Pandora's Keepers (44 page)

Once Teller learned the GAC had reached a verdict, he was anxious to know what it was. A few days after the decision, he left
Los Alamos for Washington, stopping in Chicago along the way to see if Fermi might give him an inkling of the GAC’s verdict.
Fermi was aware of Teller’s concern, but the GAC report was classified and Fermi refused to discuss its contents. He did not
have to. The tone of Fermi’s voice and his body language told the story. “It was clear from the tenor of his remarks,” Teller
later wrote, “that certainly Fermi and possibly the entire GAC did not favor an all-out crash program.”
⁴³
Fermi even scolded Teller for joining a “fascist like Lawrence” in pushing for the superbomb.
⁴⁴

Fermi’s words “thoroughly frightened” Teller, as he confided in a letter to another friend a short time later. Although he
had known and liked the Italian for years, Fermi’s about-face—he had originally proposed the idea of a superbomb to Teller
in 1941—made Teller angry. “Enrico does not know what I think of him,” he wrote. “But—unfortunately—he has an inkling.” Teller’s
words revealed how emotionally invested he had become in the superbomb, an emotional investment that eclipsed even long-standing
friendships.
⁴⁵

Teller’s conversation with Fermi reinforced his fear that Oppenheimer’s persuasive powers spelled doom for the superbomb project.
When Teller finally saw the GAC report and the minority annex on November second, he became “morose and almost silent (
very
unusual),” recalled John Manley, associate director of Los Alamos and secretary to the GAC, who had shown him the report.
Teller thought the superbomb project was all but dead—and with it, America as he knew it. “Edward offered to bet me that unless
we went ahead with his Super… he, Teller, would be a Russian prisoner of war in the United States within five years,” Manley
recalled.
⁴⁶
Teller suspected a conspiracy, complaining that there were “mysterious actions in the GAC and even higher places.” “What
disturbs me most,” he wrote fellow Hungarian John von Neumann, “is that apparently Enrico is at least temporarily convinced
that the action of the GAC is reasonable. One thing is quite clear, that the really fine and unanimous enthusiasm which was
building up in Los Alamos [for the superbomb] is now checked at least temporarily.”
⁴⁷
Teller believed that anyone—like Oppenheimer—who opposed the superbomb had become suspect.

Teller had always disliked routine and was ill at ease under any imposed discipline. This maverick streak, combined with his
overwhelming ambition and intense commitment to the superbomb, led Teller to mount a countercharge to gain support for the
proposed weapon. He had learned after the war that it was necessary for him to become very political in order to accomplish
his goals, and so he had become very smart at aligning himself with the powers in Washington. He spent much of the next few
months after the GAC report lobbying military officers and congressmen. His excited gestures showed his sincerity, and his
anticommunism struck the right patriotic note. Teller had no doubt that his campaign to build a superbomb would require a
great deal of effort and work on his part and that of many others—but so, he was fond of saying, had the atomic bomb. “I wonder
to how many people it happens that they are sent back where they have been before and that they get a second chance,” he wrote
to a confidante at the end of the year. “But this time I love the job I am going to do—I shall even love to fight if it must
be.”
⁴⁸

Teller was at least temporarily stymied when, on November ninth, the AEC endorsed the GAC recommendation against the superbomb
in a split three-to-two decision, with Lilienthal, Pike, and Smyth (who urged delay more than rejection) against development;
Strauss and Dean in favor. Lilienthal presented the views of the AEC commissioners, along with a full copy of the GAC report,
to Truman the same day. Truman assured Lilienthal that he would not be “blitzed” into any decision on this important issue.
⁴⁹
The president turned to a special three-man subcommittee of the National Security Council—Lilienthal, Secretary of State
Dean Acheson, and Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson—for a final recommendation. Lilienthal strongly supported the GAC’s position,
and Johnson was just as clearly determined to develop the weapon.

That left Acheson with the deciding vote. Acheson was a realist who believed additional military power would enhance American
diplomacy, and he was already under withering personal attack from conservative Republicans for weakness in “losing” China.
There was even some talk inside the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy of bringing impeachment proceedings against
Truman if he failed to give the go-ahead on the superbomb. It was no surprise that Acheson leaned toward the superbomb’s development.
But he was a good lawyer and understood that knowing all sides of the argument was essential. So before making up his mind,
he talked at length with opponents of the weapon, especially Oppenheimer, who had been a friend since their work together
in 1946 on an American plan for international control of atomic energy.

The urbane and pragmatic Acheson, whose first impression of Oppenheimer had been that of a smart but naive idealist, listened
closely to Oppenheimer’s arguments against the superbomb, which echoed what Bohr had said to FDR and Churchill about the atomic
bomb in 1944: it would be easier to negotiate a ban on a weapon not yet made. Acheson thought that Oppenheimer was moved less
by logic and reason than by “an immense distaste” for what the scientist himself described as “the whole rotten business.”
⁵⁰
“I listened as carefully as I knew how,” Acheson wrote loftily in his memoirs, “but I [did not] understand what Oppie was
trying to say. How can you persuade a paranoid adversary to disarm ‘by example’?”
⁵¹
But that was not the only reason he disagreed. Acheson also did not see, as he later told Oppenheimer, “how any president
could [politically] survive a policy of not making the H-bomb.”
⁵²

Such fear, logic, and pressure prevailed. Truman’s decision had been solidified by a memo the Chiefs had sent to him in mid-January:
(1) “Possession of a thermonuclear weapon by the USSR without such possession by the United States would be intolerable” both
by its “profoundly demoralizing effect upon the American people” and by the “tremendous psychological boost” it would afford
Soviet leaders; and (2) “a unilateral decision on the part of the United States not to develop a thermonuclear weapon will
not prevent the development of such a weapon elsewhere.” Truman zeroed in on these points when he met with his senior advisers
on the day of decision. “Can the Russians do it?” the president asked them. All heads nodded. “Yes, they can.” “In that case,”
said Truman, “we have no choice. We’ll go ahead.”
⁵³

On January 31, 1950, Truman approved development of the superbomb. Like Acheson, Truman saw no alternative to going ahead,
nor did he seek one after being told that the Russians would probably be able to develop their own superbomb—a belief bolstered
by the news around this time that German refugee physicist Klaus Fuchs had been arrested in London for espionage on behalf
of the Soviet Union. Fuchs had been at Los Alamos from December 1944 to June 1946, working on, among other things, the primitive
superbomb program. He was in a position to have complete knowledge of American efforts up to that point.

Truman’s decision to move ahead was so popular that it was greeted with cheers on the floor of the House and the Senate. An
opinion poll showed overwhelming public support as well: 73 percent for versus 18 percent against.
⁵⁴
The
New York Times
editorialized, “Regardless of how dreadful the hydrogen weapon might be, Mr. Truman had no other course in view of the failure
so far of negotiations for international control of atomic energy and of the ‘atomic explosion’ some months ago in the Soviet
Union.”
⁵⁵
The fear that Moscow might also be working on a superbomb—and what that would mean for American security—overwhelmed moral
qualms and worries about escalating the nuclear arms race.

The fear proved well founded, even as the qualms and worries remained. Andrei Sakharov, Russia’s top nuclear physicist at
the time, later stated that Stalin “already understood the potential of the new weapon, and nothing could have dissuaded [him]
from going forward with its development. Any U.S. move toward abandoning or suspending work on a thermonuclear weapon would
have been perceived either as a cunning, deceitful maneuver or as evidence of stupidity or weakness. In any case, the Soviet
reaction would have been the same: to avoid a possible trap, and to exploit the adversary’s folly at the earliest opportunity.”
^56
*

The evening that Truman announced his decision, AEC commissioner Lewis Strauss hosted a party at Washington’s posh Shoreham
Hotel—it was Strauss’s fifty-fourth birthday. Among the politicians, journalists, bureaucrats, and officers in attendance
was Robert Oppenheimer, who had accepted the invitation weeks before. One of the journalists spotted Oppenheimer standing
alone, morose, on the sidelines of the celebration. The journalist asked Oppenheimer why he appeared so glum. After an unusually
long pause, Oppenheimer finally replied: “This is the plague of Thebes.”
⁵⁷

Oppenheimer did not publicly criticize Truman’s decision. Perhaps he felt that as chairman of the GAC he had no right to engage
in public debate with the president. Then, too, dissent had its political risks; it was beginning to be equated with disloyalty
in a climate of growing fear of communist subversion, and Oppenheimer’s left-wing past made him vulnerable.
^*
Nearly a decade later, when looking back on the GAC report, Oppenheimer remembered that his confidential secretary had been
surprised by his strong stand against the superbomb in the October 1949 report and correctly predicted that this would get
him in a lot of trouble. Furthermore, Truman imposed a gag order barring all public discussion, and Oppenheimer would not
violate the president’s directive. He did, however, criticize the atmosphere of secrecy in which the issue of the superbomb
had been debated and decided. Shortly after Truman’s decision, he told a nationwide television audience that nuclear issues
“are complex technical things, but they touch on the very basis of our morality.” Debate should proceed in the open. “It is
a grave danger for us that these decisions are taken on the basis of facts held secret,” said Oppenheimer, adding: “Wisdom
cannot flourish and even the truth cannot be established, without the give-and-take of debate and criticism. The facts, the
relevant facts, are of little use to an enemy, yet they are fundamental to an understanding of the issues of policy.”
⁵⁸
Thereafter Oppenheimer periodically hinted at his frustration but, reluctant to abandon his access to power, publicly held
his tongue.

Truman’s decision left Szilard unsurprised but nonetheless disappointed. In a burst of black humor, Szilard drafted (but never
published) a fictional letter from inmates in a lunatic asylum to dramatize what he considered the insanity of the superbomb.
“We
got
to show him [God] that He cannot get away with [domination] any longer; we got to show him who the master is, and let’s not
stop until we show him that we can blow up what he created. On to the global bomb!” In despair Szilard warned in a nationwide
broadcast that the radioactive fallout from a thermonuclear war could destroy all human life on earth. He believed that recognition
of the possibility of mass death was essential to changing policy.
⁵⁹

Compton’s criticism of Truman’s superbomb decision was more indirect. “This is not a question for experts, either militarists
or scientists,” said Compton. “All they can do is to explain what the results will be if we do or do not try to develop such
destructive weapons. The American people must themselves say whether they want to defend themselves with such weapons.” He
urged his fellow citizens to address these fundamental questions: “Should we take moral responsibility for introducing such
greater destruction into war, at the risk of fear and suspicion by other nations? If developed, would its greater destructiveness
be outweighed by its influence as a deterrent to war? Would its development provide greater safety—or provoke other nations
to yet greater war preparations?”
⁶⁰

Rabi regretted the president’s decision and put the blame squarely on Teller and Lawrence, whom he felt had whipped up political
pressures that forced Truman’s decision. One of the results, Rabi concluded, was to lay down a challenge to the Soviet Union:

However it’s worded, this will be taken as a statement that we’re going ahead and building a hydrogen bomb. The Russians are
certainly going to take it that way. Only we’re not building a hydrogen bomb, because we don’t know how. We’re going to try.
We don’t even know that it can be done. But the Russians will never believe that an American President could be so stupid
as to say we’re going to build the most powerful weapon in the world when we don’t know how. We’ve got the worst of both worlds.
We haven’t got a super, but we’ve spurred the Russians on to an all-out effort to build one.
⁶¹

A February 1950 manifesto signed by twelve prominent physicists—all Manhattan Project veterans—echoed this point. It went
on to warn:

A hydrogen bomb, if it can be made, would be capable of developing a power 1000 times greater than the present atomic bomb.
New York, or any other of the greatest cities of the world, could be destroyed by a single hydrogen bomb.

We believe that no nation has the right to use such a bomb, no matter how righteous its cause. This bomb is no longer a weapon
of war but a means of extermination of whole populations. Its use would be a betrayal of all standards of morality and of
Christian civilization itself….