J.Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)

“I Feel that I Have Blood On My Hands”

 

I just finished a book about Robert Oppenheimer, and must admit that I finished the book perplexed about the propriety of his loosing his atomic security clearance in 1954. Indeed, given his remarkable achievement in leading the successful Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb, I wish that others or I some fifty years after losing his security clearance could make a totally objective recommendation about the fairness or justice of the process.

 

In hindsight the technical achievements of Oppenheimer in assembling, mediating the demands of he military bureaucracy and the free spirit of scientists, solving innumerable theoretical and practical problems were remarkable. His contemporaries felt that Oppenheimer was intellectually superior to everyone else as Los Alamos: “ He knew and understood everything that went on in the laboratory. However, Oppenheimer did make enemies. He had a contentious relationship with Edward Teller, the eventual “Father of the Hydrogen Bomb.”

Certainly, the selection of Oppenheimer by Leslie Groves to head the Manhattan Project must have been difficult. Paul Tibbits made the observation that the two of them were the original odd couple. “Oppenheimer was a young man, a brilliant person. And he is a chain smoker, and he drinks cocktails. And he hates fat men. And General Leslie Groves is a fat man who hates people who smoke and drink.”

 

Oppenheimer was surrounded by communists and admitted being a member of many “Communist Front Organizations.” Oppenheimer’s long time girl friend, Jean Tatlock, his wife, and his brother and sister-in-law all had been members of the Communist Party. There is evidence that in early 1942 Oppenheimer could have attended Communist Party cell meetings. Sometime in 1942 Oppenheimer began to sever his ties with leftist friends and organizations in part because of his major role in the development of the atom bomb. In the 1954 hearings the most damaging evidence against Oppenheimer was his lies about a conversation with a friend Haakon Chevalier. The later appeared to have approached Oppenheimer about transmitting classified information to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Oppenheimer was not straightforward in reporting the incident and refused initially to divulge his friends name to security officials. Oppenheimer supporters would argue that Oppenheimer took the necessary precautionary steps in preventing espionage but failed to disclose Chevalier’s name, because he knew the later would lose his academic position when he revealed the whole conversation.

 

Despite the technical success of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer had moral misgivings.  When the bomb was successfully tested in July 1945, Oppenheimer intoned a phrase from the Hindu scripture in the Bhagavad-Gita, “ I am become death, the shatter of worlds.” On August 6,1945 the uranium bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy” destroyed the city of Hiroshima. The death toll had a sobering effect on Oppenheimer. He informed government officials that most scientists would not continue to pursue such work. When he told President Truman  “I have blood on my hands,” Truman was irritated and responded “ Never mind. It will all come out in the wash.” Truman turned to Secretary of State Dean Achenson and replied that he did not want to see Oppenheimer again and that it was Truman, not Oppenheimer, who had to make the fateful decision.

From 1945-1954, from the perspective of the military establishment, Oppenheimer became a thorn in their developing appropriate response to the growing nuclear threat of the Soviet Union. Oppenheimer opposed work on the Hydrogen Bomb on both theoretical and moral grounds. His opposition earned the enmity of Edward Teller who administered the final blow to Oppenheimer at the Security Clearing Hearing.  Teller said that he had serious doubts about Oppenheimer’s judgment, leftist leanings on political matters, and opposition to the hydrogen bomb. Teller said, “ I would feel personally more secure if public matters would rest in other hands.”

In May 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower asked Lewis Strauss to chair the Atomic Entergy Commission. Strauss immediately moved to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance, thereby severing him from the commission’s work. Ultimately, Strauss failed to pass Senate Confirmation to have the Cabinet Position of Commerce in retribution for his role against Oppenheimer. 

 

Both the scientific and non-scientific world was shaken by Oppenheimer’s loss of security clearance. To some he became a martyr. Oppenheimer continued to direct the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In 1963 the Atomic Energy Commission conferred on him the Enrico Fermi Award.

 

In retrospect, there seems to be no documentary evidence that exists to show that Oppenheimer knowingly betrayed the country. Yet the pieces of his life have never been assembled in a way that provides a clear picture of the man and his motivations. He repeatedly spoke of our “common bond with other men everywhere yet worked tirelessly on a weapon that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. While his leadership of the Manhattan project was brilliant, he occasionally baffled and infuriated politicians, military leaders, and the public.

 

I was amused by his evidence before the Personnel Security Board (1954)
” I was almost wholly divorced from the contemporary scene in this country. I never read a newspaper or a current magazine like Time or Harper’s. I had no radio, no telephone: I learned of the stock market crack in the fall of 1929 only long after the event; the first time I ever voted was in the presidential election of 1936. To many of my friends, my indifference to contemporary affairs seemed bizarre, and they often chided me with being too much of a highbrow. I was interested in man and his experience. I was deeply interested in my science, but I had no understanding of the relations of man to his society.”