Conant spent the winter campaigning for an independent, rearmed West Germany, arguing that the move toward European integration was the best way to achieve peace. But with each side jockeying for power, he was growing increasingly worried that if the squabbling continued much longer, far less constructive alternatives would gain credence. Elements within Adenauer’s coalition, angered by France’s foot-dragging, were making noises about creating a German “national army” instead of the multinational EDC force. He was leery of any scheme that would lead to an Anglo-American military evacuation and leave the coal- and industry-rich Ruhr Valley vulnerable to the Russians. Conant warned Eisenhower and Dulles that “even a remote possibility” that this could occur would be dangerous, given the political instability of the country, and was “thoroughly alarmed.”
Frustrated by the endless delays, shifting demands, and disturbing signs of growing nationalistic fervor in both France and Germany, his patience was wearing thin. “What growling dogs they both are,” he complained to his diary. “Can this European business be made to work by the present bunch of politicians unless the Russians scare them more? I am in my Robert A. Taft mood,” he added, empathizing briefly with the diehard isolationist.
The intensifying fight over the EDC pushed Conant to brave Dulles’s disapproval, and, in a rare departure from the official line, he gave a speech in Frankfurt on March 31, 1954, in which he baldly stated that West Germany should become a sovereign state whether or not six “little European countries” ratified the treaty. “No reaction from Washington as to my ‘calculated indiscretion,’ ” he noted in his diary, but Conant was pleased his sharply worded statement had gotten everyone’s attention, reassured the restive German public, and added impetus to the ratification process. France, of course, immediately took offense. Though the State Department tried to characterize Conant’s remarks as personal, his statement was construed as a direct threat to France’s veto power over German rearmament. Despite Conant’s sortie into pressure diplomacy, and taking to the newspapers and radio to exhort the European leaders to vote for ratification, it looked like the EDC was a lost cause.
* * *
Two weeks later, on April 17, he flew back to the United States for a final stand in what promised to be another losing battle: testifying in Oppenheimer’s defense before the Atomic Energy Commission’s specially convened security hearing. Oppenheimer was threatened with the removal of his military security clearances and stood accused of various indiscretions—namely, friendships with members of the American Communist Party—by zealous proponents of the hydrogen bomb. Conant had dreaded this day since receiving a letter on March 22 from Oppenheimer’s distinguished New York attorney, Lloyd Garrison, seeking both a written testimonial to his client’s character and loyalty and his promise to appear as a supporting witness. Conant had already fought and won an earlier skirmish with J. Edgar Hoover over whether the left-wing physicist was fit to have access to classified information, and, after a review, his clearance had been upheld.
Conant thought it was probably inevitable with the “atmosphere of fear in Washington” that Oppenheimer’s past would catch up with him again. But this was a much graver situation, not the least because it was so public, with the newspapers printing the AEC’s charges, and McCarthy’s televised probe of a Communist cover-up in the US Army heightening the climate of suspicion. Three days before the AEC security hearing was set to begin, McCarthy gave an interview denouncing Oppenheimer for deliberately delaying work on the hydrogen bomb, and claiming the only reason he himself was not pursuing an investigation was because of assurances from “top administration officials that this matter would be gone into in detail.”
Conant worried that the “notorious senator” was setting the stage for what promised to be a tawdry political sideshow. He also worried that his absence from the Washington scene, and waning influence in the scientific community, meant that he was no longer in the same position to protect Oppenheimer from the powerful forces aligned against him. Even before Conant had left for his new job in Germany, the whispering campaign against Oppenheimer was growing louder and more vicious. The bitter split over the H-bomb, exacerbated by Teller’s relentless lobbying for a second nuclear weapons laboratory, had emboldened Oppenheimer’s antagonists in the FBI, the air force, and amid the bigger bomb proponents at Los Alamos and in the halls of government. They wanted him out of the way, and would stop at nothing to ruin his reputation and topple him from his lofty perch atop the nuclear hierarchy.
Conant knew that his and Oppie’s efforts at nuclear restraint over the past decade had earned them enemies. He had not forgotten the chilling conversation with Oppenheimer and Lee DuBridge in the spring of 1952, when they had agreed it was time to watch their backs. “Some of the ‘boys’ have their axe out for three of us on the GAC of the AEC,” Conant had later noted in his diary. Nor had he forgotten the “dirty words” being said about Oppie at the time, and the fact that his political promiscuity, in light of the country’s present anti-intellectualism, made him an easy target. After the Soviets tested their first hydrogen bomb in August 1953, Oppenheimer’s critics had stepped up their attacks, arguing that he had been wrong in his advice against the H-bomb, and suggesting that his call for arms control and dialogue had been motivated by disloyalty and the desire to disclose military secrets to the Russians.
It was Vannevar Bush, during a January visit to Bonn, who told Conant that the slur campaign against Oppenheimer had finally succeeded in eroding Eisenhower’s trust in his chief nuclear advisor. At the urging of Lewis Strauss, the new chairman of the AEC, and General Kenneth Nichols, the AEC’s general manager, the president had secretly ordered that a “blank wall” be erected between Oppenheimer and all atomic secrets. Strauss was in the hawkish Teller camp, but his personal animosity toward the arrogant former Los Alamos director went far beyond policy differences. Showing off before a Senate panel, Oppenheimer had made a fool of the investment banker—making an isotope joke that exposed his ignorance—and Strauss’s hatred of him had festered ever since. On December 21, 1953, Strauss and Nichols informed Oppenheimer that he was now regarded as a security risk, and his clearance had been suspended. They then handed him an eight-page letter listing the charges on which the suspension was based, consisting largely of the “derogatory material” dredged up from his FBI file. But rather than resign quietly and avoid a hearing, as they had hoped, Oppenheimer insisted on being given the opportunity to clear his name.
After all Oppie had done for his country, after all he had achieved, Conant could not believe the AEC would proceed against him. He was determined to help defend his old friend from retaliation by a group of ambitious rivals. Moreover, he was outraged by the suggestion that Oppenheimer’s opposition to thermonuclear weapons in any way impugned his patriotism, especially as recent events—the imminent prospect of a Soviet Super—had confirmed their sickening foreboding about Russia’s ability to duplicate their accomplishments. In his view, Truman’s decision to proceed with the development of the H-bomb had been a disaster, and they were now committed to a renewed arms race and stockpiling ever more dangerous nuclear weapons. He supposed the fact that they had been right made them even more suspect.
“I have no apologies whatsoever for the position I took and to which all the other members [of the GAC] subscribed in general,” Conant asserted in a letter to Bush in late March. “Indeed, I think I was as much a leader of this point of view as any person.” But he had no illusions about what he was up against. Even before the hearing began, he questioned the competence of the three members of the Personnel Security Board—Gordon Gray, Thomas A. Morgan, and Ward V. Evans—to fairly assess the enormously complicated technical and military defense issues involved in the H-bomb decision, complaining to Bush that they could not possibly “pass judgment on the wisdom or lack of it of the GAC recommendations in 1949.” It did not help that all three were decidedly conservative: Gray, the chairman, was the former secretary of the army,
now president of the University of North Carolina; Morgan was chairman of the Sperry Corporation; Evans, a retired chemistry professor, had served on AEC security panels in the past and had a track record of denying clearances.
Adding to Conant’s misgivings was Dulles’s negative reaction to his confidential note alerting him of his intention to appear at the hearing in support of Oppenheimer. Immediately cabling Conant that “factors unknown to you make [an appearance] undesirable,” Dulles followed up with an “eyes only” letter warning him off in no uncertain terms:
There is the general feeling in White House circles that it would be a good deal better if you did not become publicly involved in the matter. I do not mean to indicate there is any evidence to throw doubt on the gentleman’s loyalty, and I do not think that any effort will indeed be made to prove disloyalty, at least as far as the executive is concerned—I cannot vouch for what might happen in Congress. However, there is considerable evidence of laxity and poor judgment and, in some cases, lack of veracity.
I thought you ought to know this.
There was never any question in Conant’s mind that he would testify on Oppenheimer’s behalf, even though he was almost sick at the thought of the coming ordeal. When he stepped off the plane in New York, the press corps was waiting for him. The papers were full of stories about the extraordinary closed-door sessions and reports that he had flown in from Germany to appear before the Security Board on behalf of the man he had chosen to supervise the atomic bomb project. Conant dodged their questions and headed straight for Washington to meet with the secretary of state. In a brief meeting with Dulles on Monday, April 19, the two “covered Germany in 15 min” before moving on to the real business at hand. “Told him I had no choice but to testify at Oppenheimer hearing,” Conant reported in his diary. “He said I should know this might destroy my usefulness to govt. I said I quite realized this and he only had to give the word and I was through.”
The next afternoon, he walked into the drab little hearing room of the AEC’s Temporary Building III to affirm Oppenheimer’s fitness to serve the government. He took the stand, raised his right hand, and swore to tell the truth, and then sat facing the three men on the Personnel Security Board, who were positioned around a big, horseshoe-shaped table. Asked if he had a comment on the AEC’s December 23 letter listing the charges against Oppenheimer, Conant, in an admittedly “aggressive mood” that reflected his anger at the farcical proceedings, replied that he had read it and thought that it must have been “carelessly drafted.” The way it was worded, he observed caustically, he, too, would be ineligible for government service because he strongly opposed—“as strongly as anybody else on that committee”—the development of the hydrogen bomb. Describing the AEC’s reasons for doubting Oppenheimer as almost a “caricature” of the kind of sound argument he was accustomed to, he went on to pick apart the logic of its contention that Oppenheimer’s opposition to the H-bomb was detrimental to the interests of the United States. “The record is quite the contrary,” he stated emphatically, and proceeded to read into the record all the things Oppenheimer had done and said that were “detrimental to the Soviet Union.”
During cross-examination, Conant kept to short, clipped responses. He was too practiced a witness to be easily manipulated by the AEC’s skillful attorney, Roger Robb, and refused to be drawn into making contradictory statements or to rise to digs about why he and his fellow atomic advisors exceeded their authority by giving advice on military strategy. “Nobody has to take the advice if they don’t want to,” was Conant’s calm rejoinder. “It turned out they didn’t.” He was unwavering in his defense of Oppenheimer’s loyalty and insisted that his failure to report the so-called Chevalier incident—when he was approached for security information to pass on to Russian scientists—was insignificant. “He had nothing else but conversation with the man,” Conant asserted. Nor did he alter his view of Oppenheimer’s record of “effective actions against the Soviet Union.”
But Oppenheimer’s behavior, as described in the AEC indictment, had been a bit odd: first in delaying several months before reporting the incident and then in declining to name Chevalier as the person who had approached him. Conant wobbled only once, when Ward Evans posed the hypothetical question of what someone should do if approached for security information, and pressed for the answer he wanted, “Wouldn’t you have reported it just as quickly as you could?”
“I think I would have, yes,” faltered Conant, who had helped foster the national security mentality that now threatened to entrap Oppenheimer. “I hope I would have; let us put it that way.”
Sensing his discomfort, Robb broke in and exploited the opportunity to further discredit Oppenheimer by implying that the discrepancies in the physicist’s account of the Chevalier exchange with counterintelligence officials amounted to intentional deceit. “When you did report it, Doctor,” Robb asked pointedly, “you would have told the whole truth about it?”
“I hope so.”
Satisfied, Robb had the last word: “I am sure you would.”
Afterward, Conant was “not very happy” about the AEC’s lawyer’s prosecutorial style, which he compared with a “belligerent corporal,” and reported his concerns to Eisenhower. From what Conant had seen and heard, the AEC charges and proceedings seemed so stacked against Oppenheimer that there was virtually no chance he would prevail. The president said he had “prayed it would come out okay, but doubted it.”
Conant also shared his concerns that Oppenheimer’s resistance to the H-bomb was included in the AEC indictment, creating the impression that he was being punished for his opinion. Later in the day, Eisenhower wrote Conant a brief note explaining that “no criticism” was directed toward Oppenheimer because of his opposition to the H-bomb—“that opinion was recited merely to give background to certain other allegations to the effect that, even after the decision to produce had been made by the highest possible authority, the Doctor [Oppenheimer] departed from his proper role as advisor and attempted to slow down development.” Eisenhower apparently had second thoughts about that assertion, as he decided against sending the note to Conant, though he sent a copy to Strauss.
Conant departed for Germany before the hearing concluded, but he had heard enough gossip around town to leave him thoroughly depressed about the outcome. “Washington very tense!” he reported in his diary. Roger Adams, the foreign secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, confided over lunch at the Cosmos Club that the academy members were “divided” on Oppie and that “the California gang of chemists said he was a security risk.” Others such as Bush, Rabi, DuBridge, and Jack McCloy were furious. Privately, many of them blamed Teller and the “scientists in the other camp” for starting the trouble by circulating rumors. Conant agreed but reserved some of his anger for the White House, which could have avoided the “first-class mess.”
On May 27 the board issued its report, recommending 2 to 1 to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance. In fantastically contorted prose, the majority report, signed by Gray and Morgan, concluded that Oppenheimer was a “loyal citizen,” but that his “continuing conduct and associations” reflected a serious disregard for security, and that his views regarding the hydrogen bomb program were “sufficiently disturbing as to raise a doubt as to whether his future participation . . . would be clearly consistent with the best interests of security.” It was Ward Evans, the only scientist, who pointed out the paradox inherent in their finding him loyal but a security risk: “To deny him clearance now for what he was cleared for in 1947, when we must know he is less of a security risk now than he was then, seems hardly the procedure to be adopted in a free country.” A month later, the five AEC commissioners confirmed the Security Board’s judgment by a vote of 4 to 1. Again, it was the lone scientist, Henry DeWolf Smyth, who dissented. Strauss, the least impartial member of the panel, wrote the majority report for the AEC, which explained why it was laced with suspicion and vitriol.
The verdict ended Oppenheim
er’s government service. Compounding his disgrace was the government’s sudden decision to publish the full transcript of the hearings in June, violating its assurances to Oppenheimer and all the witnesses that it would be kept confidential. To make sure that public sentiment was in its corner, the AEC even provided the press with a guide to the 992-page document highlighting the passage in which Oppenheimer admitted the original story he told security officers about the Chevalier incident was a “tissue of lies.” From a public relations standpoint, it allowed the government to control the story, contrast the orderly AEC inquiry with McCarthy’s kangaroo court, and cast its actions in the best possible light.
But for Conant, it was one betrayal too many. Oppenheimer had made mistakes, said things he should not have, certainly, but he had done nothing to deserve a public lynching. Notwithstanding his belief that the proceedings were never justified in the first place, “They were not at all what they were supposed to be: a hearing on the merits of a fine man,” Conant told an interviewer years later, his anger still palpable. He would never forgive Teller, whose complaints about Oppie’s attitudes and actions had formed the basis of the charges that he was a security risk, and whose devastating testimony made the government’s case.
“It was an outrageous business from beginning to end,” Conant said, adding heavily, “a thing of a very unfortunate nature.”
* * *
As the Oppenheimer tragedy played out in Washington, Conant was engaged on another front by the looming failure of the EDC. By the spring of 1954, the French had moved from confusion to a full-blown state of crisis after the loss of Indochina, the last vestige of their colonial empire, to the Communist-trained Vietnamese nationalist forces. At the Geneva Conference in July, Vietnam was temporarily divided along the seventeenth parallel between the Communist North and the South. As the French government fell to a vote of no confidence, Conant gloomily contemplated the “fatal day” of their EDC vote, aware that a great opportunity was slipping away. “The free world seems to be coming apart at the seams, and the European movement,” he wrote, “is very sick indeed.” On August 31, the day after the French National Assembly finally killed the EDC—“D-day or Defeat Day,” as he called it—Conant met with Adenauer, who was “shattered.” Two full years of exhausting international diplomacy had “gone up in oratorical smoke,” jeopardizing the future of NATO and throwing the Western alliance into doubt. “What will happen?” Conant worried to his diary that night. “Anyone’s guess?”
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