Pandora's Keepers

by Brian Van DeMark

  I think that it hardly needs to be said why the impact is so strong. There are three reasons: one is the extraordinary speed with which things which were right on the frontier of science were translated into terms where they affected many living people, and potentially all people. Another is the fact, quite accidental in many ways, and connected with the speed, that scientists themselves played such a large part, not merely in providing the foundation for atomic weapons, but in actually making them. In this we are certainly closer to it than any other group. The third is that the thing we made… arrived in the world with such a shattering reality and suddenness that there was no opportunity for the edges to be worn off.

  In considering what the situation of science is, it may be helpful to think a little of what people said and felt of their motives in coming into this job. One always has to worry that what people say of their motives is not adequate. Many people said different things, and most of them, I think, had some validity. There was in the first place the great concern that our enemy might develop these weapons before we did, and the feeling—at least, in the early days, the very strong feeling—that without atomic weapons it might be very difficult, it might be an impossible, it might be an incredibly long thing to win the war. These things wore off a little as it became clear that the war would be won in any case. Some people, I think, were motivated by curiosity, and rightly so; and some by a sense of adventure, and rightly so. Others had more political arguments and said, “Well, we know that atomic weapons are in principle possible, and it is not right that the threat of their unrealized possibility should hang over the world. It is right that the world should know what can be done in their field and deal with it.” And the people added to that that it was a time when all over the world men would be particularly ripe and open for dealing with this problem because of the immediacy of the evils of war, because of the universal cry from everyone that one could not go through this thing again, even a war without atomic bombs. And there was finally, and I think rightly, the feeling that there was probably no place in the world where the development of atomic weapons would have a better chance of leading to a reasonable solution, and a smaller chance of leading to disaster, than within the United States. I believe all these things that people said are true, and I think I said them all myself at one time or another….

  There are [those] who try to escape the immediacy of this situation by saying that, after all, war has always been very terrible; after all, weapons have always gotten worse and worse; that this is just another weapon and it doesn’t create a great change; that they are not so bad; bombings have been bad in this war and this is not a change in that—it just adds a little to the effectiveness of bombing; that some sort of protection will be found. I think that these efforts to diffuse and weaken the nature of the crisis make it only more dangerous. I think it is for us to accept it as a very grave crisis, to realize that these atomic weapons which we have started to make are very terrible, that they involve a change, that they are not just a slight modification….

  I think the advent of the atomic bomb and the facts which will get around that they are not too hard to make—that they will be universal if people wish to make them universal, that they will not constitute a real drain on the economy of any strong nation, and that their power of destruction will grow and is already incomparably greater than that of any other weapon—these things create a new situation…. I think when people talk of the fact that this is not only a great peril, but a great hope, this is what they should mean…. There exists a possibility of realizing those changes which are needed if there is to be any peace.

  Those are very far-reaching changes. They are changes in the relations between nations, not only in spirit, not only in law, but also in conception and feeling. I don’t know which of these is prior; they must all work together, and only the gradual interaction of one on the other can make a reality…. Atomic weapons are a peril which affect everyone in the world, and in that sense a completely common problem, as common a problem as it was for the Allies to defeat the Nazis. I think that in order to handle this common problem there must be a complete sense of community responsibility. I do not think that one may expect that people will contribute to the solution of the problem until they are aware of their ability to take part in the solution….

  I think it is important to realize that even those who are well informed in this country have been slow to understand, slow to believe that the bombs would work, and then slow to understand that their working would present such profound problems. We have certain interests in playing up the bomb, not only we here locally, but all over the country, because we made them, and our pride is involved. I think that in other lands it may be even more difficult for an appreciation of the magnitude of the thing to take hold. For this reason, I’m not sure that the greatest opportunities for progress do not lie somewhat further in the future than I had for a long time thought….

  The thing which must have troubled you, and which troubled me, in the official statements was the insistent note of unilateral responsibility for the handling of atomic weapons. However good the motives of this country are… we are 140 million people, and there are two billion people living on earth. We must understand that whatever our commitments to our own views and ideas, and however confident we are that in the course of time they will tend to prevail, our absolute—our completely absolute—commitment to them, in denial of the views and ideas of other people, cannot be the basis of any kind of agreement….

  We are not only scientists; we are men, too. We cannot forget our dependence on our fellow men. I mean not only our material dependence, without which no science would be possible, and without which we could not work; I mean also our deep moral dependence, in that the value of science must lie in the world of men, that all our roots lie there. These are the strongest bonds in the world, stronger than those even that bind us to one another, these are the deepest bonds—that bind us to our fellow men. 23

  Down beside the Rio Grande River, at the teahouse where Oppenheimer had often sought refuge from his burdens, Edith Warner read a transcript of his remarks in the newspaper a few days later. She had made a point during the war of never questioning Oppenheimer as she quietly served him dinner, but she had sensed all along that he was thinking about more than just science. On November twenty-fifth, she wrote Oppenheimer a letter:

  Dear Mr. Opp,

  I have thought of you frequently…. So it was especially satisfying to read your recent speech. I hope you do not mind my having it.

  As I read, it seemed almost as though you were pacing my kitchen, talking half to yourself and half to me. And from it came the conviction of what I’ve felt a number of times—you have, in lesser degree, that quality which radiates from Mr. Baker [Niels Bohr]. It has seemed to me in these past few months that it is a power as little known as atomic energy, which has greatly increased man’s need for it. It also seems that even recognition of it involves responsibility.

  There are many things for which I would express my gratitude…. Your hours here mean much to me and I appreciate, perhaps more than most outsiders, what you have given of yourself in these Los Alamos years. Most of all I am grateful for your bringing Mr. Baker. I think of you both, hopefully, as the song of the river comes from the canyon and the need of the world reaches even this quiet spot.

  May you have strength and courage and wisdom,

  Edith Warner 24

  In Bohr’s view, because the problem of atomic weapons and war had to be solved, it would be solved; the threat to humanity’s survival simply left no other choice. Bohr believed that scientists should not portray the atomic bomb to the public solely as a potential destroyer, but as a “forceful reminder of how closely the fate of all mankind is coupled together,” and as “a unique opportunity to remove obstacles to peaceful collaboration between nations and to enable them jointly to benefit from the great promises held out by the progress of science.” Bohr saw physicists like himself as the unique agen
ts of this opportunity, both as makers of the bomb and as the teachers of its universal lessons. 25

  Bohr looked to Oppenheimer as a key ally in this effort. After settling back in Copenhagen, Bohr wrote to him in November:

  I was very sorry that I was not able see you again before my return to Denmark, but, due to difficulties in arranging passage for Margrethe and me, we could not, as we had intended to, return to the U.S.A. before the secret of the project was lifted, and then it was thought advisable that I no longer postponed my return to Denmark.

  I need not say how often Aage and I think of all the kindness you and Kitty showed us in these last eventful years, where your understanding and sympathy have meant so much to me, and how closely I feel connected with you in the hope that the great accomplishment may contribute decisively to bringing about harmonious relationships between nations. I trust the whole matter is developing in a favorable way. 26

  Oppenheimer shared Bohr’s goal, and sought to achieve it by courting policy makers, whom he believed would listen to him. He was, after all, now an international celebrity and a national hero. Oppenheimer urged other physicists to keep the horrors of atomic war fresh in the public’s mind. “It will not help to avert such a war,” he told them, “if we try to rub the edges off this new terror that we have helped to bring to the world. If I return so insistently to the magnitude of the peril,” he continued, “it is because I see in that our one great hope. As a vast threat, and a new one, to all the peoples of the earth, by its novelty, its terror, its strangely promethean quality, it has become, in the eyes of many of us, an opportunity unique and challenging.” 27

  Other physicists besides Oppenheimer began lobbying policy makers, their efforts made easier because policy makers now looked on them much as primitive tribesmen had looked on their shamans: as high priests in touch with mysterious, supernatural forces whose awsome power they alone could fathom. Fermi wrote Washington Democratic Senator Warren Magnuson in September 1945 to warn against the fallacy of an atomic monopoly. “The safety offered this country by the attempt to withhold from foreign powers what we know is only limited,” Fermi stressed. “Any major power could reach our present stage in this development in five years. It would be extremely dangerous to rely on secrecy.” 28 Compton told an audience of civic leaders in St. Louis in November that “if the United States should be a party to an atomic war,” America’s cities would “follow Hiroshima and Nagasaki into oblivion.” “If our nation should eventually win,” Compton said, “what would we have gained? Perhaps the control of the world. But of what value would this be with our civilization gone and our population decimated?” “We must keep in mind,” he added, “that when all are armed with atomic weapons no superiority of one nation can free it from danger of great damage by another.” 29

  Rabi agreed with Fermi and Compton—and set out to do something about it. His solution would not be—indeed, could not be—scientific. Try as he might, Rabi could not recapture the single-minded focus on physics he had enjoyed before the war. Now he was an older and wiser man who had experience dealing with the military, politics, and warfare, aware in a way he had not been as a young professor of the complexity of his own equations. Rabi thought that by working from the “inside,” with the government in Washington, he might be able to do something about controlling its dangers.

  He decided to map out a plan with Oppenheimer. The two friends met in Rabi’s faculty apartment on Riverside Drive in late December 1945. It was a bitterly cold day. Factories across the Hudson in New Jersey belched smoke that hung almost suspended in the frigid air. Oppenheimer and Rabi stood at the window, looking out and watching small ice floes drift downstream, turning pink in the sunset. They sat down and began posing questions to each other and shaping answers. When evening came, they had formed a far-reaching idea for international control of the atom. “We were optimistic because we realized what a terrible state the world was going to get into if something like what we were proposing didn’t happen,” remembered Rabi. “We assumed the predicament was obvious to others and it was to most—even the military.” 30

  Oppenheimer conveyed their ideas to Washington, and the following month a committee was set up to draft an international control plan. The committee was headed by Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, with Oppenheimer serving as a consultant. * For the next six weeks, committee members met in Washington offices, in railroad cars, at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, even aloft in a military transport plane. They worked and studied and debated late into the night, then resumed again early the next morning.

  The committee submitted its report to the Truman administration in March 1946. Although labeled the Acheson-Lilienthal Report, it bore the unmistakable imprint of Robert Oppenheimer, who had drafted it. “Only if dangerous aspects of atomic energy are taken out of national hands,” the report noted, “is there any reasonable prospect of devising safeguards against the use of atomic energy for bombs.” The committee proposed the creation of an international atomic agency. Believing that an unpoliced agreement placed too great a burden on good faith, the report recommended endowing the international agency with strong inspection powers. It stressed that the risk to the United States of relinquishing its atomic monopoly to an international agency was preferable to the risk of a nuclear arms race. 31

  Other physicists rallied behind the report. Teller called it “a bold and dangerous solution; but inaction and an unplanned drift into international competition would be still more dangerous.” “If the constructive and imaginative spirit of the State Department report is compared with the ‘Maginot-line’ mentality of ‘keeping the secret,’“” Teller added, “one can hardly doubt in which direction our eventual hope for safety lies.” 32 Compton called the report “a sound and constructive basis for solving a difficult problem.” “We’d be in a much stronger position if the United Nations would have the atomic weapons and no individual nations would have them,” he said, “than the position in which we would hold atomic weapons and other nations also would develop them. Military defenses cannot make us safe; we’ve got to rely on international agreement before we can really be safe.” 33 Bethe thought the greatest service physicists could perform was to “make it clear that only a truly international control of atomic energy gives any hope of lasting security from atomic weapons.” 34 Any country in the world that possessed sufficient scientific talent and material resources—certainly including the Soviet Union—could, sooner or later, duplicate the accomplishment of the Manhattan Project.

  All of them conceded that if no international agreement could be reached, then the United States might have to keep its atomic arsenal for purposes of deterrence. But they stressed that the bomb was not a “winning weapon” in the long run because other countries would eventually have it too, and in any atomic war, all sides would lose.

  The Acheson-Lilienthal Report was presented to the world with great fanfare by American diplomat Bernard Baruch in the gymnasium of New York’s Hunter College, the temporary home of the United Nations, on June 14, 1946. Oppenheimer and Compton sat in the audience that day. “We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead,” Baruch intoned at the beginning of his speech. He then went on to describe the destructive power of the bomb, to propose an international atomic authority, and to insist on the abolition of the national veto in this one area. Baruch differed from Oppenheimer by focusing attention on the negative aspect of punishment for violators rather than, as did the report, on the positive aspect of mutual cooperation.

  Sadly, within weeks the plan was gravely ill and in less than six months it was dead. American military forces were rapidly demobilizing from Western Europe while massive Russian military forces remained deployed in Eastern Europe; under such conditions, Truman was unlikely to agree to relinquish what he considered the principal American deterrent to Soviet adventurism. Additionally, probably no international control plan could have overcome the fear and suspicion with which Stalin viewed any outside intrusion into Russi
an territory. Quite simply, Stalin wanted his own atomic bomb and probably would not have accepted any limitation on his own fledgling program, and Truman favored preserving America’s atomic monopoly until, and unless, he got firm agreement to international control from the Soviets. * The Acheson-Lilienthal Report had addressed the physical facts of atomic energy, but it had ignored American and Soviet geopolitical interests, which were rooted in different values, different dispositions of military forces, and different perceptions of national security. The scientists had thought leaders would want the bomb to go away, but in fact what they wanted was the bomb. 35

  The plan’s failure bitterly disappointed and badly discouraged Oppenheimer. David Lilienthal, who talked with Oppenheimer late into the night that summer about the opportunity both thought had been missed, recorded in his diary:

  He really is a tragic figure; with all his great attractiveness [and] brilliance of mind. As I left him he looked so sad: “I am ready to go anywhere and do anything, but I am bankrupt of further ideas. And I find that physics and the teaching of physics, which is my life, now seems irrelevant.” It was this last [remark] that really wrung my heart. 36

  Still, Oppenheimer saw no alternative but to continue working for international control. Writing to Bohr, he tried to put the best face on what he considered a bad situation: “It seems important for all our future hopes that the wrong lessons should not have been learned by the failure of the past year, but that on the contrary there may be a renewed courage for a somewhat deeper attack on the problem.” 37

  Szilard was similarly dejected. Szilard had been hopeful, but his mood grew increasingly pessimistic as the months passed. “To me it seems futile to hope that 140 million people of this country can be smuggled through the gates of Paradise while most of them are looking the other way,” he said bitterly in 1947. “Nothing much can be achieved now or in the very near future until such time as the people of this country understand what is at stake. Maybe God will work a miracle—if we don’t make it too difficult for him.” 38 Lawrence, however, took a completely different view: he blamed the failure of international control on Soviet intransigence, which made him conclude that American restraint was unwise and an agreement with Stalin unattainable. As a result, Lawrence abandoned the nuclear restraint that he had advocated along with Oppenheimer, Fermi, and Compton just after the war, and now turned into an enthusiastic proponent of American nuclear superiority.