[The inventor of the atomic bomb, the subject of Christopher
Nolan’s new film, was the chief celebrity victim of the national
trauma known as McCarthyism. ]
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OPPENHEIMER, NULLIFIED AND VINDICATED  
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Kai Bird
July 7, 2023
The New Yorker
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_ The inventor of the atomic bomb, the subject of Christopher
Nolan’s new film, was the chief celebrity victim of the national
trauma known as McCarthyism. _

1947... Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, by x-ray delta one (CC
BY-NC-SA 2.0)

 

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
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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
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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
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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).

VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER
Supernova: A Stock-Car Succession Story
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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
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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.

At the time, I was unaware of the true scope of Rieser’s influence
as a key aide on the Senate Appropriations Committee. And neither was
I aware that he had a personal interest in the Oppenheimer case. But I
learned that his father, Dr. Leonard Rieser, had worked at Los Alamos
as a young physicist, in 1945, and, like other scientists, had revered
Oppenheimer. As a child, Tim Rieser grew up hearing his parents talk
about the Manhattan Project
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where his mother ran the nursery school. For him, the injustice that
had been inflicted on Oppenheimer was also personal.

Later in the summer of 2016, Rieser persuaded Senator Leahy and three
other Democratic senators—Martin Heinrich; Edward J. Markey, of
Massachusetts; and Jeff Merkley, of Oregon—to sign a letter to
President Obama urging nullification. The letter was sent on September
23, 2016. We knew the clock was running out on the Obama
Administration. But we still hoped that the appeal of four senators
could persuade the President to issue an executive order. Heinrich and
another senator, Tom Udall, of New Mexico, had a meeting with
Secretary Moniz in early July, 2016—but it went badly. Instead,
Moniz said that the Department of Energy would create a student
fellowship in Oppenheimer’s name. He thought that this was a
concession. We thought that it was nothing.

Things were not looking good. Senator Heinrich said that he had
repeatedly talked to Moniz but the Energy Secretary was not moving
from his position. Marty and I still hoped that Obama could be
persuaded to issue an executive order as he left the White House, in
early 2017. But nothing happened. And then Donald Trump
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election. With Trump in the White House, Marty and I gave up.

Nothing happened on the Oppenheimer case for the next four years.
Marty and I thought that it was hopeless. In June, 2017, I happened to
run into Ernest Moniz at the memorial service for the former
national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. I asked him why he had
refused to nullify the ’54 decision—and he unapologetically
insisted, “My legal counsel said it was not possible.” We argued
briefly, and I walked away feeling dejected.

But when Biden won back the White House, in 2020, Rieser revived the
project. On June 16, 2021, the same four senators who had sent the
2016 letter signed a similar one to President Biden. A couple of
months later, after hearing nothing in response, Rieser called a
friend who had recently been appointed Assistant Secretary for
Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of
Energy. They knew each other only because, some years earlier, Rieser
had bought a Ping-Pong table from him that had been advertised on
Craigslist. Rieser asked his friend about the status of the letter to
President Biden. The Assistant Secretary looked into the matter and
told Rieser that the answer was likely going to be negative. That
would close the door firmly shut. Rieser responded, “Then don’t
answer it. I’m going to draft a different letter.”

Rieser decided that it was time to back off the White House and to
instead appeal to the newly installed Energy Secretary, Jennifer
Granholm. So he went back to his office and substantially revised the
original letter signed by the four senators in 2016. The new version,
though it called on the Secretary to vacate the 1954 A.E.C. decision,
also made clear that, by doing so, she would not be reinstating
Oppenheimer’s security clearance. That would require a whole new
security review, which was obviously not possible, since Oppenheimer
had died long ago. Rieser then began reaching out to Senate staff, and
Senator Leahy spoke directly to his Senate colleagues, recruiting new
signatories for the letter addressed to Granholm. This process took
more than a year, but by the spring of 2022 they had forty-three
Senate signatures, including four Republicans.

That was a formidable achievement. But Rieser was still worried that
this would not be enough political capital. He expanded his campaign
by reaching out to the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Thom Mason, a fifty-seven-year-old physicist. Mason said that he was
sympathetic, but skeptical of nullifying the 1954 decision if that
meant restoring Oppenheimer’s security clearance. He felt that what
was needed was a formal apology for the wrong that had been done to
Oppenheimer, and said that he would write his own letter to the Energy
Secretary.

By happenstance, I was visiting Los Alamos in March of 2022.
Christopher Nolan, the director of the forthcoming film
“Oppenheimer,” had invited me to visit the set. Nolan had written
the script based on “American Prometheus.” Not surprisingly, the
film spotlights the Oppenheimer trial.

Knowing of my presence in Los Alamos, Rieser contacted Mason and asked
if he would see me. A meeting was arranged, followed by dinner. Mason
and I had an entirely civil debate about the merits of nullification
versus an official “apology” for what had been done to
Oppenheimer. I argued that an apology was not sufficient and that
nullification was required precisely to restore the integrity of the
security-review system. Mason came around to this argument once he was
persuaded that “nullification” would not restore Oppenheimer’s
security clearance. He not only agreed to rewrite his letter—he then
obtained the signatures of the eight surviving former directors of the
Los Alamos lab.

Mason’s intervention was extraordinary. Here was the director of a
science-and-weapons lab, the man ultimately responsible for managing
thousands of scientists on classified projects, urging nullification
of the 1954 Oppenheimer verdict.

Rieser then contacted Mason’s counterpart at the Idaho National
Laboratory, John Wagner, who also agreed to send a letter. Rieser then
obtained additional letters of support from the _Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists_ (his late father had been chairman of the board),
the Federation of American Scientists, the American Physical Society,
and others. A letter was also signed by three historians: the Pulitzer
Prize winner Richard Rhodes (“The Making of the Atomic Bomb
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Robert Norris (the biographer of General Leslie R. Groves), and
myself. The J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee weighed in, and
the Los Alamos County Council adopted a resolution urging
nullification.

In retrospect, this was the turning point. In September, 2022, Rieser
bicycled down to the Department of Energy and hand-delivered a binder
with all the correspondence and supporting materials. Secretary
Granholm and her staff read it all, and they conducted their own
review of the historical record. She also took the time to read
“American Prometheus.”

Tragically, Marty Sherwin had succumbed to lung cancer in October,
2021, at the age of eighty-four. Rieser and I thought that we had done
everything possible to lay the groundwork for a nullification
decision. But we were painfully aware that the ethos of the
national-security bureaucracy stood in our way. There were still those
in the Energy Department who argued that vacating the decision against
Oppenheimer could appear to create a double standard on behalf of
politically powerful individuals.

Granholm concluded otherwise. She reasoned that vacating the A.E.C.
decision was not only necessary to correct a grave injustice but was
also important to the integrity of the security-review process. At the
end of her six-page memo justifying her decision, she wrote, “When
Dr. Oppenheimer died in 1967, Senator J. William Fulbright took to the
Senate floor and said, ‘Let us remember not only what his special
genius did for us; let us remember what we did to him.’ ”

Granholm’s decision is a stunning reversal. It took tireless
persistence and a measure of serendipitous good luck. It corrects the
historical record. It is important not just for students who will now
be able to read the last chapter and learn that what was done to
Oppenheimer in that kangaroo-court proceeding was not the last word.
He was a brilliant scientist, a loyal American, and the victim of a
gross miscarriage of justice.

This lesson is particularly important because of Oppenheimer’s
status as a scientist. We are a society immersed in science and
technology based on some of the very physics that Oppenheimer and his
colleagues pioneered. And yet many in this country still distrust
science and scientists. Just look at the way that scientific facts
were distorted
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ignored during the pandemic
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of Dr. Anthony Fauci
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other public-health experts.

In some discernible measure, we can blame the legacy of the flawed
Oppenheimer security trial for this distrust. In 1954, America’s
most celebrated scientist was falsely accused and publicly humiliated,
sending a warning to all scientists not to engage in the political
arena as public intellectuals. This was the real tragedy of the
Oppenheimer case. What happened to him damaged our ability as a
society to debate honestly about scientific theory—the very
foundation of our modern world. Granholm’s courageous decision has
reaffirmed not only that the federal government is capable of
correcting its mistakes but that government employees, regardless of
their stature, can express opinions that challenge the conventional
wisdom without fear that they will be falsely branded as
disloyal. ♦

_Sign up [[link removed]] for our daily
newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker._

_Kai Bird [[link removed]] is
director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography in New York. He is the
co-author, with the late Martin J. Sherwin, of “American Prometheus:
The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
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for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize; and “The Outlier: The
Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter
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* Robert Oppenheimer
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* McCarthyism
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* Atomic Bomb
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* Manhattan Project
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