American Prometheus (82 page)

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 lied 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.

LEWIS STRAUSS had prevailed. The nuclear secrecy regime would remain in place and nuclear weapons would be built in dizzying numbers. Oppenheimer had once thought Strauss merely an annoyance, a man not likely to “obstruct things.” Now, with a Republican administration in control of Washington, Strauss was in the driver’s seat, and his right foot was pressing his political accelerator to the floor.

Oppenheimer and many of his friends were now certain that Strauss was gunning for him. In July, soon after Strauss moved in as AEC chairman, Oppenheimer’s close friend and lawyer Herb Marks received a phone call from an AEC employee: “You’d better tell your friend Oppy to batten down the hatches and prepare for some stormy weather.”

“I knew he was in trouble,” I. I. Rabi recalled. “He had been so for a couple of years . . . he was living under this shadow . . . I knew he was being hounded.” So one day Rabi told him, “Robert, you write a piece for the
Saturday Evening Post,
tell them your story, your radical connections and so on, get well paid for it—and that will kill it.” Rabi thought if the story came from Robert, and it appeared in a respectable publication, the public would understand. As a matter of public relations, a frank confessional essay might well have immunized Oppenheimer from further political attacks. But as Rabi recalled, “I couldn’t get him to do it.”

Oppenheimer had other plans. Early that summer, Robert, Kitty and their two children all boarded the SS
Uruguay
in New York, bound for Rio de Janeiro. Traveling as a guest of the Brazilian government, Oppenheimer was scheduled to give several lectures and then return to Princeton in mid-August. While he was in Brazil, the FBI had the U.S. Embassy monitor his contacts.

While Oppenheimer enjoyed a leisurely trip to Brazil, Strauss spent the summer of 1953 feverishly preparing to finally put an end to his influence. On June 22, he visited FBI headquarters for another private meeting with Hoover. Well aware of the FBI director’s extraordinary power in Washington, Strauss wanted to be sure that they maintained a “close and cordial relationship.” Almost immediately, “Admiral” Strauss turned the conversation to Oppenheimer. “He stated,” Hoover wrote in a memo, “that he was aware of the fact that Senator McCarthy contemplated investigating Dr. Oppenheimer and that while he, the admiral, felt that inquiry into Oppenheimer’s activities might be well worth while, he hoped it would not be done prematurely.”