to the hearing. Garrison asked for the opportunity to review the file with the panel, which was rejected.
Scope of testimony
As outlined in the 3,500-word Nichols letter, the hearing focused on 24 allegations, 23 of which dealt with Oppenheimer's Communist and left-wing affiliations between 1938 and 1946, including his delayed and false reporting of the Chevalier incident to authorities. The twenty-fourth charge related to his opposition to the hydrogen bomb. By including the hydrogen bomb, the AEC changed the character of the hearing, by opening up an inquiry into his activities as a postwar government adviser.Oppenheimer testified for a total of 27 hours. His demeanor was far different than it had been in his previous interrogations, such as his appearance before the House Un-American Activities. Under cross-examination by Robb, who had access to top-secret information such as surveillance recordings, Oppenheimer was "often anguished, sometimes surprisingly inarticulate, frequently apologetic about his past and even self-castigating."
One of the key elements in this hearing was Oppenheimer's earliest testimony about George Eltenton's approach to various Los Alamos scientists, a story that Oppenheimer confessed he had fabricated to protect his friend Haakon Chevalier
Haakon Chevalier
Haakon Maurice Chevalier was an author, translator, and professor of French literature at the University of California, Berkeley best known for his friendship with physicist J...
. Unknown to Oppenheimer, both versions were recorded during his interrogations of a decade before, and was surprised on the witness stand with transcripts of these, which he had had no chance to review. Under questioning by Robb, Oppenheimer admitted that he had lied to Boris Pash, an Army counterintelligence officer, concerning the approach from Chevalier. Asked why he had fabricated a story that three people had been approached for espionage, Oppenheimer responded, "Because I was an idiot."
The questions from Robb probed into Oppenheimer's private life, including his affair with his former girlfriend Jean Tatlock
Jean Tatlock
Jean Frances Tatlock M.D. , was an American psychiatrist, physician, and a member of the Communist Party. She is most noted for her romantic relationship with Manhattan Project scientific leader J. Robert Oppenheimer....
, a Communist with whom he stayed the night while he was married.
Leslie Groves
Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves, Jr. was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. As the son of a United States Army chaplain, Groves lived at a...
, testifying as a witness for Oppenheimer, reaffirmed his decision to hire Oppenheimer. Groves said that Oppenheimer's refusal to report Chevalier was "the typical American school boy attitude that there is something wicked about telling on a friend." Under questioning from Robb, Groves said that under the security criteria in effect in 1954, he "would not clear Dr. Oppenheimer today."
Much of the questioning of Oppenheimer concerned his role in the hiring for Los Alamos of his former students Rossi Lomanitz and Joseph Weinberg, both members of the Communist Party.
Edward Teller was opposed to the hearing, feeling it was improper to subject Oppenheimer to a security trial, but was torn by longstanding grievances against him. He was called by Robb to testified against Oppenheimer, and shortly before he appeared he showed Teller a dossier of items unfavorable to Oppenheimer. Teller testified that he considered him loyal, but that "in a great number of cases, I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act - I understand that Dr. Oppenheimer acted - in a way which for me was exceedingly hard to understand. I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues and his actions frankly appeared to me confused and complicated. To this extent I feel that I would like to see the vital interests of this country in hands which I understand better, and therefore trust more." Asked whether Oppenheimer should be granted a security clearance, Teller said that "if it is a question of wisdom or judgment, as demonstrated by actions since 1945, then I would say one would be wiser not to grant clearance." This led to outrage by many in the scientific community and Teller's ostracism and virtual expulsion from academic science.
Many top scientists, as well as government and military figures, testified on Oppenheimer's behalf. Among them were Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi was an Italian-born, naturalized American physicist particularly known for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics...
, I.I. Rabi, Hans Bethe
Hans Bethe
Hans Albrecht Bethe was a German-American nuclear physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. A versatile theoretical physicist, Bethe also made important contributions to quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics, solid-state physics and...
, John J. McCloy
John J. McCloy
John Jay McCloy was a lawyer and banker who served as Assistant Secretary of War during World War II, president of the World Bank and U.S. High Commissioner for Germany...
, James B. Conant and Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...
, as well as two former AEC chairmen and three former commissioners.
Also testifying on behalf of Oppenheimer was John Lansdale, a former Army counterintelligence officer who was involved in the Army's surveillance and investigation of Oppenheimer during the war. Lansdale testified that Oppenheimer was not a Communist, and that he was "loyal and discreet."
The board's decision
The board rendered its decision on May 27, 1954, in a 15,000-word letter to Nichols. It found that 20 of the 24 charges were either true or substantially true. The board found that while he had been opposed to the bomb and that his lack of enthusiasm for it had affected the attitude of other scientists, that he had not actively discouraged scientists from working on the H-bomb, as had been alleged in Nichols' letter. It found that "there is no evidence that he was a member of the [Communist] party in the strict sense of the word," and concluded that he is a "loyal citizen." It said that he "had a high degree of discretion, reflecting an unusual ability to keep to himself vital secrets," but that he had "a tendency to be coerced, or at least influenced in conduct, for a period of years."
The board found that Oppenheimer's association with Chevalier "is not the kind of thing that our security system permits on the part of one who customarily has access to information of the highest classification."
The board concluded that "Oppenheimer's continuing conduct reflect a serious disregard for the requirements of the security system," that he was susceptible "to influence which could have serious implications for the security interests of the country," that his attitude toward the H-bomb program raised doubt about whether his future participation "would be consistent with the best interests of security," and that Oppenheimer had been "less than candid in several instances" in his testimony.
In a brief dissent, Evans argued that Oppenheimer's security clearance should be reinstated. He pointed out that most of the AEC charges were in the hands of the AEC when it cleared Oppenheimer in 1947, and that "to deny him clearance now for what he was cleared for in 1947, when we must know he is less of security risk now than he was then, seems to be hardly the procedure to be adopted in a free country." Evans said that his association with Chevalier did not indicate disloyalty, and that he did not hinder development of the H-bomb. Evans said he personally thought that "our failure to clear Dr. Oppenheimer will be black mark on the escutcheon of our country," and expressed concern about the effect an improper decision may have on the country's scientific development.
Nichols findings and AEC decision
In a harshly worded memorandum to the AEC on June 12, 1954, Nichols recommended that Oppenheimer's security clearance not be reinstated. In five "security findings," Nichols said that Oppenheimer was "a Communist in every sense except that he did not carry a party card," and that the Chevalier incident indicated that Oppenheimer "is not reliable or trustworthy, and that his misstatements might have represented criminal conduct. He said that Oppenheimer's "obstruction and disregard for security" showed "a consistent disregard of a reasonable security system." The Nichols memorandum was not made public or provided to Oppenheimer's lawyers, who were also not allowed to appear before the AEC.On June 29, 1954, the AEC upheld the findings of the Personnel Security Board, with five commissioners voting in favor and one opposed. The decision was rendered 32 hours before Oppenheimer's consultant contract, and with it the need for a clearance, was due to expire.
In his majority opinion, Strauss said that Oppenheimer had displayed "fundamental character defects." He said that Oppenheimer "in his associations had repeatedly exhibited a willful disregard of the normal and proper obligations of security," and that he "has defaulted not once but many times upon the obligations that should and must be willingly borne by citizens in the national service."
Despite the promise of confidentiality, the AEC released the full transcript of the hearing in June 1954, after press publicity of the hearing.
Aftermath and legacy
Oppenheimer was seen by most of the scientific community as a martyrMartyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
to McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
, an intellectual and liberal who was unjustly attacked by warmongering enemies, symbolic of the shift of scientific creativity from academia into the military. Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States after that.A former member of the Nazi party,...
summed up his opinion about the matter with a quip to a Congressional committee: "In England, Oppenheimer would have been knighted."
Most popular depictions of Oppenheimer view his security struggles as a confrontation between right-wing militarists (symbolized by Edward Teller) and left-wing intellectuals (symbolized by Oppenheimer) over the moral question of weapons of mass destruction. Many historians have contested this as an oversimplification.
In 1964, when a German playwright produced a play on the hearing, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer reacted bitterly to his portrayal a martyr. He said, "The whole damn thing [his security hearing] was a farce, and these people are trying to make a tragedy out of it."
Time magazine literary critic Richard Lacayo, in a 2005 review of two new books about Oppenheimer, said of the hearing: "As an effort to prove that he had been a party member, much less one involved in espionage, the inquest was a failure. Its real purpose was larger, however: to punish the most prominent American critic of the U.S. move from atomic weapons to the much more lethal hydrogen bomb." After the hearing, Lacayo said, "Oppenheimer would never again feel comfortable as a public advocate for a sane nuclear policy."
Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
historian Richard Polenberg, noting that Oppenheimer testified about the left-wing behavior of his colleagues, speculated that if his clearance had not been stripped, he would have been remembered as someone who had "named names" to save his own reputation.
Recent allegations
A 2002 book by Gregg Herken, a senior historian at the Smithsonian Institution, based on newly discovered documentation, contended that Oppenheimer was a member of the Communist Party. In a seminar at the Woodrow Wilson Institute on May 20, 2009, and based on an extensive analysis of the Vassiliev notebooks taken from the KGB archives, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev concluded that Oppenheimer never was involved in espionage for the Soviets. The KGB tried repeatedly to recruit him, but never was successful. Allegations that he had spied for the Soviets are unsupported, and in some instances, contradicted by voluminous KGB and Venona documentation released after the fall of the Soviet Union. In addition, he had several persons removed from the Manhattan project who had sympathies to the Soviet Union.Oppenheimer died of cancer in 1967, having received the 1963 Enrico Fermi Award
Enrico Fermi Award
The Enrico Fermi Award is an award honoring scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. It is administered by the U.S. government's Department of Energy...
from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, but still without security clearance.
Dramatizations
The hearing was dramatized in a 1964 play by German playwright Heinar Kipphardt, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer objected to the play, threatening suit and decrying "improvisations which were contrary to history and to the nature of the people involved," including its portrayal of him as viewing the bomb as a "work of the devil." His letter to Kipphardt said, "You may well have forgotten Guernica, Dachau, Coventry, Belsen, Warsaw, Dresden and Tokyo. I have not." In a response, Kipphardt offered to make corrections but defended the play.The play premiered on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
in June 1968, with Joseph Wiseman
Joseph Wiseman
Joseph Wiseman was a Canadian theater and film actor, best known for starring as the titular antagonist of the first James Bond film, Dr. No, his role as Manny Weisbord on Crime Story, and his career on Broadway...
in the Oppenheimer role. New York Times theater critic Clive Barnes
Clive Barnes
Clive Alexander Barnes, CBE was a British-born American writer and critic. From 1965 to 1977 he was the dance and theater critic for the New York Times, the most powerful position he had held, since its theater critics' reviews historically have had great influence on the success or failure of...
called it an "angry play and a partisan play" that sided with Oppenheimer but portrayed the scientist as a "tragic fool and genius."
The hearing also figured prominently in the 1980 BBC TV movie Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer (TV miniseries)
Oppenheimer is a television serial about J. Robert Oppenheimer, produced by the BBC. It began broadcast in the United Kingdom on 29 October 1980 and in the United States on 11 May 1982...
, with Sam Waterston
Sam Waterston
Samuel Atkinson "Sam" Waterston is an American actor and occasional producer and director. Among other roles, he is noted for his Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Sydney Schanberg in 1984's The Killing Fields, and his Golden Globe- and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning portrayal of Jack McCoy...
as the title character and David Suchet
David Suchet
David Suchet, CBE, is an English actor, known for his work on British television. He is recognised for his RTS- and BPG award-winning performance as Augustus Melmotte in the 2001 British TV mini-drama The Way We Live Now, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Paloma Baeza, and a 1991 British Academy...
as Edward Teller.
External links
- Letter from William Borden to J. Edgar Hoover, Nov. 7, 1953