Priscilla Johnson McMillan (1928–2021)

For the person interested in reading about the history of the 20th century, WWII, the Cold War, the history of atomic science, or military history, certainly the recent crop of biographies on Oppenheimer would seem very inviting. I read Priscilla McMillan’s The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer: And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race, and found it very illuminating. McMillan, an historian and associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian studies, focused on the 1940-1950s time period, when Oppenheimer was suspected and accused of spying for the Soviet Union. The biography provides details about various anti-Communist agitators and the roles they played in bringing “ruin” to this once most prominent of all US citizen-scientists. McMillan has done her homework! The endnotes are 40 pages long, the bibliography runs for 38 pages, and the 40-page index seems fairly well done.

McMillan examined this period in Oppenheimer’s life against the backdrop of McCarthyism, specifically, the Army-McCarthy hearings, conducted during the same time period as the secret Oppenheimer hearing (in the spring of 1954). McMillan asserts of this congruence of the two hearings (one very public, the other quite secret), “As Stephen Ambrose, one of Eisenhower’s biographers, pointed out, such was the furor over McCarthy that the president and Lewis Strauss got rid of Oppenheimer without any public discussion of whether he had been right: whether it had been a breach of morality to build the H-bomb.” As you can imagine, many prominent scientists, engineers, and politicians play roles in this biography that details the hearing at which Oppenheimer was found to be a security risk for opposing the H-bomb program on moral grounds and by virtue of “defects in his character.”

Given his agreement with “nearly all” atomic scientists that building the H-bomb would be unethical as they would be building not a military weapon, but a weapon for killing citizens on a grotesque scale, the story of his downfall, “a travesty of justice” as a reviewer for Publisher’s Weekly puts it, resonates in a particularly chilling way. The well-known adage, no one is above justice, could perhaps be rephrased as, no one is above a travesty of justice.… (more)

J. Robert Oppenheimer was an important and highly controversial principal in the development of nuclear weaponry. He is universally credited with his exceptionally good management of the scientific aspects of the Manhattan Project to develop a heavy-element-based nuclear bomb [the A bomb]. His role in the development of light-element-based weapons [H bombs] is more controversial. I should add that American historiography tends to see the development of the A bomb as necessary, while the jury may still be out on the H bomb.

Priscilla McMillan's book focuses on the events following the Soviet Union's detonation of their first A bomb. Her account is a fairly balanced assessment of the events, politics, and many colorful characters leading to the development of the American H bomb and Oppenheimer's subsequent loss of his Q level security clearance. In her account, Oppie plays the tragic hero, while Lewis Strauss is the most evil of several villains, who also included J. Edgar Hoover, physicist Edward Teller, and journalist Charles Murphy.

The USSR tested its first A bomb in summer 1949, surprising most Americans, including the CIA. [Why the big surprise? We developed the bomb in about 3 years, starting from scratch. The Soviets took 4 years to develop a bomb even after we had shown it could be done.] The USA became almost paranoid in the fear that American nuclear secrets must have been given to the Soviets by spies, communists, or fellow travelers.

One response to the Soviet threat was to develop an even more powerful weapon--the H Bomb. Many Americans, Oppie included, doubted the wisdom of spending additional billions the H bomb when the A bomb was powerful enough to stop any massed army and could wreak fearful havoc in any city.

Teller had "worked" on the Manhattan Project in the sense that he had been employed at Los Alamos. He had not contributed much to the A bomb because he was fascinated by the possibility of more powerful weapons being built from the nuclear reactions of light elements like hydrogen and lithium. He never came up with a usable design for such a weapon, but he claimed he did. The actual breakthrough idea for a workable H bomb came from Stan Ulam, who envisioned using supercompression of radiation from an A bomb explosion to ignite light elements to sustain burning--in other words, use an A bomb to trigger an H bomb.

President Truman was under great pressure to do something about the Soviet bomb, so he ordered the Los Alamos lab to go full speed to develop an H bomb, despite the fact that the Atomic Energy Commission's General Advisory Committee [GAC], chaired by Oppie, had voted 8 to 0 against it. Later, conducting tests of the H bomb could have been opposed because the atmospheric fallout contained clues about the bomb's composition that would later be helpful to the Soviets.

Oppenheimer was a likely _target of suspicion of sympathy with the USSR. Prior to the war, he had made many contributions to the communinst party, primarily for use in the Spanish Civil War. His wife and brother were unambiguous communists, and he admitted to being a "fellow traveler." Moreover, in 1945, he was one of the draftsmen of the Acheson-Lilianthal plan, which proposed international control of all fissionable material.

Oppie could be acerbic in his dealings with others, and he made several enemies among the physicists, particularly Luis Alverez and Teller. He also publicly humiliated AEC commissioner Strauss at a hearing, when the latter showed his appalling lack of understanding of physics.

Strauss had become an AEC commissioner because of his services as a Republican fund raiser in assisting Eisenhower. Strauss, who was influenced by Teller, blamed Oppie for slowing the development of the H bomb. Strauss and Teller eventually caused the government to create a second atomic lab, Lawrence Livermore, to specialize in light element bombs.

Oppie's security clearance came up for renewal in 1954. Strauss opposed the renewal. In addition to his known pre-war communist sympathies, Oppie had been approached during the war by a good friend, Haakon Chevalier, to disclose information to the Soviets. Oppie refused out of hand, but did not report the incident immediately. He did, however, elicit the name of Chevalier's contact, and warned the FBI to keep and eye on him. He lied to the FBI about his friend, however. He also had spent a night with a former lover who happened to be a communist, an event that probably had much more to do with sex than physics or politics.

The H bomb had already been built by the time Oppie was "charged." He was never charged with disclosing any secrets. The hearing concerning the renewal of the security clearance was a mishmash of administrative law. It was never clear under what standard Oppie was being judged. Moreover, there were numerous violations of procedural due process. For example, the FBI had wire-tapped Oppie's phone and bugged several rooms in which he conferred with his lawyers.

The AEC's ultimate conclusion was the Oppie was a security risk. The rationale was not based on his loyalty, but on his "defective character."

The author cites evidence that the real motivation of some of the judges was that Oppie disagreed with the policy of an all-out effort to build the H bomb, but that was neither a legally nor politically acceptable rationale. In fact, Oppie's original opposition may have been based on his skepticism of whether the H bomb would work. Ulam later proved the Teller design would not work. In fact, development of the bomb had to wait for improvement in computing capacity from 1950-52 before the design could be accurately evaluated.

McMillan deserves kudos for writing a lucid account. In particular, the first chapter constitutes a clear exposition of the thesis of the book. I disagree with her conclusion that pursuing the H bomb started the "ruinous arms race." That race was already under way once the Soviets wanted an A bomb of their own. In addition, the arms race may have been outrageously expensive, but the only country ruined by it was the USSR. (JAB)… (more)