- The FBI spent years investigating J. Robert Oppenheimer, who helped make the WWII-ending atomic bomb.
- He was then tried by the Atomic Vitality Fee, and his top-level safety clearance was revoked.
- Stories from the FBI present Oppenheimer was accused of spreading info to the Soviets.
Throughout an inquest into the actions of J. Robert Oppenheimer by the FBI, the company investigated the “father of the atomic bomb” on suspicion of crimes together with espionage and the dissemination of nuclear info to the Soviet Union.
As depicted in Christopher Nolan’s summer time blockbuster biopic “Oppenheimer,” Oppenheimer’s habits got here underneath renewed scrutiny in 1953 after William Borden, a workers director of the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Vitality, despatched a letter to the FBI accusing Oppenheimer of being sympathetic to the Communist Occasion and probably knowingly using spies from the Soviet Union on his undertaking creating the atomic bomb.
Borden’s letter was more than likely despatched on the suggestion of Oppenheimer’s political nemesis Lewis Strauss, a businessman turned member of the US Atomic Vitality Fee.
Whereas Oppenheimer’s relationships and loyalties had been investigated previous to receiving his safety clearance, efforts to discredit the physicist had been redoubled by his rivals after he efficiently led his group to create the atomic bomb, and the letter from Borden accelerated a series of occasions that led to Oppenheimer shedding his safety clearance.
The renewed investigation into Oppenheimer’s loyalties as his safety clearance got here up for renewal cited the letter’s accusations, Oppenheimer’s associations that the US authorities discovered suspicious, in addition to a wiretap the FBI ordered on his telephone — now extensively described as unlawful — as proof of his questionable loyalty to america.
Paperwork from the investigation embrace a whole lot of pages of telephone information, together with interviews along with his colleagues.
Kenneth Pitzer, the dean of UC Berkeley’s faculty of chemistry on the time, informed brokers in 1952 in an interview relating to the renewal of Oppenheimer’s safety clearance that his opinion of Oppenheimer had modified through the years — earlier, in 1947, he mentioned he had “the utmost confidence in each the loyalty and the scientific skill” of Oppenheimer, in response to FBI information.
In the course of the investigation, although, Pitzer mentioned he had new doubts about Oppenheimer’s loyalty to the nation due to Oppenheimer’s preliminary reservations concerning the improvement of the hydrogen bomb, which some believed had been a sign that he wished the Soviet Union to develop the weapon first. Pitzer mentioned Oppenheimer had “impeded” different scientists’ progress on the bomb after his considerations had been overruled.
One other professor, Ward Evans of Loyola College Chicago, mentioned he felt Oppenheimer didn’t hinder the manufacturing of the H-bomb and mentioned he was “much less of a safety danger than he was in 1947” when he was cleared by the Atomic Vitality Fee over a separate matter, in response to the investigation.
The opposite most important accusation in opposition to Oppenheimer was that he could be a safety danger over ties to communism. The scrutiny was fueled partially by his relationships with identified communists just like the psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, with whom Oppenheimer had a romantic relationship.
In FBI reporting, Oppenheimer was additionally linked to Bernard Peters, a graduate scholar of his who was at one time a member of the German Communist Occasion — these ties added to suspicions about Oppenheimer’s objections to the H-bomb; critics attributed these objections to a loyalty to the Soviet Union reasonably than any conscientious objection over the event of the weapon.
The Atomic Heritage Basis does contemplate Oppenheimer prone to have held communist sympathies, but it surely maintains that info within the FBI’s report of its investigation was exaggerated. The AHF says it was “unclear” whether or not Oppenheimer ever formally joined the US Communist Occasion.
On the finish of the inquest, regardless of no definitive proof that Oppenheimer was a Soviet spy or that he had employed spies in his work, Oppenheimer’s top-level safety clearances had been revoked — a devastating blow to the scientist.
In 2022, US Vitality Secretary Jennifer Granholm nullified the choice to revoke Oppenheimer’s safety clearance, saying in an announcement that Oppenheimer had a “central function” in World Warfare II and the Division of Vitality had a “accountability to appropriate the historic file and honor Dr. Oppenheimer’s profound contributions to our nationwide protection and the scientific enterprise at giant.”
“As time has handed, extra proof has come to mild of the bias and unfairness of the method that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to,” Granholm mentioned within the assertion. “Whereas the proof of his loyalty and love of nation have solely been additional affirmed.”
The FBI, the Division of Vitality, and the Atomic Heritage Basis did not instantly reply to requests for remark.
Correction: July 31, 2023 — An earlier model of this story misstated the place J. Robert Oppenheimer was tried earlier than his top-level safety clearance was revoked. He appeared earlier than the Atomic Vitality Fee, not Congress. It additionally misstated who contacted the FBI about Oppenheimer. It was William Borden, not Lewis Strauss. Further context concerning the investigation and its origins was added.
