Authors: Brian Van DeMark
Now came Garrison’s turn. Tall and stately in appearance and manner, Garrison had a reputation for integrity and dedication to good causes, but he was not a litigator who was at home in the ringlike atmosphere of the courtroom. In his opening remarks, Garrison spoke softly and carefully—almost gingerly—as if convinced that if he could just avoid any abrasive actions that might offend the hearing board members, he would be able to persuade them to use the rule of reason in judging “the whole Oppenheimer,” and thus find in his client’s favor.
Garrison put Oppenheimer on the stand that afternoon. He tried to minimize his client’s left-wing past as an indiscretion of youth and ignorance, and by stressing his later patriotic service. Oppenheimer spoke easily and confidently, as though he were addressing a friendly gathering, but there was a quality of desperation about him. He felt oppressed by the unfriendly atmosphere of the proceeding and kept his distance even from his own attorney. He told the facts about his life and career; what he left out were the motives and context. Similar ambiguities exist in the lives of all individuals; they are not usually exposed to harsh examination and judgment. Nevertheless, the board felt something was left out, and it was unlikely to fill the gap with a generous, sympathetic picture that Oppenheimer himself failed to draw.
The next morning Mervin Kelly, president of Bell Telephone Laboratories, took the stand as the first pro-Oppenheimer witness. When Garrison finished his questions, those in the hearing room got their first glimpse of Robb. It quickly became clear that he was not a fact-finder but a ruthlessly aggressive prosecutor. Robb cross-examined Kelly in a manner deliberately calculated to intimidate Oppenheimer. The prosecutor turned to Gray and said, “Mr. Chairman, I would like to read the witness something from the report which is classified.” For the next few minutes, Oppenheimer remained in the hearing room alone, his attorney having been dismissed from the room. The psychological impact—the demonstration of power that Robb had, based on his privileged access to Oppenheimer’s security file—must have unnerved the lonely and embattled physicist. “When I saw what they were doing to Oppenheimer,” said another witness, “I was ready to throw chairs. How can a lawyer defend his client’s interests if he isn’t even in the hearing room? There hadn’t been a proceeding like this since the Spanish Inquisition.”
27
Oppenheimer resumed the stand later that day. He talked at length about his service to the country at Los Alamos during the war and in Washington since. He also talked about his fondness and protectiveness toward his younger brother, Frank. Frank, it was recalled, had wed Jacquenette Quann in September 1936. A Canadian majoring in economics at Berkeley who was active in the campus Young Communist League, Jackie had done for Frank what Jean Tatlock had done for Robert: she had opened his eyes to the suffering in the world around him and had turned his attention to left-wing politics. Shortly after their marriage, Frank and Jackie had joined the Communist Party. Later, in Pasadena, where Frank was studying physics at Caltech, the younger brother had invited Robert to attend a Communist Party meeting at his house—the only thing “recognizable as a Communist Party meeting” that Robert allegedly ever recalled attending.
Robb began his interrogation of Oppenheimer the next morning. The prosecutor and the physicist were vastly different: Oppenheimer was intellectual and reflective; Robb was aggressive and combative. Robb, convinced of the physicist’s guilt, took a quick and strong personal dislike to Oppenheimer: “My feeling was that he was just a brain and as cold as a fish, and he had the iciest pair of blue eyes I ever saw.”
28
Vigorous and bludgeoning, the fleshy, shovel-jawed prosecutor was intent on taking full advantage of Oppenheimer’s predicament by impelling him to testify from sheer memory about long-past events, while secretly holding in reserve documents containing the facts about these events. Robb mercilessly interrogated Oppenheimer, casting the physicist on the defensive and making him seem imprecise and evasive.
Robb quickly turned to the “Chevalier incident.” Sometime in late 1942 or early 1943 (before Oppenheimer moved to Los Alamos), Haakon Chevalier, one of his closest friends and a communist professor at Berkeley, had approached the physicist (and perhaps others, including his younger brother, Frank) on behalf of a West Coast British engineer and communist named George Eltenton. Chevalier had told Oppenheimer that Eltenton could pass secret information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. Chevalier had gone back to Eltenton almost immediately and had told him, as Eltenton later said, “that there was no chance whatsoever of obtaining any data and Dr. Oppenheimer did not approve.”
29
Although Oppenheimer had rebuffed this espionage approach, he had—seeking to protect his friend Chevalier and perhaps his brother, Frank—delayed reporting the approach to Manhattan Project security officer Colonel Boris Pash, identified Chevalier as the intermediary only after being specifically ordered to do so by Groves, and later changed the details of his story. Oppenheimer was unaware, however, that Pash had secretly recorded his 1943 revelation. With access to these 1943 recordings (access denied to Oppenheimer and his attorneys), Robb—instead of stressing the essence of the matter: that Chevalier got nothing from Oppenheimer and that Oppenheimer had taken the initiative to give the warning about Eltenton—hammered away at the story that Oppenheimer had made up in order to tip off security officers to espionage feelers without implicating those close to him:
*
R
OBB
: Did you tell Pash the truth about this thing?
O
PPENHEIMER
: No.
R
OBB
: You lied to him?
O
PPENHEIMER
: Yes.
30
Oppenheimer’s last response was barely audible. Anguished and surprisingly inarticulate, he slumped in the witness chair. He felt like a man sliding helplessly down a slope toward the sheer cliff that would finish him. His heart was pounding. He rubbed his hands between his knees, his head bowed, the color drained from his face:
R
OBB
: So that we may be clear, did you discuss with or disclose to Pash the identity of Chevalier?
O
PPENHEIMER
: No.
R
OBB
: Let us refer then, for the time being, to Chevalier as X.
O
PPENHEIMER
: All right.
R
OBB
: Did you tell Pash that X had approached three persons on the project?
O
PPENHEIMER
: I am not clear whether I said there were three Xs or that X approached three people.
R
OBB
: Didn’t you say that X had approached three people?
O
PPENHEIMER
: Probably.
R
OBB
: Why did you do that, Doctor?
“Because,” said Oppenheimer, dropping his voice, “I was an idiot.”
R
OBB
: Is that your only explanation, Doctor?
O
PPENHEIMER
: I was reluctant to mention Chevalier.
R
OBB
: Yes.
O
PPENHEIMER
: No doubt somewhat reluctant to mention myself.
31
Smelling blood, Robb confronted Oppenheimer with section after section of the 1943 recordings. Then he made Oppenheimer go back over the details of what he forced him to admit was a cock-and-bull story.
R
OBB
: Isn’t it a fair statement today, Dr. Oppenheimer, that according to your testimony now you told not one lie to Colonel Pash, but a whole fabrication and tissue of lies?
O
PPENHEIMER
: Right.
32
Even after this, Oppenheimer’s ordeal was not over. There was one added humiliation to be suffered that day: intimate questions about his relationship with Jean Tatlock—in particular, his overnight stay with her at her apartment on Montgomery Street in San Francisco on June fourteenth and fifteenth, 1943—three years after he had married Kitty and three months after he had become director of the secret laboratory at Los Alamos. Robb asked Oppenheimer why he had to see Jean. Oppenheimer explained that his former fiancée was being treated for depression at a San Francisco hospital and had sent word to Los Alamos that she wanted to see him.
*
Robb continued to probe, pitilessly and relentlessly:
R
OBB
: Did you find out why she had to see you?
O
PPENHEIMER
: Because she was still in love with me….
R
OBB
: You spent the night with her, didn’t you?
O
PPENHEIMER
: Yes.
R
OBB
: That is when you were working on a secret war project?
O
PPENHEIMER
: Yes.
R
OBB
: Did you think that consistent with good security?
O
PPENHEIMER
: It was, as a matter of fact. Not a word—it was not good practice.
33
Oppenheimer’s blurred, stumbling reply showed that Robb had crushed him. Some in the hearing room thought Oppenheimer might have a nervous breakdown or even commit suicide that night. He did not. In fact, Oppenheimer’s friends were astonished at his resilience during the pressure-filled proceedings. Back in Princeton over the weekend breaks, he attended to physics and institute business. Oppenheimer’s friends did, however, notice a change in him: his self-confidence gave way to melancholy. He paced his bedroom floor at night. He felt trapped. To this pressure was added the burden of media scrutiny. Journalists hounded him for interviews, followed him and Kitty as they came and went from the hearing, and dug deep into their newspaper files for background information to add to sketches for their daily reporting. One newspaperman found himself on the same train with Oppenheimer and Kitty between Washington and Princeton. Stuck with the reporter over dinner, Oppenheimer gently but steadfastly refused to comment while the hearing was under way. The reporter was surprised to see two security “shadows” following Oppenheimer’s every move on the train.
The day after Robb’s withering interrogation about the Chevalier incident and the night with Jean Tatlock, Groves, wartime commander of the Manhattan Project and now a businessman in Connecticut, took the stand. He reaffirmed his 1943 decision to appoint Oppenheimer as head of Los Alamos because his overriding objective had been “to produce an atomic bomb in the shortest possible time.” Groves added that he would be “amazed” if Oppenheimer would ever be disloyal. He dismissed Oppenheimer’s reluctance to divulge Chevalier’s name to him as “the typical American schoolboy attitude that there is something wicked about telling on a friend.”
34
Oppenheimer had said no to the espionage approach and had named Eltenton—those were the essential things as far as Groves was concerned.
*
Robb cleverly asked Groves whether he would clear Oppenheimer now. (Robb already knew the answer to this question because Strauss, by threatening Groves for having withheld information from the FBI during the war, had compelled the general to submit a letter that stated: “If I am asked whether I think the [AEC] would be justified in clearing Dr. Oppenheimer, I will say ‘no.’ If I am asked if I think he is a security risk, I will say ‘yes’”—thereby compromising the defense’s most important witness.)
35
Groves dutifully replied that he “would not clear Dr. Oppenheimer today” under his interpretation of new and tougher security standards. Thus Groves had covered himself, and the value of his testimony to Oppenheimer had been diminished considerably
36
After Groves finished testifying, Oppenheimer returned to the stand, this time to face questioning about his stance on the superbomb. The weather outside the hearing room had changed—a rainstorm now beat against the windows—and so had Oppenheimer’s bearing from the previous day. No longer subdued, uncertain, and slow to respond, he was now confident, combative, and quick to reply. His upper lip was tense and coldly resolved. Misery had turned to indignation. Robb brought up Oppenheimer’s reference to Lawrence and Teller as “two experienced promoters” in a letter he wrote shortly before the October 1949 GAC meeting. Oppenheimer’s irritation and resentment toward both men—once friends and now enemies who would speak against him—was apparent:
R
OBB
: Would you agree, Doctor, that your references to Dr. Lawrence and Dr. Teller and their enthusiasm for the superbomb… are a little bit belittling?