by American Prometheus: The Triumph;Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
He then observed that because almost everything associated with nuclear weapons was classified, “I must reveal its nature without revealing anything.” He pointed out that since the end of the war, the United States had been compelled to come to grips with the “massive evidences of Soviet hostility, and the growing evidences of Soviet power.” The role of the atom in this Cold War was a simple one: American policy-makers had concluded, “Let us keep ahead. Let us be sure that we are ahead of the enemy.”
Turning to the status of this race, he reported that the Soviets had produced three atomic explosions and were manufacturing substantial quantities of fissionable material. “I should like to present the evidence for this”; he said, “I cannot.” But he said that he could reveal his own casual estimate of where the Soviets stood in relation to America: “I think that the USSR is about four years behind us.” This might sound somewhat reassuring, but after reviewing the effects of one bomb delivered onto Hiroshima, Oppenheimer observed that both sides understood that these new weapons could become even more lethal. Vaguely alluding to missile technology, he said that technical developments would soon bring “more modern, more flexible, harder to intercept” delivery vehicles. “All of this is in train,” he said. “It is my opinion that we should all know—not precisely, but quantitatively and, above all, authoritatively—where we stand in these matters.”
The facts were essential to any understanding. But the facts were classified. “I cannot write of them,” he said, emphasizing once again the albatross of secrecy. “What I can say is this: I have never discussed these prospects candidly with any responsible group, whether scientists or statesmen, whether citizens or officers of the government, with any group that could steadily look at the facts, that did not come away with a great sense of anxiety and somberness at what they saw.” Looking a decade ahead, he said, “it is likely to be small comfort that the Soviet Union is four years behind us. . . . The very least we can conclude is that our twenty-thousandth bomb . . . will not in any deep strategic sense offset their two-thousandth.”
Without revealing the specific numbers, Oppenheimer said that the American stockpile of atomic weapons was growing rapidly. “We have from the first maintained that we should be free to use these weapons; and it is generally known we plan to use them. It is also generally known that one ingredient of this plan is a rather rigid commitment to their use in a very massive, initial, unremitting strategic assault on the enemy.” This, of course, was a succinct definition of the Strategic Air Command’s war plan—to obliterate scores of Russian cities in a genocidal air strike.
Atomic bombs, he continued, are “almost the only military measure that anyone has in mind to prevent, let us say, a great battle in Europe from being a continuing, agonizing, large-scale Korea.” And yet, the Europeans are “in ignorance of what these weapons are, how many there will be, how they will be used and what they will do.”
Secrecy in the atomic field, he charged, was leading to widespread rumor, speculation and outright ignorance. “We do not operate well when they [important facts] are known, in secrecy and in fear, only to a few men.” Former president Harry Truman had recently disparaged the notion that the Soviets were developing a nuclear arsenal capable of harming continental America. Oppenheimer noted sharply: “It must be disturbing that an ex-President of the United States, who has been briefed on what we know about the Soviet atomic capability, can publicly call in doubt all conclusions from the evidence.” He also ridiculed a “high officer of the Air Defense Command” for saying, only a few months ago, that “it was our policy to attempt to protect our striking force, but not really our policy to attempt to protect this country, for that is so big a job that it would interfere with our retaliatory capabilities.” Oppenheimer concluded that such “follies can occur only when even the men who know the facts can find no one to talk about them, when the facts are too secret for discussion, and thus for thought.”
The only remedy, Oppenheimer concluded, was “candor.” Officials in Washington, D.C., had to start leveling with the American people, and tell them what the enemy already knew about the atomic armaments race.
It was an extraordinarily perceptive and brazen speech. Again and again, Oppenheimer observed that he was barred from speaking of the essential facts—and then like a Brahmin priest endowed with special knowledge, he proceeded to reveal the most fundamental secret of all—that no country could expect in any meaningful sense to win an atomic war. In the very near future, he said, “we may anticipate a state of affairs in which the two Great Powers will each be in a position to put an end to civilization and life of the other, though not without risking its own.” And then, in a chilling turn of phrase that startled everyone who heard it, Oppenheimer quietly added, “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.”
It is hard to imagine a more provocative speech. After all, the new administration’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, was an outspoken advocate of a defense doctrine based on massive retaliation. And yet, here was the father of the atomic era declaring that the fundamental assumptions of the country’s defense policy were laced with ignorance and folly. The nation’s most famous nuclear scientist was calling upon the government to release heretofore closely guarded nuclear secrets, and to discuss candidly the consequences of nuclear war. Here was a celebrated private citizen, armed with the highest security clearance, denigrating the secrecy that surrounded the nation’s war plans. As word spread through Washington’s national security bureaucracy of what Oppenheimer had said, many were appalled. Lewis Strauss was seething.
On the other hand, most of the lawyers and investment bankers listening to Oppenheimer’s speech at the Council came away impressed. Even the new president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, when he later read the speech, was taken by the notion of candor. As a former military officer, Ike understood Oppenheimer’s vivid rendering of the two major powers as “two scorpions in a bottle.” Eisenhower had seen the Disarmament Panel report and he found it thoughtful and wise. Highly skeptical of nuclear weapons, he told one of his key White House aides, C. D. Jackson—who had been Henry Luce’s right-hand man at Time-Life—that “atomic weapons strongly favor the side that attacks aggressively and by surprise. This the United States will never do; and let me point out that we never had any of this hysterical fear of any nation until atomic weapons appeared upon the scene.” Later in his presidency, Eisenhower would feel compelled to rebuke a panel of hawkish advisers, caustically observing, “You can’t have this kind of war. There just aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.”
For a time, it seemed Oppenheimer’s views might influence the new president. But Lewis Strauss, who had contributed generously to Eisenhower’s campaign, was appointed the president’s atomic energy adviser in January 1953; and then, in July, he was elevated to the job he had bought— chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Strauss, of course, violently disagreed with Oppenheimer’s notion that the public should be informed about the nature of America’s nuclear stockpile, or that matters of nuclear strategy should be publicly debated. Openness, he thought, would serve no purpose other than to relieve “the Soviets of trouble in their espionage activities.” So Strauss now took every opportunity to sow suspicion in Eisenhower’s mind about Oppenheimer. The new president later remembered someone—he thought it was Strauss—telling him that spring that “Dr. Oppenheimer was not to be trusted.”
On May 25, 1953, Strauss dropped by FBI headquarters to talk with D. M. Ladd, one of Hoover’s aides. Strauss was scheduled to see Eisenhower that afternoon at 3:30. He told Ladd that Oppenheimer had an appointment to brief the president and the National Security Council in a few days, and he was “very much concerned about Oppenheimer’s activities.” He had just learned that it had been Oppenheimer who had hired David Hawkins, a suspected communist, to work at Los Alamos in 1943. In addition, Oppenheimer,
he said, had announced that he was sponsoring the appointment of Felix Browder, a brilliant young mathematician who happened to be the son of Earl Browder, former head of the Communist Party of America. Claiming that he had checked Browder’s references at Boston University and found that his record there was not very favorable, Strauss told Oppenheimer that Browder’s appointment would have to be put before a vote by the Board of Trustees. The trustees eventually voted six to five against Browder, but by then, Oppenheimer had already offered Browder the appointment. When Strauss challenged him on this, Oppenheimer claimed to have called Strauss’ secretary and informed her that he was going to give Browder the appointment unless he heard otherwise from the board. Strauss was infuriated with Oppenheimer’s high-handedness—exercised, he thought, to no other purpose than to extend a favored position to the son of America’s most famous communist.19
Finally, Strauss told Ladd that he was suspicious of Oppenheimer’s “contacts” with the Russians in 1942—a reference to the Chevalier affair— and the fact that he “is alleged to have delayed work on the hydrogen bomb.” In view of all these facts, Strauss asked Ladd if the FBI would have any “objection” if he briefed Eisenhower on Oppenheimer’s background that afternoon. Ladd quickly reassured Strauss that the Bureau had no objection to this; after all, he said, the FBI already had passed all its information on Oppenheimer to the attorney general, the AEC and “other interested Government agencies.”
The initiation of Strauss’ campaign to destroy Oppenheimer’s reputation can thus be precisely dated; it began on the afternoon of May 25, 1953, with his appointment with the president. Ike would recall later that Strauss “came back to him time and again about the Oppenheimer matter.” On this occasion, he told Eisenhower that “he could not do the job at the AEC if Oppenheimer was connected in any way with the program.”
A week before Strauss’ meeting with Eisenhower, Oppie had phoned the White House and explained that “he needed very badly to see the president for a short time, and that it should not be long delayed.” Two days later, he was ushered into the Oval Office. After a short meeting, Eisenhower invited him to come back to brief the National Security Council on May 27. Bringing Lee DuBridge with him, Oppenheimer spent five hours lecturing and answering questions. He argued the merits of candor, and, perhaps thinking back to the 1946 Lilienthal Panel, he urged the president to create a five-member disarmament panel. According to C. D. Jackson, Oppenheimer “had everybody spellbound—except the President.” Ike cordially thanked him for the briefing, but let him leave the room without tipping his hand as to what he actually thought. Perhaps Eisenhower was weighing what Strauss had told him just two days earlier—that he could not run the AEC if Oppenheimer continued to serve as a consultant. According to Jackson’s account, Ike felt uncomfortable as he watched Oppenheimer exert his “almost hypnotic power over small groups.” Some time later, he told Jackson that he “did not completely trust” the physicist. Strauss’ first blow had found its mark.
FULLY AWARE of Oppenheimer’s White House meetings, Strauss now began to orchestrate a public campaign against Robert. Over the next few months, Time, Life and Fortune magazines—all controlled by Henry Luce—published broadsides attacking Oppenheimer and the influence of scientists in defense policy. The May 1953 issue of Fortune magazine featured an anonymous article titled, “The Hidden Struggle for the H-Bomb: The Story of Dr. Oppenheimer’s Persistent Campaign to Reverse U.S. Military Strategy.” The author charged that under Oppenheimer’s influence, Project Vista (the air defense study contracted out to Caltech) had been transformed into an exercise to question “the morality of a strategy of atomic retaliation.” Citing Air Force secretary Finletter, the author charged that “there was a serious question of the propriety of scientists trying to settle such grave national issues alone, inasmuch as they bear no responsibility for the successful execution of war plans.” After reading the Fortune essay, David Lilienthal spoke of it in his diary as “another nasty and obviously inspired article attacking Robert Oppenheimer. . . .”
As Lilienthal neatly summarized it, the article purported to expose how Oppenheimer, Lilienthal and Conant had tried to block development of the H-bomb, but “Strauss saved the day etc. From there on J.R.O. [Oppenheimer] is the instigator of a kind of conspiracy to defeat the idea that the strategic bombing unit of the Air Force has the answer to our defense. . . .” Lilienthal didn’t know it, but the Fortune essay had been written by one of the magazine’s editors, Charles J. V. Murphy, who was an Air Force reserve officer— and who had, moreover, an unacknowledged collaborator: Lewis Strauss.
Some time after the Fortune magazine attack, Oppenheimer, Rabi and DuBridge met C. D. Jackson at Washington’s Cosmos Club to discuss the piece. Afterwards, Jackson reported to Luce that they were “absolutely furious” about the essay, which they described as “the unwarranted attack on Oppenheimer. . . .” He told Luce that he had tried to defend the magazine’s integrity but that “I had privately felt that Murphy and [James] Shepley [Time magazine’s Washington bureau chief] had been engaging in an unwarranted anti-Oppenheimer crusade. . . .”
OPPENHEIMER’S “candor” speech was published on June 19, 1953, in Foreign A fairs, having been cleared for publication by the White House. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran stories on the article, and Oppenheimer was quoted as saying that without “candor” the American people were going to be “talked out of reasonable defense measures.” Only the president, he said, “has the authority to transcend the racket and noise, mostly consisting of lies, that have been built up about this subject of the strategic situation of the atom.” Lies!
A smoldering Strauss hastily went to see President Eisenhower. He thought Oppenheimer’s essay “dangerous and its proposals fatal.” He was surprised to learn that Oppenheimer had cleared a draft of the article with the White House. The president had read Oppie’s essay and found himself in general accord with its argument. In a July 8 press conference, Eisenhower indicated that he agreed with Oppenheimer’s notion of the need for more “candor” about nuclear weapons. Strauss now complained to Ike that some members of the press were construing this statement as “a blanket endorsement of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer’s recent doctrine of ‘candor’ and as favoring the release of information on our stockpile and production rate of weapons and our estimate of enemy capabilities.”
“That’s complete nonsense.” Eisenhower responded. “You ought not to read what those fellows write. I am at least the one person more security-minded than you are.” And then he added, “Somebody ought to do a piece to correct the Oppenheimer article.” Momentarily appeased, Strauss volunteered that he might write an essay himself.
Oppenheimer’s Foreign A fairs essay sparked a vigorous debate within the Eisenhower Administration on what the public should be told about nuclear weapons. That had been Oppie’s intention. He had hoped that his blunt description of the dangers the country faced from an unfettered arms race would prompt a reconsideration of the notion of relying so heavily on nuclear weapons. Candor was necessary precisely because the public ought to be frightened at the prospect of an endless arms race. As Eisenhower and his aides wrestled with the issue, the president found himself pursuing contradictory ends. “We don’t want to scare the country to death,” he told Jackson after reading one of his draft “candor” speeches. And he told Strauss that he wanted to both be candid about the risks of nuclear war and yet also offer the public some “hopeful alternative.”
Strauss disagreed, but astutely held his tongue. To his mounting frustration, it appeared that Ike was attracted to some of Oppenheimer’s ideas— and Strauss was determined to disabuse the president of the notion of their value. Early in August 1953, Strauss had cocktails with C. D. Jackson and afterwards Jackson noted in his diary, “Very relieved to get from Strauss firm categoric denial any feuding between him and Oppenheimer and any reluctance pursue Candor, except for stockpile arithmetic.” A shrewd bureaucratic infighter, Strauss had l
ied to Jackson. That very month he had secretly collaborated with Charles Murphy at Fortune on a second essay bitterly critical of Oppenheimer’s call for candor on atomic secrets.
Events also conspired to help Strauss. Late that August newspaper headlines around the country blared the news, “Reds Test H-Bomb.” Only nine months after the first American test of a hydrogen bomb, the Soviets had apparently been able to match that feat. At least that is what the American people were told. In fact, the Soviet test was not the technical achievement it appeared to be: It was neither truly a hydrogen bomb, nor a weapon that could be delivered in an airplane. But the impression that the Soviets were perhaps ready to surpass the American nuclear arsenal gave Strauss further political ammunition to block Oppenheimer’s call for candor.
Eventually, Eisenhower found his “hopeful alternative” and presented it in a speech proposing an “Atoms for Peace” program. He suggested that the U.S. and the Soviet Union should contribute fissionable materials to an international effort to develop peaceful nuclear energy power plants. Delivered on December 8, 1953, at the United Nations, the speech was initially a public relations success—but the Soviets failed to respond. And neither had the president been candid about American nuclear weapons. Gone from the speech was any accounting of the size and nature of the nuclear arsenal, or any other information that was grist for a healthy debate. Instead of candor, Eisenhower gave America a fleeting propaganda victory.
And far from conducting any reconsideration of nuclear strategy, in the months ahead the Eisenhower Administration would begin to cut defense spending on conventional weapons while building up its nuclear arsenal. Eisenhower called this his “New Look” defense posture. The Administration had accepted the Air Force’s strategy and would rely almost exclusively on air power for America’s defense. A policy of “massive retaliation” appeared to be a cheap and deadly fix. It was also shortsighted, genocidal and, if initiated, suicidal. Dean Acheson called it a “fraud upon the words and upon the facts.” Adlai Stevenson asked pointedly, “Are we leaving ourselves the grim choice of inaction or thermonuclear holocaust?” The “New Look” was in fact old policy, and precisely the opposite of what Oppenheimer had hoped for from the new Administration.