By DOUG REILLY
Los Alamos
On December 18, 2022, the Los Alamos Daily Post published, “Energy Secretary Announces Decision To Revoke Security Clearance Of J. Robert Oppenheimer Finally Nullified” (link). This has been covered by many other media. I wish to add some information relative to this issue.
The 1954 AEC hearing reached the decision to revoke Oppie’s Q-Clearance one day before it was to expire. The hearing lasted three weeks; the AEC attorney was Roger Robb, a D.C. prosecutor, and Oppie’s was William K. Garrison, a well-known New York lawyer. Several years ago, when I was the docent in the Los Alamos History Museum, I noticed a couple discussing Kai Bird’s biography of Julius Robert Oppenheimer. When I approached them, the man said his name was Garrison and William was his uncle or grandfather (I don’t remember which). In discussing the hearing with William, he said, “He was almost certain that if he’d been given the promised security clearance to review the classified evidence (Robb did have such) he could have cleared Oppie.”
I’ve read almost all books on Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. Here’s some information relative to this issue. Lewis Strauss was AEC chairman at the time; he pronounced his name, STRAWS. Earlier he had chaired the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and had called Oppie to testify before the committee. When Strauss asked what would be needed to determine if a device was an atomic bomb, Oppie responded, “a screwdriver!” This was taken by Strauss as a slight, and Strauss was known to carry a grudge forever. In other words, he wished to take Oppenheimer down. The hearing was designed to do this.
When Edward Teller testified that while Oppie had surely been responsible for guiding Los Alamos efforts that resulted in Little Boy and Fat Man, his opposition to the SUPER (hydrogen bomb) was a threat to US security. When Oppie left the hearing that day passing by Teller, Teller said, “Oppie, I’m sorry!” Oppie’s reply was, “after what you’ve said, I don’t understand that remark!” When Teller returned to Los Alamos almost no one would talk to him.
After Teller died in 2003, Columbia University held a memorial service for him. Nobel laureate Issac Isador Rabi had been a close friend of both Oppenheimer and Teller; he’d long been associated with the physics department at Columbia. I remember reading an article in the New York Times where a reporter at the memorial asked Rabi his opinion of Teller, Rabi’s reply was, “The world would have been better off, had Edward never lived!”
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