“Architect of Atomic Bomb Cleared of ‘Black Mark.’ ” That was the headline last December 18th, when the Times ran a long story on page 16 reporting that Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm had “nullified a 1954 decision to revoke the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a top government scientist who led the making of the atomic bomb in World War II but fell under suspicion of being a Soviet spy at the height of the McCarthy era.” Granholm had issued a press release explaining that her department had been “entrusted with the responsibility to correct the historical record and honor Dr. Oppenheimer’s ‘profound contributions to our national defense and scientific enterprise at large.’ ” She said that she was pleased to announce the nullification.
The Times’ veteran reporter on things nuclear, William J. Broad, went on to summarize Oppenheimer’s life story and his downfall at the height of the Cold War: “Until then a hero of American science, he lived out his life a broken man and died in 1967 at the age of 62.” But, even in 1954, it was clear to most readers of the trial transcripts, leaked to the Times that spring, that the security hearing was a kangaroo court and that Oppenheimer had been publicly humiliated for political reasons. The “father of the atomic bomb” had to be silenced because he was opposing the development of the hydrogen “super” bomb. Ever since, historians have regarded him as the chief celebrity victim of the national trauma known as McCarthyism.
So why now, sixty-eight years after the infamous security hearing, and fifty-five years after Oppenheimer’s death, did the Biden Administration find the courage to do the right thing? Governments rarely apologize for their errors. How did this decision happen? True, the director Christopher Nolan has a major motion picture coming out this summer called “Oppenheimer.” But, contrary to popular myth, Hollywood’s influence in Washington is limited, particularly when it comes to the nuclear-security establishment.
Here is the wholly improbable story.
In 2005, Martin J. Sherwin and I published “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” Marty had worked on the biography for twenty-five years. I was brought aboard the project only in 2000. In 2006, the book won the Pulitzer Prize, and Marty was inspired by the notion that perhaps we could sue the government to revoke the 1954 decision. We wrote a four-thousand-word memo delineating how the Atomic Energy Commission, or A.E.C., had violated its own regulations governing security reviews. Among a long list of transgressions, they had illegally wiretapped Oppenheimer’s home and the office of his lawyer during the course of the security trial. Nothing incriminating was discovered. They allowed the three-member security panel access to Oppenheimer’s F.B.I. files, which ran to several thousand pages—but denied his own lawyer a security clearance, so he was not allowed to read the material being used selectively against his client. They blackmailed otherwise friendly witnesses to turn against Oppenheimer.
Armed with this catalogue of abuses, we approached a senior partner at WilmerHale, an influential Washington law firm, and persuaded him to take on the case pro bono. A young associate was assigned to research whether there was any legal recourse in the courts. Three months later, we got a phone call from the firm, explaining that it had to drop the matter due to personal objections from one of its partners, the late C. Boyden Gray, who had formerly served as White House counsel during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush. Washington is still a small town, and, as it happens, Gray’s father was Gordon Gray, the man who had chaired the three-member security-hearing panel that ruled against Oppenheimer.
Some months later, Marty Sherwin and I were at a crowded book party in Georgetown, at the home of William Nitze, a son of the late career politician Paul Nitze. Across the room, I pointed out to Marty, stood Boyden Gray. Marty marched up to Gray, introduced himself as Oppenheimer’s biographer, and proceeded to explain why what Gray’s father had done in 1954 was a travesty. Boyden Gray took offense, and they argued vehemently for a few minutes. No blows were landed, but Marty walked away pleased that he had spoken truth to power.
By this time, we had been advised by other lawyers that, separate from Boyden Gray’s objections, they had come to the conclusion that the courts could not be used to reverse the 1954 decision. The lawyers advised that such a reversal could only be achieved by executive order, probably by the President himself. (WilmerHale did not respond to requests for comment).
Early in 2010, we therefore approached the Obama White House. Fortuitously, the newly appointed White House counsel was Robert Bauer, who happened to be one of my high-school friends from Cairo, Egypt, where both of our fathers were stationed as Foreign Service officers in the nineteen-sixties. Marty and I drafted yet another memo making the argument for nullification and sent it to Bauer—and he was sympathetic. Bauer encouraged us to get a few senators or historians to sign a letter urging nullification.
Without further prompting, we soon learned that Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, had sent a twenty-page memo on June 14, 2011, to Obama’s Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. Bingaman’s letter, which paralleled many of our own arguments, was drafted by a member of his staff, Sam Fowler, and marshalled a powerful legal case. But Secretary Chu declined to act. Bingaman retired from the Senate, in early 2013, and was replaced by Senator Martin Heinrich.
Marty and I later persuaded Heinrich to write a letter to Obama’s new Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, who was himself a trained physicist and someone whom we thought would be aware of, and sympathetic to, the Oppenheimer case. But in response to Heinrich’s pleading that he “issue a declaratory order vacating the decision,” Moniz offered bureaucratic pablum, saying merely that he was “keenly aware of Dr. Oppenheimer’s unquestionable scientific contribution to U.S. national security.” Moniz reported that, on the advice of his chief counsel, he could not reinstate Oppenheimer’s security clearance. (Moniz did not respond to a request for comment).
Not until the spring of 2016 did we get some momentum for our redemption campaign. On March 4, 2016, Marty and I drafted a two-page appeal to President Obama, asking him to overrule Moniz. Simultaneously, I reached out to an old friend, Tim Rieser, who was a longtime aide to Vermont’s Democratic senator, Patrick Leahy. I explained the issue, and Rieser replied, “As for getting this [letter] to Obama, can you think of any current senators who have been particularly outspoken about nuclear arms control? I am not sure myself, but can easily find out. If one exists, he/she could find a way to get it to Obama. Otherwise, I have ways of doing it.”
Rieser did indeed have ways of making things happen. After more than three decades of working for Senator Leahy, Rieser had a reputation for taking on the toughest, most politically risky issues and convincing powerful politicians to do the right thing. He was relentless. In 1992, over the objections of the Pentagon, he had played a key role, as Senator Leahy’s aide, in getting Congress to support legislation to ban the export of land mines. He also found a way to enable Leahy to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars to help Vietnam clear unexploded munitions left behind by American forces and to address the ongoing effects of Agent Orange, as well as to open the door for the U.S. to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba.