hearing. That choice made the version Oppenheimer first told Pash in 1943 appear to be a lie that would have been a felony — falsely informing a federal officer — had the statute of limitations not protected him. But the alternative choice — to affirm the 1943 version and repudiate the 1946 version — would have moved the felony within range of prosecution. More painfully, it would also have implicated a friend in espionage and have exposed Oppenheimer himself to further investigation to discover who the “two or three people” were and how, when, where and by whom they were approached. Oppenheimer had trapped himself, and as he came to see that he had done so, it tore him apart. “Hunched over,” Robb remembered the physicist's agony, “wringing his hands, white as a sheet,” Oppenheimer bent and broke under Robb's relentless cross-examination:
Q. When did you first mention your conversation with Chevalier to any security officer?
A. I didn't do it that way. I first mentioned Eltenton… I think I said little more than that Eltenton was somebody to worry about.
Q. Yes.
A. Then I was asked why did I say this. Then I invented a cock-and-bull story.
Q. Then you were interviewed the next day by Colonel Pash, were you not?
A. That is right.
“Until the end,” Garrison recalled, “[Oppenheimer] never did stop to think ‘How could I best put this.’ Whether this was because he felt he was so right that he didn't need to pause or that he was contemptuously lording it over the other fellow by spitting the answer out immediately I don't know, but this endless cross- examination simply wore him down… ”
Q… Did you tell Pash the truth about this thing?
A. No.
Q. You lied to him?
A. Yes.
Q. What did you tell Pash that was not true?
A. That Eltenton had attempted to approach members of the Project — three members of the project — through intermediaries.
Q. What else did you tell him that wasn't true?
A. That is all I really remember.
Q. That is all? Did you tell Pash that Eltenton had attempted to approach three members of the project —
A. Through intermediaries.
Q. Intermediaries?
A. Through an intermediary.
Q. So that we may be clear, did you discuss with or disclose to Pash the identity of Chevalier?
A. No.
Q. Let us refer, then, for the time being, to Chevalier as X.
A. All right.
Q. Did you tell Pash that X had approached three persons on the Project?
A. I am not clear whether I said there were three X's or that X approached three people.
Q. Didn't you say that X had approached three people?
A. Probably.
Q. Why did you do that, Doctor?
A. Because I was an idiot.
Q. Is that your only explanation, Doctor?
A. I was reluctant to mention Chevalier.
Q. Yes.
A. No doubt somewhat reluctant to mention myself.
Q. Yes. But why would you tell him that Chevalier had gone to three people?
A. I have no explanation for that except the one already offered.
Q. Didn't that make it all the worse for Chevalier?
A. I didn't mention Chevalier.
Q. No; but X.
A. It would have.
Q. Certainly. In other words, if X had gone to three people that would have shown, would it not —
A. That he was deeply involved.
Q. That he was deeply involved. That it was not just a casual conversation.
A. Right.
Q. And you knew that, didn't you?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you tell Colonel Pash that X had spoken to you about the use of microfilm?
A. It seems unlikely. You have a record, and I will abide by it.
Q. Did you?
A. I don't remember.
Q. Did you tell Colonel Pash that X had told you that the information would be transmitted through someone at the Russian consulate?
(There was no response.)
Q. Did you?
A. I would have said not, but I clearly see that I must have.
Q. If X had said that, that would have shown conclusively that it was a criminal conspiracy, would it not?
A. That is right.
More cross-examination followed on the episode, Robb reading from transcripts of the 1943 recordings. Significantly, the AEC attorney produced a 1943 telegram revealing that Oppenheimer had told not only Pash that X had made three approaches; when General Groves had insisted Oppenheimer identify X, and Oppenheimer had given Groves Chevalier's name, the physicist had repeated his original charge: “Haakon Chevalier to be reported by Oppenheimer to be professor at Rad Lab who made three contacts for Eltenton… Oppenheimer believed Chevalier engaged in no further activity other than three original attempts.” Robb drove the point home:
Q. Why did you go into such great circumstantial detail about this thing if you were telling a cock-and-bull story?
A. I fear that this whole thing is a piece of idiocy.
“I felt sick,” Robb recalled. “That night when I came home I told my wife, ‘I've just seen a man destroy himself.’”
But the true story of what happened in 1943 between Oppenheimer and Chevalier, and Oppenheimer and Groves, is even more remarkable than the story Oppenheimer told Pash. According to George Eltenton in his 1946 testimony to the FBI, Peter Ivanov, secretary to the Soviet consulate-general in San Francisco, had asked him in 1942 to help collect information on atomic-bomb research at the University of California Radiation Laboratory. Ivanov suggested that Eltenton contact Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and Luis Alvarez. (Evidently Ivanov was unaware that both Lawrence and Alvarez were staunch anti-Communists.) At this point what happened becomes speculative, since only Oppenheimer's various versions of the story remain. Eltenton may have tapped Chevalier to approach Oppenheimer. The approach may have taken place much as Oppenheimer recounted in the security hearing, except that Chevalier obviously told Oppenheimer the whole story: Ivanov, Eltenton, microfilm, support for a beleaguered nation, Lawrence and Alvarez. Oppenheimer rebuffed the approach. Then or later, however, Oppenheimer may have learned another awkward fact: that Chevalier had also approached his brother Frank.
