Pandora's Keepers (43 page)

Oppenheimer opened the next morning’s session by reading aloud Seaborg’s letter. He then asked each committee member to express
his view about what to do. Not everyone had made up his mind, and Oppenheimer was careful not to lead or to influence them.
A member of the GAC recalled:

Dr. Oppenheimer did not express his point of view until after all the rest of the members of the committee had expressed themselves.
It was clear, however, as the individual members did express their opinions as we went around the table, that while there
were differing points of view, different reasons, different methods of thinking, different methods of approach to the problem,
that each member came essentially to the same conclusion, namely, there were better things the United States could do at that
time than to embark upon this super program…. Each person took five to ten minutes or thereabouts to express his views.
³⁰

Oppenheimer spoke last. “There was a surprising unanimity—to me very surprising—that the United States ought not to take the
initiative at that time in an all-out program,” he said. Then: “I am glad you feel this way, for if it had not come out this
way, I would have had to resign as chairman.”
³¹
The fact that there
was
a consensus on such a contentious issue underscored the physicists’ moral qualms about building a superbomb. (But there was
not unanimity, since Seaborg, in his letter, favored going ahead.)

Four of the five AEC commissioners then joined the GAC at this point.
^*
For an hour the two groups discussed the superbomb. It was a soul-searching session. Many GAC members said they could not
see how any country could go from one weapon of mass destruction to another a thousand times more destructive and retain any
normal perspective with regard to other countries and world peace. They felt as if they were being asked to endorse an undertaking
that might prove to bring down the curtain on human civilization.

At 11:00
A.M.
the Joint Chiefs arrived. They came with a very different perspective. Without the superbomb, they asserted, there would
be nothing the U.S. military could do to deter or prevent Russia from overrunning Western Europe. They considered a war with
the Soviet Union “likely” in four to five years. “Further negotiation with the Russians,” they sniffed, “is useless.” But
they had great difficulty articulating the actual military value of a superbomb. When Oppenheimer asked the JCS chairman,
army general Omar Bradley, what military advantages he could see in a superbomb over the largest atomic bombs, Bradley answered,
“Only psychological.” When Lilienthal asked air force general Lauris Norstad why not simply increase the production of atomic
bombs instead of building an even more destructive weapon, Norstad had no answer. The group then broke for lunch.

When discussion resumed in the afternoon, GAC member Hartley Rowe expressed strong opposition to the superbomb on moral grounds.
“We built one Frankenstein,” he muttered. Oppenheimer nodded in agreement. Speaking carefully as his eyes swept the room,
Fermi said the superbomb should be explored but not necessarily developed. “One must explore it and do it,” said Fermi, but
added, “That doesn’t foreclose the question: should it be made use of?”
³²
Rabi felt a decision to go ahead was probably foreordained, if for no other reason than domestic politics; the only open
question would be who was willing to join in it. The sense of momentum, and inevitability, made Conant recall the development
of the atomic bomb, and the parallel made him uneasy. A chemist who had begun his service to the state making poison gas during
World War I and then had helped direct the Manhattan Project, Conant had had enough—he wanted nothing more to do with weapons
of mass destruction. “This whole discussion makes me feel I’m seeing the same film, and a punk one, for the second time,”
Conant announced.
³³
Conant’s and the other scientists’ qualms boiled down to this: it was one thing to develop the atomic bomb in wartime; it
was quite another to develop a weapon so destructive that it had no rational military use and to introduce it into a world
at peace.

At the end of their deliberations, the GAC members sat down to write a report. Emotions were running high and the eight men
stayed up late that night drafting the document. The body of the report addressed mainly technical issues, but also larger
concerns. They agreed that a superbomb would probably be technically feasible, but that it was unnecessary because the Soviet
Union had few large cities and the United States could use atomic bombs against them if necessary. As Oppenheimer later explained:
“We thought it was something to avoid because we were infinitely more vulnerable [because more of the American population
lived in large cities than did the Russian population] and infinitely less likely to initiate the use of these weapons and
because the world in which great destruction has been done in all civilized parts of the world is a harder world for America
to live with than it is for the Communists to live with.” From a strategic standpoint, the superbomb made no sense. Moreover,
even if the Soviets developed the superbomb, the United States would still have more than enough atomic bombs for adequate
deterrence or, if deterrence failed, punishing retaliation. Moral
and
military logic argued against building anything bigger.

To these scientists, however, the practical and strategic liabilities of the superbomb were subordinate to a more fundamental
concern. The majority of the committee’s members opposed the superbomb
per se
. They emphasized the single most distinctive characteristic of a fusion, as opposed to a fission, weapon: if it could be
built, it would have unlimited destructiveness. This distinguished the superbomb from even such horrific weapons as atomic
bombs—the superbomb was “a weapon of genocide”:

It is clear that the use of this weapon would bring about the destruction of innumerable human lives; it is not a weapon which
can be used exclusively for the destruction of material installations of military or semi-military purposes. Its use therefore
carries much further than the atomic bomb itself the policy of exterminating civilian populations.

This was surprisingly strong language coming from many of those who had put the atomic bomb in the hands of the United States
during World War II. “In determining not to proceed to develop the superbomb,” they concluded, “we see a unique opportunity
of providing by example some limitations on the totality of war and thus of limiting the fear and arousing the hopes of mankind.”
³⁴

They did not say that following their advice would prevent the development of a Soviet superbomb. Rather, they argued that
foregoing the superbomb was a necessary precondition for persuading the Russians to do the same; and that America’s atomic
stockpile was such that doing so would not entail any substantial risk of upsetting the balance of power. All of this was
done in the hope that restraint would replace an ever-deadlier arms race.

There were some divisions. Oppenheimer and most other GAC members opposed
any
development of the superbomb. But Fermi and Rabi, suspecting that a GAC recommendation against development would be ignored
by the White House, suggested a more practical alternative: coupling American forbearance on the superbomb with a Soviet pledge
to do the same. Fermi and Rabi laid out their proposal in a minority annex to the report:

We believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public, and the world, that we think it
wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate a program of development of such a weapon. At the same time it would be
appropriate to invite the nations of the world to join us in a solemn pledge not to proceed in the development or construction
of weapons of this category. If such a pledge were accepted even without control machinery, it appears highly probable that
an advanced stage of development leading to a test by another power could be detected by available physical means. Furthermore,
we have in our possession, in our stockpile of atomic bombs, the means for adequate “military” retaliation for the production
or use of a “super.”
³⁵

Their hope, said Fermi later, was “to outlaw the thing before it was born.”
³⁶
Rabi explained what he and Fermi had in mind: “Fermi and I said that we should use this as an excuse to call a world conference
for the nations to agree, for the time being, not to do further research on [superbombs]. We felt that if the conference should
be a failure and we couldn’t get agreement to stop this research and had to go ahead, we could then do so in good conscience.”
³⁷

But despite this, it was not clear whether Fermi’s and Rabi’s consciences could be untroubled in any circumstances relating
to the superbomb. They behaved uncertainly—favoring the superbomb at the outset of the GAC’s deliberations, but conditionally
opposing it at the end. And while willing to countenance an American superbomb if the Russians would not forgo one of their
own, both clearly condemned the weapon’s immorality:

Necessarily such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes.
By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost
one of genocide.

It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality
and dignity even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country. It is evident to us that this would be the view of peoples
in other countries. Its use would put the United States in a bad moral position relative to the peoples of the world.

Any postwar situation resulting from such a weapon would leave unresolvable enmities for generations. A desirable peace cannot
come from such an inhuman application of force. The postwar problems would dwarf the problems which confront us at present….

The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction
a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons we believe it
important for the President of the United States to tell the American public, and the world, that we think it wrong on fundamental
ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon.

Fermi and Rabi’s minority annex showed not just moral passion but political imagination. It sought to use the Soviet atomic
test as a lever for restarting nuclear arms control talks instead of letting it serve as a stimulus for the development of
even more destructive superbombs. The United States could simply agree with the Soviets on a “no superbomb” pledge even without
on-site inspection, relying upon atmospheric and seismic detection to monitor compliance. The Soviets in all likelihood could
not produce a superbomb without testing, and American detection was very likely to pick up any evidence of cheating.

The effect of Fermi and Rabi’s annex, however, was marginal; it was the majority’s call for
total
renunciation of the superbomb that got noticed. Some of this was their fault. “We just wrote our report and then went home,
and left the field to the others,” said Rabi. “That was a mistake. If we hadn’t done that, history might have been different.”
³⁸

Not only had the GAC majority report said that the superbomb was the wrong answer—it had also challenged Teller and Lawrence.
This challenge had been political, but it was hard not to see some personal elements in it. Oppenheimer had grown estranged
from both men by 1949. The latent friction that had marked Oppenheimer and Teller’s first encounter in 1937 had surfaced under
the wartime strain at Los Alamos and deepened after Teller began promoting the superbomb in the wake of the Soviet test.

Oppenheimer’s relationship with Lawrence was deeper and more complicated. A mixture of personal affection and professional
one-upmanship had characterized their association from the beginning. Their relationship, already weakened when Oppenheimer
left Berkeley for Princeton, had been severely strained when Oppenheimer’s brother, Frank, had gotten in trouble for his communist
past and Lawrence, stung by the exposure of his Rad Lab as a hotbed of Soviet sympathizers, had exiled Frank from the place
where he had worked so hard and effectively during the war. Lawrence’s treatment of Frank wounded Frank’s sensitive and protective
older brother, and shredded all but a vestige of Lawrence and Oppenheimer’s long-standing friendship. “I think there was probably
warmth between us at all times,” Oppenheimer said later, “but there was bitterness which became very acute in ’49 and which
was never resolved.”
³⁹
Lawrence felt that bitterness, too. Distinguishing now between “working scientists” like himself and “talkers,” Lawrence
observed acidly that “those who once thought the atomic bomb was a terrible thing now have no such scruples about it but have
transferred their sense of horror to the H-bomb.”
⁴⁰

This mutual bitterness led Oppenheimer to belittle Lawrence and Teller around this time in a private letter as “two experienced
promoters”
⁴¹
and served to blind him to the merit of Fermi and Rabi’s proposal. Oppenheimer had recognized, as he had written privately,
that “it would be folly to oppose the exploration of this weapon. We have always known it had to be done; and it does have
to be done.” Then he added: “But that we become committed to it as the way to save the country and the peace appears to me
full of dangers,” failing to recognize that Fermi and Rabi’s idea might have allowed the exploration he considered inevitable
without the commitment he considered dangerous.
⁴²
Thus a potentially promising avenue went unexplored and the contentious issue became even more personalized.