In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer

HONR 269J

The Beat Begins: America in the 1950s

In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Much has been written about the Oppenheimer Security Clearance hearings in the spring of 1954. What follows is a very brief account of the timeline and particulars in the case, with hyperlinks to some of the primary materials (memos, letters, and the like).

In the years following World War II, Oppenheimer articulately defended a number of positions that later brought him under the suspicions of people in the Eisenhower Administration. For example:

He played an important role on the committee that drafted the Acheson-Lilienthal Report (1946), which called for international control of atomic energy at a time when many, especially those in the military, thought the U.S. would be crazy to give up its "monopoly" on atomic weapons. (That monopoly proved to be very short-lived, as most physicists thought it would be; the Soviets successfully tested a fission bomb in August 1949.)
A few weeks after the Soviet test, while Oppenheimer was the Chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, the GAC was asked to consider whether the U.S. should pour its resources into the development of a thermonuclear (fusion) weapon. The GAC concluded on technical and moral grounds that the U.S. should not pursue the hydrogen bomb. (Truman disagreed, and in January 1950 "directed the Atomic Energy Commission to continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super bomb.")
In May 1949 Oppenheimer had embarrassed AEC Commissioner Lewis L. Strauss in a Congressional Committee hearing, called by Strauss to discuss the shipment of radioactive isotopes abroad. Strauss staunchly opposed this sharing on the grounds that these isotopes could be put to military use against the U.S. Oppenheimer was cavalierly dismissive of Strauss's concerns, and Strauss never got over the public humiliation.
Later, in 1951, Oppenheimer became involved with a group of scientists working on Project Vista -- their report, to which Oppenheimer contributed, suggested that rather than relying on large thermonuclear bombs, the U.S. and its allies in Western Europe would be better served by a large number of small tactical fission weapons. This position upset the Air Force, which had used the prospects of bigger and bigger bombs, and the long-range bombers to deliver them to their targets, to garner prestige and increase appropriations.
Less than a month after coming to office, President Eisenhower read the report of a State Department committee on disarmament chaired by Oppenheimer which advocated, among other things, "a policy of candor toward the American people -- and at least equally toward its own elected representatives and responsible officials -- in presenting the meaning of the arms race." To the horror of some in his administration (including Lewis Strauss), Eisenhower was much taken by the report, and by Project Candor. In July, speaking to the press, he said "personally, I think the time has arrived when the American people must have more information on this subject, if they are to act intelligently... I think the time has come for us to be, let us say, more frank with the American people than we have been in the past." The susceptibility of the President to Oppenheimer's blandishments was another reason the latter had to be removed.
Finally, in a number of widely-read publications in the early 1950s, Oppenheimer argued for greater openness on atomic matters and a willingness to negotiate with the Soviets if opportunities presented themselves. He memorably likened the U.S. and the Soviet Union "to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of its own life."

All of these positions would come back to haunt him in the spring of 1954.

The transition to an Eisenhower administration in 1953 ushered in a number of changes that affected Oppenheimer's status in the government. Perhaps the crucial one was Eisenhower's appointment of Lewis L. Strauss to the position of White House adviser on atomic energy. Strauss, a wealthy ex-banker, social conservative and Republican loyalist, disliked Oppenheimer intensely ever since their paths first crossed in 1947 when Strauss (in his capacity as a Trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study) had recruited Oppenheimer to be the Institute's director. Strauss was one of the original Commissioners of the Atomic Energy Commission, and he and Oppenheimer were on opposite sides of many of the most important issues facing the AEC in the postwar era -- international control of atomic energy, civilian vs. military control of nuclear energy and materials, the sharing of information and atomic materials with U.S. allies, and the hydrogen bomb, among them. Strauss was convinced that Oppenheimer could not be trusted, so after his appointment as White House adviser, Strauss immediately told Eisenhower of his concerns, and the machinery was set in motion to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance. In addition to Strauss's deep personal antipathy toward Oppenheimer (carefully concealed from Eisenhower and his staff), the fervent anti-communism of the early 1950s played a role in Oppenheimer's undoing. In November 1953, Attorney General Herbert Brownell accused former President Truman of knowingly protecting a Communist spy in the Treasury Department, and Senator Joseph McCarthy attacked Truman for being soft on Communism. Some of the President's staff worried that McCarthy's accusations would soon be directed at Eisenhower himself. Given the derogatory information concerning Oppenheimer, Strauss had no trouble convincing Eisenhower that a "blank wall" should be placed between Oppenheimer and any any sort of classified information.

So, on December 23 Oppenheimer received a letter from the General Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission, Major General Kenneth D. Nichols, which began:

As a result of additional investigation as to your character, associations, and loyalty, and review of your personnel security file in the light of the requirements of the Atomic Energy Act and the requirements of Executive Order 10450, there has developed considerable question whether your continued employment on Atomic Energy Commission work will endanger the common defense and security and whether such continued employment is clearly consistent with the interests of the national security.

After listing the particulars -- sixteen paragraphs beginning "It was reported that..." and containing the results of nearly 15 years of active surveillance of Oppenheimer and his family by the FBI and others -- Nichols concluded:

In view of your access to highly sensitive classified information, and in view of these allegations which, until disproved, raise questions as to your veracity, conduct and even your loyalty, the Commission has no other recourse, in discharge of its obligations to protect the common defense and security, but to suspend your clearance until the matter has been resolved. Accordingly, your employment on Atomic Energy Commission work and your eligibility for access to restricted data are hereby suspended, effective immediately, pending final determination of this matter.

Nichols advised Oppenheimer that if he wished to respond, "you have the privilege of appearing before an Atomic Energy Commission personnel security board" -- a privilege Oppenheimer availed himself of. The Personnel Security Board hearing took place in Washington from April 12-May 6, 1954. Forty witnesses testified, and the hearing generated three thousand pages of testimony. Although the hearing was held in secret, it was followed closely by the press. In his opening remarks, Chairman Gordon Gray assured all present that "the proceedings and stenographic record of this board are regarded as strictly confidential between Atomic Energy Commission officials participating in this matter and Dr. Oppenheimer, his representatives and witnesses. The Atomic Energy Commission will not take the initiative in public release of any information relating to the proceeding before this board." He repeated this assurance more than thirty times in subsequent exchanges with witnesses. Nevertheless, in order to assuage some of the public outcry over the Gray Board's May 27 Recommendation (and apparently without asking the witnesses' permission, and directly contrary to the wishes of at least one of the witnesses), Lewis Strauss instructed the Government Printing Office to print the complete transcript, and on June 15 the 992-page book was released to the public. (It was accompanied by a helpful list of "highlights" drawing attention to portions of the transcript most damaging to Oppenheimer.) Then, on July 2, after the Commissioners had made their decisions, the AEC released a short pamphlet entitled In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Texts of Principal Documents and Letters of Personnel Security Board, General Manager, Commissioners. Washington, D. C., May 27, 1954 Through June 29, 1954. The pamphlet contained the following items:

In Item 1 the three-member Personnel Security Board -- the Gray Board, named for its chairman, Gordon Gray -- voted two to one, on the basis of information contained in the published transcript (plus more than three thousand pages of files not made public or shared with Oppenheimer and his attorneys), not to reinstate Oppenheimer's security clearance. The following day, General Manager Nichols sent a copy of the "Findings and Recommendation" to Oppenheimer and his attorney, Lloyd K. Garrison. In his covering letter (Item 2), Nichols advised Oppenheimer of his right "to request review of your case by the Personnel Security Review Board and to submit a brief in support of your contentions" and that he had twenty days in which to exercise that right.

Garrison replied to Nichols on June 1 (Item 3), raising several issues about the grounds for the Gray Board's findings and requesting "permission to file a brief and to make oral argument." Garrison promised the brief by June 7 (a date dictated by Nichols), but noted the need for "critical analysis and illumination of these issues which can only be supplied adequately by the brief and oral argument herein requested." A central complaint in Garrison's letter concerned procedures in the hearing:

Weeks before the hearing commenced we asked you and the Commission's general counsel for much information which we thought relevant to our case but which was denied us -- documents and minutes concerning Dr. Oppenheimer's 1947 clearance and a variety of other material. Much of this information did come out in the hearings but usually only in the course of cross-examination when calculated to cause the maximum surprise and confusion and too late to assist us in the orderly presentation of our case. Some of the information which was denied to us before the hearing was declassified at the moment of cross-examination or shortly before and was made available to us only during cross-examination or after.

Nichols' testy response of June 3 (Item 4) denied the request for oral argument, citing the AEC's Security Clearance Procedures, which "make no provision for submission of a brief, or for oral argument, when the [Personnel Security Board] case... comes to the General Manager for final determination." In response to the claims about procedural unfairness, Nichols reminded Garrison that he and Oppenheimer had been told in February, long before the hearing, of the AEC's "willingness to make available to you... documents which you reasonably believe are relevant to the matters in issue" -- the only limitation being "the [AEC's] right to decide whether particular documents to which you request access are relevant and whether your access to such documents or parts thereof would be consistent with the national interest."

This exchange of letters was included in the pamphlet published on July 2. What was not included was Garrison's response of June 9, in which he exposed several of Nichols' evasions and noted, of the AEC's offer of documents,

This offer did not in fact turn out to be of help. Among other things we asked on Dr. Oppenheimer's behalf for the minutes and other papers relating to Dr. Oppenheimer's clearance by the Commission in 1947. This request was denied... [Further,] so far as we know, except for a very few items, counsel for the Commission used in the proceedings no documents which were not declassified. Some of these documents were declassified at the moment of cross-examination and some of them earlier, but we were not told of their existence until they were actually used in cross-examination. Since it was possible to declassify them for use in cross-examination, it is clear that their disclosure in no way involved the national security, and there is no reason why they should not have been made available in advance to Dr. Oppenheimer and other witnesses concerned... As a result of these tactics, which were used in the case of certain other witnesses, it is understandable that at some points in the testimony limitations of memory may have been mistaken for disingenuousness.

[There are literally dozens of examples of this sort of thing in the transcript of the Personnel Security Board Hearing: Garrison's request to review document X has been denied on the grounds that document X is classified and that Garrison does not have the requisite clearance. (Lewis Strauss was instrumental in preventing Garrison from getting the necessary clearance.) However, during the hearing, Roger Robb, Counsel for the AEC Board, is permitted to de-classify document X on the spot in order to use it in cross-examination of Oppenheimer or other witnesses, who are of course unfamiliar with its contents, and who as a result play right into Robb's hands.]

A few days later, on June 12, General Manager Nichols submitted his "Recommendations of the General Manager to the United States Atomic Energy Commission in the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer" (Item 5). Significantly, this document was not shared with Oppenheimer and his attorneys -- they first saw it along with the rest of the world on July 2, when the AEC pamphlet was published. A few days before this (on June 29), the Atomic Energy Commission had issued a press release (Item 6) announcing its decision: four of the Commissioners (Chairman Lewis L. Strauss; Joseph Campbell; Thomas E. Murray; and Eugene M. Zuckert) "decided that Dr. Oppenheimer should be denied access to all restricted data", one (the physicist Henry DeWolf Smyth) "voted to reinstate Dr. Oppenheimer's clearance."

At one point in his dissenting opinion, Smyth notes that "For much of the last 11 years [Dr. Oppenheimer] has been under actual surveillance, his movements watched, his conversations noted, his mail and telephone calls checked. This professional review of his actions has been supplemented by enthusiastic amateur help from powerful personal enemies." Two of Oppenheimer's most "powerful personal enemies" were very close to home (AEC Chairman Strauss and General Manager Nichols), but Smyth was perhaps referring also to attorney William Liscum Borden, whose letter to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on November 7, 1953 was a proximate cause of Oppenheimer's troubles. Nichols' initial letter presenting the AEC's charges simply repeats verbatim many of Borden's accusations. Hoover, for his part, had had his eye on Oppenheimer for a long time, and there are many confidential Hoover memoranda like this one dated March 26, 1952, sent to Truman's Attorney General Howard McGrath.

It is worth pausing at this point to note the extent of the surveillance alluded to by Smyth in his dissenting opinion, and the extent of Strauss's involvement in this matter. Oppenheimer's phones had been tapped and his incoming and outgoing mail read while he was at Los Alamos -- that was standard procedure. But his left-leaning politics, together with the fact that many of his friends and family members had been members of the Communist Party, ensured that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI would maintain an active interest in Oppenheimer. The FBI wiretaps continued after the war, and Oppenheimer once remarked that "the government paid far more to tap my telephone than they ever paid me at Los Alamos." Strauss, enlisting the help of J. Edgar Hoover, had surveillance devices installed in all of the offices Oppenheimer used -- including those of his attorneys. All of Oppenheimer's telephones were tapped. As a result, not only did Oppenheimer have no private life, but Lewis Strauss and Roger Robb were privy to the details of all of his consultations with the defense team. As one recent account observes,

Charles Bates, Hoover's liaison to the AEC, carried the wiretapped reports, plus letters and memoranda from the FBI files -- sometimes as much as a briefcaseful -- from the FBI to Strauss, and from Strauss to Robb or his assistant Art Rolander... During the first six months of 1954, before, during, and after the hearing, he carried at least 273 wiretapped reports to Strauss or Robb, as well as oral messages back and forth between the two men, including Strauss's suggestions as to the questions Robb should ask witnesses. (Patricia J. McMillan, The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Viking, 2005), pp. 199-200.)

Strauss himself told Bates "that the Bureau's technical coverage of Oppenheimer at Princeton had been most helpful to the AEC in that they were aware beforehand of the moves he was contemplating." (Strauss letter quoted in Richard Pfau, No Sacrifice Too Great: The Life of Lewis L. Strauss (University of Virginia Press, 1984), p. 162)

On July 14, Garrison wrote to Chairman Lewis Strauss to complain about the selective nature of the "principal documents and letters" included in the AEC pamphlet. He noted that it did not include his letter of June 9 correcting the "inaccuracies and misunderstandings" in Nichols' June 3 letter (which was included). About the inclusion of Nichols' harsh recommendations -- "which Dr. Oppenheimer and his counsel have now read for the first time" -- Garrison added,

If this document... was of a sort which could be released at the Commission's pleasure, then it seems to me that it should have been shown to us upon its submission to the Commission so that we might have had an opportunity to submit our comments to the Commission, which obviously would have been relevant to the Commission's decision.

Nearly a month later (on August 9), Nichols responded to Garrison on Strauss's behalf. All he said was that

Before publishing this pamphlet the Commission considered carefully which documents should be included. It was decided to print only the basic findings, recommendations and decisions in the proceeding, together with those letters which had to do with procedures to be followed after the submission of the report of the Personnel Security Board.

He concluded, "the Commission contemplates no further action with regard to this matter."

Soon afterward, Oppenheimer resumed his duties as Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, despite Lewis Strauss's attempts to have him removed. On October 1 the trustees of the Institute elected him for another term. The re-election motion, which carried unanimously, was introduced by Strauss, who a few months before as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission had decided that Oppenheimer "should be denied access to all restricted data" because he

has fallen far short of acceptable standards [of reliability, self-discipline, and trustworthiness]... [He] has consistently placed himself outside the rules which govern others. He has falsified in matters wherein he was charged with grave responsibilities in the national interest. In his associations he has repeatedly exhibited a willful disregard of the normal and proper obligations of security... The work of Military Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Atomic Energy Commission -- all, at one time or another have felt the effect of his falsehoods, evasions, and misrepresentations... Dr. Oppenheimer has defaulted not once but many times upon the obligations that should and must be willingly borne by citizens in the national service.

After leaving the Atomic Energy Commission in 1959, Lewis Strauss was nominated by Eisenhower to be Secretary of Commerce, a position Strauss wanted badly. The hearings were long and contentious. Among the most damaging testimony came from scientists who accused Strauss of abusing his power at the AEC, citing the Oppenheimer hearings and other cases in which Strauss had used the AEC security program as a way of getting rid of people who had disagreed with him. As it turns out, Strauss had asked for confidential derogatory information about one of the scientists testifying against him (David Inglis) but then lied under oath about having done so. As a result of this and other prevarications, the nomination was rejected, 49-46. Strauss was undone by the same qualities that are so amply demonstrated in the Oppenheimer hearings.

The Oppenheimer Personnel Security Board hearing has been the subject of an enormous literature. See the Atomic Bomb Bibliography elsewhere on this website for some of the relevant books and articles.

On April 28, 2004 the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee unanimously passed a resolution recognizing "the loyal service of J. Robert Oppenheimer to the United States and the outstanding contributions he made to theoretical physics, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the development of nuclear energy, and the common defense and security of the United States." The resolution makes no mention of the 1954 Personnel Security Board hearings. It is a very strange document.