Leaders In Profile Oppenheimer—“ Verdict May Soon Be Reversed”

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28473, 31 December 1957, Page 7

Leaders In Profile Oppenheimer—“ Verdict May Soon Be Reversed”

[By

SIMON KAVANAUGH]

LONDON. In the summer of 1954 the United States Atomic Energy Commission reached the seemingly curious conclusion that a man could be simultaneously discreet, loyal and a bad security risk.

They decided this about Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. So they tossed him out of his job as top adviser on atomic matters to the United States Government. In this way did the American Government rid itself of one of the age’s most brilliant scientists and the man who, more than any other, was responsible for producing the atom bomb which ended the Second World War. Oppenheimer sank back into comparative obscurity so far as the general public was concerned. Professionally he was still eminent and he continued in one of his nation’s most coveted scientific posts as head of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University.

Dr. Oppenheimer was dropped from public service during a state of national febrility. There is a chance now that he may be popularly restored in a similar atmosphere. Then it was the Communist spy scare with McCarthyism rampant. Now it is the Communist moon scare and the fear that Russia, with giant scientific strides, is leaving America hopelessly behind. As the clamour grows for a man of genius to co-ordinate and direct the nation’s scientific research programme, there grows apace the demand for a reopening of the Oppenheimer case. If the administration reopened Oppenheimer’s case they would be playing with political dynamite. But if they cleared and reinstated-him they would certainly be getting the man of genius the voters clamour for. Oppenheimer has been represented, certainly outside America, as a modest and conscientious man of science who fell victim to blatant McCarthyism.

Even inside America views on Oppenheimer are apt to be extremist. He is either a fiendishly subtle sort of traitor or the shining example of twentieth century martyrdom, the persecuted egghead. Oppenheimer certainly fits the latter role with his almost aggressive modesty, his lean good looks, and his background of culture (he is a poet of some skill and his mother was an accomplished painter).

But to get the record straight it should be pointed out that Senator McCarthy was not directly responsible for investigating and firing Oppenheimer. This was the responsibility of the Atomic Energy Commission, a body of moderate men of goodwill.

Remember, 1 too, the prevailing climate of alarm in America at the time. Soviet spy rings had been earlier uncovered and the defection of the British atom, scientist, Fuchs, was still uncomfortably fresh in American minds.

To have failed to investigate Oppenheimer in view of the charges made against him in conjunction with his background, would have been inviting a national crisis, might even have been construed as a disastrous dereliction of duty. There was. for example, Oppenheimer’s past association with Communists and his known advocacy of sharing scientific secrets with the Russians. In the 1930’5, while he was a professor at the University of California, Oppenheimer’s conscience nagged him. As the son of a wealthy New York textiles merchant he had lacked' nothing material. Yet around him fine young fellow scientists were going to pieces because in depressiongripped America there was no work for them. As a Jew he was troubled by the Nazi persecution of German Jews. For a man of genius—and his scientific career until then proved his claim to the title—his reaction was rather commonplace and trite. He began to join Left-wing organisations and associate with Communists.

His gesture, and it was no more than that, was typical of his generation. He was theh in his thirties, an age when men make lastifig friendships. Among the leftist intellectuals he found friends and a wife.

The girl he married was a widow whose husband, a .Communist Party official, had been killed in the Spanish civil war. As well as helping to ease his conscience, all this association with Left-wing intellectualism appealed to the romantic in Oppenheimer. And there is a strong streak of romanticism in this brilliant scientist. (At Harvard, where he completed the physics course in three instead of the normal four years, he found time to write publishable poetry.) In later years this was to prove beyond the comprehension of his detractors. They reasoned, it seemed, that a man of science must bring to all his activities the

cold, calculating approach of his laboratory life.’ As to his advocacy of sharing secrets with Russia, Oppenheimer held this view most sincerely. In the formative years after Harvard he travelled the great scientific centres of Europe with their suggestion that, like art, science recognised no frontiers. With more candour than tact, Oppenheimer repeated the view that since American secrecy was clearly not impeding Russia’s scientific progress, it was harmful. There were, however, other and more sinister-seeming charges against Oppenheimer. On the eve of his taking over the research programme which was to produce the first atom bomb he was told of a suggestion by a Communist that he might transmit technical information to Soviet scientists.

Oppenheimer waited some months before reporting this conversation and even then was evasive about the source of his information. It had in fact come from a friend and Oppenheimer’s dissimulation had been inspired by personal loyalty. . But most damning of all was the suggestion that Oppenheimer as head of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission had advised against priority H-bomb production for political reasons. Curiously this charge was not levelled against other members of the committee who had concurred in this view. But the extremists among Oppenheimer’s detractors were prepared to believe that he was some sort of scientific Svengali. The successful detonation of a Russian hydrogen bomb made Oppenheimer’s case even dqrker.

To their credit the Atomic Energy Commission did not permit themselves to be stampeded. Their ability to see the truth is reflected in their finding that although Oppenheimer’s loyalty and discretion (from aj security point of view) were; beyond doubt, he could not continue in his Government post because of “defects of character” apd “association.” j In essence, they werje saying that Oppenheimer for; his scientific genius, had been dangerously naive in his hiiman relations. The commission’s fault lay in its insistence that* this was sufficiently grave to merit sacking Oppenheimer. i Would Oppenheimer return to Government service should his case be successfully reopened? Most probably be would return Not only is he a positively loyal American, but his personal dynamism must make him itch to be back at the centre qf things, guiding his country’s course in the great scientific rack against Russia.