By the time that Strauss returned to Washington in midmonth, one of the boat’s crewmen was critically ill and most others were suffering from radiation sickness. The incident had drawn headlines in Japan, prompting criticism of U.S. nuclear testing from around the world. An impromptu remark by Eisenhower later in the month—that the test “must have surprised and astonished the scientists”—inadvertently added fuel to the furor, as did Strauss’s subsequent admission to the press that a Bravo-sized bomb could destroy any city, including New York. (“I wouldn’t have answered that one that way, Lewis,” Ike gently admonished.)39
Bravo also literally overshadowed the preparations for the test of Livermore’s first H-bomb: the Ramrod device proposed by Teller.40 The unexpected power of the Los Alamos–designed Bravo had blown the roof off the corrugated tin hut that housed Livermore’s superbomb, while radiation from the test had forced the Livermore firing party off a nearby atoll and out to sea. Lawrence, who had been on hand to witness Bravo, was forced by a recurrence of his illness to return to California before the Livermore test, code-named Koon.41
In the early morning hours of Wednesday, April 7, 1954, the countdown for Koon wound down to zero.42 From the deck of the USS Curtis, Duane Sewell and his Livermore colleagues peered into the fog and low overcast as a dim glow briefly penetrated the murk. The contrast with Bravo was instantly apparent. (“Did it go off?” asked Sewell anxiously.) Whereas lab pessimists had scaled back early estimates of a Bravo-like yield to a single megaton, the actual explosion was only a tenth that magnitude, almost all of it accounted for by Koon’s Los Alamos–supplied fission primary.43
The fizzle produced a mood of near desperation among the lab’s weaponeers. Following the disappointing results of the twin hydride tests, the California lab now had an unbroken record of failure. Eager to get at least one score on the tally board before the end of the series, some urged that the only other Livermore-designed bomb scheduled for Castle—a cryogenically cooled, “wet” version of Ramrod, in a test code-named Echo—be moved to a barge and exploded as soon as possible, even though any diagnostic data from the shot would be lost. Instead, Herb York and Harold Brown decided to cancel the test. Commission experts agreed with Teller’s colleagues that the next bomb, too, was likely to fizzle, given its similarity to the ill-fated Koon.44
Beyond embarrassment at Livermore’s failure, York and Teller had another, deeper concern. In the wake of the lab’s disastrous debut in Nevada and the Pacific, they expected that questions would again be raised concerning the need for a second weapons laboratory. Predictably, the loudest criticisms came from a familiar quarter. Just weeks after Koon, Norris Bradbury wrote to the AEC questioning whether Livermore needed or deserved an independent test program. Bradbury’s memo likewise branded the rival lab for pursuing weapons of dubious design and only “problematic interest.”45
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On Monday, April 12, 1954, five days after Teller’s H-bomb had fizzled in the Pacific, the Oppenheimer hearings began in Room 2022 of Building T-3, across Constitution Avenue from AEC headquarters. The barracks-like temporary structure had been erected in the early days of the Second World War, on the empty sward of land between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.
Members of the Personnel Security Board—Gray, Evans, and Thomas—sat at a long baize-covered table at the room’s east end. The opposing lawyers, Garrison and Robb, and their staffs faced each other across two mahogany tables fitted together and attached like the stem of a T. At the base, standing apart, was a single wooden chair for witness testimony; behind it, a nondescript leather sofa, usually occupied by Oppenheimer, sitting alone.46
Nichols had forbidden Garrison from making an opening statement, so much of the first morning was taken up by Gray’s reading of the statement of charges and Oppenheimer’s fourteen-page reply, recounting his life and career. After lunch, Garrison entered into the record wartime letters from Groves and FDR, praising the physicist for his work on the atomic bomb.
Across the street at the AEC that afternoon, there were already signs that Oppenheimer was in trouble. Groves telephoned Nichols with word that, while Garrison still wanted him to testify, Oppie’s lawyer was disturbed by the fact that Groves’s recollection of the Chevalier incident did not jibe with Oppenheimer’s.47
Most of the next two days was taken up by Garrison’s direct examination of Oppenheimer. On Wednesday morning, April 14, when the subject turned to Frank, it was Oppie who prompted Garrison’s question.48 The lawyer asked, “Was your brother connected with this approach by Chevalier to you?” Oppenheimer’s reply had the sound of an answer prepared well in advance: “I am very clear on this. I have a vivid and I think certainly not fallible memory. He had nothing whatever to do with it.”
Following the precepts of his youth and the training of the Ethical Culture School, Oppenheimer had elected to do “the noble thing.”
* * *
Robb’s cross-examination later that day focused upon Oppie’s graduate students who had worked on the Manhattan Project: Lomanitz, Weinberg, Bohm, and Friedman. In the afternoon, the prosecution turned to the Chevalier incident. Some weeks earlier, Bates had located in bureau files the Presto disk of Pash’s interview with Oppenheimer. At the FBI, Nichols, Robb, and Rolander had listened transfixed to the decade-old recording of Oppenheimer telling Pash about three colleagues being contacted by an unnamed intermediary to spy for the Russians.49
Prodded by Robb to “begin at the beginning and tell us exactly what happened” with Chevalier, Oppenheimer told the version he had given the FBI in 1946—that he had been the only one approached by the
