* * *
Strauss had not bothered to hide his contempt for the former Manhattan Project director in a 1951 conversation with Borden, to whom he confided: “Groves is and always has been stupid.… [Strauss] added that whereas once it might have been worthwhile to consult General Groves, that time is long since past.”6
Already aware that Groves had belatedly admitted lying to the FBI, Strauss had recently located another piece of incriminating evidence to use against the general. The letter that Groves wrote Oppenheimer in May 1950, when the physicist feared being called before HUAC, had been discovered in mid-January by an AEC security man sent to retrieve classified files from Princeton. LaPlante duly gave the letter to Bates, who passed it along to Strauss and Hoover.7 Groves’s unbidden testimonial—“that at no time did he regret his decision”—had been intended as ammunition for Oppenheimer to use against the Crouches. Strauss now planned to use it as ammunition against Groves.
Strauss and Groves probably talked about the letter as well as the upcoming hearing during a train ride together on January 21 to Groton, Connecticut, for the launching of the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus. Shortly afterward, therefore, Strauss told Belmont that “Groves might now be sorry that he had sent such a letter to Oppenheimer.”8
For Hoover, too, the evidence that linked Frank to the Chevalier incident and implicated Groves in the cover-up was a welcome weapon to use against the man who had been his wartime nemesis.9 (“From the above it is readily apparent that Groves has attempted to withhold and conceal important information concerning an espionage conspiracy violation from the FBI,” Belmont wrote his boss. “Even now Groves is behaving with a certain amount of coyness in his dealings and admissions to the Bureau.”)10
Groves himself was all too aware of how his recent admission to the FBI made his position in the case tenuous. The general also knew—or at least suspected—that Oppenheimer’s calls were being monitored. On January 22, when Oppie telephoned to ask Groves if they could have lunch together the following week in New York, FBI agents recorded that Groves was “courteous [to JRO] but has indicated that he knows nothing about the case except some gossip.”11
With the trap thus set, Strauss judged the time right to spring it. On February 19, 1954, Groves met with the AEC chairman in Washington, at Strauss’s request. Asked whether he would clear Oppie now, Groves answered no. Asked, “Do you think Oppenheimer is a security risk?” Groves responded in the affirmative. Afterward, Strauss informed Robb of the results of his interrogation, reminding the lawyer to “be sure to ask these questions of Groves at the hearing.”12 Later that afternoon, Nichols took Groves to see Robb and Arthur Rolander, the AEC security man who was assisting the prosecution.13
Confident that the most important defense witness was now solidly in the prosecution’s camp, Strauss saw no need to compromise. When Rabi proposed a deal whereby Oppenheimer would agree to resign his AEC contract in exchange for Nichols withdrawing the statement of charges, Strauss promptly rejected the offer as “out of the question.” In early March, Garrison, too, told Strauss that he and Oppenheimer would “fight.”14
* * *
With the hearing only weeks away, each side had a new appreciation of the stakes involved. Strauss told Mitchell that the “importance of the Oppenheimer case could not be stressed too much,” while a defeat for the AEC would be “another ‘Pearl Harbor’ as far as atomic energy is concerned.”15 Brownell predicted that the hearing “would be bigger than the Alger Hiss case” and might result in a criminal indictment of Oppenheimer.16 Strauss and Nichols—who had begun meeting daily on the case in the chairman’s office by February—knew they had a vital but unseen ally in Hoover.17 Robb and Strauss had already assured the FBI director that nothing in the bureau’s files would be shared with Oppenheimer’s lawyers.18
Under Robb’s direction, Rolander began collecting documents and conducting interviews on Projects Vista and Lexington, the air force’s ill-fated nuclear bomber, and AFOAT-1, which Strauss claimed Oppenheimer had tried to kill at its birth.19
Strauss and Nichols also did what they could to put obstacles in the path of Oppenheimer’s defense. When Garrison, having had a preview of the opposition’s tactics, began to rethink his early decision not to obtain a security clearance to try the case, Strauss and Nichols rejected his request on the grounds that Garrison’s associate, Herbert Marks—a former AEC general counsel—was a security risk.20 Although Garrison realized that without a clearance the defense would be at a disadvantage when it came to allegations that Oppenheimer had impeded progress on the hydrogen bomb, in deference to Marks, he decided not to press the issue.21
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The FBI wiretaps revealed tantalizing details not only of Garrison’s strategy but of the problems being encountered by the defense.
On February 6, 1954, Oppenheimer telephoned his brother in Colorado, telling Frank that he was in “considerable trouble.”22 The bureau’s transcript suggests that Oppie realized not only that his phone was tapped but that his mail was being read: “J. Robert Oppenheimer also indicated that he hoped to see Frank for a talk at the first opportunity as he cannot adequately discuss the problem in a letter.”
But the hoped-for visit did not take place. More than a month later, FBI agents picked up mention of Frank’s name again in a telephone call from Oppie to Garrison: “Subject feels it necessary that someone contact his brother to discuss his phase of involvement.”23
Since Garrison could not afford to take time out for the trip—the hearing was now less than two weeks away—he sent an associate in the firm, Samuel Silverman, to see Frank. Silverman arranged a rendezvous in early April at Dorothy McKibben’s old Manhattan Project office in Santa Fe.
Told by Garrison simply to “go talk to Frank Oppenheimer and see what he can tell
