Nor did Strauss hesitate to use his new office to settle old scores.10 More than three years after Carroll Wilson had left the commission, Strauss interceded to deny the former AEC general manager a clearance when Wilson took a new job at the Metals and Control Corporation. Wilson had finally turned for help to Vannevar Bush and Henry Smyth.11 When Gordon Arneson, the State Department’s atomic energy expert, ran afoul of the man he derisively called “the Tugboat Admiral,” Strauss had Arneson declared a security risk and fired.12
* * *
The Russians’ failure to fulfill his worst fears by testing a hydrogen bomb was disturbing his sleep that summer, the AEC chairman told friends.13 The suspense ended in late August, with the test of Joe-4. But AFOAT-1’s analysis of the debris from the bomb actually showed that it was the United States, and not the Soviet Union, which held the thermonuclear advantage. The Soviet device had been similar to Teller’s original Alarm Clock, with a yield of 400 kilotons, far less than the multimegaton Mike.14 The CIA believed that the radiation-implosion secret of the new Super remained unfamiliar to—or was at least as yet undemonstrated by—America’s adversary.
While the advent of a Soviet H-bomb was not unexpected, it had the effect of strengthening Strauss’s hand. That autumn, Eisenhower quietly acceded to the AEC chairman’s request that all official statements concerning H-bombs be cleared first with him. That step marked the end of “Operation Candor.” As Ike announced in a press statement—drafted by Strauss—his administration henceforth did not intend to disclose details “of our strength in atomic weapons of any sort.”15
* * *
By that fall, Borden’s original list of 38 questions concerning Oppenheimer had swelled to 500.16 “All his spare time seems to be devoted to brooding about your business,” Ken Mansfield told Teller in early November.17
Also worrying Borden was the fact that those who were left behind on the Joint Committee did not seem to share his obsession with Oppie.18 That included Frank Cotter, who had just completed his months-long review of the case against Oppenheimer. Cotter concluded that legal action against the scientist was problematic at best, since much of the evidence was based upon illegal wiretaps. Moreover, the former FBI agent thought an actual trial both unnecessary and unwise, as likely to alienate the nation’s scientists. “I believe that in the future he will become a weaker voice and hope that he will never become a voice speaking for martyrdom,” Cotter advised the Joint Committee. He recommended that they merely “continue to follow the case.”19 Allardice, Borden’s successor, agreed.20
As Borden was well aware, the letter that he had drafted for McMahon to give to Truman, warning about Oppenheimer, had never been delivered. A similar letter, written for Cole’s signature and intended for Eisenhower, likewise remained unsent.21 Meanwhile, Borden’s few remaining allies on the committee were fast dwindling: Walker had already returned to his law practice in New York.
The final straw may have been a memo that Cole and Allardice wrote in early November, intending to send to Hoover. Although they appended a partial list of Borden’s questions, the two noted that “[they had] not reached any definite conclusion on Dr. Oppenheimer.”22 Borden feared, with reason, that Cole and Allardice were preparing to wash their hands of the case.23
The prospect that Oppenheimer might get away with conduct that Borden considered treasonous finally compelled the ex-staffer to act. On November 7, 1953, Borden mailed from Pittsburgh’s main post office a three-and-a-half-page, single-spaced letter that he had been mentally writing for more than six months. Addressing the letter to Hoover, Borden recapitulated Oppenheimer’s extraordinary influence as a government adviser, listing twenty-one “factors”—most linked to events before 1943—that led him to his “own exhaustively considered opinion … that more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union.”24
* * *
Hoover’s immediate suspicion was that Borden’s letter might be a plot to embarrass Eisenhower, in retribution for the humiliation of the Wheeler incident.25 But he also recognized, Hoover told aides, that he “might later be confronted with the question of what the FBI did about it.”26 While little or nothing in Borden’s letter was new to Hoover, the FBI director ordered his agents to interview the ex-staffer.
What else to do about the letter was a dilemma inadvertently solved for Hoover a few days later during a visit from Thomas Murray. The commissioner had come to the bureau to complain about Strauss’s hiring of Teeple, but also to inquire whether the FBI had anything new on Oppenheimer.27 Hoover told Murray about the letter, complaining that Borden had decided “to dump [it] into the lap of the FBI.”
At Murray’s request, Hoover sent him a copy of the letter a week later. The FBI director also sent a copy to Herbert Brownell, Eisenhower’s attorney general. Strauss found a copy of the letter—along with a brief note from Hoover and Oppenheimer’s latest FBI file—on his desk when he arrived for work at the commission on Monday morning, November 30.28
On Tuesday evening, Strauss received a distraught telephone call from Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, who confessed that Borden’s letter had come as “something of a shock.” Wilson wondered whether Oppenheimer had not also been involved in the Wheeler incident.29 “I do not know that he is a Communist,” Strauss told Wilson, “but I do know that he is a liar.”30
The next day, Eisenhower learned about Borden’s letter from Wilson. (“Worse one so far,” the defense secretary told the president.)31 Ike recalled that early in his administration someone—he thought it was Strauss—had warned him that Oppenheimer was not to be trusted.32 Having recently come under attack by McCarthy for laxness in confronting communism, Eisenhower summoned Wilson, Strauss, and Brownell to the White House to discuss what to do about Oppenheimer. The president also ordered a meeting of top officials in the Oval Office for early the following morning.33
On Thursday, December 3, Eisenhower ordered that a “blank wall” be put between Oppenheimer
