When Nichols telephoned Teller on April 24 to confirm the date for his testimony, Teller had clearly made up his mind about what he was going to say: “He said he would be very glad to repeat the statement he had given earlier to Rolander and Robb if I thought it would be of any use,” wrote Nichols in his diary.94
On Tuesday morning, April 27, Teller spent another forty-five minutes in Nichols’s office discussing his testimony and the hearing. Teller also met with Murray in the afternoon and that evening with Robb, who showed him the portion of the transcript containing Oppenheimer’s abject reply to Robb’s question about the Chevalier incident. Teller told Robb—“with some heat,” the lawyer later recalled—that Oppenheimer had lied to him as well. (“He felt that by leaving out important and relevant facts in his statement to Dr. Teller about his past associations, Dr. Oppenheimer had deceived and misled Dr. Teller,” Robb later wrote to Strauss.)95
Possibly with Robb’s prompting, Teller agreed to make one important change to his planned testimony. Whereas in past interviews with the FBI he had always dismissed the idea that Oppenheimer might be a security risk, Teller told Robb that, in light of Oppie’s recent admission of lying, he felt he could no longer give such an assurance. For Teller, as for Alvarez, the prospect of finally “unfrocking” Oppenheimer proved too tempting to resist.96
On Wednesday afternoon, April 28, Teller was sworn in and had barely given the board some brief details of his career when Robb asked him, “Do you or do you not believe Dr. Oppenheimer is a security risk?
Teller’s carefully worded reply was a subtle variation on what he had told Robb and Rolander in Berkeley six weeks earlier, when he had expressed concern that Oppie’s clearance might be “lifted for a mere mistake of judgment”:
In a great number of cases I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act—I understand that Dr. Oppenheimer acted—in a way which for me was exceedingly hard to understand. I thoroughly disagreed with him in numerous issues and his actions frankly appeared to me confused and complicated. To this extent I feel that I would like to see the vital interests of this country in hands which I understand better, and therefore trust more.97
Lest there be any doubt about what Teller meant, Gray repeated Robb’s question in the cross-examination, to which Teller replied, “If it is a question of wisdom and judgment, as demonstrated by actions since 1945, then I would say one would be wiser not to grant clearance.”*98
* * *
Earlier in the day, Robb had announced at the hearing that Lawrence would not appear after all, because of illness.99 Alvarez’s testimony on Thursday afternoon, April 29, continued into Friday morning, as Robb and the board quizzed Luie about the diary he had kept during the H-bomb debate. But neither Alvarez’s testimony nor the brief, notarized affidavit that Lawrence submitted to the board a few days later would affect the outcome.100
On May 3, Rolander informed Bates that the prosecution was finished with its witnesses. Robb said he hoped to wrap things up in another two days.101 On May 6, following a three-hour summation by Garrison, the hearings finally ended. Oppie and Kitty returned home to Princeton that evening.
Four days later, the agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark office once more asked for permission to discontinue the Oppenheimer wiretaps.102 Strauss again requested that they be kept in place, since further testimony might be given when the board reconvened in Washington on May 18. There was, moreover, Hoover wrote the conscience-stricken Newark agent, another reason to continue the wiretaps on the physicist: “Since his testimony under oath, investigation may now be directed with a view toward possible prosecution provided legally admissible evidence can be developed to corroborate the [Crouches’] allegations.”103
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LIKE GOING TO A NEW COUNTRY
BELIEVING THAT THE Gray board would take from four to six weeks to reach a decision, Garrison and Oppenheimer began work almost immediately on a rebuttal, should the AEC declare Oppie a security risk. The FBI’s bugs picked up their efforts. Hoover reported to Strauss that two problems were bothering the defense. One—a question that had been “pressed at the hearing,” and which Oppenheimer considered “wholly messy”—was presumably the Chevalier affair. The other was the disarmament panel’s discussion in 1952 about the possible postponement of Mike. Rolander requested the panel’s minutes from the State Department so that he might be able to counter Garrison’s arguments in advance.1
Garrison’s summation on May 6, 1954, had focused in some detail on Oppenheimer’s contradictory versions of the Chevalier incident—only to conclude, somewhat weakly, that “Dr. Oppenheimer has surely learned from this experience.”2 Gray himself had tried to finally get at the truth of the matter when he asked Oppie, during the physicist’s last day on the stand, why he had told a complicated lie to Pash if his motive was to protect Chevalier. But Oppenheimer once again dodged the question. It was, averred the physicist, “most difficult to explain.”3
Strauss’s concern grew after a week passed without a verdict. His particular concern was Ward Evans. The chemistry professor had startled the other members of the board by making disparaging and even anti-Semitic remarks about Oppenheimer at a dinner early in the proceedings. Gray and Morgan had told Rolander that they feared Evans was so outspoken he might prejudice the case.4
On May 20, no longer able to contain his anxiety, Strauss telephoned Belmont, asking that Hoover intervene personally with the board: “[Strauss] said that the Oppenheimer Hearing Board is in the last stages of its considerations and that things are ‘touch and go.’ He said a slight tip of the balance could cause the
