Varied Press Reaction To Oppenheimer Case

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27367, 4 June 1954, Page 11

Varied Press Reaction To Oppenheimer Case

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) NEW YORK, June 3. New York’s morning newspapers toda£ expressed approval in leading articles of the decision in the Oppenheimer case, but the Washington “Post” called it disappointing and shameful. The “New York Times” said that the principal document, in which two of the three members of a special security board recommended the withholding of further atomic secrets to Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, was written judiciously.

It was, the paper added, “a classic example of the manner in which security charges against a Federal employee should be considered.”

The “New York Times” added: “It is a masterly demonstration of the way in which a democratic government ‘can search its own soul’ and probe the relationships of an individual to that government in terms of loyalty and liberty, security and freedom within the frameworks of the traditional and inviolable principles of American justice.”

The Washington “Post" said it was a paradox that the man who had more than perhaps anyone else to do with the perfection of the atom bomb was now to be “insulated” from atomic secrets. It was a “truly shocking commentary” that the board based its decision chiefly on statements that Dr. Oppenheimer had opposed work on the hydrogen bomb in 1949. The paper asked whether the board meant that a man should anticipate a decision and change his convictions to conform with what later might turn out to be a popular course. “What is this but a formula for intellectual dishonesty? This is the tortured reasoning and perverted logic one might expect to find in the pages of ‘Pravda’.”

The New York “Herald-Tribune” said that the 2-1 vote denied the country “that united opinion” which was “so much to be desired in a matter of this kind.”

It added: “Dr. Oppenheimer, in spite of his immense scientific contributions, stood —as under a government of laws he must stand—on an equal footing with those whose genius has been of a far lesser order. It said that the report would stand out as a “vital document on its own merits.” The tabloid “Daily News” Said that the board majority thought Dr. Oppenheimer was a “simple security risk” like any thoroughly loyal soul who talked too much when sober or drunk, was vulnerable to blackmail for soine reason, loved to impress people with his knowledge of government secrets, or had some similar weakness. It added: “There is no disgrace in being such a person.”