by American Prometheus: The Triumph;Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Robert then turned to the primary purpose of his letter: to urge Frank to seek “the comfort, the strength, the advice of a good lawyer.” The House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) had been holding hearings that summer, and Robert was worried for his brother—and perhaps himself. “It has been hard,” he wrote Frank, “since we left to follow in detail what all is up with the [J. Parnell] Thomas Committee. . . . Even the Hiss story seemed to me a menacing portent.”
That August, a Time magazine editor and former communist named Whittaker Chambers had testified before HUAC that Alger Hiss, a New Deal lawyer and former high-ranking State Department official, had been a member of a secret communist cell in Washington. Chambers’ accusations against Hiss quickly became the centerpiece of the Republican case that Roosevelt’s New Dealers had allowed communists to worm their way into the heart of the American foreign policy establishment. Hiss sued Chambers for libel in September 1948—but by the end of the year Hiss was indicted for perjury.
Oppenheimer was right to think the Hiss case a “menacing portent.” If someone of Hiss’ stature could be brought down by HUAC, he feared what the Committee could do to his brother, whose Communist Party affiliation was well known. Robert knew that back in March 1947, the Washington Times-Herald had run a story charging that Frank had been a Party member. Frank had foolishly denied the truth of the story. Without being explicit, Robert observed that Frank had “thought about it a lot these last years. . . .” It was in this context that he gently suggested that Frank get a lawyer, and not just a good lawyer. He needed someone who knew “his way around Washington, the Congress . . . and above all the press. Why don’t you consider Herb Marks, who may have all these qualifications?” Robert hoped that his brother would not be caught up in one of HUAC’s witch-hunts; but clearly, Frank had to be prepared.
Now thirty-six years old, Frank Oppenheimer was standing on the brink of a rewarding career. First at the University of Rochester and now at the University of Minnesota, he was doing innovative experimental work in particle physics. By 1949, he had a reputation among his fellow physicists as one of the country’s foremost experimentalists, studying high-energy particles (cosmic rays) at high altitudes. Early that year, he had shipped out to the Caribbean aboard a Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Saipan, from which he and his team had launched a series of helium balloons carrying a specially designed capsule containing a cloud chamber with stacks of nuclear-emulsion photo plates. Designed to climb to extremely high altitudes, the balloon-borne photo plates recorded the tracks of heavy nuclei; this data suggested that the origin of cosmic rays could be traced to exploding stars. The metal capsules had to be recovered after descending, and Frank found himself trekking through the jungles of Cuba’s Sierra Maestra in search of one such capsule—which he triumphantly found perched atop a mahogany tree. But when another disappeared into the sea, Frank wrote melodramatically that his spirit was “completely broken.” In fact, he loved these adventures and reveled in his work. If he had followed in Robert’s footsteps through 1945, Frank was now set on an independent course as a cutting-edge experimentalist.
Worried as he was about Frank, Robert appears to have believed that his fame would neutralize his own left-wing past. In November 1948, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, accompanied by a flattering profile of his life and career. Time’s editors told millions of Americans that Oppenheimer, a founding father of the atomic age, was an “authentic contemporary hero.” When interviewed by Time’s reporters, he did not try to hide his radical background. He unabashedly explained that until 1936 he had been “certainly one of the most unpolitical people in the world. . . .” But then he confessed that the sight of young unemployed physicists “cracking up” and the news that his own relatives in Germany were having to flee the Nazi regime, had opened his eyes. “I woke up to a recognition that politics was a part of life. I became a real left-winger, joined the Teachers’ Union, had lots of Communist friends. It was what most people do in college or late high school. The Thomas Committee [HUAC] doesn’t like this, but I’m not ashamed of it; I’m more ashamed of the lateness. Most of what I believed then now seems complete nonsense, but it was an essential part of becoming a whole man. If it hadn’t been for this late but indispensable education, I couldn’t have done the job at Los Alamos at all.”
Soon after the Time story was published, Oppie’s good friend and sometime lawyer, Herb Marks, wrote to congratulate him on what he thought had been a “quite good” article. In what was probably a reference to Oppie’s quoted remarks about his left-wing past, Marks commented, “That one ‘pre-trial’ touch was superb.” Robert replied, “The only thing I liked was the one deliberate point you picked out, where I saw an opportunity, long solicited, but not before available.” Herb’s wife, Anne Wilson (Oppie’s former secretary), was worried that the Time publicity would attract critics. Oppenheimer himself wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. “I suffered from it,” he wrote Herb, “in the most acute way in the first week or so, but came out of that thinking wryly that it was probably good for me.”
OPPENHEIMER MAY have hoped to inoculate himself against congressional investigators, but in the spring of 1949 HUAC launched a major investigation of atomic spying at Berkeley’s Rad Lab. Not only Frank but Robert himself was a potential target. Four of Oppenheimer’s former students— David Bohm, Rossi Lomanitz, Max Friedman and Joseph Weinberg—were served with subpoenas requiring them to testify. HUAC’s investigators knew that Weinberg had been overheard on a wiretap talking to Steve Nelson in 1943 about the atomic bomb. But while this evidence appeared to implicate Weinberg in atomic spying, HUAC’s counsel knew that a warrantless wiretap would not stand up in court. On April 26, 1949, HUAC brought Weinberg face-to-face with Steve Nelson. He flatly denied having ever met Nelson. HUAC’s lawyers knew Weinberg had perjured himself—but proving it was going to be difficult. They hoped to build their case with testimony from Bohm, Friedman and Lomanitz.
Bohm was not sure whether he should testify, and if so, whether he should be willing to testify about his friends. Einstein urged him to refuse to testify, even though he might have to go to jail. “You may have to sit for a while,” the scientist told him. Bohm didn’t want to take the Fifth Amendment; he reasoned that being a member of the Communist Party was not illegal, and therefore there was nothing he could incriminate himself about. His instinct was to agree to testify about his own political activities but refuse to testify about others. Aware that Lomanitz had received a similar subpoena, Bohm contacted his old friend, who was teaching in Nashville at the time. Lomanitz had had a rough time since the war; each time he found a decent job, the FBI would inform his employer that Lomanitz was a communist and he would be fired. His future seemed particularly bleak, but he found the wherewithal to visit Bohm in Princeton.
Soon after his arrival, the two old friends were walking on Nassau Street when Oppenheimer emerged from a barbershop. Robert hadn’t seen Lomanitz for years, but they had kept in touch. In the autumn of 1945, he had written Lomanitz. “Dear Rossi: I was glad to get your long, but very melancholy letter. When you are back in the States and free to do so please come and see me. . . . It is a hard time, and especially hard for you, but hold on—it won’t last forever. With all warm good wishes, Opje.” Now, after exchanging pleasantries with Oppie, Bohm and Lomanitz explained their predicament. According to Lomanitz, Oppenheimer became agitated and suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, my God, all is lost. There is an FBI man on the Un-American Activities Committee.” Lomanitz thought this “paranoiac.”
But Oppenheimer had every reason to worry. He, too, had been served a subpoena to testify before HUAC, and he happened to know that one member of the Committee, Illinois congressman Harold Velde, was indeed a former FBI agent, and had worked in Berkeley during the war years investigating the Rad Lab.
Oppenheimer later characterized this encounter with his former students as a brief two-minute conversation. He said he had merely advised
them to “tell the truth,” and they had responded, “We won’t lie.” In the event, Bohm testified before HUAC in May and again in June 1949. On advice of his counsel, the legendary civil liberties lawyer Clifford Durr, he refused to cooperate, citing both the First and Fifth amendments. For the time being, Princeton University, where he was then teaching, issued a statement supporting Bohm.
On June 7, 1949, it was Oppenheimer’s turn to appear before a closed-door, executive session of HUAC. Six congressmen were there to interrogate him, including Representative Richard M. Nixon (R-Cal.). Oppenheimer ostensibly appeared before the Committee in his role as chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the AEC. But these hard-boiled congressmen were not there to question him on nuclear weapons policy; they wanted to know about atomic spies. Apprehensive, he nonetheless wished not to appear defensive, so he decided not to appear with a personal lawyer. Instead, he brought along Joseph Volpe, and made a point of introducing him as the AEC’s general counsel. Over the next two hours, Oppenheimer was cooperative and forthcoming.
HUAC’s counsel first proclaimed that the Committee was not seeking to embarrass him. But the very first question was: “You were acquainted with the fact, were you not, that a communist cell existed among certain scientists at the Radiation Laboratory?” Oppenheimer denied any such knowledge. He was then asked to talk about the political activities and views of his former students. He denied knowing before the war that Weinberg was a communist. “He was in Berkeley after the war,” Oppenheimer said, “and his expressed views then were certainly not communist-line views.”
HUAC’s counsel then asked Oppenheimer about another of his former students, Dr. Bernard Peters. His response reflects his continuing naïveté. He appears to have assumed that because he was testifying in executive session, his comments would not become public. Was it true, asked the HUAC counsel, that Oppenheimer had told Manhattan Project security officers that Peters was “a dangerous man and quite red”? Oppenheimer admitted that he had said as much to Capt. Peer de Silva, his security officer at Los Alamos. Asked to elaborate, Oppenheimer explained that Peters had been a member of the German Communist Party and that he had fought in street battles against the Nazis. Subsequently he had been sent to a concentration camp and then miraculously escaped using “guile.” He also volunteered that when Peters arrived in California, he “violently denounced” the Communist Party as “not sufficiently dedicated to the overthrow of the [U.S.] Government by force and violence.” When asked how he knew Peters had been a member of the German Communist Party, Oppenheimer replied, “Among other things, he told me.”
Oppenheimer seems to have been troubled about Peters. In May, just a month earlier, while he was attending a conference of the American Physical Society, his old friend Samuel Goudsmit had asked him about Peters. In his capacity as an AEC consultant, Goudsmit occasionally reviewed security cases. Peters had recently asked Goudsmit why he seemed to be in trouble—so Goudsmit had looked at his security file and read Oppenheimer’s 1943 statement to De Silva in which he had said that Peters was “dangerous.” When Goudsmit asked Oppie whether he still had the same opinion of Peters, Oppenheimer surprised him by answering, “Just look at him. Can’t you tell he can’t be trusted?”
Oppenheimer was asked about other friends as well. When queried as to whether his old friend Haakon Chevalier was a communist, he replied that “he was the prize example of a parlor pink,” but that he had no knowledge of whether or not he was a Party member. Regarding the “Chevalier affair,” Oppenheimer repeated the same story he had told the FBI in 1946—that a confused and embarrassed Chevalier had told him about Eltenton’s notion of “communicating information to the Soviet Government,” and that in response he (Oppenheimer) had loudly and “in violent terms told him not to be confused and to have no connection with it.” Chevalier had no knowledge, Oppenheimer said, of the atomic bomb until it exploded over Hiroshima. The Committee did not specifically ask about an approach to three other scientists—the version of the story he had told Pash in 1943—but he denied that any other individual had approached him for atomic information.
Regarding another of his former students, Oppenheimer briefly confirmed that Rossi Lomanitz had been dismissed from the Rad Lab and inducted into the Army owing to an “unbelievable indiscretion.” He also acknowledged that Joe Weinberg was a friend of Lomanitz’s and that another physics student, Dr. Irving David Fox, had been active in organizing a union inside the Rad Lab. When asked about Kenneth May, he confirmed that May was “an avowed Communist.”
Oppenheimer was trying hard to please. Where he could, he was naming names. But when asked about his brother’s past Party membership, Robert replied, “Mr. Chairman, I will answer the questions you put to me. I ask you not to press these questions about my brother. If they are important to you, you can ask him. I will answer, if asked, but I beg you not to ask me these questions.”
In a mark of extraordinary deference, HUAC’s counsel withdrew the question. Before adjourning, Congressman Nixon said that he was “tremendously impressed” with Oppenheimer and “mighty happy to have him in the position he has in our program.” Joe Volpe was astonished at Oppenheimer’s cool performance: “Robert seemed to have made up his mind to charm these Congressmen out of their seats.” Afterwards, all six HUAC legislators came down to shake the hand of the famous scientist. Perhaps it is not surprising that Robert continued to believe that his notoriety was a protective shield.
OPPENHEIMER EMERGED unscathed from the hearings, but his former students were not so fortunate. The day after Oppenheimer’s testimony, Bernard Peters spent an almost perfunctory twenty minutes before the Committee. Peters denied that he had been a CP member in Germany or in the United States—and he denied that his wife, Dr. Hannah Peters, had ever been a Party member, or that he knew Steve Nelson.
Peters left wondering what Oppenheimer had told the Committee the previous day, so on his way back to Rochester, he stopped off in Princeton to see his mentor. Oppie quipped that “God guided their questions so that I did not say anything derogatory.” One week later, however, Oppenheimer’s closed-session testimony was leaked to the Rochester Times-Union. The headline blared: “Dr. Oppenheimer Once Termed Peters ‘Quite Red.’ ” Peters’ colleagues at the University of Rochester read that their colleague had escaped from Dachau by “guile” and had once criticized the American Communist Party as insufficiently dedicated to armed revolution.
Peters knew immediately that his job was at risk. Only the previous year, similar HUAC testimony had leaked and when the Rochester Times-Union published a story headlined “U of R Scientist May Face Spy Probers,” Peters had sued the paper for libel. He won an out-of-court settlement of $1. With this history, Peters understood what was at stake if the allegations were resurrected. Peters promptly denied Oppenheimer’s allegations, telling the Rochester Times-Union, “I have never told Dr. Oppenheimer or anybody that I had been a member of the Communist Party because I have not; but I did say that I greatly admired the spirited fight they put up against the Nazis . . . and also that I admired the heroes who died in the concentration camp at Dachau.” Peters admitted that his political views, even today, were “not orthodox,” citing his strong opposition to racial discrimination and his belief in the “desirability of socialism.” But he was not a communist.
That same day, Peters wrote Oppenheimer a letter, enclosing the newspaper clip, and asked if he had indeed said these things before HUAC. “You are right that I advocated ‘direct action’ against fascist dictatorships. But do you know of any instances where I advocated such action in a nation where the majority of people were supporting a government of their own free choice?” He also asked, “Where did you get the dramatic story of the street battles I was in? I wish I had.” Peters was outraged enough to ask his lawyer if he had sufficient cause “to sue Robert for libel.”
Five days later, on June 20, Oppenheimer phoned Peters’ lawyer, Sol Linowitz, and passed a message to Hannah Peters: He wa
nted Bernard to know that he was “very much disturbed” by the newspaper story and insisted that it misrepresented what he had said to the Committee. Robert said he was most anxious to talk with Bernard.
In short order, Oppenheimer heard from his brother Frank, Hans Bethe and Victor Weisskopf, all of them expressing pained astonishment that Oppie would attack a friend that way. Both Weisskopf and Bethe wrote that they could not understand how he could have said such things about Peters, as Weisskopf put it, and they urged him to “set this record straight and do what is in your power to prevent Peters’ dismissal. . . .” Bethe wrote him that “I remember you spoke in the most friendly terms to me about the Peterses, and they certainly have considered you their friend. How could you represent his escape from Dachau as evidence for his inclination to ‘direct action’ rather than a measure of self-defence against mortal peril?”
Edward Condon, Oppie’s friend from Göttingen days and briefly his deputy director at Los Alamos, was angry and “shocked beyond description.” Now director of the U.S. Bureau of Standards, Condon was himself the occasional target of right-wing attacks on Capitol Hill. On June 23, 1949, he wrote his wife, Emilie: “I am convinced that Robert Oppenheimer is losing his mind. . . . [I]f Oppie is really becoming unbalanced, it can have very complicated consequences considering his positions, including that of originator of the Acheson-Lilienthal report on international control of atomic energy. . . . [I]f he cracks up it will certainly be a great tragedy. I only hope that he does not drag down too many others with him. Peters says the testimony of Oppie about him is full of out-and-out lies on matters where Oppie should know the truth.”