Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin

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

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “A Manifestation of Hysteria”

  I am very distressed, as I assume you are, over the Oppenheimer matter. I feel that it is somewhat like inquiring into the security risk of a Newton or a Galileo.

  JOHN J. MCCLOY to President Dwight D. Eisenhower

  AFTER OPPENHEIMER WAS EXCUSED from the witness chair on Friday, Garrison was allowed to call a parade of more than two dozen defense witnesses to vouch for Oppenheimer’s character and loyalty. They included Hans Bethe, George Kennan, John J. McCloy, Gordon Dean, Vannevar Bush and James Conant, among other eminent figures from the worlds of science, politics and business. By far one of the most interesting of these was John Lansdale, the Manhattan Project’s former chief of security, and now a partner in a Cleveland law firm. That the Army’s key security officer during the Los Alamos years was testifying for the defense should have carried great weight with the hearing panel. Moreover, unlike Oppenheimer, Lansdale immediately knew how to fend off Robb’s aggressive tactics. Under cross-examination, Lansdale said he “strongly” felt Oppenheimer to be a loyal citizen. And then he added, “I am extremely disturbed by the current hysteria of the times, [of] which this seems to be a manifestation.”

  Robb could not possibly let this pass, and asked him, “You think this inquiry is a manifestation of hysteria?”

  Lansdale: “I think—”

  Robb: “Yes or no?”

  Lansdale: “I won’t answer that question ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ If you are tending to be that way—if you will let me continue, I will be glad to answer your question.”

  Robb: “All right.”

  Lansdale: “I think the hysteria of the times over communism is extremely dangerous.” He then explained that at the same time in 1943 when he was handling Oppenheimer’s security clearance, he had also been grappling with the sensitive question of whether to commission as Army officers known communists who had volunteered to fight the Spanish fascists in Republican Spain. Because he had “dared to stop the commissioning” of a group of fifteen or twenty such communists, Lansdale said he had been “vilified” by his superiors. His decision was overruled by the White House—and Lansdale said he blamed Mrs. Roosevelt “and those around her in the White House” for creating an atmosphere in which communists were given officer commissions.

  Having thus established his anticommunist credentials, Lansdale went on to say that, “We are going through today the other extreme of the pendulum, which is in my judgment equally dangerous. . . . Now, do I think this inquiry is a manifestation of hysteria? No. I think the fact that so much doubt and so much—let me put it this way. I think the fact that associations in 1940 are regarded with the same seriousness that similar associations would be regarded today is a manifestation of hysteria.”

  JOHN J. MCCLOY, now chairman of Chase National Bank, agreed with Lansdale. A member of Eisenhower’s private “kitchen cabinet,” McCloy was also chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he sat on the boards of the Ford Foundation and a half dozen of the richest corporations in the country. On the morning of April 13, 1954, when McCloy read Reston’s story about the Oppenheimer case, he found the news profoundly “disturbing.” “I didn’t give a damn if he was sleeping with a mistress who was a communist,” he recalled later.

  McCloy had been seeing Oppie regularly at the Council on Foreign Relations and had no real doubts about his loyalty—an opinion he did not hesitate to share immediately with Eisenhower: “I am very distressed, as I assume you are, over the Oppenheimer matter,” he wrote the president. “I feel that it is somewhat like inquiring into the security risk of a Newton or a Galileo. Such people are themselves always ‘top secret.’ ” Ike lamely replied that he hoped the “distinguished” Gray Board would exonerate the scientist.

  McCloy felt strongly enough about the whole matter that at the end of April he was easily persuaded by Garrison—who had known McCloy since their Harvard Law School years—to attend the hearing as a last-minute defense witness. McCloy’s testimony produced some memorable exchanges as he tried to raise issues that bore directly on the very legitimacy of the hearing. He began his defense of Oppenheimer by questioning the Gray Board’s definition of security:

  “I don’t know just exactly what you mean by a security risk. I know that I am a security risk and I think every individual is a security risk. . . . I think there is a security risk in reverse. . . . We are only secure if we have the best brains and the best reach of mind. If the impression is prevalent that scientists as a whole have to work under such great restrictions and perhaps great suspicion in the United States, we may lose the next step in this [nuclear] field, which I think would be very dangerous for us.”

  When Garrison asked him about the Chevalier incident, McCloy responded that the Gray Board ought to weigh Oppenheimer’s willingness to lie in order to protect a friend against his value to the country as a theoretical physicist. This line of argument, of course, greatly unsettled the Gray Board, for it suggested that there could be no absolutes in matters of security, that a value judgment had to be made on the merits of each individual—which AEC security regulations did, in fact, recommend. During his cross-examination of McCloy, Robb countered with a clever analogy: Did the chairman of Chase National Bank employ anyone who for some time had associated with bank robbers? “No,” said McCloy, “I don’t know of anyone.” And if a Chase branch manager had a friend who volunteered that he knew some people who planned to rob the bank, wouldn’t McCloy expect his branch manager to report the conversation? McCloy, of course, had to answer yes.

  McCloy understood that this exchange had damaged Oppie’s case, and the more so when Gray returned to the analogy a short time later: “Would you leave someone in charge of the vaults about whom you have any doubt in your mind?”

  No, said McCloy, but then he quickly interjected that if an employee of doubtful background nevertheless “knew more about . . . the intricacies of time locks than anybody else in the world, I might think twice before I let him go, because I would balance the risks in this connection.” When it came to the mind of Dr. Oppenheimer, he said, “I would accept a considerable amount of political immaturity in return for this rather esoteric, this rather indefinite, theoretical thinking that I believe we are going to be dependent on for the next generation.”

  SUCH DRAMATIC EXCHANGES were not unusual. The drab hearing room at 16th and Constitution had rapidly become a stage upon which an extraordinary cast of actors addressed Shakespearean themes. How should a man be judged, by his associations or by his actions? Can criticism of a government’s policies be equated with disloyalty to country? Can democracy survive in an atmosphere that demands the sacrifice of personal relationships to state policy? Is national security well served by applying narrow tests of political conformity to government employees?

  Oppenheimer’s character witnesses offered eloquent and sometimes poignant testaments. George Kennan was unequivocal: In Oppenheimer, he said, we were faced with “one of the great minds of this generation of Americans.” Such a man, he suggested, could not “speak dishonestly about a subject which had really engaged the responsible attention of his intellect. . . . I would suppose that you might just as well have asked Leonardo da Vinci to distort an anatomical drawing as that you should ask Robert Oppenheimer to speak . . . dishonestly.”

  This provoked Robb to ask Kennan under cross-examination if he meant to suggest that different standards should be used when judging “gifted individuals.”

  Kennan: “I think the church has known that. Had the church applied to St. Francis the criteria relating solely to his youth, it would not have been able for him to be what he was later. . . . it is only the great sinners who become the great saints and in the life of the Government, there can be applied the analogy.”

  One member of the Gray Board, Dr. Ward Evans, interpreted this to mean that “all gifted individuals were more or less screwballs.”

  Kennan politely demurred: “No, sir; I would not say that they are
screwballs, but I would say that when gifted individuals come to a maturity of judgment which makes them valuable public servants, you are apt to find that the road by which they have approached that has not been as regular as the road by which other people have approached it. It may have zigzags in it of various sorts.”

  Seeming to agree, Dr. Evans responded, “I think it would be borne out in the literature. I believe it was Addison, and someone correct me if I am wrong, that said, ‘Great wits are near to madness, closely allied and thin partitions do their bounds divide.’ ”

  At this, Dr. Evans took note that “Dr. Oppenheimer is smiling. He knows whether I am right or wrong on that. That’s all.”

  LATER that same day, Tuesday April 20, David Lilienthal followed Kennan into the witness chair. Kennan had emerged unscathed. But Robb had prepared a trap for the new witness. The previous day, Lilienthal had received permission to review his own AEC papers in order to refresh his memory. But as Robb began his cross-examination, it soon became clear that Robb had some documents in hand that had been kept from Lilienthal. After leading him on to recount his memory of Oppenheimer’s 1947 security review, Robb suddenly produced memorandums that made it clear that Lilienthal had himself recommended “the establishment of an evaluation board of distinguished jurists to make a thorough review” of Oppenheimer’s case.

  Robb: “In other words, you recommended in 1947 that the exact step which is now being taken, be taken then?”

  Flustered and angry, Lilienthal foolishly admitted that had been the case, when, in fact, he had suggested something quite different from the star chamber proceeding that was now under way. As Robb pressed him relentlessly, Lilienthal at one point protested that “. . . a simple way to secure the truth and accuracy would have been to have given me these files yesterday, when I asked for them, so that when I came here, I could be the best possible witness and disclose as accurately as possible what went on at that time.”

  Garrison interrupted at this point to complain once again that “the surprise production of documents is not the shortest way to arrive at the truth. It seems to me more like a criminal trial than it does like an inquiry and I just regret that it has to be done here.” And once again, Chairman Gray brushed aside Garrison’s protest. And once again, Garrison fell silent.

  At the end of this very long day, Lilienthal went home and noted in his diary that he had difficulty sleeping, “so steamed up was I over the ‘entrapment’ tactics . . . and sadness and nausea at the whole spectacle.”

  WHERE LILIENTHAL EMERGED chastened and angered by the experience, the inimitable and unflappable Isidor Rabi walked out of the hearing room defiant and unscathed. In one of the more memorable statements of the entire hearing, Rabi said, “I never hid my opinion from Mr. Strauss that I thought this whole proceeding was a most unfortunate one. . . . That the suspension of the clearance of Dr. Oppenheimer was a very unfortunate thing and should not have been done. In other words, there he was; he is a consultant, and if you don’t want to consult the guy, you don’t consult him, period. Why you have to then proceed to suspend clearance and go through all of this sort of thing, he is only there when called and that is all there was to it. So it didn’t seem to me the sort of thing that called for this kind of proceeding at all against a man who had accomplished what Dr. Oppenheimer has accomplished. There is a real positive record, the way I expressed it to a friend of mine. We have an A-bomb and a whole series of it . . . [deleted classified material] and what more do you want, mermaids? This is just a tremendous achievement. If the end of that road is this kind of hearing, which can’t help but be humiliating, I thought it was a pretty bad show. I still think so.”

  Upon cross-examination, Robb attempted to shake Rabi’s selfconfidence by posing yet another hypothetical question about the Chevalier incident. If Rabi had been put in such circumstances, Robb asked, he would have told the “whole truth about it, wouldn’t you?”

  Rabi: “I am naturally a truthful person.”

  Robb: “You would not have lied about it?”

  Rabi: “I am telling you what I think now. The Lord alone knows what I would have done at that time. This is what I think now.”

  A few moments later, Robb asked, “Of course, Doctor, you don’t know what Dr. Oppenheimer’s testimony before this board about the incident may have been, do you?”

  Rabi: “No.”

  Robb: “So perhaps in respect of passing judgment on that incident, the board may be in a better position to judge than you?”

  Never at a loss for words, Rabi parried, “It may be. On the other hand, I am in possession of a long experience with this man, going back to 1929, which is 25 years, and there is a kind of seat-of-the-pants feeling [on] which I myself lay great weight. In other words, I might even venture to differ from the judgment of the board without impugning their integrity at all. . . .

  “You have to take the whole story,” Rabi insisted. “That is what novels are about. There is a dramatic moment and the history of the man, what made him act, what he did, and what sort of person he was. That is what you are really doing here. You are writing a man’s life.”

  In the midst of Rabi’s testimony, Oppenheimer excused himself from the hearing room and upon his return a few minutes later, Chairman Gray noted his presence: “You are back now, Dr. Oppenheimer.”

  Oppenheimer replied laconically, “This is one of the few things I am really sure of.”

  Rabi was both stunned by the hostile atmosphere in the hearing room and struck by Oppenheimer’s metamorphosis. Robert had walked into Room 2022 an eminent, proud and self-assured scientist-statesman—but he was now playing the role of political martyr. “He was a very adaptable fellow,” Rabi later observed. “When he was riding high, he could be very arrogant. When things went against him, he could play the victim. He was a most remarkable fellow.”

  IF THE PROCEEDING SEEMED SURREAL, it was nevertheless high theater, bristling at times with profound emotion. On Friday, April 23, Dr. Vannevar Bush was called to testify and was asked about Oppenheimer’s opposition in the summer and autumn of 1952 to the testing of the early hydrogen bomb. Bush explained, “I felt strongly that that test ended the possibility of the only type of agreement that I thought possible with Russia at that time, namely, an agreement to make no more tests. For that kind of an agreement would have been self-policing in the sense that if it was violated, the violation would be immediately known. I still think that we made a grave error in conducting that test at that time.” His conclusion was uncompromising: “I think history will show that was a turning point, that when we entered into the grim world that we are entering right now, that those who pushed that thing through to a conclusion without making that attempt have a great deal to answer for.”

  Regarding the whole controversy over Oppenheimer’s opposition to the crash development of the hydrogen bomb, Bush bluntly said that it appeared to most scientists around the country that Oppenheimer was “now being pilloried and put through an ordeal because he had the temerity to express his honest opinions.” As to the written charges against Oppenheimer, Bush bluntly said it was a “poorly written letter,” and one which the Gray Board should have rejected from the outset.

  Chairman Gray interjected at this point that, setting aside the allegations about the hydrogen bomb, there were “items of so-called derogatory information,” items which did not relate to the mere expression of opinion.

  “Quite right,” Bush said, “and the case should have [been] tried on those.”

  Chairman Gray: “This is not a trial.”

  Bush: “If it were a trial, I would not be saying these things to the judge, you can well imagine that. . . .”

  Dr. Evans: “Dr. Bush, I wish you would make clear just what mistake you think the Board made. I did not want this job when I was asked to take it. I thought I was performing a service to my country.”

  Bush: “I think the moment you were confronted with that letter, you should have returned the letter, and asked t
hat it be redrafted so that you would have before you a clear-cut issue. . . . I think this board or no board should ever sit on a question in this country of whether a man should serve his country or not because he expressed strong opinions. If you want to try that case, you can try me. I have expressed strong opinions many times, and I intend to do so. They have been unpopular opinions at times. When a man is pilloried for doing that, this country is in a severe state. . . . Excuse me, gentlemen, if I become stirred, but I am.”

  ON MONDAY, April 26, Kitty Oppenheimer took the witness chair and testified about her communist past. She acquitted herself easily, coolly and precisely answering each question. Although she confided to her friend Pat Sherr that she was nervous, to the Gray Board she appeared forthright and unflustered. As a young girl, Kitty had been trained by her German-born parents to sit still without fidgeting, and now she drew upon this training to put on a performance of tremendous self-control. When Chairman Gray asked her if a distinction could be drawn between Soviet communism and the Communist Party of America, Kitty answered, “There are two answers to that as far as I am concerned. In the days that I was a member of the Communist Party, I thought they were definitely two things. The Soviet Union had its Communist Party and our country had its Communist Party. I thought that the Communist Party of the United States was concerned with problems internal. I now no longer believe this. I believe the whole thing is linked together and spread all over the world.”

  When Dr. Evans asked her if there were two kinds of communists, “an intellectual Communist and just a plain ordinary Commie,” Kitty had the good sense to say, “I couldn’t answer that one.”

  “I couldn’t either,” replied Dr. Evans.

  MOST OF THE WITNESSES called in Oppenheimer’s defense were close friends and professional allies. Johnny von Neumann was different. Though they had always maintained friendly relations personally, von Neumann and Oppenheimer had strong disagreements politically. For this reason, von Neumann was potentially a particularly persuasive defense witness. A fervid supporter of the hydrogen bomb program, von Neumann explained that while Oppenheimer had tried to persuade him to his views—and von Neumann had done the same with Oppenheimer—he could not say that Oppenheimer had ever interfered with his work on the Super. When asked about the Chevalier incident, von Neumann cheerfully explained, “This would affect me the same way as if I would suddenly hear about somebody that he has had some extraordinary escapade in his adolescence.” And when Robb pressed him with the usual hypothetical about lying to the security officers in 1943, von Neumann replied, “Sir. I don’t know how to answer this question. Of course, I hope I wouldn’t [lie]. But—you are telling me now to hypothesize that somebody else acted badly, and you ask me would I have acted the same way. Isn’t this a question of when did you stop beating your wife?”