One of the most important functions of the study of history is to guide us in the present to avoid the mistakes of the past. The 1949 Advisory Group which Oppenheimer chaired, and which made recommendations to Truman on whether to pursue development of the hydrogen bomb, concluded that the h-bomb met no useful military purpose, and should not be pursued. Truman disagreed, and the arms race was born.
Here is what the current Presidential candidates are saying about the use of nuclear weapons:
Hillary Clinton (D), on 1/5/2008, at Manchester, NH, in the Democratic Candidates Debate, on the use of nuclear weapons:
"You know, deterrence worked during the Cold War in large measure because the United States made it clear to the Soviet Union that there would be massive retaliation. We have to make it clear to those states that would give safe haven to stateless terrorists, that would launch a nuclear attack against America that they would also face a very heavy retaliation."*
John McCain (R), on 8/5/2007, at the GOP Iowa Straw Poll Debate, on the use of nuclear weapons:
"It's naive to say that we will never use nuclear weapons."*
Barack Obama (D), on 8/2/2007, from the Associate Press, on the use of nuclear weapons, while responding to a question by the Associated Press about whether there was any circumstance where he would be prepared or willing to use nuclear weapons to defeat terrorism and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden:
“I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance involving civilians. Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table.”*
If you are interested in a historical viewpoint, take a look at these documents on my Web site at http://h-bombbook.com under For Professors and Researchers/Document Archive/Oppenheimer: Oppenheimer’s Farewell Speech to Los Alamos, November 2, 1945; Atomic Weapons and American Policy, July 1953; and the No First Use Appeal of February 14, 1950.
What are your thoughts? What lessons should we have learned from Oppenheimer and history?
*Source: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (http://www.wagingpeace.org/menu/resources/surveys/2008_pres_cand/cand_quotes_page.php)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Use of Nuclear Weapons – What have we learned?
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3 comments:
Patricia McMillan writes: “One of the most important functions of the study of history is to guide us in the present to avoid the mistakes of the past. The 1949 Advisory Group which Oppenheimer chaired, and which made recommendations to Truman on whether to pursue development of the hydrogen bomb, concluded that the h-bomb met no useful military purpose, and should not be pursued. Truman disagreed, and the arms race was born.”
Ms. McMillan’s first sentence regarding the study of history is true if, and only if, conditioned on careful study of all the historical facts. Unfortunately, this condition is not met in the rest of the quoted statement. It is fundamentally not true that the arms race was born in 1949 when Truman disagreed with the Oppenheimer Advisory Group. The arms race was born on January 19, 1942, when Franklin D. Roosevelt penned a ‘go-ahead’ to Vannevar Bush, who had requested authority to move from theory to practical research on the possibility of an atomic weapon. In view of its importance to history, Roosevelt’s approval was ridiculously prosaic. Written on the equivalent of a yellow-post-it, it read: “Jan 19—V.B. OK – returned – I think you had best keep this in your own safe FDR” (The Making of the Atom Bomb, Richard Rhodes, p.388)
By the end of 1942 the Soviet Union, through their intelligence services, had confirmed that America was embarked on a top-secret program to develop an atomic weapon. The Soviets had multiple sources for this intelligence. There is strong evidence that Oppenheimer was one of them. Consequently, the USSR launched its own ‘crash’ project—it was late 1942 when Stalin selected physicist Igor Kurchatov to head the Russian program. The primary pillar of the Soviet effort, however, was not science but espionage, namely the penetration of the Manhattan Project. It is uncontestable that Communists such as Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall and David Greenglass (Rosenberg) were Soviet spies at Los Alamos. There were others. By the end of 1945, the KGB and GRU had obtained the designs of the Oak Ridge plant, Little Boy (the first atomic bomb), Fat Man (the superior implosion design), Teller’s notion of a super bomb and much more. On August 29, 1949, the USSR detonated Joe-1, a virtual replica of Fat Man.
Ms. McMillan goes astray in creating a distinction between the de facto arms race before 1949 and a so-called “modern arms race” starting in 1949. She also incorrectly makes the Cold War coincident with her “modern arms race.” This is contrived history, apparently meant to add cache to her book. Close study of atomic history shows the arms race to be a continuum. For example, the Cold War did not begin with the Oppenheimer-Truman disagreement in 1949. The Cold War was an intensification/mutation of the existing arms race occurring in 1945-6 as a result of the Gouzenko defection in Canada. This is evident from Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain Speech” in March 1946, largely a reaction to the Soviet atomic espionage uncovered in Ottawa (How the Cold War Began, Amy Knight). Physics is free and fungible. Truman and his advisors understood this. They therefore did not agree with the Oppenheimer channeled position that the h-bomb “met no useful military purpose” or with it’s derivative policy of unilateral U.S. suspension of advanced atomic research. Truman got it right--fission weapons versus fusion weapons is not effective deterrence. America’s h-bomb program did in fact serve an important military purpose as the quote from Hillary Clinton on this website attests: “… deterrence worked during the Cold War in large measure because the United States made it clear to the Soviet Union that there would be massive retaliation.” (The first existential change in the arms race continuum was SALT, followed by START.)
Readers may recall that Eisenhower not only continued Truman’s defense policy, but when he was presented with a mountain of credible information that Oppenheimer was a security risk he immediately abrogated his Q clearance. A security clearance is not a right but a privilege. A finding that someone is a security risk does not require proof that a person had in the past or might in the future do harm to the country. The judgment of security risk entails only crossing a threshold of reasonable doubt about loyalty. In this regard, any lie can broach the reasonable doubt standard on trustworthiness. It was Oppenheimer’s choice to undergo a Personnel Security Board to challenge what was the sole prerogative of the U.S. Government. The AEC then drafted a formal Letter of Charges that was Oppenheimer’s responsibility to refute. He decidedly failed to do so: "It is not clear today whether the account Dr. Oppenheimer gave to Colonel Pash in 1943 concerning the Chevalier incident or the story he told the Gray Board last month is the true version." (United States Atomic Energy Commission, Washington, D. C., June 29, 1954)
Author McMillan is certainly capable of producing work that advances knowledge and understanding, e.g. Marina and Lee. Thus a reassessment from her on the matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the nuclear arms race would be welcome. Any such undertaking will require applying the principle of reasonable doubt to Oppenheimer’s character, actions and the following specific issues: It has now been conclusively shown that Robert Oppenheimer was a member of the American Communist Party (google Brotherhood of the Bomb, Gregg Herken); American intelligence concluded in 1952 (or before) that a covername found in wartime KGB messages possibly referred to Robert Oppenheimer. This finding was resident in the minds of select Government officials in the effort to ‘wall off’ Oppenheimer from U.S. atomic affairs, but remained undisclosed for the same national security reasons that the source (Venona) was never used in the Fuchs, Coplon and Rosenberg trials.
H. B. Laes
Dear Mr. Laes:
Thank you for your very knowledgeable response to my posting.
With regard to your paragraph 1, yes, I do use the expression "arms race" here to mean H-bomb phase of the Cold War.
With regard to paragraph 3, I disagree that Oppenheimer provided A-bomb Intelligence to the Russians, and will refer to this later.
With regard to paragraph 4, the Cold War did not begin merely with the Gouzenko case and the discovery ot Soviet espionage. The Azerbaijan crisis of 1946 and other events of 1946-47 marked the beginning: the Gouzenko case, if memory serves, had more to do with arousing fear of Soviet espionage here in the US, but did not start the Cold War by any means. In that same paragraph, Oppenheimer never favored suspension of advanced nuclear research,as the 1949 GAC recommendation and the majority statement which he signed make clear: he favored research, but not testing and building of H-weapons. Para 5, Eisenhower was not presented with "a mountain of evidence." I doubt that he even saw Borden's letter. Lewis Strauss told him about it, as did Defense Secretary Wilson. He dealt with the Borden letter as a political fact, and he was encouraged to react as he did by Strauss who, as Eisenhower's subsequent remarks revealed, also fed him crucial misinformation.
Finally, with regard to paragraph 6, it has not been conclusively shown that Oppenheimer was a member of the American CP. Indeed, evidence has recently come to light that the Ales referred to in the Venona transcripts was not Oppenheimer (I believe it was Hiss) and this will be discussed in a book by John Earl Haynes to be published next fall. Gregg Herken, to whom Mr. Laes refers, has been apprised of the new evidence, although I have not yet discussed it with him and do not know his conclusions.
Although I disagree with Mr. Laes in my interpretation of some of the historical facts, I do agree that much of the Oppenheimer story, and the question of how the nuclear arms race attained such dimensions, deserve greater understanding.
Thank you for writing.
The title and thesis of Ms. McMillan's book is The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The word "ruin" is both a noun and a verb. The noun definition, "the downfall of a person", is descriptive and unbiased; the verb definition, "to bring a person to ruin or devastation," is pointed and pejorative. The latter, of course, is McMillan's usage imputed to a malevolent agency. Her marquee agent is Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Strauss is the man who installed Oppenheimer as head of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton in 1946 and the same man who 7 years later had a different opinion: "I do not know that [Oppenheimer] is a Communist, but I do know that he is a liar." Strauss was dead on the money. Robert Oppenheimer was a duplicitous, serial liar. Two examples wherein the gravamen goes beyond simple turpitude:
#1. At Oppenheimer's AEC Personnel Security Board (PSB)in 1954 John Lansdale gave the following testimony: "Dr. Oppenheimer stated that he did not want anybody working for him on the project that was a member of the Communist Party. He stated that the reason for that was that one always had a question of divided loyalty." This statement by Oppenheimer to Lansdale was a lie. Official government records show that Robert Oppenheimer was responsible for the Manhattan Project employment of the following people: Robert and Charlotte Serber, Frank Oppenheimer, Rossi Lomanitz, Joseph Weinberg, David and Francis Hawkins, Bernard Peters, Philip and Emily Morrison, David Bohm, Al Friedman, Shirley Barrett (secretary at Los Alamos), Ruby Sherr and Robert Davis. Government documents and other sources show that all of these people were members of the Communist Party, and that JRO knew that to be the case.
#2. In the same vein, Oppenheimer told the PSB that he thought membership or association with the Communist movement was not compatible with employment on a secret war project (ITMOJRO, p.147). In regard to this statement, Oppenheimer was questioned closely about Philip Morrison, who in previous public testimony (Jenner Subcomittee, 7 May 1953) had admitted to being a member of the Party while a graduate student at Berkeley. About Morrison, JRO testified to the Board as follows:
Board. Was Morrison a Communist? Oppenheimer. "I think it probable."
Board. Did he go to work on the project? Oppenheimer. "He did."
Board. With your approval? Oppenheimer. "With no relation to me." (ITMOJRO, p.196)
That was a lie. Documents in the National Archives tell a different story. On April 22, 1942, Oppenheimer filled out a personnel reference form on the letterhead of the Metallurgical Lab, University of Chicago. The prospective employee was Philip Morrison, the form asked 6 questions and was completed and signed by Robert Oppenheimer: The document reads:
1. How long and how well have you known him? "6 - 7 years; student, scientific work"
2. If employed by you, was his service record while under your supervision entirely satisfactory? "Yes, in every way"
3. Do you know of anything which would tend to reflect unfavorably on his honesty, moral character, personal habits or class of associates? "No"
4. Has he expressed or shown sympathy toward any un-American organization? "No"
5. Any question of loyalty to the United States? "No"
6. Is there any reason you know of why he should not be assigned to confidential work? "No"
Further, the National Archives contains a two-page memo written by Oppenhiemer to General Groves dated 30 September 1944. The memo requests that Morrison be transferred to Los Alamos, which occurred in November 1944. In point of fact, Oppenheimer was completely responsible for Morrison's career in the Manhattan Project. In point of further fact, Philip Morrison was chief among Oppenheimer's Communist acolytes at Berkeley. His association with the Communist Party went back to YCL membership while an undergrad in Pittsburgh. Morrison was certainly present at the gatherings of Oppenheimer's clique of Berkeley Communists and assuredly raised his glass to Oppie's habitual drinking toast, "To the confusion of our enemies.” (H. Chevalier, Story of a Friendship)
KGB Source. The KGB Rezident in San Francisco, newly arrived in December 1941, was Gregori Kheifetz. Serendipitously, Kheifetz had arrived just days before Louise Bransten's Spanish War Relief fund raiser the night before Pearl Harbor. Both Oppenheimer and Kheifetz attended this affair. In his memoir, Special Tasks, KGB spymaster Pavel Sudoplatov asserted several meetings between Oppenheimer and Kheifetz, the first of which was a lunch following Pearl Harbor. On this occasion, wrote Sudoplatov, Oppenheimer divulged the sensitive letter that Einstein had written to President Roosevelt about the feasibility of atomic energy for military purposes. In 2001 another KGB spymaster, Alexander Feklisov (case officer of J. Rosenberg and also the atomic spy PERS whose information was "priceless") stated the following in his memoir: "At this time [1943], Grigory Heifetz, the Soviet vice consul and INO Rezident on the west coast of the United States, was about to infiltrate the Los Alamos center where a brilliant team of world-renowned physicists was putting together the atomic bomb. Heifetz personally knew J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project." In 1942 Kheifetz became a subject in the FBI's CINRAD investigation. In that regard, it is reported that Oppenheimer's name and particulars were observed in Kheiftez' address book.
Authors Jerrold and Leona Schecter in their 2002 book Sacred Secrets reprint a letter from Soviet intelligence archives documenting that Oppenheimer was a well-placed Communist and also a KGB source: "In 1942 ... Oppenheimer while being an unlisted member of the apparatus of Comrade Browder informed us about the beginning of work [on uranium in the USA]." (Sacred Secrets, p.49-50). Authors Weinstein and Vassiliev it their book, The Haunted Wood, excerpt a 1944 report to KGB Chairman Merkulov as follows: "[Oppenheimer] reprsents a very large interest for us. His membership in the compatriot organization [American Communist Party] and friendly attitude toward our country provide grounds for counting on a positive result of his cultivation." (THW, p.184) Notwithstanding Ms. McMillan's fervent wish, Robert Oppenheimer was a 'capital C' Communist and a KGB source.
Mountain of Evidence. On the matter of Oppenheimer, Eisenhower met with AEC Chair Straus, Secretary of Defense Wilson and AG Brownell at the White House on December 3, 1953. In the days before the meeting, Hoover had sent each participant an updated summary of the Bureau's inches thick Oppenheimer file. This Summary ran to 67 pages. The 2-page Borden letter was completely immaterial in the face of this document. In addition, there was other evidence never known to Borden, witness Hoover's statement to his boss, AG Brownell that “an investigation of Oppenhemier might reveal a lot of information which could not be publicly disclosed". For Gregg Herken, this means illicit wiretaps (BOB,p.269). But the reality is closer to authorized, clandestine surveillance in all forms; surreptitious entry against foreign intelligence officers; a top secret signals decryption program; etc. In point of fact, there was an ungodly amount of evidence underpinning President Eisenhower's concern about Oppenheimer's loyalty. It is worse than frivolous for historians and authors not to develop and account for all of the facts.
Venona. Ms. McMillan mentions new evidence that might be published in a forthcoming book by John Haynes, to wit, "the ALES referred to in the Venona [decrypts] was not Oppenheimer." This is undoubtedly a misunderstanding. NSA analysts have considered ALES to be Alger Hiss since the 1950's--not to mention that Oppenheimer was at Los Alamos when ALES was at Yalta. In any case, the Venona cryptonym that I alluded to in my post was "VEKSEL". This covername is found in two Venona decrypts. The one that is prima facie indicative of Oppenheimer is, New York to Moscow, No.799, dated 26 May 1945. This message listed 8 "places where work on ENORMOUS [the U.S. atomic energy project] is being carried out." The first was HANFORD - no Director named; the second was New Jersey - Director UREY [Harold Urey]; the third was BERKELEY - Director LAWRENCE; the fourth was [Oak Ridge] - Director COMPTON; the fifth was CHICAGO - Director COMPTON; the sixth was the RESERVATION - Director VEKSEL; the seventh was [Alamogordo] - no Director named; the eighth was MONTREAL, Canada - no Director named. As stated in the Soviet decrypt, the source of this intelligence was MLAD, the covername of Ted Hall, a physicist at Los Alamos. The NSA reference number for this decrypt is dated 17/10/1952. Obviously, Hall knew that Oppenheimer was the Director of Los Alamos (the Reservation) and so informed the KGB. The question for McMillan now, as it was for Eisenhower in 1953, is, why didn't the New York KGB Station treat Oppenheimer the same as it treated the other lab directors, whose names were given in the clear? Or, to state it conversely, why did only Oppenheimer have a covername? With this last but most alarming item at the top of the heap of the pejorative information confronting the President, he had absolutely no option but to immediately suspend Oppenheimer's atomic clearance.
Ironies. 1. It is an oft-told anecdote that at Yalta Roosevelt informed Stalin about U.S. research on a super weapon. It is reported that Stalin showed no surprise or interest. We now know that "Uncle Joe" was completely informed on the Manhattan Project, while Vice President Truman was not cleared for this secret until after Roosevelt died. 2. One has to appreciate the KGB's covername for Los Alamos, the Reservation. They were so 'piped in' to Los Alamos that they used Oppenheimer & Company's pet name for the New Mexico lab, affected to commiserate their restriction to an Army base, apropos of the indians on the nearby San Ildefonso Indian Reservation.
In summary, Oppenheimer apologists simply cannot come to terms with the fact that Oppenheimer was a committed Communist and had impermissible relationships with Soviet Intelligence officers, such as G. Kheifetz and Steve Nelson. A book that delivers the truth about J. Robert Oppenheimer waits to be published. When it is all other Oppenheimer books will be irrelevant.
Thanks to Ms. McMillan for a forum on Oppenheimer, which may hasten better scholarlship on the subject.
H. B. Laes
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