Pandora's Keepers (41 page)

Fearing a national panic, Oppenheimer urged Washington to preempt Moscow’s announcement of the test by breaking the news to
the U.S. people first. Many Americans, including those in high places, had great difficulty believing that the Soviets could
achieve such a technological feat on their own. Truman, dubious, grudgingly accepted the scientists’ conclusion and released
news of the Soviet bomb on September twenty-third. That same evening, Oppenheimer received a call from Teller, who was back
at Los Alamos doing consulting work. “What should we do now?” Teller asked Oppenheimer excitedly. “Just go back and keep working,”
said Oppenheimer. Then, after a long pause, he added: “Keep your shirt on.”
¹

Teller’s anxious “What should we do now?” became the question of the day in Washington as well. The Russian bomb fed fears
triggered by earlier Soviet actions: the occupation of Eastern Europe and the use of the Red Army to install governments controlled
by local communist parties in East Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Poland. While the United States and its Western European
allies made their own contributions to Cold War tensions, the Soviet Union under Stalin readily appeared to be a dangerous
totalitarian regime. Coming at a time when the Cold War was rapidly worsening—the Soviet coup in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin
Blockade, and Mao’s victory in China had all happened within the past year—Russia’s atomic test seemed the latest and most
spectacular setback for the West against what it saw as a monolithic, aggressive communist axis stretching across Eurasia,
encompassing half of the world’s people and threatening the rest. Combined with the Soviets’ development of long-range aircraft
capable of reaching the United States, a Soviet atomic bomb promised to end America’s historic sense of invulnerability. Contributing
to this vulnerability were fresh memories of Pearl Harbor. These anxieties about nuclear vulnerability fed American fears
of the Soviet Union.

The answer that came back from many quarters within the American government and the American scientific establishment was
to embark on a crash program to develop the superbomb. In the current crisis atmosphere, the superbomb seemed the best means
for the United States to regain its lost nuclear supremacy.
²

The destructive power of a superbomb was as revolutionary in respect to the atomic bomb as the latter was to conventional
weapons. Unlike an atomic bomb, which used the explosive energy of fission (the splitting of uranium and plutonium isotopes
by neutrons), a superbomb would use the explosive energy of
fusion
, in which the nuclei of two light atoms (usually isotopes of hydrogen such as deuterium or tritium)
^*
combined to form one, heavier nucleus. This combining, or thermonuclear fusion, of two atomic nuclei into one occurred only
at extraordinarily high temperatures and pressures (for example, those found at the center of the sun) and released enormous—theoretically
unlimited—amounts of heat, energy, and radiation, far greater even than fission.

Advocates of a superbomb, led by Teller, argued that it was only a matter of time before Russia developed one; America
must
have its own in order to avoid falling behind or being blackmailed. They further contended that the superbomb was morally
no different from the atomic bomb, or any other weapon for that matter; it all depended on what policy makers did with them.
Teller had voiced this view as far back as 1945. Terming moral opposition to the superbomb “a fallacy,” he had written to
Fermi in October of that year:

If the development is possible, it is out of our powers to prevent it. All that we can do is to retard its completion by some
years. I believe, on the other hand, that any form of international control may be put on a more stable basis by the knowledge
of the full extent of the problem that must be solved and of the dangers of a ruthless international competition. The terrible
consequences of a superbomb will not be avoided by ignoring or postponing the issue but by wise and provident planning.
³

His thinking had not changed since then, except to become more fervent. Teller and other advocates of the superbomb believed
in the principle—bordering on an imperative—that physicists, like other scientists, had an obligation to understand nature
and develop new knowledge. They could not avoid the responsibility of knowing the facts, no matter how terrifying. In Teller’s
mind, once he and other physicists had realized an atomic bomb was feasible, a thermonuclear weapon was scientifically the
next logical step.

Few physicists had challenged the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and almost no one other than Bohr and
Szilard had given thought to the time “after the bomb.” Questions did not emerge until shortly before Hiroshima; and even
then, few opposed the use of the bomb against Japan. The atomic bomb debate occurred only
after
the weapon was made. The superbomb debate, in contrast, occurred
before
the weapon was made. What is more, no one now could plead ignorance of its effects. Physicists knew they were confronting
in the superbomb a scientific issue, and a personal choice, fraught with large moral and political implications.

The superbomb debate played out before secret boards and committees of the U.S. government. But reduced to its barest essentials,
the debate amounted to a personal duel between two proud and brilliant men: Oppenheimer and Teller. Everything about the duel
was compelling: the drama it sparked, the struggles it produced, and above all, the clashing perspectives and values it revealed.

For Teller, this moment had been a long time coming. The idea of a superbomb had originated in conversations between him and
Fermi at Columbia University back in the fall of 1941. One afternoon, as they walked back to Pupin Laboratory after lunch,
Fermi had casually—almost offhandedly—asked Teller whether he thought an atomic explosion might be used to produce a thermonuclear
reaction. In the center of an exploding fission bomb, extraordinarily high temperatures—approaching 40 million degrees Fahrenheit—were
produced, and so at least one of the conditions necessary for igniting a thermonuclear reaction seemed to be feasible, perhaps
even within reach.

The idea had intrigued Teller. It appealed to his immense curiosity and competitiveness. It also appealed to his intense ambitiousness.
A scientist who knew Teller sensed this quality in him from the start:

When I first met Teller, he appeared youthful, always intense, visibly ambitious, and harboring a smoldering passion for achievement
in physics. He was a warm person and clearly desired friendship with other physicists. Possessing a very critical mind, he
also showed quickness, sense, and great determination and persistence. However, I think he also showed less feeling for true
simplicity in the more fundamental levels of theoretical physics. To exaggerate a bit, I would say his talents were more in
the direction of engineering, construction, and the surveying of existing methods. But undoubtedly he also had great ingenuity.
⁴

Teller’s mind worked with dazzling swiftness and creativity. He liked to discuss ideas with others, using these conversations
to strike sparks and generate insights. Teller would slap his forehead as he corrected or discarded an idea—and then dash
off another. Fermi, who knew him well, often said of him: “If only he could find one thing to concentrate on!”
⁵
With the superbomb, Teller had found his one thing.

Teller’s superbomb obsession surprised many people because it was so out of character with his flighty personality. “His trouble
was
lack
of concentration on any one problem,” said a colleague. “Then this thing hit him and he seemingly couldn’t let loose of it.”
⁶
His commitment reflected a personal passion and emotional involvement not uncommon among scientists. No doubt his fear of
the Russians, his sense of scientific curiosity and patriotic duty, and his belief that peace could be achieved only through
powerful weapons were sincere and genuine. But his personal ambition was even stronger. The superbomb became the territory
that Teller staked out as his own, where he could compete successfully against Oppenheimer’s esteem and Fermi’s achievement.
More and more, Teller began to identify himself with the superbomb, mentally classifying physicists into those on “his” side
and those “against” him. His emotional temperament also came into play, his habit of getting self-blindingly attached to his
own ideas leading him on. Teller pressed his idea forcefully and relentlessly, tirelessly ready at each meeting to start again
from the beginning. He was impervious to doubt.

Teller had begun his dogged quest for the superbomb at wartime Los Alamos. In a meeting there with James Conant toward the
end of the war, he had pressed for postwar development of the weapon and dismissed moral objections to it as irrelevant to
the pursuit of scientific knowledge: “There is among my scientific colleagues some hesitancy as to the advisability of this
development on the grounds that it might make the international problems even more difficult than they are now. My opinion
is that this is a fallacy. If the development is possible, it is out of our powers to prevent it.”
⁷
After he moved to Chicago, he kept abreast of theoretical developments by spending summers at Los Alamos as a consultant.
Unable to get his mind off the superbomb, he lobbied for it whenever and with whomever he could. His message was insistent
but simple: If a superbomb could be built (and he believed that it could), then it also could be built by the Russians. America
therefore must undertake a crash program to build the superbomb in order to prevent Russia from getting it first, and then
using it to intimidate or blackmail the United States in a crisis. In his insecure mind, greater destructive power meant greater
military strength, and greater military strength meant greater national security.

Ever since the end of the war, Teller had been trying to find a way to get serious work going on his pet project. The challenge
of the Soviet bomb seemed to provide the impetus that was previously lacking, and Teller resolved to use every means and argument
he could think of to exploit it. This was his moment, he thought.

Oppenheimer had hoped that Soviet scientists could not soon duplicate what he and his wartime colleagues at Los Alamos had
done. Yet even after he learned of the Soviet atomic test, Oppenheimer remained opposed to development of the superbomb. Fission
bombs, destructive as they might be, were limited in power. Now, it seemed, scientists such as Teller were seeking to brush
even those limits aside and to build bombs whose destructiveness was boundless. Oppenheimer believed that America, as the
world’s leading nuclear power, must lead by example. And the example he sought to set was one of restraint.

Oppenheimer’s concern was not new; two years before the Soviet atomic test, Arthur Compton

found Oppenheimer reluctant [about the superbomb]. His chief reluctance was, I believe, on moral grounds. No nation should
bring into being a power that would (or could) be so destructive of human lives. Even if another nation should do so, our
morality should be higher than this. We should accept the military disadvantage in the interest of standing for a proper moral
principle.

He had other reasons—the development of fear and antagonism among other nations, the substantial possibility that the effort
to create a [thermonuclear] explosion would fail, questions regarding the H-bomb’s military value. He hoped that no urgent
need for its development would arise.
⁸

Oppenheimer found the superbomb a weapon out of all proportion to whatever America might seek to accomplish in either peace
or war. He believed that most policy makers and scientists such as Teller gave far too high a value to nuclear weapons; and
that just as the atomic bomb had given America a false sense of security, the nation was in danger of falling into the same
error with the superbomb: the fallacy of a cheap, easy alternative to finding a way to coexist—like it or not—with Soviet
Russia.

Oppenheimer suspected that most advocates of the superbomb were motivated by a reactive fear of the Soviet atomic test. “Having
tried to find something tangible to chew on ever since September 23,” he confided to a friend, they “[have] at last found
[their] answer: We must have a Super, and we must have it fast.” Privately admitting that “it would be folly to oppose exploration
of this weapon”—a prediction his own career would tragically bear out—and that the basic scientific research “had to be done,”
Oppenheimer nonetheless refused to accept the enormously destructive superbomb “as the way to save the country and the peace.”
Instead, he believed the allure of the superbomb was “full of dangers,” and represented a doomed effort to “return to a state
of affairs approximating monopoly.”
⁹

Lawrence did not share Oppenheimer’s qualms; he was, as Bethe described him, “a terrific nationalist who was completely devoted
to making America infinitely strong.”
¹⁰
Like Oppenheimer, Lawrence had opposed development of the superbomb just after the war, but the Soviet atomic test had changed
his mind. Lawrence hoped the superbomb would prove impossible, but if such a weapon could be built, then he believed the United
States must have it first. A longtime associate of Lawrence noted another motivation: “He welcomed it as not only a matter
of duty, but a personal opportunity” to return to the “kind of high” experienced in the making of the atomic bomb, the sense
that “you were really part of a great movement, doing things which were interesting and consequential.”
¹¹
Princeton physicist Henry Smyth, who had known Lawrence for many years, characterized him astutely. “Apart from being an
expert in his field and a brilliant scientist,” Smyth wrote that fall, “Lawrence was also something of a promoter;… several
times in the past he may have overstepped the line in pushing projects which add to his own ‘Empire.’”
¹²