“Hunched over, wringing his hands, white as a sheet,” Robb later recalled—Oppie, having admitted that he lied, waited almost helplessly for the trap to be sprung.51
“Why did you do that, Doctor?” Robb asked.
“Because I was an idiot,” Oppenheimer replied.52
The physicist went on to venture a further explanation—that he had invented the tale of three contacts in order to protect Chevalier. But Robb pointed out that this new story made no sense, since an approach to others showed his friend to be even more “deeply involved” in espionage. Robb also forced Oppenheimer to admit to having paid a friendly visit to Chevalier—the man he had just implicated as a wartime spy—only months earlier in Paris.53
Finally, producing the telegram that Groves had sent Nichols in December 1943, Robb challenged Oppenheimer to account for its reference to three contacts: “You think General Groves did tell Colonel Nichols and Colonel Lansdale your story was cock and bull?”54
“I find that hard to believe,” conceded Oppenheimer in a quiet voice.
“So do I,” Robb shot back.55
* * *
That evening, at the AEC building, Groves was coached by Robb and Rolander on the testimony he would give the following day.56 In the witness chair on April 15, Groves made no mention of his December 1943 meeting at Los Alamos with Oppie. Instead, Robb’s questions—and Groves’s answers—were what the general and Strauss had gone over nearly two months before.57
Although Lansdale, in his own later testimony, vaguely remembered telling the FBI that Frank was the actual contact, he told Robb that he could no longer recall how he came by that information: “My memory is a complete blank.”58 Nor did Robb decide to call any of those who might have shed light on the Chevalier incident—Consodine, Frank Oppenheimer, or Chevalier himself, who denied, the following day in the International Herald-Tribune, ever approaching Oppie for secrets of any kind.59
Robb chose not to pursue the gaps and inconsistencies in Groves’s story.60 He and Strauss saw little advantage to having Oppenheimer portrayed as a hero for sacrificing himself to save his brother.
Following Oppie’s admission of lying and the hand-washing testimony of Groves, Garrison’s strategy of relying upon notables to make a proxy case for the physicist went up in smoke—a fact as evident to the prosecution as it was to the defense.
A day after Oppenheimer’s ordeal on the stand, Strauss, exultant, wrote Eisenhower: “The counsel who have been in attendance feel that an extremely bad impression toward Oppenheimer has already developed in the minds of the board.”61 Bates informed Hoover that Strauss was “most happy with the way that the Oppenheimer hearing was going.”62
But a reminder from Rabi of the effect that a protracted hearing was likely to have upon the morale of the nation’s scientists prompted Strauss to direct Robb “to make every effort to speed up the hearing.”63 Ever since an article about the supposedly secret proceedings had appeared in the New York Times on April 13, Strauss recognized the danger that the hearings might spin out of control.64 Strauss also worried that Congress might “try to get into the act.”65
* * *
The hearings continued, nonetheless, into a second and then a third week. FBI agents stationed outside the Georgetown house where the Oppenheimers were staying—the home of Garrison’s law partner—reported that the physicist was up late into the night, pacing the floor. At the AEC and the FBI, Hoover, Strauss, and Robb were still looking for the final piece of evidence that would unequivocally seal Oppenheimer’s fate: convincing proof that Oppie, contrary to his repeated assurances, had once secretly belonged to the Communist Party.
Bureau agents spent countless hours pouring over airline and railroad timetables to see if the Oppenheimers could have returned to Kenilworth Court from Perro Caliente in time to host the clandestine party meeting alleged by the Crouches.66 The results were inconclusive.67
Hoover and Strauss became personally involved in the hunt for new leads and the tying up of loose ends. The FBI director ordered his agents to interview for a second time a former Army private who had been on garbage duty at wartime Los Alamos and remembered seeing copies of the Daily Worker and New Masses in Oppenheimer’s trash.68 Strauss asked Nichols to ascertain whether the consular official who had tipped the FBI off to Oppenheimer’s visit to the Paris embassy would testify that Oppie had tried to help Chevalier reenter the United States (He would not.)69 When the propriety of wiretapping Oppenheimer’s conversations with Garrison once more came under question at the FBI, Hoover ordered the taps continued, again at Strauss’s request.70
Nor was the dragnet only out for Oppenheimer. Following testimony on April 22 by physicists Norman Ramsey and Isidor Rabi, Nichols asked the FBI for any derogatory information it might have on others whom Garrison intended to call to the stand in Oppie’s defense—“in order that AEC can use the information against the potential witness if desired.” Included on the list of two dozen names that Nichols gave the bureau were both of Strauss’s predecessors at the AEC: Lilienthal and Dean.71
Yet it was becoming clear that a drawn-out hearing might be a mistake for the prosecution. Vannevar Bush’s testimony on Friday, April 23, was particularly strong. (He had warned Strauss in advance, Bush wrote Conant, “that I was going to sail into him and I proceeded to do so.”)72 Unintimidated by Robb, Bush vigorously defended his attempt to postpone Mike—“I still think we made a grave error in conducting that test at that time, and not attempting to make that type of simple agreement with Russia”—and attacked the board for “placing a man on trial because he held opinions.”*73
Conant, too, proved a surprisingly outspoken witness for the defense. The former Harvard president, now high commissioner to Germany, had defied the wishes of Secretary of State Dulles in order to appear at the hearing; afterward, Conant spoke to Eisenhower about
