Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin

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

  At this point, the Gray Board members jumped in and tried to get von Neumann to answer the same hypothetical.

  Dr. Evans: “If someone had approached you and told you he had a way to transport secret information to Russia, would you have been very much surprised if that man approached you?”

  Dr. von Neumann: “It depends who the man is.”

  Dr. Evans: “Suppose he is a friend of yours. . . . Would you have reported it immediately?”

  Dr. von Neumann: “This depends on the period. I mean, before I got conditioned to security, possibly not. After I got conditioned to security, certainly yes. . . . What I am trying to say is this, that before 1941, I didn’t even know what the word ‘classified’ meant. So God only knows how intelligently I would have behaved in situations involving this. I am quite sure that I learned it reasonably fast. But there was a period of learning during which I may have made mistakes or might have made mistakes. . . .”

  Perhaps sensing that von Neumann was scoring points, Robb resorted to one of the oldest ploys in a prosecutor’s bag of tactics: asking only one question on cross-examination. “Doctor,” he asked, “you have never had any training as a psychiatrist, have you?” Von Neumann was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his time. He knew Oppenheimer both professionally and socially. But no, he was not a psychiatrist—and therefore, in Robb’s not-so-subtle view, von Neumann was not qualified to judge Oppenheimer’s behavior in the Chevalier affair.

  MIDWAY THROUGH THE HEARING, Robb had announced that, “unless ordered to do so by the board, we shall not disclose to Mr. Garrison in advance the names of the witnesses we contemplate calling.” Garrison had revealed his list of witnesses at the very beginning of the hearing, thus allowing Robb to prepare detailed questions, often based on classified documents. But Robb now explained that he could not extend the same courtesy to his adversary because, “I will be frank about it, that in the event that any witnesses from the scientific world should be called, they would be subject to pressure.” Perhaps, but it was a transparent rationalization that should have been vigorously challenged by Garrison. In the first instance, it was obvious to everyone that Edward Teller would be called, and so whatever pressure his colleagues intended to apply would be applied. Ernest Lawrence and Luis Alvarez were also likely candidates—and the list goes on. The irony of this professed concern on the part of the prosecutor lies in the fact that the producer of this show trial, Lewis Strauss, was indefatigable in his pursuit of hostile witnesses.

  A week after testifying, Rabi ran into Ernest Lawrence at Oak Ridge and asked him what he was going to say about Oppenheimer. Lawrence had agreed to testify against him. He was truly fed up with his old friend. Oppie had opposed him on the hydrogen bomb and opposed the building of a second weapons lab at Livermore. And more recently, Ernest had come home from a cocktail party outraged upon being told that Oppie had years before had an affair with Ruth Tolman, the wife of his good friend Richard. He was angry enough to accede to Strauss’ request to testify against Oppenheimer in Washington. But the night before his scheduled appearance, Lawrence fell ill with an attack of colitis. The next morning, he called Strauss to tell him he could not make it. Sure that Lawrence was making excuses, Strauss argued with the scientist and called him a coward.

  Lawrence did not appear to testify against Oppenheimer. But Robb had interviewed him earlier and now made sure that the Gray Board—though not Garrison—saw the transcript of this interview. Lawrence’s conclusion, therefore, that Oppenheimer was guilty of so much bad judgment that “he should never again have anything to do with the forming of policy” went unseen and unchallenged by Oppenheimer’s lawyers. Surely this was the sort of violation of the rules of due process that would have constituted grounds for halting the proceedings.

  UNLIKE LAWRENCE, Edward Teller had no hesitations about testifying. On April 22, six days before his testimony, Teller had an hour-long conversation with an AEC public information officer, Charter Heslep. In the course of the conversation, Teller expressed his deep animosity to Oppenheimer and the “Oppie machine.” A way had to be found, Teller believed, to destroy Oppenheimer’s influence. Heslep’s report to Strauss includes the following paragraph: “Since the case is being heard on a security basis, Teller wonders if some way can be found to ‘deepen the charges’ to include a documentation of the ‘consistently bad advice’ that Oppenheimer has given, going all the way back to the end of the war in 1945.” Heslep added that “Teller feels deeply that this ‘unfrocking’ must be done or else— regardless of the outcome of the current hearing—scientists may lose their enthusiasm for the [atomic weapons] program.”

  Heslep’s memo to Strauss lays out the full political motivations behind the Oppenheimer case:

  Teller regrets the case is on a security basis because he feels it is untenable. He has difficulty phrasing his assessment of Oppie’s philosophy except a conviction that Oppie is not disloyal but rather— and Teller put this somewhat vaguely—more of a “pacifist.”

  Teller says what is needed . . . and the job is most difficult, was to show his fellow scientists that Oppie is not a menace to the program but simply no longer valuable to it.

  Teller said “only about one per cent or less” of the scientists know of the real situation and that Oppie is so powerful “politically” in scientific circles that it will be hard to “unfrock him in his own church.” (This last phrase is mine and he agrees it is apt.)

  Teller talked at length about the “Oppie machine,” running through many names, some of which he listed as “Oppie men” and others as not being “on his team” but under his influence. . . .

  On April 27, Teller met with Roger Robb, who wanted to be sure that the mercurial physicist was still ready to testify against his old friend. Teller later claimed that this meeting occurred the next day, only minutes before he was sworn in, but his memory is contradicted by a handwritten note he later sent to Strauss in which he stated he had met with Robb the evening before his testimony. According to Teller’s account, Robb bluntly asked, “Should Oppenheimer be cleared?” “Yes, Oppenheimer should be cleared,” he replied. Whereupon Robb pulled out a transcript and had Teller read that part of Oppenheimer’s testimony in which he had admitted to inventing a “cock-and-bull story.” Claiming to have been astounded that Oppenheimer had so brazenly confessed to lying, Teller later said that he left Robb uncertain about whether he would testify that Oppenheimer deserved to be cleared.

  Teller’s recounting of this incident is disingenuous. For more than a decade, he had deeply resented Oppenheimer’s influence and popularity among his fellow scientists. By 1954, he desperately wanted to “defrock him in his own church.” What Robb had shown him from the still secret hearing transcript simply made it easier for him to testify against Oppie.22

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, with Oppenheimer sitting on his couch a few steps away, Teller took the witness chair. Robb let him testify at considerable length about Oppenheimer’s attitude toward the development of the H-bomb, and other issues. Finally, aware that Teller wished to appear ambivalent, Robb gently guided him to say only what was necessary.

  Robb: “To simplify the issues here, perhaps, let me ask you this question: Is it your intention in anything that you are about to testify to, to suggest that Dr. Oppenheimer is disloyal to the United States?”

  Teller: “I do not want to suggest anything of the kind. I know Oppenheimer as an intellectually most alert and a very complicated person, and I think it would be presumptuous and wrong on my part if I would in any way analyze his motives. But I have always assumed, and now assume, that he is loyal to the United States. I believe this, and I shall believe it until I see very conclusive proof to the opposite.”

  Robb: “Now, a question which is a corollary of that. Do you or do you not believe that Dr. Oppenheimer is a security risk?”

  Teller: “In a great number of cases I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act—I understood that Dr. Oppenheimer acted in a way which for me was exce
edingly hard to understand. I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues, and his actions, frankly, appeared to me confused and complicated. To this extent, I feel that I would like to see the vital interests of this country in hands which I understand better and therefore trust more.”

  Under cross-examination by Chairman Gray, Teller amplified his statement by saying, “If it is a question of wisdom and judgment, as demonstrated by actions since 1945, then I would say one would be wiser not to grant clearance. I must say that I am myself a little bit confused on this issue, particularly as it refers to a person of Oppenheimer’s prestige and influence. May I limit myself to these comments?”

  Robb needed nothing more said. Excused from the witness chair, Teller turned around, and walking past Oppenheimer, who was sitting on the leather couch, he offered him a hand and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Oppie shook his hand and replied laconically, “After what you’ve just said, I don’t know what you mean.”

  Teller would pay dearly for what he had said. Later that summer, on a visit to Los Alamos, Teller spotted an old friend, Bob Christy, in the dining hall. Walking over to greet him with outstretched hand, Teller was stunned when Christy refused to shake hands and abruptly turned his back. Standing close by was a furious Rabi, who said, “I won’t shake your hand, either, Edward.” Stunned, Teller went back to his hotel room and packed his bags.

  AFTER TELLER’S testimony the hearing dragged on anticlimactically for another week. On May 4—some three weeks into the hearing—Kitty was called back to the witness chair. Chairman Gray and Dr. Evans pressed her again about when she had broken with the Communist Party. Kitty again said that after 1936, “I stopped having anything to do with the Communist Party.” Their exchange then turned fairly testy.

  Chairman Gray: “Would it be fair to say that Dr. Oppenheimer’s contributions in the years as late as possibly 1942 meant that he had not stopped having anything to do with the Communist Party? I don’t insist that you answer that yes or no. You can answer that any way you wish.”

  Kitty Oppenheimer: “I know that. Thank you. I don’t think that the question is properly phrased.”

  Chairman Gray: “Do you understand what I am trying to get at?”

  Kitty: “Yes; I do.”

  Chairman Gray: “Why don’t you answer it that way?”

  Kitty: “The reason I don’t like the phrase ‘stopped having anything to do with the Communist Party.’ . . . It is because I don’t think Robert ever had anything to do with the Communist Party as such. I know he gave money for Spanish refugees; I know he gave it through the Communist Party.”

  Chairman Gray: “When he gave money to Isaac Folkoff, for example, this was not necessarily for Spanish refugees, was it?”

  Kitty Oppenheimer: “I think so.”

  Chairman Gray: “As late as 1942?”

  Kitty Oppenheimer: “I don’t think it was that late. . . .”

  When Gray reminded her that her husband had used that date, she responded, “Mr. Gray, Robert and I don’t agree about everything. He sometimes remembers something different than the way I remember it.”

  One of Oppenheimer’s lawyers tried to enter the conversation at this point, but Gray insisted on pursuing his line of questioning. What he was trying to get at, he said, was, when did her husband’s associations with communists cease?

  Kitty Oppenheimer: “I do not know, Mr. Gray. I know that we still have a friend of whom it has been said that he is a Communist.” (She meant, of course, Chevalier.) Startled by this casual admission, Robb interjected, “I beg your pardon?” But Gray forged ahead, and asked again about the “mechanics” by which one becomes “clearly disassociated” from the Communist Party. Kitty answered quite sensibly, “I think that varies from person to person, Mr. Gray. Some people do the bump, like that, and even write an article about it. Other people do it quite slowly. I left the Communist Party. I did not leave my past, the friendships, just like that. Some continued for a while. I saw Communists after I left the Communist Party.”

  The questions kept coming. Dr. Evans asked her to define the difference between a communist and a fellow traveler. Kitty replied simply, “To me, a Communist is a member of the Communist Party who does more or less precisely what he is told.”

  When Robb asked her about their subscription to the People’s World Kitty quite plausibly explained that she doubted they had ever subscribed to the newspaper. “I did not subscribe to it,” Kitty said. “Robert says he did. I sort of doubt it. The reason I have for that is that I know we [in Ohio] often sent the Daily Worker to people that we tried to get interested in the Communist Party without their having subscribed to it.”

  Kitty did not give an inch. Not even Robb could touch her. Calm and yet alert to every nuance, she was undoubtedly a better witness than the husband she was defending.

  ON MAY 5, the final day of the hearing, as Oppenheimer was about to be excused from the witness chair for the last time, he asked to make one further comment. After enduring almost four weeks of excruciating humiliation, Oppenheimer played the last act of Garrison’s strategy of conciliation and thanked his tormentors: “I am grateful to, and I hope properly appreciative of, the patience and consideration that the board has shown me during this part of the proceedings.” It was a demonstration of deference designed to prove to the Gray Board that Robert Oppenheimer was a reasonable, cooperative person, a member of the establishment who could be worked with and trusted. Chairman Gray was unimpressed. “Thank you very much, Dr. Oppenheimer,” he responded.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Garrison spent three hours on his summation of the case. He again protested, less gently this time, the way in which the “hearing” had been turned into a “trial.” He reminded the Gray Board that they had spent a full week before the hearing ever began reading FBI materials on Oppenheimer. “I remember a kind of sinking feeling,” Garrison said, “that I had at that point—the thought of a week’s immersion in FBI files which we would never have the privilege of seeing. . . .” But sensing that he shouldn’t protest too harshly, Garrison immediately backed off. While it was true, he said, they had found themselves “unexpectedly in a proceeding which seemed to us to be adversary in nature. . . . I do want to say in all sincerity that I recognize and appreciate very much the fairness which the members of the board have displayed. . . .”

  If Garrison was embarrassingly submissive, he was also eloquent in his summation. He warned the Gray Board against the “illusion of a foreshortening of time here which to me is a grisly matter, and very, very misleading.” What happened in the 1943 Chevalier incident must be judged by the atmosphere of that time: “Russia was our so-called gallant ally. The whole attitude toward Russia, toward persons who were sympathetic with Russia, everything was different from what obtains today.” As to Oppenheimer’s personal character and integrity, Garrison reminded the Board, “You had three and a half weeks now with the gentleman on the sofa. You have learned a lot about him. There is a lot about him, too, that you haven’t learned, that you don’t know. You have not lived any life with him.”

  Garrison continued: “There is more than Dr. Oppenheimer on trial in this room. . . . The Government of the United States is here on trial also.” In a veiled reference to McCarthyism, Garrison spoke of the “anxiety abroad in the country.” Anticommunist hysteria had so infected the Truman and Eisenhower administrations that the security apparatus was now behaving “like some monolithic kind of machine that will result in the destruction of men of great gifts. . . . America must not devour her own children.” On this note, having pleaded once again that the Gray Board should “judge the whole man,” Garrison ended his summation.

  THE TRIAL WAS OVER, and on the evening of May 6, 1954, the defendant returned to Princeton to await the board’s judgment.

  As Garrison had tried to show, belatedly, the Gray Board hearings were patently unfair and outrageously extrajudicial. The primary responsibility for the proceedings lay with Lewis Strauss. But as chairman of
the board, Gordon Gray could have ensured that the hearing was conducted properly and fairly. He did not do his job. Instead of taking control of the hearing to maintain fairness, which would have required him to rein in Robb’s illicit tactics, he allowed Robb to control the proceedings. Prior to the hearing, Gray permitted Robb to meet exclusively with the board to review the FBI files, a direct violation of the AEC’s 1950 “Security Clearance Procedures.” He accepted Robb’s recommendation that Garrison be denied a similar meeting; he acquiesced to Robb’s refusal to reveal his witness list to Garrison; he did not share Lawrence’s damaging written testimony with the defense; he did nothing to expedite a security clearance for Garrison. The Gray Board was, in sum, a veritable kangaroo court in which the head judge accepted the prosecutor’s lead. As AEC commissioner Henry D. Smyth would insist, any objective legal review of how the hearing was conducted surely would result in its nullification.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “A Black Mark on the Escutcheon of Our Country”

  It is sad beyond words. They are so wrong, so terribly wrong, not only about Robert, but in their concept of what is required of wise public servants. . . .