Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin

by American Prometheus: The Triumph;Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

  By then, Oppenheimer had been interviewed once again about the Crouches’ allegation that he had hosted a Party meeting at his Kenilworth Court home in Berkeley in July 1941. On this occasion, two investigators from the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned him in the presence of his attorney, Herbert Marks. Oppenheimer again denied knowing either of the Crouches; he also denied that he had ever met Grigori Kheifets, a Soviet intelligence officer stationed in San Francisco, and he denied that Steve Nelson had ever approached him for information about the bomb project.

  The interview was conducted in a less-than-friendly manner. Seeing the Senate staffers taking careful notes, Marks interrupted to say that he wanted a copy of any record they made of the conversation. When they rebuffed this request, Marks insisted that if they wished to continue to ask about Oppenheimer’s affairs, “we would want a transcript.” To this the Senate staffers coldly observed that last spring Oppenheimer had been under subpoena, and at that time, Oppenheimer’s other lawyer, Joe Volpe, had suggested that Oppenheimer be interviewed in an “informal talk.” They thought, said the Senate staffers, that they “were being nice about it.” On this note, the twenty-minute interview soon ended. Such encounters convinced both Oppenheimer and Marks that the Crouches’ allegations had not been put to rest.

  On May 20, 1952, just three days before Weinberg’s indictment, Oppenheimer arrived in Washington for yet another interrogation. The lawyers who were about to prosecute Weinberg had decided it might be useful to confront Oppenheimer with his accuser. Four years earlier, Richard Nixon and his HUAC investigators had lured an unsuspecting Alger Hiss to a room in New York City’s Commodore Hotel and confronted him with his accuser, Whittaker Chambers. Hiss was now serving a prison term for perjury. Perhaps, Justice Department investigators reasoned, Nixon’s tactic was worth trying on Oppenheimer.

  Accompanied by his attorneys, Oppenheimer walked into the Justice Department to be interviewed by lawyers from the Criminal Division. Questioned about the alleged July 1941 meeting in his Kenilworth Court home, he once again denied the Crouches’ story and insisted that he had been in New Mexico at the time. He said he did not know either Paul or Sylvia Crouch, and “that no such persons” had come to his home during that period to talk about communism or the invasion of Russia. He said that he had read Crouch’s testimony before the California State Committee on Un-American Activities (the Tenney Committee) and he had no recollection of the meeting Crouch described. He volunteered that he had talked with his wife and also with Kenneth May, and “they confirmed his recollection that no such meeting occurred.”

  At this point, the Justice Department lawyers turned to Oppenheimer’s attorneys—Herb Marks and Joe Volpe—and said that Paul Crouch was sitting in the next room. Would it be acceptable, they asked, if Crouch was brought into the room “to see if he would recognize Dr. Oppenheimer, as well as to see if Dr. Oppenheimer would recognize Crouch . . .”? With Oppenheimer’s acquiescence, Marks and Volpe agreed. The door then opened and Crouch walked up to Oppenheimer, shook his hand and said, “How do you do, Dr. Oppenheimer?” He then turned melodramatically to the lawyers and said that the man with whom he had just shaken hands was the same person who had been his host at a meeting in July 1941 at 10 Kenilworth Court. Crouch reiterated that he had given a talk on the “Communist Party propaganda line to be followed after the invasion of Russia by Hitler.”

  If Oppenheimer was taken aback by this performance, the FBI record fails to report it. Instead, it merely notes that he quickly responded that he did not know Crouch. Prompted to describe the July 1941 meeting in greater detail, Crouch said that he remembered Oppenheimer asking him several questions at the conclusion of his hour-long presentation. To this Oppenheimer interrupted to ask what exactly he was supposed to have said in this question period. Crouch then claimed that Oppenheimer’s questions involved a philosophical analysis of Russia’s involvement in the war “based upon Marxian doctrine.” Crouch said, “Dr. Oppenheimer stated that he could see why we should give aid to Russia but asked why we should aid Britain, who might double-cross us.” Crouch claimed Oppenheimer also asked whether or not the German invasion of Russia had now created two wars: a “British-German imperialistic war” and a “Russian-German people’s war.” To this Oppenheimer said that such questions by him “were impossible because he had never at any time thought or advanced the suggestion of two wars.”

  Marks and Volpe made some attempt to trip Crouch up by asking him about Oppenheimer’s appearance. Did he look substantially the same as he did in 1941? Crouch replied that he looked the same. What about his hair? asked one of the two attorneys. Crouch allowed that Oppenheimer’s hair might be a little shorter than in 1941, but he hadn’t really concentrated on his hair. In fact, in 1941 Oppenheimer had worn his hair in a long, bushy cut; by 1952 he kept it very short, almost a crew-cut. Still, this was a small discrepancy.

  On the whole, Crouch had demonstrated that he might be a credible witness against Oppenheimer in a court trial. He had described the interior of Oppenheimer’s home, and he also had seemed credible in claiming to have seen Oppenheimer in the autumn of 1941 at a housewarming party for Ken May. Oppenheimer had conceded that he remembered dancing with a Japanese girl at a party that might well have been May’s housewarming party. This might be regarded as an important admission, since Crouch further claimed that he had seen Oppenheimer deep in conversation at this party with Ken May, Joseph Weinberg, Steve Nelson and Clarence Hiskey, another physics student at Berkeley.

  After Crouch finally left the room, Oppenheimer turned to the Justice Department lawyers and once again stated that he had no recollection of ever having met Crouch. At that, he was excused. He left with Marks and Volpe, and afterwards the three men speculated on what the Justice Department’s next step would be.

  Three days later, on May 23, 1952, they learned of the indictment of Weinberg, and that the indictment made no mention of Crouch, Oppenheimer or the Kenilworth meeting. In fact, Oppenheimer’s lawyers had lobbied the Justice Department, through AEC chairman Gordon Dean, to drop the Kenilworth incident from the indictment. Oppenheimer was relieved— but only momentarily.

  JOE WEINBERG’S perjury trial finally commenced in the autumn of 1952, and almost immediately Oppenheimer was given notice by the government that he might be called as a witness. Herb Marks again diligently lobbied the Justice Department to keep Oppenheimer’s name off the witness list. Among other things, he persuaded the AEC chairman, Gordon Dean, to write President Truman, urging him to order the Justice Department to exclude Crouch’s charges from the trial proceedings. “It will be Oppenheimer’s word against Crouch’s word,” Dean wrote the president. “Whatever the outcome of the Weinberg case, Dr. Oppenheimer’s good name will be greatly impaired and much of his value to the country will be destroyed.” Truman replied the very next day: “I am very much interested in the Weinberg-Oppenheimer connection. I feel as you do that Oppenheimer is an honest man. In this day of character assassination and unjustified smear tactics it seems that good men are made to suffer unnecessarily.” Truman, however, gave no indication of what he would do.

  Early that autumn, when the Justice Department’s bill of particulars against Weinberg was filed, it made no mention of Oppenheimer. But after Dwight Eisenhower’s election to the presidency in early November a harsher attitude toward security cases was instituted. A Justice Department official called Joe Volpe on November 18, 1952, and said, “Oppie will have to be brought into it.” The San Francisco Chronicle, among other newspapers, picked up on wire service reports: “. . . government prosecutors said today that Dr. Joseph Weinberg attended a Communist Party meeting in Berkeley, Calif. in a ‘residence believed to have been . . . occupied by J. Robert Oppenheimer.’ ” The very next day, Oppenheimer was served a subpoena by Weinberg’s attorney to appear in court as a defense witness. Oppie let Ruth Tolman know how upset he was and she wrote him back, “Such a miserable business. Robert, I know how worrisome the prospect must be.”r />
  Marks and Volpe understood that anything could happen in a trial where it was one person’s word against another’s. If Weinberg was convicted of perjury, that would pave the way for an indictment of Oppenheimer himself. So, once again, Marks and Volpe scrambled to get Oppenheimer removed from the case. In a meeting with prosecutors, they argued that “it seemed a terrible thing to subject Oppenheimer to the embarrassment and grief . . . and expressed the hope that a way could be found to avoid doing this to a man who has been so important to his country. . . . [T]here would be no better way for Joe Stalin to play his game than to create suspicion about people like Oppenheimer.”

  In late January, soon after Eisenhower’s inauguration, Volpe and Marks again approached AEC Chairman Dean and asked him if there “isn’t some natural and in-channel way of getting this question considered on a higher level.” But when the trial finally commenced in late February, Weinberg’s lawyer announced that Oppenheimer would appear as a defense witness and that he would testify that the Kenilworth Court meeting never took place. In his opening statement, Weinberg’s defense counsel dramatically announced that “this case can be cut down to whether they believe the word of a criminal [Crouch] or the word of a distinguished scientist and outstanding American. . . .”

  Oppenheimer had to go to Washington to be ready to appear in court at a moment’s notice. But on February 27, he was told that he probably would not have to testify; the Justice Department had suddenly agreed to drop the part of the indictment pertaining to the Kenilworth meeting. In the interest of protecting the AEC’s reputation, Gordon Dean had evidently leaned on the Justice Department. Oppie took the train home on the evening of February 27 and arrived late to a party at Olden Manor hosted by Ruth Tolman, who was visiting from California. Ruth could see that he “felt so worn out and worried and frazzled.” But at least he had escaped “all the miseries of subpoenas and the like.”

  Since the prosecution was barred from introducing the illegal FBI wiretap of Weinberg’s conversation with Steve Nelson, its case was now transparently weak. The trial ended on March 5, 1953, with Weinberg’s acquittal. In an extraordinary departure from legal norms, U.S. District Court Judge Alexander Holtzoff told the jury that “the court does not approve of your verdict.” He went on to observe that testimony in the trial had unearthed “an amazing and shocking situation existing in the crucial years of 1939, 1940, and 1941 on the campus of a great university in which a large and active Communist underground organization was in operation.”18

  Nevertheless, Oppenheimer was greatly relieved. The whole business, he hoped, was finally put to rest. When David Lilienthal learned that Oppenheimer would not be called to testify in the case, he wrote his old friend, “With so many mean and unjust things happening, we’re entitled to some decency even in these days.” Ironically, one day when Oppenheimer happened to be up on Capitol Hill he stepped into an elevator and saw Senator McCarthy. “We looked at each other,” Robert later told a friend, “and I winked.”

  Joe Weinberg, now thirty-six, had a life again—though not a job. The University of Minnesota had dismissed him two years earlier when HUAC had labeled him “Scientist X.” And despite his acquittal, the university’s president announced that Weinberg would not be reinstated because of his refusal to cooperate with the FBI. Turning one last time to his mentor, Weinberg wrote Oppie asking for a letter of recommendation for a possible job at an optics firm. Weinberg assured him that “this will be the last time I will ever disturb you.” Although Oppenheimer had every reason to believe the FBI would find out about it, as they did, he wrote a supportive letter for Weinberg, who got the job. Weinberg was grateful, but years later, when asked to reflect on his relationship with Oppie he replied, “He had had enough of me and I had had enough of him too.”

  The Weinberg case had been emotionally draining, and it had been an expensive ordeal. On December 30, 1952, even before the case went to trial, Oppenheimer had dropped by the offices of Lewis Strauss, telling him that he had a personal matter to discuss. His attorneys, he said, had just billed him $9,000 for their representation of him as a potential witness in the Weinberg case. The legal fees far exceeded his expectations, and he “did not know how to handle it.” He then asked Strauss if he, in his capacity as chairman of the board for the Institute, would recommend that the Institute pay his legal expenses. Strauss firmly replied that this would be a “mistake.” When Oppenheimer pointed out that Corning Glass Company paid the legal bills of his friend, Dr. Ed Condon, Strauss said the circumstances were not parallel. Dr. Condon’s employers, he pointed out, had known of Condon’s problems with HUAC before they had hired him. The Institute’s trustees, Strauss said coldly, had “no indication whatever” that Oppenheimer had such problems. This, of course, was not true; in 1947, Oppenheimer had informed Strauss of his documented left-wing past. Nevertheless, Strauss suggested that his legal bills were high because his lawyers thought him “quite rich and that the traffic would bear it.”

  Oppenheimer replied testily that Strauss must know that was not the case since his tax returns were prepared by an Institute office manager under Strauss’ supervision. Strauss said no, he had “no idea what his income situation was.” To this, Oppenheimer said that he “was not wealthy—that he had a modest income aside from his Institute salary. . . .” He allowed that some people might think him wealthy because he had inherited “some quite extraordinary works of art.” Clearly unsympathetic, Strauss ended the meeting by saying that he would not raise the issue with the trustees “at this time.” Oppenheimer left angry and humiliated; henceforth he knew he could count on Strauss’ hostility. He decided simply to go around him and send the legal bill to the Institute’s trustees, hoping they would pay it. But Strauss later told the FBI that he had persuaded the “long-haired professors” on the board to reject the bill. By the spring of 1953, the enmity between the two men was palpable to everyone who knew them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “The Beast in the Jungle”

  We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.

  J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, 1953

  OPPENHEIMER HAD LONG BEEN HARBORING a vague premonition that something dark and momentous lay in his future. One day in the late 1940s, he had picked up a copy of Henry James’ short story “The Beast in the Jungle,” a tale of obsession, tormented egotism and existential foreboding. “Utterly transfixed” by the story, Oppenheimer immediately called up Herb Marks. “He was very anxious that Herb read it,” recalled Marks’ widow, Anne Wilson Marks. James’ central character, John Marcher, encounters a woman he met many years earlier, and she recalls his having confided in her that he was haunted by a premonition: “You said you had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within you, the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you, that you had in your bones the foreboding and the conviction of, and that would perhaps overwhelm you.”

  Marcher confesses that whatever it is, the event hasn’t happened—yet: “It hasn’t yet come. Only, you know, it isn’t anything I’m to do, to achieve in the world, to be distinguished or admired for. I’m not such an ass as that.” When the woman asks, “It’s to be something you’re merely to suffer?” Marcher replies, “Well, say to wait for—to have to meet, to face, to see suddenly break out in my life; possibly destroying all further consciousness, possibly annihilating me; possibly, on the other hand, only altering everything, striking at the root of all my world and leaving me to the consequences. . . .”

  Since Hiroshima, Oppenheimer had lived with just such a peculiar sense that someday his own “beast in the jungle” would emerge to alter his existence. For some years now, he had known that he was a hunted man. And if there was a “beast in the jungle” waiting for him, it was Lewis Strauss.

  ON FEBRUARY 17, 1953, some six weeks before Joe Weinberg was finally acquitted, and thus at a mo
ment when Oppenheimer still felt vulnerable, he nevertheless gave a speech in New York that was essentially an unclassified version of the disarmament report he and Bundy had recently sent the new Eisenhower Administration urging a policy of “candor” about nuclear weapons. According to the historian Patrick J. McGrath, Oppenheimer gave the speech with the consent of Eisenhower—but he surely realized that it would anger his political enemies in Washington. His chosen audience was a closed meeting of members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Precisely because the Council was such an elite venue, his words were sure to resonate loudly throughout Washington’s military and policy-making circles. Sitting in the audience that day were such luminaries of the foreign policy establishment as the young banker David Rockefeller, the Washington Post publisher Eugene Meyer, the New York Times military correspondent Hanson Baldwin and the Kuhn, Loeb investment banker Benjamin Buttenwieser. Also there that evening—Lewis L. Strauss.

  Introduced by his good friend David Lilienthal, Oppie began by noting that he had entitled his talk “Atomic Weapons and American Policy.” To polite laughter, he acknowledged that this was a “presumptuous title,” but he begged his listeners’ indulgence, explaining, “Any smaller vehicle would give an impression of clarity different than that which I wanted to communicate.”