American Prometheus (94 page)

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. . . .

DAVID LILIENTHAL

OPPENHEIMER RETURNED TO OLDEN MANOR tired and irritable. He knew things had gone badly, and there was not much he could do but wait for the Gray Board’s judgment. He thought it would be weeks before it reached a decision. The FBI wiretap overheard him telling a friend that even then, “he believes he will never be through with the situation. He does not believe the case will come to a quiet end as
all the evil of the times is wrapped in this situation.
” A few days later, the FBI reported that Oppenheimer was “very depressed at the present time and has been ill-tempered with his wife.”

As they awaited the panel’s judgment, he and Kitty spent hours in front of their black-and-white television set, watching the Army-McCarthy Senate hearings. This extraordinary drama had begun on April 21, 1954, in the middle of Oppenheimer’s own ordeal, and as the hearings dragged on through May, an estimated 20 million Americans tuned in each day to watch as Senator McCarthy and the Army’s counsel, Boston lawyer Joseph Nye Welch, traded barbs. Like many Americans, Oppenheimer was transfixed by this live television drama; but for him it must have been a painfully personal reminder of the star chamber nature of the hearings he had just endured. Could he have helped but think that things might have gone better for him if he had been represented by Welch, or someone like him?

GORDON GRAY thought things had gone splendidly. The day after the proceedings ended, he dictated a private memo for his files summing up his initial reactions: “It is my present conviction that up to this point the proceedings have been as fair as circumstances permit. My reason for the qualification is that, of course, Dr. Oppenheimer and his counsel are not privileged to see certain documents such as FBI reports and other classified material. . . .” Gray also confessed that “I was mildly uncomfortable about Mr. Robb’s cross-examination and his piecemeal and surprise references to and quotations from documents.” But in the end, he rationalized to himself, “that there was no damage to Dr. Oppenheimer’s interests if the proceedings are viewed as a whole.”

From Gray’s informal discussions with his fellow panel members, there seemed little doubt of the outcome. Oppenheimer, in his view, was certainly guilty of putting “loyalty to an individual above loyalty or obligation to Government.” Or, as Gray had told Morgan and Evans one morning earlier that week, Dr. Oppenheimer had a “repeated tendency to put his own judgment about a situation ahead of the considered and official judgment in many cases of people whose responsibility and duty it was to have such judgments.” Gray cited the Chevalier affair, Oppenheimer’s defense of Bernard Peters, the hydrogen bomb debate and several of Oppenheimer’s other atomic policy positions. Morgan and Evans indicated their agreement—and Dr. Evans specifically commented that “Oppenheimer certainly was guilty of very bad judgment.”

Upon his return from a ten-day recess, therefore, Gray was shocked to learn that Dr. Evans had penciled a draft dissent supporting Oppenheimer. Gray had thought Evans disposed “from the beginning” to rule that Oppenheimer’s clearance should not be reinstated. Evans had told him privately that in his experience “almost without exception those who turned up with subversive backgrounds and interests were Jewish.” Bluntly put, Gray thought Evans’ anti-Semitism would prejudice his judgment. Throughout the month-long proceedings, Gray noted, “my impression grew that both of my colleagues were pretty well committed to a view.” But now, upon his return from Chicago, “Dr. Evans clearly had undergone a complete reversal of view.” Evans said he had simply reviewed the record and decided that there was nothing new in the charges. The FBI thought “someone had ‘gotten to’ him.”

Strauss became frantic when he learned of this development. He and Robb had wiretapped Oppenheimer’s lawyers, they had blocked Garrison’s attempt to get a security clearance, they had ambushed witnesses with classified documents, they had prejudiced the Gray panel with hearsay evidence from the FBI files—and despite all their efforts to assure a guilty verdict, now it seemed possible that Oppenheimer would be exonerated.

Fearing that Evans might influence one of the two other panel members, Strauss called Robb. The two men agreed that something had to be done and Robb, with Strauss’ approval, called the FBI and asked for Hoover’s intercession. Robb told Bureau agent C. E. Hennrich that he thought “it extremely important that the Director discuss this matter with the Board. . . . Robb said that he feels it will be a tragedy if the decision of the Board goes the wrong way and that he considers this a matter of extreme urgency.” Almost at the same moment, Strauss was on the phone to A. H. Belmont, one of Hoover’s personal assistants, begging him to get the director to intervene. He said things were “touch and go” and that “a slight tip of the balance would cause the Board to commit a serious error.”

Agent Hennrich observed: “This all boils down, it seems to me, to a situation where Strauss and Robb, who want the Board to make a finding that Oppenheimer is a security risk, are doubtful that the Board will find so at this point. . . . It is my feeling that the Director should not see the Board.”

Any such intervention on Hoover’s part would have been considered highly prejudicial if it ever became public—and Hoover knew it. He told his aides, “I think it would be highly improper for me to discuss [the] Oppenheimer case. . . .” He would not see the Gray Board.

Years later, when Robb was confronted with an FBI memo documenting his attempt to get Hoover’s intercession, he denied that he had tried to get the FBI director to influence the board’s judgment. He told the filmmaker and historian Peter Goodchild, “I specifically and categorically deny that I ever encouraged a meeting between the Board and the Director for the purpose of having the Director influence the Board. . . . I also deny that I ever told Hennrich that I considered this ‘to be a matter of extreme urgency’ because unless the Board talked with Mr. Hoover it might decide in favor of Oppenheimer.” But the documentary record is clear—he was lying.

Ironically, Gray thought Evans’ brief so badly written that he asked Robb to rewrite it. “I didn’t want ‘Doc’ Evans’ opinion to be too vulnerable,” Robb explained. “If it was, it would look as though he was just a plant on the Board, do you follow me, it would look as though we put a nincompoop on the Board.”

ON MAY 23, the Gray Board returned its formal verdict. By a vote of two to one, the board deemed Oppenheimer a loyal citizen who was nevertheless a security risk. Accordingly, Chairman Gray and board member Morgan recommended that Oppenheimer’s security clearance
not
be restored. “The following considerations,” Gray and Morgan wrote, “have been controlling in leading us to our conclusion:

We find that Dr. Oppenheimer’s continuing conduct and association have reflected a serious disregard for the requirements of the security system.

We have found a susceptibility to influence which could have serious implications for the security interests of the country.

We find his conduct in the hydrogen bomb program sufficiently disturbing as to raise a doubt as to whether his future participation, if characterized by the same attitudes in a Government program relating to the national defense, would be clearly consistent with the best interests of security.

We have regretfully concluded that Dr. Oppenheimer has been less than candid in several instances in his testimony before this Board.

Their reasoning was tortured. They did not accuse Oppenheimer of violating any laws or even security regulations. But his associations gave evidence of a certain indefinable ill-judgment. His studied lack of deference to the security apparatus was particularly damning in their eyes. “Loyalty to one’s friends is one of the noblest of qualities,” Gray and Morgan wrote in their majority opinion. “Being loyal to one’s friends above reasonable obligations to the country and to the security system, however, is not clearly consistent with the interests of security.” Among other deviations, Oppenheimer was guilty of excessive friendship.

Evans’ dissent on the other hand, was a clear, unambiguous critique of his fellow board members’ verdict. “Most of the derogatory information,” Evans observed in his dissent, “was in the hands of the Committee when Dr. Oppenheimer was cleared in 1947.”

They apparently were aware of his associations and his left-wing policies: yet they cleared him. They took a chance because of his special talents and he continued to do a good job. Now when the job is done, we are asked to investigate him for practically the same derogatory information. He did his job in a thorough and painstaking manner. There is not the slightest vestige of information before this Board that would indicate that Dr. Oppenheimer is not a loyal citizen of his country. He hates Russia. He had communistic friends, it is true. He still has some. However, the evidence indicates that he has fewer of them than he had in 1947. He is not as naïve as he was then. He has more judgment; no one on the Board doubts his loyalty— even the witnesses adverse to him admit that—and he is certainly less a security risk than he was in 1947, when he was cleared. To deny him clearance now for what he was cleared for in 1947, when we must know he is less of a security risk now than he was then, seems hardly the procedure to be adopted in a free country. . . .