In late April 1952, the juggernaut that Teller’s briefings had set in motion collided with a familiar obstacle: Oppenheimer’s GAC. Protesting that “a fairly technical decision was being forced by high pressure methods,” Oppie acknowledged that the AEC would probably have to yield to the pressure for a second lab. Privately, however, Oppenheimer told his colleagues that it was still “not clear” whether a second laboratory was inevitable.77
Dean, too, was suddenly “backtracking” on the second lab, Murray complained to his fellow commissioners.78 Yet it was not the AEC chairman whom Murray blamed for “roadblocks,” but Oppenheimer.79 During a dinner at the Brookings Institution on May 19, Strauss confided to Murray that he “had very good information to the effect that the 2nd laboratory was being sabotaged. He thought that if some aggressive action was not taken the 2nd laboratory would never be built.”80
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In one of his clandestine meetings with the Joint Committee, Griggs had bluntly asked “what [they] were doing to get Oppenheimer off the GAC.”81 The terms of the GAC’s three charter members—Oppenheimer, Conant, and DuBridge—would expire that summer, unless the men were reappointed by Truman. (“Three men—one soul” was how Teller described the trio.) Griggs had told the Joint Committee that the air force considered Oppenheimer’s removal from the GAC “an urgent and immediate necessity.”82
For allies in their campaign to oust Oppenheimer from the GAC, Murray, Griggs, and the Joint Committee turned to Berkeley. During Murray’s visit to the Rad Lab that spring, Lawrence had recounted the story of how he had gradually become disillusioned with Oppie, Frank, and mutual associates like Serber. He opposed Oppie’s continuing on the GAC, Ernest told Murray.83
In March, just weeks after giving up his post at the AEC, Pitzer had made a speech to the American Chemical Society that blamed delays in the H-bomb project on the GAC. Following the speech, Pitzer had lunch with Borden, who urged the chemist to share his views with the FBI. Pitzer told bureau agents the following week that, contrary to his earlier opinion, he was “now doubtful as to the loyalty of Dr. Oppenheimer.” Pitzer suggested that Edward Teller could provide the names of those whom Oppie had dissuaded to work on the Super, “if Teller decides to talk.”84
Teller, too, subsequently unburdened himself to bureau agents, at their request. Claiming that Oppenheimer had always swayed opinions against the Super, he said he was satisfied with Oppie’s loyalty but was reluctant to be quoted—lest he be subjected “to considerable cross-examination on this point.” Should his views become public, Teller cautioned, his position in the H-bomb project might well become untenable.85
Alvarez had already been to the FBI about Oppenheimer—on the same day, in fact, that the GAC had recommended against proceeding with the Mark II. Prior to his interview with bureau agents, Luie had met in the Pentagon with Finletter, Griggs, and LeBaron, for whom Alvarez described how he had originally been lured to wartime Los Alamos by Oppenheimer with a promise to work on the Super. “Although Dr. Alvarez was agitated, he apparently added nothing to the FBI file,” a disappointed aide informed Borden.86
At the annual meeting of the American Physical Society that spring, Oppenheimer’s friends were perplexed and upset by the “vitriolic talk” directed against the physicist—“notably from some of the University of California contingent.”87 Until then, Oppenheimer, like Dean, had tended to dismiss such ad hominem attacks as simply part of “the rather tense atmosphere that still prevail[ed] at Berkeley.”
In late May, Hoover couriered the bureau’s recent interviews with Pitzer, Libby, and Teller to the White House, the Justice Department, and the AEC’s Division of Security.88 Included in the thick dossier was Teller’s admission to the FBI that “he would do most anything to see [Oppenheimer] separated from General Advisory Committee because of his poor advice and policies regarding national preparedness and because of his delaying of the development of H-bomb.”89 Strauss had already talked privately with Truman, asking that the president not reappoint Oppenheimer.90
McMahon decided against sending Truman an “eyes only” letter, which Borden had drafted, pleading that Oppenheimer not be reappointed.91 The senator also canceled a long-planned personal meeting with the president. Neither McMahon nor Strauss wanted Oppenheimer’s departure from the GAC to seem forced, lest it become a cause célèbre in the nation’s scientific community.92
Thus far, among those who knew Oppenheimer, only Pitzer had gone so far as to actually question the physicist’s loyalty.93 While Griggs ominously ascribed delays in the H-bomb program to “almost literally criminal negligence,” he had refrained from identifying Oppie as the suspect. Strauss and Borden, too, had been cautious in their efforts to end Oppenheimer’s influence in Washington. While both men thought the Crouches’ story of a secret Communist meeting at Oppie’s house “inherently believable,” they confessed to a mutual “feeling of utter frustration about the possibility of any definite conclusion.” Strauss told Borden that he thought it impossible “to confirm or deny these fears through the use of any intelligence methods,” since “the ‘barber’”—Oppenheimer’s friend, AEC attorney Joseph Volpe—was in a position to warn Oppie about possible telephone taps.*94
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But those who had become the target of this attack could no longer be heedless of the danger. “Some of the ‘boys’ have their axe out for three of us on the GAC of AEC,” wrote Conant in his diary on May 9, 1952, following a dispirited lunch at the Cosmos Club with Oppenheimer and DuBridge.95 “Claim we have ‘dragged our heels’ on H bomb. Dark words about Oppie!”96
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