INVESTIGATIONS: The Storm Breaks

As much as any other one man. Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who bossed the Los Alamos project during World War II, created the atomic bomb. For the past several months, Oppenheimer has been the nucleus of a top-secret political Abomb. This week the New York Times —on information provided by Oppenheimer himself—broke the news. On Dec. 23, 1953, the Atomic Energy Commission suspended J. Robert Oppenheimer as a security risk.

Oppenheimer's move seemed to be an answer to Joe McCarthy, who last week asked if "traitors to our Government" had not caused an 18-month delay in U.S. development of the H-bomb. Oppenheimer turned over to the Times two letters.

One was from AEC General Manager K. D. Nichols, notifying Oppenheimer of the suspension. The other was Oppenheimer's 43-page answer. The charges against him:

¶ That Oppenheimer in 1940-42 contributed regularly and generously to Communist causes.

¶ That Oppenheimer before his marriage was in love with one Communist woman and that he married a former Communist, and that his brother and sister-in-law were Communists. Said the Nichols letter: "It was reported that in 1943 and previously you were intimately associated with Dr. Jean Tatlock, a member of the Communist Party in San Francisco ... It was reported that your wife was formerly the wife of Joseph Dallet, a member of the Communist Party who was killed in Spain in 1937 ... It was further reported that during the period of her association with Joseph Dallet, your wife became a member of the Communist Party ... It was reported that your brother, Frank F. Oppenheimer, became a member of the Communist Party in 1936 . . . [and] that your brother's wife, Jackie Oppenheimer, was a member of the Communist Party in 1938 . . ."

¶ That Oppenheimer gave contradictory testimony to the FBI about attendance at Communist meetings in the early '40s.

¶ That Oppenheimer hired Communists or former Communists to work at Los Alamos during World War II.

¶ That Haakon Chevalier, well-known translator of French literary works, approached Oppenheimer, either directly or through Frank Oppenheimer, in 1943 "for the purpose of obtaining information regarding work being done at the Radiation Laboratory for the use of Soviet scientists." Although, Nichols said, the request was refused, Oppenheimer did not report it until several months later, did not name himself as the person to whom the approach was made, and at first refused to identify Chevalier as the man who sought the information.

¶ That Oppenheimer, as chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, strongly opposed the development in 1949 of the hydrogen bomb, and lobbied against it even after President Truman gave the go-ahead order.

An Unusual Life. Because of these charges, said Nichols, Oppenheimer would be denied further access to secret Government documents, and suspended from his position as AEC consultant.