A Word In Edgewise: One Thread in a Gordian Knot

I’ve not seen Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, but I read Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird’s compelling biography, American Prometheus, from which the film was sourced. Its subtitle, The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, gives but an inkling of the breadth and depth of that chasm.

It required a quarter century’s research to write the book, some 40 percent of Oppenheimer’s 62-year lifespan. His legacy as “Father of the Atom Bomb” was freighted; Director of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer was among the witnesses at 5:30 A.M, Monday, July 16, 1945 when Trinity’s ignition vaporized its tower and turned the base to green sand as nuclear dawn mushroomed above the New Mexico desert.

Like others born with extremes of one talent or another, Oppie was not “well-rounded,” though magnetic and compelling. His biographers describe his speech as soft, measured, emerging in sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, complete as though reading from an internal prompter. (Hear him on YouTube.)

Oppenheimer irritated those who noted–accurately–that he rarely “finished” things, angered that one glance at a complex issue often sufficed to comprehend, then he was flitting away, a bee seeking the next fragrant blossom. On the other hand, many interviewees praised Oppenheimer’s ability to discuss a problem in such a way that the listener­–or group, if addressing an audience–would be led to discover the solution themselves.

One who never could abide Oppenheimer and who spent years dreaming of his ruin, was Lewis Strauss. They’d met before and there were major issues at hand–Oppenheimer, after witnessing Trinity then learning the fates of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was loath to endorse the even more lethal Super (i.e., Hydrogen) bomb, favored by Strauss specifically and the military machine in general.

A verbal strike to an ego’s flint lit the fuse. In June, 1949, Oppenheimer testified before an open session of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. The AEC had approved (4-1) the export of radioisotopes to foreign labs for research purposes. Strauss was the sole dissenter.

Oppenheimer disagreed; “No one can force me to say that you cannot use these isotopes for atomic energy. You can use a shovel for atomic energy; in fact, you do. You can use a bottle of beer for atomic energy. In fact, you do,” adding, “My own rating of the importance of isotopes in this broad sense is that they are far less important than electronic devices, but far more important than, let us say, vitamins, somewhere in between.”

Ego-stricken and enraged, this was the hill upon which Strauss chose to die. The time was ripe; J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy were abroad in the land, seeing communists behind every arras. Strauss joined forces and–look it up­–orchestrated a kangaroo court that stripped Oppenheimer of his security clearance.

American Prometheus reads like Greek tragedy, working the theme of hate; its weight and freight; its squandering of human energy–of life–in its service. And, always, there’s hubris.

Strauss’s squirrel-like gathering of (often false) evidence, the records of use of illegal FBI wire-taps, false allegations; his meticulous retention of the lot, left a formidable case against him. He had “defrocked” Oppenheimer, but in 1959, the Senate rejected his nomination for Secretary of Commerce.

In 1963, President Johnson awarded Oppie the $50,000 Fermi Prize, but did not reinstate his security clearance.