American Prometheus (113 page)

137
“How shall we dissipate”:
Klehr,
The Heyday of American Communism,
p. 413.

137
“We/he initiated it”:
Haakon Chevalier, interview by Sherwin, 6/29/82, pp. 3, 4, 6, 7; see also Chevalier,
Oppenheimer,
p. 19. Many years after her divorce, Barbara Chevalier noted in her unpublished memoir that Opje and Haakon had “joined a secret unit of the Communist Party. There must have been only six or eight members—a doctor, a wealthy businessman (maybe).” Barbara noted that she had deliberately not wanted to remember the names of those involved (Barbara Chevalier manuscript, 8/8/81, courtesy of Gregg Herken).

137
For almost a year the FBI:
Born in Russia in 1905, Schneiderman came to the United States when he was three years old. In 1939, government prosecutors attempted to revoke his citizenship and deport him. The case was still under appeal at the time of his meeting with Oppenheimer; in 1943 the Supreme Court upheld Schneiderman’s citizenship (Klehr,
The Heyday of American Communism,
p. 484).

137
“the big boys”:
FBI report, 5/19/41, document 2, and FBI teletype, 10/16/53, San Francisco bureau to FBI director, Haakon Chevalier, FBI file, part 1 of 2. The cable reports that when Schneiderman and Folkoff arrived, “there were observed parked in Chevalier’s driveway cars registered to [blank] and J. Robert Oppenheimer.”

138 “persons to be considered”: N.J.L. Piper to FBI director, 3/28/41, JRO FBI file, sect. 1, doc. 1.

138
Another FBI document:
FBI report, 6/18/54, by Joe R. Craig, with attachment, “Excerpts from 97-1 (C-14).” The attachment is undated, but judging from the context of the excerpts, it must have been written sometime after August 1941, when Oppenheimer moved into his home at One Eagle Hill, Berkeley. Oppenheimer had met Helen Pell through their joint activities on behalf of the Committee to Aid Democratic Spain. (Pell was also a good friend of Steve Nelson; see Nelson, interview by Sherwin, p. 13.) Dr. Addis, of course, was Jean Tatlock’s friend and the man who initially funneled Oppenheimer’s donations on behalf of the Spanish Republic to the Communist Party. Alexander Kaun was a Berkeley professor who rented Oppenheimer his house for a time. In 1943 Oppenheimer told Lt. Col. Lansdale that he knew Kaun was a member of the American Soviet Council—but that he did not know whether he was a Party member (JRO hearing, p. 877). George Andersen was identified as the “official Communist Party Attorney” in San Francisco. Aubrey Grossman and Richard Gladstein were attorneys for the union leader Harry Bridges.

138
Morrison, of course:
See Philip Morrison testimony, 5/7–8/53, “Subversive Influence in the Educational Process,” 83rd U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, part 9, pp. 899–919.

138
When asked about Chevalier’s:
Morrison, interview by Sherwin, 6/21/02.

138
“What made you a member?”
and subsequent quotes:
Haakon Chevalier, interviews by Sherwin, 6/29/82, pp. 6–7, and 7/15/82, p. 5.

138
“I don’t know that I could”:
Nelson, interview by Sherwin, 6/17/81, p. 14.

139
“My own estimate”:
Nelson, interview by Sherwin, 6/17/81, p. 22.

140
“liaison with the Faculty group”:
Griffiths, “Venturing Outside the Ivory Tower: The Political Autobiography of a College Professor,” unpublished manuscript, LOC. Griffiths produced two versions of this typed manuscript; the shorter, untitled manuscript names Oppenheimer as a member of the closed unit. Oppenheimer’s name is not used in the longer manuscript; apparently, when Griffiths began to circulate the manuscript for possible publication, a friend persuaded him that he should not disclose Oppenheimer’s name. We are quoting here from the shorter manuscript, p. 26.

141
he “did not consider”:
Gordon Griffiths, “Venturing Outside the Ivory Tower,” unpublished manuscript, shorter version, LOC, p. 26; FBI report of interview with Kenneth O. May, 3/5/54, JRO FBI file.

141
Once a graduate student:
Kenneth May, confidential letter to Dr. Lawrence M. Gould, president of Carleton College, 9/25/50, Carleton College Archives, courtesy of college archivist Eric Hilleman. May wrote an article in the
New Masses
entitled “Why My Father Disinherited Me.” David Hawkins, interview by Sherwin, 6/5/82, p. 15.

142
“agree with CP aims”:
FBI report of interview with Kenneth May, 3/5/54. May left the Party sometime during World War II. In 1946 he finally obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics, and later that year he joined the mathematics department at Carleton College in Northfield, MN. Interviews with John Dyer-Bennett, May’s roommate at Berkeley, and Miriam May, May’s third wife, by Bird, 5/15/01.

Chapter Ten: “More and More Surely”

143
“I know Charlie”:
Smith and Weiner,
Letters,
p. 211.

143
No issue of the day was:
Maurice Isserman,
Which Side Were You On?,
pp. 32–54.

143
“fantastic falsehood that”:
The Nation
reprinted this open letter (Schwartz,
From
West to East,
p. 290).

143
“that Opje proved himself”:
Chevalier,
Oppenheimer,
pp. 31–32. In his 1959 novel,
The Man Who Would Be God,
Chevalier has his Oppenheimer character defend the Stalin-Hitler Pact with these words: “ ‘Even in the worst situation,’ he said in a low voice, ‘there is a right move, and there are many wrong ones. Since the Western powers violated their pledge to Czechoslovakia in Munich, Russia’s situation has been dangerously exposed. This is surely the right move. Because it’s the one move that foils the plot of a united attack on the Soviet Union by Germany and a coalition of Western nations—France and England, with American support. . . . The pact is not an alliance with Germany. It is a quarantining of Germany against any combination with the West. . . . This is going to be beastly to explain’ ” (Chevalier,
The Man Who Would Be
God,
pp. 21–22).

143
at a time when:
Numerous historians have lent credence to this argument (see Alexander Werth,
Russia At War,
pp. 3–39, and Peter Calvovoressi and Guy Wint,
Total War,
p. 82.

144
“seasoned liberals into reactionaries”
and subsequent quotes:
Chevalier,
Oppenheimer,
p. 33.

144
Robert was not himself:
Maurice Isserman,
Which Side Were You On?,
pp. 38, 42. In 1941 the newly created “Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities”— chaired by California state senator Jack B. Tenney—held hearings to investigate allegations that the League of American Writers was in fact a Communist front (see Edward L. Barrett, Jr., The Tenney Committee, p. 125).

144
Not surprisingly, their discovery:
Herken,
Brotherhood of the Bomb,
p. 31; Chevalier, interview by Sherwin, 6/29/82, pp. 6–7; Chevalier,
Oppenheimer,
pp. 35–36.

144
“They were printed”:
Gordon Griffiths, “Venturing Outside the Ivory Tower,” unpublished manuscript, shorter version, LOC, pp. 27–28.

144
“The outbreak of war”:
The pamphlets came to the attention of the university’s president, Robert G. Sproul, who placed them in his presidential papers in a folder marked “Communists, 1940.” During the course of an interview, Chevalier brought out copies of the pamphlets, and Sherwin read excerpts into a tape recorder (Chevalier, interview by Sherwin, 7/15/82).

144
“you can recognize his style”:
Chevalier, interview by Sherwin, 7/15/82.

145
“The elementary test”:
“Report to Our Colleagues: II,” 4/6/40, “Communism,” Office of the President (Robert Sproul), 1940, UCB.

146
“something of a progressive”:
Ibid.

146
If Oppenheimer had:
JRO to Edwin and Ruth Uehling, 5/17/41; Smith and Weiner,
Letters,
p. 217.

147
“I may be out of a job”:
Smith and Weiner,
Letters,
p. 216. We see no record that JRO was questioned by any investigative committee at this time, so perhaps he was not called.

147
“The University of California”:
Martin D. Kamen, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/79, p. 27.

147
While his friend:
Chevalier, interview by Sherwin, 7/15/82.
Daily Worker,
4/28/38. Chevalier was joined in this statement by nearly 150 prominent intellectuals, including Nelson Algren, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, and Malcolm Cowley.

147
“It was an absolutely”:
During World War II, Weissberg was eventually shipped to an extermination camp in Poland. He jumped from a truck, however, and managed to escape into the woods, where he became active in the Polish underground (Victor Weisskopf, interview by Sherwin, 3/23/79, p. 5).

147
“It’s worse than you”:
Michelmore,
The Swift Years,
pp. 57–58.

147
“What they reported”:
JRO hearing, p. 10.

148
Oppie “still believed”:
Weisskopf,
The Joy of Insight,
p. 115.

148
“He really had”:
Weisskopf, interview by Sherwin, 3/23/79, pp. 3–7.

148
“I know that these conversations”:
Weisskopf, interview by Sherwin, 3/23/79, p. 10.

148
“Opje said he came”:
Edith Arnstein Jenkins,
Against a Field Sinister,
p. 27. Edith chose as her Party alias the name of Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. She said that no one was a “card-carrying communist” in their own name: “It was too dangerous.” From 1936 to 1938, Arnstein was the official secretary and dues collector for a closed unit of the CP at Berkeley—but she left this position in 1938 when she quit law school. The professional section of the Communist Party at Berkeley, she said, was composed of several units, with about eight individuals in each unit. She later said that Oppenheimer was certainly not a member of her closed unit, though she could not speak to this point for the years after 1938. Jenkins also remembered that Oppenheimer had once given her a small sum of money as a contribution to the Young Communist League (YCL) (Edith Arnstein Jenkins, interview by Herken, 5/9/02; Jenkins, interview by Bird, 7/25/02).

148
“Opje is fine”:
Schweber,
In the Shadow of the Bomb,
p. 108; Bloch to Rabi, 11/2/38, box 1 (general correspondence), Bloch Papers, SU.

148
That evening he presented:
Childs,
An American Genius,
p. 307.

149
“beautifully eloquent speech”:
Schweber,
In the Shadow of the Bomb,
p. 108.

149
“He had sympathies”:
Bernstein,
Hans Bethe,
p. 65.

149
“Our little group”:
Chevalier, interview by Sherwin, 6/29/82, p. 10; Chevalier,
Oppenheimer,
p. 46.

149 “[W]e shared the ideal”: Chevalier, Oppenheimer, p. 187.

150
“Sebastian would meet”:
Chevalier,
The Man Who Would Be God,
pp. 14–15.

150
“It was his baby”:
Ibid., pp. 88–89.

150
the “novel’s underlying tone”:
Time,
11/2/59, p. 94.