Genius in the Shadows

by William Lanouette

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I have to go home to my children.”

  “You can’t go home!” Szilard declared. “If you don’t do this, we won’t have a world!” Believing in the cause, Pinkson found a way to work late.28

  Szilard could be blind to his supporters’ needs as well. Groups he addressed that summer—in Greenwich, Connecticut, and in Stockbridge and Woods Hole, Massachusetts—found his speeches disconcerting. Forbes blamed this on Szilard’s “total lack of tact,” although that seems to have changed little over the years.29 More likely, Szilard’s message changed, from inspiring followers to importuning for money. He wearied his listeners with details about how cleverly the boards, the council, the lobby, and the panel would interact. And he sounded too vague about the criteria for picking candidates the council would support.

  “He was very intemperate and impatient with the processes of American democracy” said editor and publisher Michael Straight, a friend since the 1940s. “He was much more interested in moving step-by-step ahead and in working out, in his own marvelous ways, ways of circumventing Congress and circumventing anybody else in order to strike a deal with the Russians.” He wanted to short-circuit the political system, to get right to those with power. Questioned after the Woods Hole speech about why he chose to focus on the Senate, Szilard said: “Because there are fewer of them, and they’re easier to buy.”

  In the audience, Straight groaned at that answer. “Leo, you can’t say those things in public,” Straight said after the talk.

  “Why not?” asked Szilard. “It’s true!”30

  Some who saw Szilard thought he might be weakened or distracted by his cancer, but he shrugged off fatigue and occasional infections. “I feel fine,” he told a Time magazine reporter in the spring of 1962. “But I don’t want to mislead people into thinking I am cured, because I do not know if I am. There is no telling how long I will be well.” To Newsweek, Szilard said, “Even now, I have no five-year program in mind.” He was “grateful” for his recovery but hardly on top of the world, the magazine reported. “It’s a rather heavy world,” he said. “I feel that the world, in fact, is on top of me. . . .”31

  Despite its tentative start, the council collected enough money to play a role in the 1962 congressional elections. Its first candidate was George McGovern, a former US representative from South Dakota who had failed in 1960 to unseat the state’s incumbent senator, Republican Karl Mundt, and was then working on food programs in the White House.32 (Szilard urged another White House aide, Harris Wofford, to quit his job and join the council’s staff. At the time, Wofford declined, but in 1991 he was appointed US Senator from Pennsylvania, then reelected with support from the Council for a Livable World.) Szilard’s move into practical politics upset at least one old friend, physicist Edward Teller. “Szilard, I have a little difficulty to agree with you when you are imaginative,” Teller chided during a nationally televised debate on arms control. “When you are becoming a political realist, that is the time when I have real difficulty to agree with you completely.”33

  In April 1962 the United States resumed above-ground nuclear-weapons tests in response to Russia’s break of a moratorium six months before. Then, in June, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara officially declared U. S. policy on the “counterforce” use of nuclear weapons against military targets, not cities. The Russians denounced him as a madman who was out to create “rules for the holocaust.”34 Szilard was also appalled.

  “Did you read what McNamara said?” Szilard asked Forbes in an anxious telephone call. “In effect, he said America is prepared for a first strike!”35 That made dialogue with the Russians more critical than ever, Szilard thought, and he spent the summer of 1962 thinking about ways to recruit and use a few scientists and scholars for yet another scheme—the “Angels Project.”

  These musings came together during a Pugwash conference in August 1962 in the paneled common rooms and mossy courtyards of Gonville & Caius College in Cambridge, England. There a Russian scientist—whom Szilard would only identify as “R”—encouraged him to open more focused talks. Szilard decided to enlist government policymakers and consultants who would be “on the side of the angels” by being disposed to forgo temporary diplomatic advantages “for the sake of attaining an agreement with the Soviet Union that would stop the arms race.” The Angels would work out policy options that might then be weighed by their governments. Among those Szilard first considered for this task were physicist Freeman Dyson and Jerome Wiesner. But while many friends encouraged Szilard, physicist Hans Bethe declined an invitation, saying there were now enough other channels for US-Soviet dialogue.36

  At the Soviet embassy, Szilard explained his Angels Project to Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. He seemed intrigued but raised a question that cut to the heart of Szilard’s plans and his role in Washington. In the United States, many individuals outside government advise on policy at the highest levels, Dobrynin said, but in Russia there are none. How, he asked, can you arrange comparable participants?37 Ignoring this complaint, Szilard drafted a detailed proposal for Khrushchev.38

  Szilard’s enthusiasm for the Angels Project grew from his conviction that if reasonable men could just sit down together and discuss their fate rationally, a solution would be found. He felt that President Kennedy was “an amateur, wet behind the ears . . .” and no match for the Russians, “intellectuals by comparison who are respected for their training.” And he feared that Russia and America might allow a minor cold-war conflict to escalate into a global nuclear confrontation. America’s fall elections had politicized just such a case: Cuba, Russia’s ally just off America’s shores. After Soviet defensive, short-range missiles had been discovered in Cuba, Senate Republicans backed a resolution in October warning Cuba against subversive activities in the hemisphere.

  On October 13, Kennedy was shown U-2 reconnaissance-plane photos of offensive, intermediate-range missiles being installed southwest of Havana, and in secret his administration planned to challenge the Soviets directly. US air and sea units were deployed around Cuba on Saturday, October 20, and on Monday the twenty-second, Kennedy briefed congressional leaders at the White House, then prepared to address the nation on television.

  “Come right down, Forbes,” Szilard said in a phone call to the council’s vice-president. “Kennedy is to speak about Cuba. I fear he will over-react.”39 Forbes flew in from Boston that evening and joined Szilard, Trude, and national security analyst Marcus Raskin in the Szilards’ cluttered bedroom. On television Kennedy sounded serious and stern as he announced that US intelligence had discovered Soviet offensive, intermediate-range missiles in Cuba despite the Kremlin’s promise not to station them in this hemisphere. It would be US policy “to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union,” Kennedy said.40

  Szilard stared at the television screen, his face pale with fear, his eyes wide with panic. Kennedy was overreacting!

  “What do you do in a situation like this?” someone asked.

  “A blockade is an act of war,” said Szilard.41 “An act of war.” About a dozen young people came up to Szilard’s room after Kennedy’s speech, seeking advice and reassurance.

  “What can be done?” one asked.

  “Nothing,” Szilard answered. “It is hopeless.” In a moody and rambling talk he confessed that he had failed to control the weapon he helped create. Now, soon, it might destroy the world. He was too old, Szilard said. He only hoped that young people would pick up the broken pieces.42

  Szilard slept fitfully that Monday night and the next morning appeared pallid and weary as he moved about the hotel nervously—telephoning, hanging up and staring, pacing the lobby and halls. With help from policy analysts Arthur Waskow and Raskin, Szilard stood at a pay phone in the Dupont Plaza and placed a call to the pope, hoping he would intervene with Kennedy. But the call never w
ent through. Szilard walked to the bank to withdraw his money.

  “Pack the bags,” he said to Trude when he returned.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I don’t care.”

  “What should we take?” she asked.

  “Everything,” said Szilard. “Give up the room.”

  Trude suggested they go to Canada, but Szilard shook his head. “Maybe Mexico,” Szilard said. But she worried about sanitation there and Leo’s recurrent infections.

  “Geneva,” Szilard finally said. “Let’s go to Geneva. You always liked Geneva.” Trude telephoned Lisbeth Bamberger, who had become a “gal Friday” for the council. When she arrived, Szilard said, “Come with us! You have to have the courage to leave when you recognize the time has come.” Bamberger telephoned airlines and travel agents for Trude and helped the Szilards pack, but finally decided to stay.43

  It was Szilard’s habit to pay whenever he invited someone to a meal, but at lunch with Raskin that frantic Tuesday, October 23, he said, “Today we go Dutch.” Szilard said he needed “all the cash on hand I can get.” He advised Raskin to always be prepared in three ways: keep your passport in order, keep plenty of cash, and always keep a bag packed. (One bag Szilard always kept was his “Big Bomb Suitcase,” with essential family, academic, and patent records, in case he had to flee a nuclear war.) “I will take Erika with me if you want,” Szilard said, referring to Raskin’s three-year-old daughter, whom he enjoyed entertaining on Sunday walks. Raskin admired Szilard and began to wonder what to do. Was this advice right? Should he flee, too?44

  The Szilards littered their room with new suitcases and packed until after midnight. Before dawn the next morning they stuffed fourteen bags into a taxi to National Airport and from there flew to New York. That Wednesday, October 24, as about twenty-five Soviet-bloc vessels steamed toward Cuba, the US Navy closed its blockade around the island. Then the Soviets recalled some ships.

  But as the White House redefined its quarantine procedures, a new problem arose in Washington, this time over the US Navy’s own conduct. The White House planners now wanted to be sure that the blockade did not humiliate the Russians. Otherwise, “Khrushchev might react in a nuclear spasm. . . .”45 Just the irrational blunder Szilard had feared.

  All day Szilard telephoned friends, urging them to leave, asking their opinions. He called geneticist Joshua Lederberg and in an anxious voice asked him what he thought he would do. He also called Richard Garwin, an H-bomb designer on the President’s Science Advisory Committee, and the two physicists met for lunch at a small East Side restaurant. Even in panic, Szilard strained to be rational about the few facts they knew. “Leo maintained that the Soviets would not put offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba because they had nothing to gain,” Garwin recalled. “And I said they would because they had nothing to lose.” As it turned out, “we were both wrong,” Garwin reflected years later. “They did put them in, which made Leo wrong, and they did have much to lose, which made me wrong.”46 Szilard and Garwin were not the only nuclear scientists frightened by the blockade. At Harvard, President Eisenhower’s science adviser, chemist George Kistiakowsky, dismissed his classes early, saying, “War is at hand.”

  Ironically, Szilard was supposed to attend a nuclear strategy conference in Cambridge that Wednesday. He missed it and a meeting for fellows of the new Salk Institute the next day at the Gotham Hotel on Fifth Avenue.47 On Thursday morning, he and Trude were in a taxi driving toward Idlewild. Fog over Western Europe diverted their flight from Geneva, and as their plane touched down in Rome, Trude said, “Now you can see the pope.” Szilard decided to try but, telephoning from his hotel, learned that Pope John XXIII was involved each day in the Ecumenical Council (Vatican II) that he had opened two weeks before.

  The next morning, Saturday, October 27, the Szilards flew on to Geneva and from the airport took a brief taxi ride to the sprawling campus of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). The center’s director at the time was their friend physicist Victor Weisskopf. Szilard knocked at Weisskopf’s office door, then stepped in.

  “Leo,” said Weisskopf, looking up from his desk in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m the first refugee from America, there’s persecution of liberals, JFK is a sick man, there will be nuclear war in a few days.” Szilard said he had fifteen pieces of luggage at the airport and wondered if he might have use of a desk.

  Weisskopf laughed nervously, then offered Szilard an office at CERN and told him the latest he had heard by radio about the crisis.48 Some Soviet vessels had been boarded; others passed without inspection. Unknown to the public that day, President Kennedy had dispatched his brother Robert, the US attorney general, on a secret visit to Ambassador Dobrynin at the Soviet embassy. Behind the confrontation was a three-step compromise. Soviet missiles would be withdrawn from Cuba. In return, the United States would not invade the island and would remove its obsolete, intermediate-range Jupiter missiles from Turkey.49

  Szilard was unaware of how frightened and ultimately cautious Kennedy had become as the crisis progressed. As far as he knew, it was Khrushchev who had been the statesman. Szilard situated himself and Trude at the old-fashioned Hotel Bernina, on Place de Cornavin opposite Geneva’s railway station, and set about trying to revive his Angels Project— a scheme he thought was now needed more than ever. Martin Kaplan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) and a friend from Pugwash conferences, offered the Szilards offices at the Palais des Nations, the imposing headquarters for several UN agencies. This placed Szilard conveniently between the Soviet mission along the north shore of Lake Leman and his hotel downtown. At the Bernina, Szilard wandered in and out of the lobby with papers under his arm and gray hair flying about. “He was here but not here,” recalled the concierge, Elias Blatter. “Appearing, disappearing. . . .”50

  At about that time, Robert Livingston reported to Szilard that Defense Secretary McNamara thought the Cuban Missile Crisis might have improved opportunities for the Angels Project,51 and an invitation came from Khrushchev to proceed and to visit Moscow. “I like this proposal,” Khrushchev said, now eager for ways to ease US-Soviet tensions.52 Szilard replied immediately, sending the names of possible American participants. These included Fisher, George Rathjens of MIT, Henry Kissinger and Harvey Brooks of Harvard, Lew Henkin of Columbia Law School, Dyson, James Fisk of Bell Telephone Labs, and Don Ling of Morristown, New Jersey.53

  The Angels Project, Szilard thought, could be the first positive step between Russia and America after the wrenching experience of the missile crisis.54 But as Szilard happily made plans to leave for Moscow on November 26, Livingston telephoned from Washington.55 Some “misunderstandings” with the Kennedy administration would have to be cleared up first. Livingston had told Raskin about Szilard’s plan to visit Khrushchev, and Raskin had told McGeorge Bundy, who fumed. Szilard would not negotiate with the Soviet premier! Bundy insisted.56

  Dejected by this news, Szilard unpacked and again wrote to Khrushchev, citing a misunderstanding.57 When Szilard read in the papers that Khrushchev was about to visit French president Charles de Gaulle, he hopped on a train for Paris. There he called his biology colleagues François Jacob and Jacques Monod at the Pasteur Institute, seeking help to penetrate the Foreign Ministry. But when this approach failed, Szilard returned to Geneva and wrote Khrushchev again, this time enclosing a rectangular pocket watch whose case pulled apart to reveal the time.

  “I wanted to give you a souvenir that would give you pleasure,” Szilard said. “It’s not a formal gift. The watch is very convenient; I have the same sort myself.” The action of opening the watch also winds it. “It’s hard for us older people to wear wristwatches,” Szilard said, “because they can interfere with the circulation. I hope you will use it.”58 Then, musing about Bundy’s complaint, Szilard returned to Washington, now somewhat chagrined about his leaving.

  “Welcome back, Forbes,” Szilard joked when the two men m
et in the Dupont Plaza lobby in mid-December. Forbes had been “disgusted” with Szilard when he left for Geneva, and the council’s office manager, Ruth Pinkson, “felt so let down” she had wanted to quit. “He had preached to me, ‘We are saving the world!,’ and then he left us,” she recalled. But Forbes and Pinkson stayed on and moved the office to the Dupont Circle Building, then a low-rent haven for public-interest groups.

  Back in Washington, Szilard seemed depressed and showed little interest in the council.59 But he was amused to learn that during the missile crisis a homemade fallout shelter built in California by Manhattan Project chemist Willard Libby had been damaged in a brushfire. A former US atomic energy commissioner and a Nobel laureate, Libby opposed arms-control negotiations, prompting Szilard to remark that the shelter fire proved not only “that God exists, but that He has a sense of humor.”60

  At 5:00 P.M. on December 31, Szilard appeared at the West Gate of the White House for an appointment with Bundy. In their meeting Szilard tried to stress that the Angels Project was not meant to displace official negotiations, only to precede them by identifying promising topics. This made no impression on Bundy. “Maybe,” he reflected years later, “because it was New Year’s Eve.”61 But when Carl Kaysen, Bundy’s assistant, showed more interest in the project, Szilard drafted two memoranda for the participants.62 Still, Szilard could raise little foundation money to fund the first meeting, nor could he be sure that the administration would allow his best candidates to participate.63

  In mid-February 1963, Szilard met again with Bundy and this time annoyed him by offering gratuitous advice about how the administration should handle “domestic political pressure” then building “on the issue of Cuba.”64 To get around Bundy, Szilard proposed staging a “hearing” for expert “witnesses” from in and out of government, with the transcript sent to the president.65 Nothing came of this idea. When the council failed to attract the $25 million he had first hoped for, Szilard quipped that that much was not really needed; you can be just as effective with congressmen by threatening to withhold donations as you can by promising to make them.66