American Experience (1988) s21e01 Episode Script

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GORDON GRAY:
The hearing will come to order.
Dr. J.R. Oppenheimer,
the Institute
for Advanced Study,
Princeton, New Jersey.
There has developed
considerable question
whether your
continued employment
on Atomic Energy Commission work
is consistent
with the interests
of the national security.
In view of your access
to highly sensitive
classified information,
and in view of allegations
which, until disproved,
raise questions
as to your veracity, conduct,
and even your loyalty,
the Commission has
no other recourse
but to suspend your clearance
until the matter
has been resolved.
NARRATOR:
The hearings were held
in a makeshift courtroom
in a shabby government office
in Washington, D.C.
GRAY:
It was reported that your wife,
Katherine Puening Oppenheimer,
was a member
of the Communist Party.
It was reported
that your brother
Frank Friedman Oppenheimer was
a member of the Community Party.
NARRATOR:
J. Robert Oppenheimer,
the most eminent
atomic scientist in America,
stood accused,
a risk to national security.
It was 1954.
The cold war with Russia
was fueling fears
of Communist infiltration
at the highest levels
of government.
GRAY:
It was reported that you stated
that you were not a Communist,
but had probably belonged
to every Communist front
organization on the West Coast
and had signed many petitions
in which Communists
were interested.
NARRATOR:
The news shocked
Americans everywhere.
If Robert Oppenheimer
could not be trusted
with the nation's secrets,
who could be?
Brilliant, proud, charismatic,
a poet as well as a physicist,
Oppenheimer had seemed to enjoy
the full trust and confidence
of his country's leaders.
He was a national hero,
the man who had led
the scientific team
which devised the atomic bomb
the ultimate weapon
of mass destruction.
Oppenheimer came to prominence
through unspeakable violence
and suffered all the ambiguities
and contradictions
he had helped create.
OPPENHEIMER:
We knew the world
would not be the same.
A few people laughed.
A few people cried.
Most people were silent.
I remembered the line
from the Hindu scripture,
the Bhagavad Gita.
Vishnu
is trying to persuade the prince
that he should do his duty,
and to impress him,
takes on his multi-armed form
and says,
"Now I am become death,
the destroyer of worlds."
I suppose we all thought that
one way or another.
RICHARD RHODES:
What he was trying
to help the world understand
is that these are not weapons.
These are forces of destruction
so great
that we finally, as a species,
are in a position
where we can destroy
the entire human world,
without question.
NARRATOR:
As the nation's top
nuclear weapons advisor,
Oppenheimer tried
to warn his countrymen
of their dangers,
but powerful figures
within the government feared
he was a threat
to America's security.
They determined to destroy him.
MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER:
The country asked him
to do something,
and he did it brilliantly,
and they repaid him
for the tremendous job he did
by breaking him.
Doctor, do you think that
social contacts between a person
employed in secret war
work and Communists
or Communist adherents
is dangerous?
Are we talking about today?
Yes.
Certainly not necessarily so.
They could conceivably be.
Was that your view in 1943
and during the war years?
NARRATOR:
The hearings would go on
for nearly a month,
the story of Oppenheimer's life
laid bare;
his secrets exposed;
his brilliance and arrogance,
naiveté and insecurities
debated, dissected and judged.
A special three-man board,
appointed by the Atomic
Energy Commission,
would rule on the charges.
To defend himself,
the embattled scientist
felt compelled
to tell his own story
in his own way.
The items of so-called
derogatory information
cannot be fairly understood
except in the context
of my life and-and work.
I was born in New York in 1904.
My father came to this country
at the age of 17
from Germany.
NARRATOR:
Julius Oppenheimer
was a penniless Jewish immigrant
who arrived in America in 1888
unable to speak a word
of English,
and went to work in his uncle's
textile importing business.
By the time he was 30,
he was a partner in the company
and a wealthy man.
When he fell in love,
it was with a sensitive,
talented woman
of exquisite taste
and refinement.
My mother was born in Baltimore,
and before her marriage,
she was an artist
and teacher of art.
NARRATOR:
Ella Oppenheimer was
"very delicate,"
a friend remembered,
with an air of sadness
about her.
Robert was
precociously brilliant,
and both parents were protective
of his uncommon gifts.
Frail, frequently sick,
he was attended to by servants,
driven everywhere.
He rarely played
with other children.
PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN:
He wasn't mischievous.
He was too brilliant to be
just one of the children.
But his parents treasured him,
treated him like a little jewel,
and he just skipped being a boy.
NARRATOR:
"My childhood did not
prepare me for the fact
that the world is full
of cruel and bitter things,"
Oppenheimer said.
"It gave me no normal,
healthy way to be a bastard."
Sometime around the age of five,
Robert's grandfather gave him
a small collection of minerals.
"From then on," he said,
"I became, in a completely
childish way,
"an ardent mineral collector.
"But it began to be also a bit
of a scientist's interest,
a fascination with crystals."
MARTIN SHERWIN:
He wrote to the New York
Mineralogical Society
on a typewriter.
They were so impressed
with what he had to say that,
of course, thinking
he was an adult,
they invited him to give
a lecture,
and little Robert,
at age ten or 11,
shows up at the New York
Mineralogical Society,
and has to stand on a box
in order to see over the lectern
to give this lecture.
That is not a normal
average childhood.
NARRATOR:
Eight years separated Robert
from his brother Frank,
too many for companionship.
Robert was a loner.
And at New York's
Ethical Culture school,
he inhabited
his own rarefied world,
more comfortable
with his teachers
than with the other students,
who nicknamed him
"Booby" Oppenheimer.
To protect himself,
he relied
on his preternatural brilliance
and grew aloof and arrogant.
McMILLAN:
He didn't grow up.
He studied a great deal, which
shielded him from the world,
and the emotional side of him
didn't catch up
until much later.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer graduated
high school valedictorian
and then conquered Harvard.
He studied chemistry,
physics, calculus,
English and French literature,
Western, Chinese
and Hindu philosophy.
He even found time to write
stories and poems.
RHODES:
He described it as being
like the Huns invading Rome,
by which he meant he was going
to swallow up every bit
of culture and art and science
that he could possibly do.
SHERWIN:
Harvard is an environment
in which the intellectual life
is a rich feast,
but the social life is a desert.
NARRATOR:
In all his years at Harvard,
he never had a date.
He remained immature, uncertain,
easily bewildered
in social situations.
One friend remembered
"bouts of melancholy
and deep, deep depressions."
"In the days of my almost
infinitely prolonged
adolescence,"
he said later,
"I hardly took an action,
"hardly did anything
that did not arouse in me
"a very great sense
of revulsion and of wrong.
"My feeling about myself
was always one
of extreme discontent."
His doubts about himself
came clear in his poems:
OPPENHEIMER (dramatized):
The dawn invests our substance
with desire
And the slow light betrays us,
and our wistfulness
We find ourselves again
Each in his separate prison
Ready, hopeless for negotiation
With other men.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer graduated
in just three years,
and in 1925 headed
for Cambridge, England,
and an advanced degree at the
celebrated Cavendish laboratory.
Academic success had
always come easily.
Ambitious, determined
to succeed,
in England he would learn
what it was like
to struggle and fail.
RHODES:
Oppenheimer, like so many
theoretical physicists,
it turns out that
if he walks through a lab,
the instruments all break.
And he's trying to do a rather
delicate physical experiment
and he's not getting anywhere.
And he's sinking deeper
and deeper
into that special despair
that comes along
when prodigies grow up
and have and realize
they can't just do it
by being a prodigy anymore.
SHERWIN:
His eyes and his hands
and his mind
are not coordinated.
He's can't do what all
of the other young people
are able to do.
And he finds himself one day
standing at a blackboard,
staring into space, saying,
"The point is
"The point is
The point is
There is no point."
RHODES:
He fell into despair.
He fell into depression.
Here was a point where he was
suddenly doubting his intellect,
his ability to do science,
so it's not surprising
that at that point,
the whole thing
would go collapsing
down for him.
At the same time,
he had never really learned
how to approach women,
how to close the sale,
if I may call it that,
and he was dealing
with that as well.
Wrestling with inner demons
that threatened
to overwhelm him,
he was, he later said, "at the
point of bumping myself off."
In 1926, Oppenheimer
would save himself.
He cut free from the English
experimental laboratory
and headed for
Göttingen, Germany,
to study theoretical physics
with some of the greatest
scientific minds of the century.
"I had very great misgivings
about myself
on all fronts," he said.
"I hadn't been good;
I hadn't done anybody any good;
and here was something
I felt just driven to try."
In Göttingen, Oppenheimer
would make his mark
in a new science
which explored a world
that ran counter to everyday
experience: quantum physics.
HERBERT YORK:
Quantum physics
is the basic physics
behind electrons and atoms.
It turns out that classical
ideas about Newtonian mechanics
and particle motion and so on,
do not apply to things of
to things of atomic scale.
You needed
a new kind of physics.
So if you're going to change
on a different scale
the-the whole structure
of the physics,
everything has to be redone,
if you will,
and that means there are
enormous opportunities available
for a young graduate student
with talent to come in and make
various aspects of this his own.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer immersed himself
in the mysteries
of the subatomic universe,
where nothing was certain,
and probability the only rule.
He found the work exhilarating.
"There was terror," he wrote,
"as well as exaltation."
FREEMAN DYSON:
Oppenheimer really
flourished there.
He annoyed everybody, of course,
by talking too much and
pretending he knew everything.
He always considered
very carefully what he said
as though he was speaking
for the ages.
And he expected everybody
to be seduced
by his Renaissance man knowledge
of everything.
NARRATOR:
In Göttingen, Oppenheimer came
into his own
as a theoretical physicist,
publishing 16 papers
in three years.
By the time he was ready
to return to America,
he was focused and confident,
an ambitious young man with
an international reputation.
OPPENHEIMER (dramatized):
In the spring of 1929,
I returned to the United States.
I was homesick for this country.
I had learned in my student days
a great deal
about the new physics.
I wanted to pursue this myself,
to explain it,
and to foster its cultivation.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer was just 25
and already knew more
about the quantum universe
than nearly any other American.
He settled in California
and began teaching at Cal Tech
in Pasadena
and the University of California
in Berkeley.
But at first,
his lectures were
incomprehensible.
ROBERT CHRISTY:
It was customary
until I got there
for students to take his main
course in theoretical physics
twice in a row.
They would take a second year
to fully understand it.
Other students were taking it
in pairs.
One would listen,
the other one would write notes
and they'd work out the lecture
afterward.
SHERWIN:
He spoke at a very fast clip,
puffing on his cigarette,
which he always had;
he was writing with his chalk,
and he was moving back and forth
between his left hand and
his right hand so quickly
that people thought he was going
to smoke the chalk,
you know, and write
with the cigarette,
uh, and they couldn't
follow him.
But he was able
to transform himself
into an excellent lecturer
who was charismatic
and extremely effective.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer became a magnetic,
dazzling teacher,
but his arrogance could make
even his colleagues wince.
GOLDBERGER:
He was not likable because he
wouldn't let you look at him.
He was always on stage.
You never had a feeling
that he was speaking
from the heart somehow.
He never came across
as a real person.
There was always
a studied remark
intended to convey some sort of,
I don't know, superiority
or deeper knowledge
than you pos
you slobs could possibly
understand.
He could be devastating,
especially to young people.
He became very impatient
and was always all over them,
and sometimes reduced them
practically to tears.
RHODES:
His sharp remarks
were not inadvertent.
They had to do with a kind
of arrogance and contempt.
I take it to be a way
that he disguised his anxieties,
that he disguised
his social insecurities,
but it was immensely cruel.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer called his behavior
"beastliness."
"It is not easy," he wrote
in a letter to his brother,
"at least it is not easy for me,
to be quite free of the desire
to browbeat somebody."
Ever since Oppenheimer
had visited New Mexico
as a teenager, he had been
haunted by its wild beauty.
In 1927, his father took a lease
on a rustic cabin
high in the mountains 45 miles
northeast of Santa Fe
and gave it to both his sons.
The Oppenheimers called it
Perro Caliente
Spanish for "hot dog."
RHODES:
He found peace there.
He found a different self there,
one that he liked,
a cowboy self.
Friends who went to visit him
later would talk about the fact
that he would go out riding
for three days at a time
up the ridge
of the Rocky Mountains
with a bar of chocolate
and a pint of whiskey
in his hip pocket,
and they would be starving
and terrified
riding through mountain storms
and lightning,
and he would just be having
a wonderful time.
NARRATOR:
"My two great loves,"
he once told a friend,
"are physics and desert country.
It's a pity
they can't be combined."
(birds singing)
(loud shouting, whistle blowing)
(gunshots)
In 1934, San Francisco
longshoremen battled police,
shutting down the waterfront
just across the bay
from Oppenheimer's home
in Berkeley.
America itself seemed
on the verge of revolution,
with violence in the streets,
strikes, a failing economy,
a third of the nation
unemployed.
But Oppenheimer remained aloof.
OPPENHEIMER (dramatized):
I had no radio, no telephone.
I never read a newspaper
or a current magazine.
I learned
of the stock market crash
in the fall of 1929
only long after the event.
I voted for the first time
in a presidential election
in 1936.
I was deeply interested
in my science,
but I had no understanding
of the relations of man
to his society.
SHERWIN:
The Depression didn't affect him
personally.
He had an income
from his father,
who was wealthy.
And politics
seemed gross to him.
OPPENHEIMER:
Beginning late in 1936,
my interests began to change.
I saw what the Depression
was doing to my students.
Often, they could get no jobs.
But I had no framework
of political conviction
or experience
to give me perspective
in these matters.
In the spring of 1936,
I was introduced by friends
to Jean Tatlock.
In the autumn,
I began to court her.
We were at least twice
close enough to marriage
to think of ourselves
as engaged.
NARRATOR:
Jean Tatlock was Oppenheimer's
first real love.
She was 22,
studying to be a doctor,
and passionately involved
with the contentious issues
of her day:
the civil war in Spain,
organizing workers,
racial discrimination.
She was also a member
of the Communist Party
and introduced Oppenheimer
into her political circle.
I made left-wing friends,
and felt sympathy for causes
which hitherto would have seemed
so remote from me,
like the Loyalist cause in Spain
and the organization
of migratory workers.
I liked the new sense
of companionship
and, at the time, felt
that I was coming to be part
of the life of my time
and country.
I did not then regard Communists
as dangerous,
and some of their declared
objectives seemed
to me desirable.
RHODES:
In the 1930s,
in the bottom of the Depression,
there was a deep
and fundamental concern
about the future
of this country,
whether its economic
and, to some degree,
political system was adequate.
We came later in America
to demonize people
who belonged
to the Communist Party,
but it was a very common
business in the '30s.
NARRATOR:
Workers, teachers,
doctors, writers.
Americans of every stripe
and color were party members,
but although he shared many
of their political concerns,
there is nothing to prove
that Oppenheimer himself
was a Communist.
Oppenheimer never joined
the party.
The FBI spent 30 years
trying to prove
that Oppenheimer
had been a Communist
and was never able to do so.
That's probably good evidence
that he never joined the party.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer was deeply bound
to Tatlock,
but she was volatile, moody,
sometimes distraught.
After three years, she broke off
their relationship.
McMILLAN:
Their relationship appears
to have been quite a stormy one,
and Jean Tatlock,
although for many years people
who knew her didn't say this,
was uncertain whether she wanted
to be with men or women,
whether she was lesbian
or heterosexual,
and I believe that must
have been at the bottom
of her crises with Oppenheimer.
And how that fed
into his own sexual certainties
and uncertainties,
one can only imagine.
He was troubled.
That's why he was attracted
to troubled women.
He was troubled.
He didn't know who he was.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer would always feel
a tender attachment to Jean,
but they had gone
their separate ways
when Kitty Harrison set her cap
for him.
Kitty was 29
and also a former
Communist Party member.
She was married to a doctor,
but that didn't stop her
from going after
the well-known scientist.
RHODES:
When she saw Oppenheimer,
she grabbed him.
They were together, of course,
for the rest of their lives,
but it was, God knows,
a tumultuous relationship
with a lot of bickering
and a lot of fighting
and a lot of drinking.
You know, Kitty and Jean
were both dominant women.
They were passionate women,
and in some way,
he could comfort them.
He could save them, or try to.
Here were two women
who both presented themselves
as people who needed saving,
and Robert jumped in like the
like the white knight
that he, I think, wanted to be.
NARRATOR:
In 1940, Oppenheimer became
Kitty's fourth husband.
Less than seven months later,
their first child,
Peter, was born.
Although they continued
to see some
of their left-wing friends,
the Oppenheimers were, by now,
detaching themselves
from Communist Party politics.
OPPENHEIMER:
My views were evolving.
At that time,
I did not fully understand
As in time
I came to understand
How completely
the Communist Party
in this country was under
the control of Russia.
Many of its declared objectives
seemed desirable to me,
but I never accepted
Communist dogma or theory.
In fact,
it never made any sense to me.
NARRATOR:
What did make sense was science.
He would never
let politics interfere
with his teaching
or his physics.
ROY J. GLAUBER:
Of course, he paid attention
to experiment,
but he was a theorist.
He probed very deeply.
He was interested
in the deepest ideas,
and he did contribute
to some of them.
DYSON:
In 1939, he published
with his student
Hartland Snyder,
really a great piece of work,
explaining how stars collapse,
how they can actually
end up as black holes,
which had never been
understood before.
NARRATOR:
That same year,
a startling dispatch
from the abstruse world
of nuclear physics
changed the course of history
and Oppenheimer's life.
Two German chemists reported
that the uranium nucleus
could be split.
The discovery soon had a name:
nuclear fission.
"The U-business
is unbelievable,"
Oppenheimer wrote.
"Many points are still unclear.
"I think it really
not too improbable
"that a ten-centimeter cube
of uranium deuteride
might very well blow itself
to hell."
The discovery of nuclear fission
began a race
that would end
with the atomic bomb.
RHODES:
He saw already
at the beginning, as I think
any really good physicist did,
just by doing the numbers
about the amount of energy
released in this reaction,
that this was going
to change the world.
With that discovery
came a change
in the relationship
between science
and the nation state.
Every country in the world
in 1939 and 1940
that had the capability
of even beginning
to work on a bomb
began that work,
not only England and Germany
and the United States,
but also France, Japan
and the Soviet Union.
NARRATOR:
But the only threat came
from Germany.
OPPENHEIMER:
We had information in those days
of German activity in the field
of nuclear fission.
We were aware
of what it might mean
if they beat us to the draw
in the development
of atomic bombs.
I had relatives there,
and was later
to help in extricating them
and bringing them
to this country.
(weapons firing)
NARRATOR:
Nine months after the discovery
of nuclear fission,
Germany invaded Poland.
World War II had begun.
When the United States
entered the war two years later,
American scientists feared
that Germany was already
well ahead
in the race
to build an atomic bomb.
If America was going
to develop a bomb first,
they would have to work fast.
(train whistle blowing)
In October 1942,
the 20th Century Limited was
speeding toward New York City.
Sharing a private Pullman car
were Robert Oppenheimer
and a 46-year-old career
Army officer,
General Leslie Groves.
Groves had been placed
in command
of the Manhattan Project,
the staggering enterprise
to marshal the vast technical
and industrial resources
to develop an atomic bomb.
Now, he was looking over the man
he hoped might head up
the secret laboratory
where the bomb would be designed
and built.
RHODES:
Groves's way of operating
was to be blunt and brutal.
He knew, as they said
during the First World War,
how to get the spam
to the front lines.
He knew how to get the job done.
NARRATOR:
The two men talked for hours.
When they were done,
Groves had made up his mind.
Oppenheimer, he believed,
had the ambition, discipline
and brilliance
to lead the most complex
scientific effort
America had ever undertaken.
"He's a genius,"
Groves said later.
"A real genius.
"He can talk to you
about anything you bring up.
"Well, not exactly.
He doesn't know anything
about sports."
CHRISTY:
Groves went a way out on a limb
in choosing Oppenheimer.
No one would have supposed
that this esoteric person,
with an interest
in French poetry
and Hindu mysticism,
would be a practical person
to lead a laboratory.
He'd never directed anything
really, to speak of.
He hadn't even been
a department chairman.
Most of his friends think
that Oppenheimer could not run
a hamburger stand.
NARRATOR:
Groves wanted Oppenheimer
anyway,
but the United States Army
refused
to give the scientist
a security clearance.
The country was at war.
Even though Russia
was America's ally,
anyone
with Communist associations
was considered a possible spy.
It was the first time
Oppenheimer's loyalty to America
would be questioned.
SHERWIN:
The security people
are appalled.
Oppenheimer is the last person
they would want as director,
and he's the next
to the last person
they'd even want involved
in the project
at all, as a, uh
as a janitor.
Groves is very conservative.
He hates Communists.
But Groves does not allow
Oppenheimer's left-wing
activities during the 1930s
to trump his belief
that Oppenheimer will be
just the right person.
OPPENHEIMER:
In early 1943,
I received a letter,
appointing me director
of the laboratory.
Almost everyone knew
this was a great undertaking.
It might determine
the outcome of the war.
It was an unparalleled
opportunity to bring to bear
the knowledge and art of science
for the benefit of the country.
This job, if it were achieved,
would be part of history.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer had once fantasized
combining
his passion for physics
with his love of the desert
and mountains of New Mexico.
Now, he suggested
a remote wilderness
near the Los Alamos Canyon,
northeast of Santa Fe,
as the site
for the atomic bomb laboratory.
General Groves quickly agreed.
Oppenheimer's fantasy
had come true.
Before leaving for Los Alamos,
Oppenheimer entertained
an old friend for dinner,
Haakon Chevalier,
a French professor
teaching at Berkeley
and a dedicated Communist.
RHODES:
Oppenheimer had known
Chevalier for years.
Chevalier was
one of his closet friends.
He knew Chevalier
was a Communist.
It didn't really worry him.
He judged that Chevalier
wouldn't do anything
that would compromise
Robert Oppenheimer.
NARRATOR:
But Chevalier put Oppenheimer
at risk.
He told his friend
that a British engineer
named Eltenton wanted
information
about Oppenheimer's scientific
work to pass on to a diplomat
at the Soviet Embassy.
Oppenheimer dismissed the idea.
"That would be treason,"
he said.
RHODES:
Oppenheimer did not,
at the time,
take this approach
as something serious.
It was only later
that it came to be a problem
because it was useful to people
who wanted to destroy him
to make it a problem.
Doctor, do you think
that social contacts
between a person
employed in secret war work
and Communists or Communist
adherents is dangerous?
Certainly not necessarily so.
They could conceivably be.
My awareness of the danger
would be greater today.
Doctor, in your opinion,
is association
with the Communist movement
compatible with a job
on a secret war project?
I was associated
with the Communist movement,
and I did not regard it
as inappropriate
to take the job at Los Alamos.
Doctor, let me ask you
a blunt question.
Don't you know, and didn't
you know certainly by 1943,
that the Communist Party
was an instrument
or a vehicle of espionage
in this country?
I was not clear about it.
I am asking you now
if fear of espionage
wasn't one
of the reasons
why you felt
that association
with the Communist Party
was inconsistent with work
on a secret war project?
Yes.
Your answer is that it was?
Yes.
You would have felt then,
I assume,
that a rather continued
or constant association
between a person employed
on the atomic bomb project
and Communists or Communist
adherents was dangerous?
Potentially dangerous,
conceivably dangerous.
Look, I have had a lot of
secrets in my head a long time.
It does not matter
who I associate with.
I don't talk
about those secrets.
NARRATOR:
In times of spiritual trial,
Oppenheimer would search
the Bhagavad Gita,
a sacred Hindu text,
for meaning and comfort.
He often turned to the story
of the warrior Prince Arjuna,
who, to fulfill his destiny,
must fight and kill.
OPPENHEIMER:
"In battle, in forest,
"at the precipice
in the mountains,
"on the dark great sea,
"in the midst of javelins
and arrows,
"in sleep, in confusion,
in the depths of shame,
the good deeds a man
has done before defend him."
NARRATOR:
In April 1943,
Oppenheimer was 38 years old,
about to take on a task
for which few people thought him
capable:
harnessing the forces
of the atom
to build a bomb
of awesome destructive power.
There was little doubt
that a potentially
world-shattering undertaking
lay ahead.
We began to see
the great explosion.
We also began to see how rough,
difficult, challenging
and unpredictable this job
might turn out to be.
CHRISTY:
A whole town was being
constructed,
and Oppenheimer was trying
to organize the science.
But in addition,
they were constructing roads,
laboratory buildings and homes.
We had no sidewalks anywhere,
and in one season of the year,
walked around
in mud up to our ankles.
RHODES:
They were trying to build
a first-class physics laboratory
out in the middle
of a howling wilderness.
It was a hell of a place to try
to move a linear accelerator
up the narrow switchback
mountain roads
to install it at the top.
NARRATOR:
The laboratory at Los Alamos
was a closely guarded secret.
From its beginnings, security
had the highest priority.
Army intelligence watched over
everything and everybody,
especially
the laboratory director
with the left-wing past.
Oppenheimer's phones
were tapped,
his mail opened,
his office wired,
his comings and goings
closely monitored.
His driver and bodyguard
was an undercover agent.
Oppenheimer, who knew everything
that was going on at Los Alamos,
was still waiting
for his security clearance.
SHERWIN:
Oppenheimer goes about doing
the job as best he can do it,
but the security people are
like flies on a hot summer day.
They're constantly buzzing
around him.
They're constantly annoying him.
He does his best to shoo them,
you know, away,
but there's one instance
where he makes a terrible,
terrible mistake.
OPPENHEIMER:
I had visited Jean Tatlock
in the spring of 1943.
I almost had to.
She was not much of a Communist,
but she was certainly
a member of the party.
There was nothing dangerous
about that.
There was nothing potentially
dangerous about that.
NARRATOR:
The government knew
all about Oppenheimer's visit.
Agents from Army intelligence
waited outside
Tatlock's apartment,
while Oppenheimer spent
the night,
and reported the details
to the FBI.
Why did you have to see her?
She had indicated
a great desire to see me
before we left for Los Alamos.
At that time, I couldn't go.
For one thing,
I wasn't supposed to say
where we were going or anything.
I felt that she had to see me.
She was undergoing
psychiatric treatment.
She was extremely unhappy.
Did you find out
why she had to see you?
Because she was
still in love with me.
When did you see her after that?
She took me to the airport,
and I never saw her again.
RHODES:
Jean Tatlock was a wounded,
lonely woman,
who was at wit's end,
and she wanted this man
whom she loved
to come to her and he did.
From the point of view
of the gumshoes who sat outside
Jean Tatlock's apartment
all night in their car,
writing down who came
and who went and at what hour,
and when the lights were on
and when the lights were off,
there may have been
a security problem.
But for him, human need,
human compassion,
caring for someone you love
trumped the security system.
NARRATOR:
The FBI feared that Tatlock
might be passing atomic secrets
to the Russians.
They tapped her phone,
but persistent eavesdropping
revealed nothing.
Six months
after Oppenheimer's visit,
Jean Tatlock killed herself.
"I am disgusted
with everything,"
she wrote in an unsigned note.
"To those who loved me and
helped me, all love and courage.
"I wanted to live and to give,
and I got paralyzed.
"I tried like hell to understand
and couldn't.
"I think I would have been
a liability all my life.
"At least I could take away
the burden of a paralyzed soul
from a fighting world."
You have said that you knew
she had been a Communist?
Yes. I knew that
in the fall of 1937.
Was there any reason
for you to believe
that she wasn't still
a Communist in 1943?
No.
Pardon?
There wasn't. I do not know
what she was doing in 1943.
You have no reason to believe
she wasn't a Communist, do you?
No.
You spent the night with her,
didn't you?
Yes.
That is when you were working
on a secret war project?
Yes.
You have told us, this morning,
that you thought that at times
social contacts with Communists
on the part of one working
on a secret war project
was dangerous.
Could conceivably be.
You didn't think
spending a night
with a dedicated Communist
I don't believe she was
a dedicated Communist.
You don't?
No.
NARRATOR:
Five weeks after Oppenheimer's
visit to Tatlock,
General Groves rammed through
his security clearance.
But Oppenheimer continued
to operate
under a shadow of suspicion,
and by the summer of 1943,
the pressure began to tell.
That August, Oppenheimer
volunteered to talk
with Colonel Boris Pash,
chief of Army
counterintelligence
for the West Coast.
He had begun to worry
about his conversation
with his friend
Haakon Chevalier.
He realized that he should have
reported it at once,
but he still didn't want to get
his old friend in trouble.
General Groves has,
more or less, I feel,
placed a certain
responsibility in me.
I don't mean to take up
too much of your time.
That's perfectly all right.
Whatever time you choose.
I have no firsthand knowledge,
but a man attached
to the Soviet Consul
has indicated indirectly
through an intermediary
that he was in a position
to transmit information.
I think it might not hurt
to be on the lookout for it.
If you wanted to watch him,
I think it would be the
appropriate thing to do.
His name is Eltenton.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer had simply wanted
to alert Army intelligence
that Eltenton might be a threat,
but Pash did not trust
Oppenheimer
and his left-wing past.
He hid a microphone
in the telephone receiver
and recorded their entire
conversation.
Oppenheimer had no idea that
everything he said was set down,
transcribed and added
to his security file,
where it would be unearthed
years later
with disastrous consequences.
OPPENHEIMER:
There were approaches
to other people
who were troubled by them
and sometimes they came
and discussed them with me.
And that's as far
as I can go on that.
PASH:
These people, were they
contacted directly by Eltenton?
OPPENHEIMER:
No.
PASH:
Oh, through another party?
Yes.
Well, now, could we know
through whom
that contact was made?
I think it would be a mistake.
Oppenheimer makes up
this complicated story
so that the security people
are looking all over the place,
and they won't finger Robert
and they won't finger Chevalier.
He evidently hadn't learned
to think
the way security people think.
RHODES:
Every time he said something
else, he just made it worse.
Pash ended up, of course,
believing Oppenheimer
was a Communist spy.
OPPENHEIMER:
But I think in mentioning
Eltenton's name,
I essentially said that
he may be acting in a way
which is dangerous
to the country
and which should be watched.
I'm not going to mention anyone
else's name in the same breath.
I just can't do that.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer quickly put
the whole incident behind him.
There was too much work to do.
Los Alamos was growing
into a bustling town
with thousands of people.
He had wildly underestimated
the magnitude of the job.
But he was thriving.
In spite of the initial doubts
of his scientific colleagues,
he was proving that he was more
than up to the enormous task.
GOLDBERGER:
He showed an ability
to motivate and inspire
that I think surprised everyone.
GLAUBER:
Everyone loved him
because he was everywhere.
He understood all of these
absurdly difficult
and intractable problems,
and he often had witty things
to say about them.
HAROLD AGNEW:
He had a certain charisma,
a certain charm,
a certain flair.
He had a robin's egg blue
convertible Cadillac, you know.
And if you're a young kid,
and here's the boss,
and he's driving around
with his porkpie hat
and his tweed jacket
and cigarette always,
you know, like in the movies.
You know, you're impressed.
GLAUBER:
Oppenheimer inspired everyone.
He expressed
the intellectual essence
of what we were doing,
the deepest sense
of what it was.
GOLDBERGER:
I don't know in retrospect
who could have done it better;
who could have pulled
that gang
80% of which were prima donnas
of their own.
Could have pulled
that gang together
and-and made them work
as a as a unit.
RHODES:
In being the director
of this historic laboratory,
Oppenheimer found his greatest
and most natural role.
He was cruel to people
before the war.
He was cruel to people
after the war,
but he wasn't cruel to people
during the war.
The period at Los Alamos
was the only time in his life
when he wasn't plagued
by existential doubt,
when all the parts came together
and worked together.
It was the first chance
he'd ever had
to serve the country
and forget himself.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer shaped an array
of brilliant,
eccentric scientists
into a team.
The Hungarian refugee Edward
Teller was his biggest problem.
GLAUBER:
Teller was always
an ebullient scientist.
Very bright, quite impatient.
When I showed up at Los Alamos,
uh, I saw this name chalked
next to the door:
E. Teller,
but there was no one
in the office.
I learned that
he was rather unhappy
that he had not been chosen as
leader of the theory division
and had gone off in a huff.
His passion from the very first
was to create
what he called "the Zupa,"
the superbomb.
NARRATOR:
The "super" was a hydrogen bomb,
a weapon with nearly unlimited
destructive power.
But since a hydrogen bomb
would need an atomic bomb
to set it off, Oppenheimer gave
Teller's super a low priority.
Oppenheimer, said, "No, no,
we got enough on our hands.
"We're not going to,
we're not going to
"we got to make the hy
we got to make the atomic bomb.
"That's what we're going to do.
"That's our job
and that's what
we're going to focus on."
NARRATOR:
Teller threatened to quit
until Oppenheimer relented
and let him work independently
to try and design his superbomb,
but there would always be
bad blood between them.
GOLDBERGER:
Teller was obsessive.
He would not accept
Oppenheimer's judgment
about the feasibility
of this project.
He was not a crackpot
or anything like that.
He was an excellent physicist,
but he got off on something
that was simply wrong,
and he couldn't let it go.
Teller never forgave
Oppenheimer, and, uh
he paid him back
unfortunately.
NARRATOR:
By summer of 1944,
the enormous burden
of responsibility
had begun to take its toll.
Losing weight, afflicted
with a rasping cough,
Oppenheimer chain-smoked his way
through increasingly
demanding months.
Kitty was an additional burden.
She refused to take on the role
of the director's wife
and found herself at loose ends.
After their second child
was born
in the Los Alamos Hospital,
a girl they named Toni,
she became even more distracted.
She was drinking hard,
on the verge
of emotional collapse
while Oppenheimer
was preoccupied,
desperately pushing
the project forward.
For me it was a time
so filled with work,
with the need for decision
and action and consultation,
there was room for little else.
They had to invent
all these new technologies
in these very short months
from the summer of '44
to the summer of '45.
Oppenheimer nearly broke down.
He was really depressed.
He thought he'd blown it.
He thought they had found
themselves at a dead end.
GLAUBER:
It was devilishly difficult
grappling with problems
which were on the edge
of absurdity.
Just imagine trying to find out
what's going on
within an explosion
all of which is over in less
than a thousandth of a second.
He seriously considered
leaving the project,
and one of his friends
finally took him aside
and said, "Robert,
you can't leave.
"You're the only person
who can make this happen.
You have to stay.
I don't care what you think."
And he did stay.
The consensus
of all our opinions
and every directive I had
stressed the extreme urgency
of the work.
Time and time again
we had in the technical work
almost paralyzing crises.
Time and again the laboratory
drew itself together
and we faced the new problems
and got on with the work.
We worked by night and by day.
NARRATOR:
While Oppenheimer
and his team raced on,
the war against Japan
and Germany
was reaching a bloody climax.
On May 7, 1945,
the Nazis surrendered.
The race with Germany
to build the bomb was over.
GLAUBER:
We had joined this project
fearing that the Germans
were working on trying
to produce a bomb
and if they succeeded
in reaching it before we did,
they wouldn't be very
sentimental about using it.
SHERWIN:
When Germany surrenders,
the bomb is several months away
from being built.
And the question is,
should we continue?
Is it the right thing to do?
Is it ethical?
We never heard any suggestion
from Oppenheimer
that there was any course
other than continuing.
There was a kind
of momentum involved
in our efforts
in this direction.
It was an enormous project.
We were all deeply involved
in finding out whether
the darn thing would work.
When you see something
that is technically sweet,
you go ahead and do it
and you argue about
what to do about it
only after you have had
your technical success.
NARRATOR:
Caught up in the momentum
of the project,
driven by the desire to finish
the job he had begun,
Oppenheimer was determined
to see it through.
"This might help to convince
everybody," he argued,
"that the next war
would be fatal.
"For this purpose,
actual combat use
might even be the best thing."
He rejected the idea of
demonstrating the bomb first.
YORK:
If you have a demonstration,
what it is
is a fantastic firework
with nobody getting hurt.
What's important
about nuclear weapons
is not that
it's fantastic fireworks.
What's important
about nuclear weapons
is the fact they kill people.
NARRATOR:
On May 31, 1945,
Oppenheimer joined a meeting
of high-ranking
government officials,
scientists and military men.
It was agreed that
"the most desirable target
"was a vital war plant
"employing a large number
of workers
and closely surrounded
by workers' houses."
Oppenheimer made no objection.
What worried him was
whether the bomb would work.
The answer would come in
New Mexico's Alamogordo desert,
the place the Spanish had called
the Jornada del Muerto,
"The Journey of Death."
On July 15,
Oppenheimer climbed
a 110-foot tower
for one last look at the bomb.
It would be tested the next day.
He was down to 115 pounds,
tense, on edge.
GLAUBER:
There was great tension
about the test,
great uncertainty
whether it would work
or produce a pathetic fizzle.
This had never been done before,
and it was a
no one had a clear picture
at all of what to expect.
NARRATOR:
The evening before the test,
someone recalled,
"The frogs had gathered
in a little pond by the camp
and copulated and squawked
all night long."
Oppenheimer chain-smoked
nervously
and sat quietly reading
the French poet Baudelaire.
OPPENHEIMER:
Seductive twilight,
the criminal's friend.
Silent like a wolf.
The sky is closing down.
A dark cloth drawn
across an alcove.
Where the impatient man changes
into a beast of prey.
NARRATOR:
At 5:10, the countdown began
at zero minus 20 minutes.
As loudspeakers ticked off the
time at five-minute intervals,
Oppenheimer wandered in and out
of the control bunker,
glancing up at the sky.
At the two-minute mark,
he was heard to say to himself,
"Lord, these affairs are hard
on the heart."
Minus one minute.
Minus 55 seconds.
CHRISTY:
We were given a piece
of welder's glass
to hold in front of our eyes,
so that we could look at it
without being blinded.
It was pitch-dark outside,
just before dawn.
A lot of tension.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer lay on his stomach,
his face dreamy, withdrawn.
"He grew tenser as the last
seconds ticked off,"
an Army general remembered.
"He scarcely breathed.
"For the last few seconds,
he stared directly ahead."
(explosion)
CHRISTY:
There was a brilliant flash
like daylight outside.
Suddenly, from pitch-dark
to daylight over a huge area.
There was this rapidly expanding
glowing sphere
with swirling,
dark clouds in it.
And finally as it dimmed,
you could see on the outside
a faint blue glow.
It was simply fantastic.
NARRATOR:
"It worked," was all
that Oppenheimer said.
"It worked."
GLAUBER:
We were just awestruck.
There it was.
It had happened.
The test was
evidently a success.
But we had no idea when
the next thing would happen.
Nobody had said to us
that a bomb had
already been shipped out.
There was total silence,
fear and tension.
Now we're into something.
Now who knows
what's going to ensue?
We heard not a single word
until the sixth of August.
(explosion)
NARRATOR:
On August 6, 1945,
the United States exploded
an atomic bomb over Hiroshima,
a city with a population
of 350,000.
Even before the blast,
Oppenheimer had been
darkly mourning.
"Those poor little people,"
he said.
"Those poor little people."
Yet, he had given the military
precise instructions
to ensure that the weapon
would be delivered on target.
"No radar bombing," he wrote.
"It must be dropped visually.
"Don't let them
detonate it too high
or the target
won't get as much damage."
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer was of two minds.
His success
had been exhilarating,
but he was in anguish
over the human costs.
RHODES:
There's no doubt that
there was ambivalence about it.
I think Oppenheimer
saw the question
in all its complexity.
It wasn't so simple as,
"Was he guilty about building
such a weapon?"
He understood that the bomb
was going to change history.
He might have hoped
that there was some other way
to demonstrate
its effectiveness.
They knew what they were making.
They knew it was going
to kill a lot of people.
They didn't like
that aspect of it,
but there you were.
(explosion)
NARRATOR:
The second atomic bomb,
exploded over Nagasaki
on August 9,
left him morose,
consumed by doubts,
fast sinking into depression.
"This undertaking,"
he wrote a friend,
"has not been
without its misgivings.
"They are heavy on us today,
"when the future,
"which has so many elements
of high promise,
is yet only a stone's throw
from despair."
"Some of you will have seen
photographs
of the Nagasaki strike,"
he told the American
Philosophical Society
three months after the blast.
"Seen the great steel girders
of factories
twisted and wrecked."
"Atomic weapons are weapons
of aggression,
"of surprise, and of terror.
"If they are ever used again,
"it may well be
by the thousands,
or perhaps by the tens
of thousands."
SHERWIN:
He was a great supporter
of using the bomb,
but he understood all along
that he was on the cusp
of a new terror
even at the moment
when the scientists believed
that there was no other choice.
They knew that most of the
people killed were civilians.
They knew that the targets
for these bombs
were the centers of cities.
It's a very heavy burden
that he carries
into the postwar period,
after Hiroshima and Nagasaki
are destroyed.
I have been asked
whether in the years to come,
it will be possible to kill
40 million American people
in the 20 largest American towns
by the use of atomic bombs
in a single night.
I am afraid that the answer
to that question is yes.
NARRATOR:
In 1945,
America was the only country
in the world
with the atomic bomb.
President Harry Truman believed
that national security
depended on keeping
nuclear technology secret.
Oppenheimer, along with nearly
every other nuclear scientist,
disagreed.
OPPENHEIMER:
I have been asked
whether there is hope
for the nation's security
in keeping secret
some of the knowledge
which has gone
into the making of the bombs.
I am afraid
there is no such hope.
RHODES:
President Truman
really did seem to feel
that if you just
kept the lid on enough,
we'd always have the secret
and no on else
would ever get it.
There wasn't any secret.
The secret was it worked.
NARRATOR:
On October 25, 1945,
Oppenheimer met
with President Truman
to share his concerns.
When the president assured
his visitor
that the Soviets
would never get the bomb,
Oppenheimer became frustrated.
"Mr. President," he said,
"I feel I have blood
on my hands."
"Blood on his hands,"
Truman complained later.
"Damn it, he hasn't half as much
blood on his hands as I have.
You just don't go around
bellyaching about it."
RHODES:
It's not surprising
Truman just about threw him
out of his office.
It was the president's decision.
It wasn't Oppenheimer's
decision.
NARRATOR:
Later, Truman told
his secretary of state,
"I don't want to see
that son of a bitch
in this office again."
In the years after the war,
Robert Oppenheimer's fame grew.
His name became
a household word.
He was "the father
of the A-bomb,"
the government's top advisor
on atomic weapons,
privy to all the nation's
atomic secrets.
YORK:
He was instantly famous.
Nuclear weapons, nuclear energy
was such a big and new thing
and such a surprise
to nearly everyone,
that it was very widespread
to ask your local physicists,
"What does this all mean
and what should we do?"
You know the Rotary clubs
did it,
the Kiwanis did it,
the PTAs, I mean, everybody.
And not only that,
whenever there was a
anything in the papers about it,
it was always a "brilliant
nuclear physicist."
There was no other kind.
Now Oppenheimer
was right at the top of it,
so it was the president
or the Congress
or the senators or the UN,
you know, who asked him,
and for whom he gave his advice.
McMILLAN:
He was interested in power.
He was drawn to it.
He wanted to have a say
in what became of those weapons.
He wasn't going to go
back down on the farm
after he'd seen Paris.
RHODES:
He realized that he might turn
this fame and power
into statesmanship.
That he might become the sort
of philosopher/scientist,
philosopher/statesman,
who could bring the rest
of the message to government
about how you
go about eliminating
nuclear weapons in the world.
Oppenheimer was naive
in that he really thought
that if he got inside,
he could change things.
Immediately after the war,
I was deeply involved
in the effort
to devise effective means
for the international control
of atomic weapons.
NARRATOR:
In 1946, Oppenheimer
hammered out the details
of a visionary proposal
with some of America's
most distinguished statesmen.
The plan was designed
to put atomic energy
into the hands
of an international agency,
controlling uranium mines,
atomic power plants
and atomic laboratories.
YORK:
It involved giving up
nuclear weapons
and internationalizing
the entire nuclear enterprise.
And Oppenheimer writes,
"We know that people will say,
"'This is impossible.
You can't do this.'
Our answer is, 'We must.'"
NARRATOR:
But Oppenheimer's hope
for an international accord
that would lead
to the elimination
of nuclear weapons
was facing fierce resistance,
foundering
on the deepening antagonisms
between two former allies:
the Soviet Union
and the United States.
SHERWIN:
Oppenheimer believed that
if we could figure out
how to create
a postwar period in which
the foundation
of international affairs
was U.S.-Soviet cooperation,
the world would be
a very different place.
NARRATOR:
But the Soviet Army already
occupied much of Eastern Europe.
Americans feared that
Western Europe might be overrun.
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin
had fears of his own.
RHODES:
The Soviet Union was not about
to let the United States
have a monopoly
on these weapons.
They didn't trust us,
with reason.
We had, after all,
built a weapon in secret,
telling our allies Great Britain
but not telling our allies
the Soviet Union
and actually used the thing
on an enemy population.
Stalin had every reason
to believe
that we would use it on him.
NARRATOR:
In the face of opposition
from both the Soviets
and the Americans,
Oppenheimer's plan
to internationalize
nuclear energy went nowhere.
RHODES:
So, it was a brilliant
and radical
and evidently premature idea.
Because national sovereignty
trumped everything.
NARRATOR:
On July 1, 1946,
the United States tested
a 21,000-ton atomic bomb,
exploding it in Bikini Atoll
in the Pacific Ocean.
Two months before, Oppenheimer
had written President Truman
a letter opposing the tests.
Truman paid no attention,
calling Oppenheimer
"that crybaby scientist."
By now, Oppenheimer
was disillusioned
with America's efforts
to eliminate the threat
of nuclear weapons,
but he was even more
disillusioned with the Russians.
McMILLAN:
He saw how intransigent
the Russians were going to be,
and he went into another mode
in his thinking
about what should be done
about the bomb.
He felt that what you
had to do
instead of you had
to accomplish the impossible,
what you had to do
was accomplish
another impossibility,
and that is live successfully
and peacefully
with nuclear weapons.
NARRATOR:
That fall, Oppenheimer
was made a key advisor
to the newly created
Atomic Energy Commission.
As chairman of its
General Advisory Committee,
he reached what he described
as a "melancholy" conclusion.
OPPENHEIMER:
As the prospects of success
receded and as the evidence
of Soviet hostility and growing
military power accumulated,
we were more and more to devote
ourselves to finding ways
of adapting our atomic potential
to offset the Soviet threat.
We concluded that the principal
job of the Commission
was to provide atomic weapons
and good atomic weapons
and many atomic weapons.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer was now
a scientific statesman.
He had little time
to be a scientist.
After the war, he had given up
teaching to become the director
of the Institute
for Advanced Study at Princeton,
a center for theoretical
research, renowned as the home
of the most famous scientist
in the world, Albert Einstein.
But Oppenheimer rarely did
any research himself anymore.
He published only a few
scientific papers,
and after 1950,
never published one again.
DYSON:
And that was a great grief
to him.
He had had dreams
of getting back into science
and doing something great
while he was here.
His wife, Kitty, begged me
if I couldn't actually work
with Robert and actually
do some science with him,
and I never could.
Some you know, it was
he never got down
to the nitty-gritty.
He was older.
What, he was 40?
He was past the age when people
do their best scientific work.
NARRATOR:
The popular press continued
to depict him
as a scientist
on the cutting edge
and a model American,
a happily married man
with two small children
and a German shepherd
called Buddy.
No one knew that he was under
close surveillance by the FBI
because of his past ties
to the Communist Party.
J. EDGAR HOOVER:
Communists have been,
still are, and always will be
a menace
to freedom,
to democratic ideals,
to the worship of God,
and to America's way of life.
NARRATOR:
With America's relationship
with Russia deteriorating,
the fear of Communism seemed
to be spreading everywhere,
and FBI director
J. Edgar Hoover
continued to find
Oppenheimer suspicious,
in spite of Oppenheimer's
leadership at Los Alamos
and his immense reputation.
SHERWIN:
There were periods
in which there was a letup,
but the FBI started to follow
and surveil Oppenheimer
in about 1940, 1941,
and never stopped.
Never stopped.
NARRATOR:
As the Soviets tightened
their grip on Eastern Europe,
the hunt for Communist spies
was becoming
a national obsession.
McMILLAN:
Looked at from outside,
the United States
was the most powerful country
in the world,
but in the U.S.,
there was this awareness
that the Russians had walked
all over Eastern Europe
and that Communism
was being foisted
on the peoples
of those countries,
and that was terrifying
to the American public.
And it wasn't long
before there were politicians
who learned
to exploit that fear.
NARRATOR:
The House Un-American
Activities Committee
had begun investigating
what they called
the Communist threat
to the American way of life.
In June 1949,
it subpoenaed Oppenheimer.
The famous scientist tried
to charm the congressmen.
When they asked,
he confirmed the names
of Communist Party members.
Some had been his students.
Later, he said
that his nerve just gave way.
DYSON:
It looked as though
he was just trying
to save his own skin
by incriminating the students.
To me, it was horrible.
McMILLAN:
He must have sensed
that the flames
could get to him sometime.
And it wasn't clear to him
what he should do.
NARRATOR:
That same June, Oppenheimer
appeared before Congress again,
but this time,
made a formidable enemy.
Lewis Strauss was the president
of the Institute
for Advanced Study.
He had hired Oppenheimer
as its director.
Strauss was also a member
of the Atomic Energy Commission.
A self-made millionaire,
ambitious, proud,
fiercely anti-Communist,
he did not like to be crossed.
"If you disagree with Lewis
about anything,"
a fellow atomic energy
commissioner said,
"he assumes you're
just a fool at first,
"but if you go on
disagreeing with him,
he concludes
you must be a traitor."
Oppenheimer and Strauss
clashed over a minor issue
at a congressional hearing,
and Strauss never forgave him.
OPPENHEIMER:
My opinion
is that if the determination
were made
that isotopes should
not be shipped abroad,
the Congress will be making
a profound mistake.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer was testifying
in support
of exporting radioisotopes
to Europe
while Strauss looked on,
seething.
Strauss violently disagreed,
fearing that the isotopes
might fall into the hands
of Russia.
In a reckless display
of arrogance,
Oppenheimer aimed a jibe
directly at Strauss,
telling the congressmen
that radioisotopes
were no more dangerous than
a shovel or a bottle of beer.
SHERWIN:
And everybody laughed,
and a journalist said he looked
over at Lewis Strauss,
who had turned beet red.
He had never seen so much hate
and anger on anyone's face
as he saw on Strauss's face
at that moment.
McMILLAN:
Strauss was very sensitive
to criticism.
If he didn't like people,
he dealt with them.
And he had a long memory.
He could deal with them
a long time afterward,
um, if he wanted to.
NARRATOR:
On August 29, 1949,
the Soviet Union tested
its first atomic bomb.
America was still the
most powerful nation on earth,
but the confidence of many
of its citizens was shattered.
RHODES:
There was near-hysteria
in Washington.
People were running around
screaming, "The sky is falling."
Now, why would they do that?
If you've got all of your eggs
in the basket
that it's a secret,
and then the secret is lost,
then of course you think
you've lost everything.
NARRATOR:
The day the test made headlines,
Oppenheimer received a call
from an agitated Edward Teller.
"What should I do now?"
Teller wanted to know.
"Keep your shirt on,"
Oppenheimer told him.
RHODES:
From Teller's point of view,
there was a balance of forces
between us and the Soviet Union
in Europe.
They had four million men
on the ground in Eastern Europe,
and we had the bomb.
Now, suddenly,
they had four million men
on the ground in Europe,
we had the bomb,
and they had the bomb,
so the balance of forces
was upset.
GOLDBERGER:
He hated the Soviet Union.
He grew up in Hungary,
and Communism
was a four-letter word,
so he thought the only way you
could deal with the Soviet Union
was to have more bombs
than they did,
that they would be influenced
by force and by nothing else.
NARRATOR:
Teller believed he had
the answer to the Soviet threat:
the Super, the hydrogen bomb,
which had remained his pet
project ever since Los Alamos.
It was up to Oppenheimer and
his General Advisory Committee
to recommend to the
Atomic Energy Commission
whether or not to try and create
the most awesome weapon of
mass destruction ever devised.
OPPENHEIMER (dramatized):
A good many people came to me
or called me or wrote me letters
about the Super program.
It was not clear to me
what the right thing to do was.
Was it crash development,
the most rapid possible
development and construction
of the Super?
NARRATOR:
The debate over the H-bomb
sparked a controversy
fraught with danger
for the unsuspecting scientist.
Ever since the war had ended,
Teller had been trying
to convince
any high official
who would listen
that the Super
would keep Americans safe.
GOLDBERGER:
He thought that
if we didn't develop it,
the Russians surely would,
and we would be at their mercy.
McMILLAN:
He thought that it would be
crazy not to develop it
and that those who opposed it
might possibly be unpatriotic.
NARRATOR:
But Oppenheimer and the General
Advisory Committee worried more
about the destructive power
of the H-bomb
than they did
about the Russians.
They voted eight to zero
against it.
There was
a surprising unanimity,
to me, very surprising,
that the United States ought not
to take the initiative
in an all-out program
for the development
of thermonuclear weapons.
SHERWIN:
The committee concluded
that it shouldn't be built,
because this was a weapon
of genocide
that had absolutely
no military necessity,
and that our stockpile
of atomic bombs
was a sufficient deterrent.
NARRATOR:
The debate seemed to be over.
Oppenheimer, along
with some of the country's
most experienced
nuclear scientists,
had rendered their opinion,
but President Truman,
fearing the Russians
would develop an H-bomb first,
dismissed it.
(explosion)
On November 1, 1952,
the world's first hydrogen bomb
explosion vaporized
the tiny island
of Elugelab in the Pacific.
AGNEW:
It became a great big lagoon.
It just went away.
And the whole water around it
was milky white.
It was scary.
The heat from this thing
was really very frightening.
It started getting hotter
and hotter
and hotter and hotter.
This is almost 30 miles away.
RHODES:
These were no longer weapons
that were military devices.
They were simply weapons
of mass destruction
on the most terrible scale.
Well, let's take New York.
The blast would destroy the
entire greater New York area.
The fallout would take out
the rest of the East Coast.
One bomb.
McMILLAN:
It meant that a new era
of warfare was upon us.
We now had in our possession
a weapon of genocide,
not just warfare.
The modern arms race started
with the invention
of the hydrogen bomb,
and after which,
it was escalation all the way.
OPPENHEIMER (dramatized):
If the development by the enemy,
as well as by us,
of thermonuclear weapons
could have been averted,
I think we would be
in a somewhat safer world today
than we are.
God knows, not entirely safe,
because atomic bombs
are not jolly, either.
NARRATOR:
Once the decision was made,
Oppenheimer did nothing
to oppose it.
Frustrated,
he considered leaving
the government altogether,
but instead,
played the loyal soldier.
Later, Oppenheimer's lack
of enthusiasm
would be interpreted
as outright opposition.
Did you, subsequent to
the president's decision
of January 1950,
ever express any opposition
to the production
of the hydrogen bomb
on moral grounds?
I would think
I could very well have said,
"This is a dreadful weapon,"
or something like that.
Why do you think that you could
very well have said that?
Because I have always thought
it was a dreadful weapon.
Even if from a technical point
of view,
it was a sweet and lovely
and beautiful job,
I have still thought
it was a dreadful weapon.
And have said so?
I would assume
I have said so, yes.
You mean, you had
a moral revulsion
against the production
of such a dreadful weapon?
This is too strong.
Beg pardon?
That is too strong.
Which is too strong,
the weapon or my expression?
Your expression.
I had grave concern and anxiety.
You had moral qualms about it.
Is that accurate?
Let us leave the word "moral"
out of it.
You had qualms about it.
How could one not have qualms
about it?
I know no one who doesn't
have qualms about it.
RHODES:
Oppenheimer wasn't opposed
to building nuclear weapons.
He was just opposed
to building huge nuclear weapons
that wouldn't that were
bigger than the targets.
(rapid gunfire)
NARRATOR:
In 1950,
the United States went
to war in Korea.
Soon, Americans were fighting
both Korean
and Chinese communists,
while the Russians seemed
to be growing
increasingly belligerent.
Oppenheimer knew
that America's military planned
a devastating response
to any Soviet attack.
In 1951,
he was shown the Air Force's
top-secret strategic war plan.
RHODES:
The plan was
that we would bomb our way
across Eastern Europe
with nuclear weapons.
We would then destroy
the Soviet Union,
and then as a kind of an extra,
we'd go on and destroy China,
because, after all,
it was a Communist country.
SHERWIN:
The American government
was planning,
in its nuclear weapons response
to any Soviet attack,
to kill 200 and something
million people
within a week or two.
I mean, Oppenheimer just felt
that this was madness,
sheer madness.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer spoke out
for moderation.
He took a stand against building
nuclear-powered aircraft
and submarines
and advocated open discussion
of the growing arms race.
It is a grave danger for us
that these decisions are taken
on the basis of facts
held secret.
If we are guided by fear alone,
we'll fail in this
time of crisis.
NARRATOR:
But powerful
Washington insiders believed
he was standing in the way
of America's ability
to defend itself.
They were led by Lewis Strauss.
With the election
of Dwight Eisenhower
to the presidency,
Strauss became the chairman
of the Atomic Energy Commission.
He now had the power
to build a case
to rid the government
of the influential scientist.
RHODES:
Strauss would deliberately
destroy the name and reputation
and government position
of Robert Oppenheimer.
And when he destroyed something,
he destroyed it thoroughly.
NARRATOR:
Strauss began
by orchestrating a campaign
in America's most popular
news magazines,
alleging that Oppenheimer
was undermining the nation's
atomic weapons program.
The stories depicted
Edward Teller
as a scientific patriot.
Teller readily
joined the crusade
against his old boss.
He had long wanted
to remove Oppenheimer
from public life.
In 1951, he told the FBI
that "a lot of people believe
"Oppenheimer opposed
the development
of the hydrogen bomb,"
on "direct orders from Moscow."
GOLDBERGER:
Teller sincerely believed
that we were in a dangerous
arms race with the Russians
and that Oppenheimer
was standing in the way
of protecting the country
against this dreaded foe.
I think he may well have
sincerely believed that.
And I'm sure for Teller,
it was also
a very personal jealousy.
Oppenheimer likes his bomb,
but he doesn't like my bomb.
I know that sounds absurd,
and yet,
I have no doubt that it was part
of the equation.
So, get rid of him,
and then Teller,
like cream, would rise
to the top of the bottle.
They needed to get Oppenheimer
out of the way
so that Strauss and Teller could
realign the physics community
around the dream of building
new and better bombs.
(explosion)
NARRATOR:
Late in August 1953,
the Russians exploded
what the press called
a hydrogen bomb.
The news seemed to confirm
what Americans feared.
Their nuclear secrets
were being stolen.
Two years before,
reports that Soviet agents
had penetrated Los Alamos
and passed atomic secrets
to the Russians
under Oppenheimer's watch
had stunned them.
Convinced that America
was vulnerable,
many began searching
for someone to blame.
One Communist on the faculty
of one university
is one Communist too many.
NARRATOR:
The reputations and careers
of loyal citizens
in universities, businesses
and government
were already being ruined.
Are you a member
of the Communist conspiracy
as of this moment?
RHODES:
People were really convinced
that tomorrow,
Soviets were going
to take over America,
and they were convinced
that it would be because
of internal subversion
Not because
of external activity,
but because we had spies,
and they were destroying
the American way.
NARRATOR:
The former executive director
of the congressional
Joint Committee on Atomic Energy
was convinced that Oppenheimer
was one of them.
William Borden
had harbored doubts
about Oppenheimer for years
and shared his suspicions
with Strauss.
SHERWIN:
Borden is a natural ally
of Lewis Strauss.
And Strauss allows Borden
to take Oppenheimer's
security file home,
and Borden studies it
for months,
and writes this letter
to J. Edgar Hoover.
NARRATOR:
Borden outlined a series
of charges
against Oppenheimer.
He concluded with an accusation
that went off like a bombshell.
"More probably than not,"
Borden wrote,
"J. Robert Oppenheimer is
an agent of the Soviet Union."
Hoover forwarded the letter
to the White House.
The President called in
Lewis Strauss
to help him decide what to do.
SHERWIN:
Strauss convinces Eisenhower
that if this letter was sat on
by the administration,
it would cost Eisenhower
politically,
and Eisenhower declares
that a wall should be put
between Oppenheimer and secrecy.
NARRATOR:
On December 21, 1953,
Strauss told Oppenheimer
that his security clearance
had been suspended.
The country's most famous
authority on atomic weapons,
"the father of the A-bomb,"
was stunned.
He fell into
a "despairing state of mind,"
a friend remembered.
The following evening,
after meeting with his lawyers
and more than one drink,
he fainted
on the bathroom floor.
SHERWIN:
When he began to think
about the consequences
of what he was facing,
I think he realized that he was
in deep, deep trouble
for the first time in his life.
McMILLAN:
Oppenheimer realized
that he was going to pay.
I think he had the tragic sense.
He understood the drama
that he had to play out,
even though he later called it
a farce.
NARRATOR:
The hearings were enveloped
in an atmosphere of fierce
anti-Communism.
GRAY:
It was reported that in 1940,
you were listed
as a sponsor of the Friends
of the Chinese People,
an organization characterized
by the House Committee
on Un-American Activities as
a Communist-front organization.
NARRATOR:
At stake was a man's dignity
and the role
that nuclear weapons would play
in America's military strategy.
GRAY:
It was reported
that you strongly opposed
the hydrogen bomb
on moral grounds,
and by claiming
that it was not feasible
and not politically desirable.
And even after it was determined
to proceed,
you continued to oppose
the project.
NARRATOR:
Confronted with charges
that could ruin his reputation,
Oppenheimer himself insisted
on the hearing
despite the warnings
of some of his friends.
RHODES:
Oppenheimer couldn't see
tucking tail and walking away.
What would that say
about the charges against him?
On the other hand, it's too bad
he didn't understand
what sort of forces
he was up against.
NARRATOR:
With no credible evidence
to prove
that Oppenheimer had put
America's security at risk,
Prosecutor Roger Robb would have
to wear the scientist down,
force him into contradictions,
confuse and embarrass him.
Your brother Frank told you
in 1936, probably in 1937,
that he and his wife Jackie
had joined the Communist Party.
Did he ask your advice about it?
Oh, Lord, no.
He had taken the step.
I had confidence in his decency
and straightforwardness
and in his loyalty to me.
Tell us the test
that you applied to acquire
the confidence
that you have spoken of.
In the case of a brother,
one doesn't make tests;
at least I didn't.
Well
I knew my brother.
When did you decide
that your brother was no longer
a member of the party
and no longer dangerous?
I never regarded my brother
as dangerous.
NARRATOR:
Robb was an experienced
trial lawyer,
but Lewis Strauss wasn't taking
any chances.
The hearings turned into a trial
in which Strauss made the rules.
Strauss selected the judges,
kept the defense from seeing
all the relevant documents
and from knowing in advance
which witnesses would be called.
SHERWIN:
They are in a war
against Communism
and, therefore,
the normal rules of justice
have to be set aside in order
to protect the body politic.
NARRATOR:
Strauss even broke the law
to get his man.
The FBI bugged Oppenheimer's
lawyer's offices, his home,
nearly everywhere he went,
then passed the information
along to the prosecutor.
The defense strategy was known
to the prosecution in advance.
RHODES:
It was the worst kind
of kangaroo court.
They had them
ten ways to Sunday.
OPPENHEIMER (on record):
There were approaches to other
people who were troubled by them
and sometimes they came
and discussed them with me.
That's as far as I can go
on that.
NARRATOR:
Unknown to Oppenheimer
or his lawyer,
Robb had discovered
the secret recording
of Oppenheimer's conversation
with Army Intelligence Officer
Colonel Pash.
He carefully studied
the transcript
and prepared a trap to catch
Oppenheimer in a lie.
Did Chevalier tell you
or indicate to you in any way
that he had talked to anyone
but you about this matter?
No.
You are sure about that?
Yes.
Did you learn
from anybody else or hear
that Chevalier had approached
anyone but you
about this matter?
No.
You are sure about that?
That is right.
Doctor, I would like to read
from the transcript
of your interview
with Colonel Pash.
"There were approaches
to other people
"who were troubled by them,
"and sometimes came and
discussed them with me.
That's as far
as I can go on that."
Do you recall saying
something like that?
I don't recall that conversation
very well.
I can only rely
on the transcript.
Doctor, for your information,
I might say that we have
a record of your voice.
Sure.
Do you have any doubt
that you said that?
No.
So as to be clear,
did you discuss with
or disclose to Pash
the identity of Chevalier?
No.
Let us refer to him then,
for the time being, as "X."
All right.
Didn't you say that X had
approached three people?
Probably.
Why did you do that, Doctor?
Because I was an idiot.
Is that your only explanation,
Doctor?
I was reluctant
to mention Chevalier.
Yes?
No doubt somewhat reluctant
to mention myself.
So you told Pash
that there were several people
that were contacted.
Right.
And your testimony now
is that was a lie?
Right.
That wasn't true?
That is right.
You did, you are sure,
tell Colonel Pash
there was more than
one person involved.
This whole thing is
a pure fabrication
except for the one name
Eltenton.
Why did you go to such great
circumstantial detail
about this thing if you knew
it was a cock-and-bull story?
I fear this whole thing
is a piece of idiocy.
RHODES:
Oppenheimer was up against
a kind of psychological torture.
He was broken down by a very,
very skillful prosecutor,
made to look stupid
made to look like a fool.
McMILLAN:
The purpose in proving him
a liar was to impress
the hearing board
that he couldn't be trusted
and that they should declare him
a security risk.
It had to be totally humiliating
and destroy his confidence
in himself.
He's being told
that he's a liar,
untrustworthy, unworthy,
and he folded.
The story I told Pash
is not a true story.
There were not three
or more people involved.
I believe I can do
no more than say
that the story I told
is a false story.
It is not easy to say that.
Now, when you ask
as to why I did this,
other than that I was an idiot,
I am going to have more trouble
being understandable.
I found myself, I believe,
trying to give a tip
to the intelligence people
without realizing
that when you give a tip,
you must tell the whole story.
But I am, in any case,
solemnly testifying
that there was no conspiracy
in what I knew
and what I know of this matter.
I wish I could explain
to you better
why I falsified and fabricated.
McMILLAN:
The trial proved to him
his worst fears.
Oppenheimer had been troubled
all his life about who he was.
He later said that he was
repulsive to himself.
The trial said that he had
defects of character,
that he was not
a good human being,
and unfortunately he agreed.
NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer testified
for 27 hours.
A parade of witnesses
was called on both sides.
He looked wan, demoralized
by the time Edward Teller
took the stand.
Teller drove the final nail
into Oppenheimer's coffin.
TELLER (dramatized):
I thoroughly disagreed
with Dr. Oppenheimer
in numerous issues,
and his actions, frankly,
appeared to me confused
and complicated.
I feel that I would like
to see the vital interests
of this country in hands
which I understand better
and therefore trust more.
I would feel
personally more secure
if public matters would
rest in other hands.
I'm sorry.
After what you've just said
I don't know what you mean.
NARRATOR:
The hearing lasted
nearly four weeks.
In his closing remarks,
Oppenheimer's lawyer warned,
"America must not devour
her own children."
GRAY:
We find that Dr. Oppenheimer's
continuing conduct
and associations have
reflected a serious disregard
for the requirements
of the security system.
We have found a susceptibility
to influence,
which could have
serious implications
for the security interests
of the country.
We find his conduct
in the hydrogen bomb program
sufficiently disturbing.
We have regretfully concluded
that Dr. Oppenheimer
has been less than candid
in several instances
in his testimony.
NARRATOR:
By a vote of two to one,
the board concluded
that, although Oppenheimer
was a loyal citizen,
his security clearance
should be revoked.
Numb and bewildered,
Oppenheimer told a friend,
"I have so little sense
of self remaining."
In a futile gesture, he appealed
to the Atomic Energy Commission,
chaired by Lewis Strauss.
The Commission
upheld the verdict, four to one.
JEREMY BERNSTEIN:
I took a train ride
with him to New York,
and for some reason,
he started talking
about "my case, my case."
And he said to me
that at the time,
he thought it was happening
to somebody else.
McMILLAN:
He wasn't accused
in the course of the hearing
of having ever betrayed
a secret.
It was about
getting Oppenheimer out
of the security councils
of the U.S. government.
NARRATOR:
America's most influential voice
for nuclear moderation
had been stilled.
SHERWIN:
The Oppenheimer hearing
was a political battle
between the Strauss view
"We need more and more
and more nuclear weapons"
And the Oppenheimer view
that nuclear weapons are a part
of our defense, but we have to,
you know, use them sensibly
and we can't rely
on them totally.
That hearing had a profound
effect on the nuclear arms race.
It essentially opened
the floodgates.
It removed the legitimacy
of criticism
against more and more
nuclear weapons.
NARRATOR:
In 1954, the year
of the Oppenheimer hearings,
America had some 300
nuclear weapons.
By the end of the 20th century,
the United States
would have at the ready
more than 70,000.
We built so many more
than we ever needed,
and the Soviets followed suit.
NARRATOR:
In 1954, Robert Oppenheimer
turned 50.
His security clearance
had been revoked.
His connection to the government
had been severed.
He would live for 13 more years,
but he was never the same man.
CHRISTY:
He had been a strong,
forceful leader before that,
and he was a beaten man
afterwards.
RHODES:
He gave lectures on science and
its interaction with humanity.
He continued to direct the
Institute for Advanced Study.
He became what Yeats calls
a smiling public man.
GOLDBERGER:
I saw a lot of him at that time,
and I saw the impact
that this tragedy had on him.
I can't recall ever
seeing him happy, you know,
just relaxed and having fun.
I don't have the feeling that he
ever felt good about himself
and if he was ever in any sense
at peace with himself.
NARRATOR:
In 1963, Oppenheimer received
what many saw
as an official apology.
President Lyndon Johnson
presented him
with one of the nation's highest
scientific honors:
the Fermi Award from
the Atomic Energy Commission.
With countless other men
and women, we are engaged
in this great enterprise
of our time,
testing whether men
can live without war
as the great arbiter of history.
I think it's just possible,
Mr. President,
that it has taken some
character and some courage
for you to make
this award today.
NARRATOR:
Edward Teller was there
that day,
come to offer
his congratulations.
When he extended his hand,
once again,
Oppenheimer shook it.
After the ceremony, Lewis
Strauss wrote an angry letter
to Life magazine, complaining
that honoring Oppenheimer
"dealt a severe blow
to the security system
which protects our country."
Robert Oppenheimer died
four years later.
He was 62.
In those twilight years,
he seldom returned
to the New Mexico where he
had come to feel at peace.
When he was 24,
he had written a poem
inspired by the wilderness
he loved so well
and the allure of death.
OPPENHEIMER:
It was evening when we came
to the river
With a low moon over the desert
That we had lost in the
mountains, forgotten,
What with the cold
and the sweating
And the ranges barring the sky.
We waited a long time
in silence.
Then, we heard the oars
creaking, and afterwards,
I remember the boatman
called to us.
We did not look back
at the mountains.
Captioned by
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