(7 of 7)
Hard Requirements. In and between the lines of the majority report was woven a strong thread of sadness. "It seemed to us," said the majority, "that an alternative recommendation would be possible, if we were allowed to exercise mature practical judgment without the rigid circumscription of regulations and criteria established for us. In good sense, it could be recommended that Dr. Oppenheimer simply not be used as a consultant and that therefore there exists no need for a categorical answer to the difficult question posed by the regulations, since there would be no need for access to classified material."
But, turning to AEC for guidance, the board found that failure to cancel Oppenheimer's clearance would mean that he would continue to receive classified documents, and would be accorded continued clearance in other Government departments by virtue of his uncontested, top-level AEC clearance.
"The hard requirements of security, and the assertion of freedoms, together thrust upon us a dilemma not easily resolved. In the present international situation our security measures exist, in the ultimate analysis, to protect our free institutions and traditions against repressive totalitarianism and its inevitable denial of human values. . . We share the hope that some day we may return to happier times when our free institutions are not threatened and a peaceful and just world order is not such a compelling principal preoccupation. Then security will cease to be a central issue . . . there will be no undue restraints upon freedom of mind and action, and loyalty and security as concepts will cease to have restrictive implications.
"This state of affairs seems not to be a matter of early hope."
*AEC Chairman Strauss and Oppenheimer have a professional relationship besides the atom: Oppenheimer is director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; Strauss is president of its board of trustees.
†The U.S. exploded its first hydrogen bomb in November 1952; Russia, in August 1953. As a matter of actual fact (which neither Dr. Oppenheimer nor any other physicist could have predicted), H-bomb development proved to be no strain on the fission bomb program.
*Oppenheimer was represented (without fee) by the Manhattan firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and by Herbert Marks, onetime general counsel for the AEC. Famed Constitutional Lawyer John W. Davis, fresh from his defeat in the school segregation cases, joined in writing an appeal brief to the AEC, which has final jurisdiction in the case.
*Notable exception: Columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop, long-standing Oppenheimer partisans. They implied that Gordon Gray's findings were part of a plot by AEC Chairman Strauss to even an old personal grudge against Oppenheimer, a point that conveniently overlooked the matter of Gray's record and integrity.