And even more from the book it is based upon: “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
Christopher Nolan’s award winning film Oppenheimer is based on the 2005 biography American Prometheus. I really liked the title. Prometheus was the Greek god who gave mankind fire, and was punished for doing so. J. Robert Oppenheimer gave us atomic weapons and energy. The ugly and enthralling core of the book and the film is about the story of his success and the resulting punishment.
The film is not quite accurate, but in a related context Oppenheimer justified some changes to other theatrical accounts of his life as legitimate dramatic licence. The 700-page book has to be more scrupulous. There are 85 pages of notes and the bibliography is another 15.
An enquiry was set up in 1954 to consider Oppenheimer’s security status. The book calls it a ‘kangaroo court’. Lewis Strauss, his main antagonist, chose the enquiry panel and kept in constant touch with them and the ‘prosecuting team’. Between meetings Oppenheimer’s rooms were bugged, including discussions with his counsel. It was not a court, so illegally acquired evidence from FBI wire-taps was used against him. Not that Oppenheimer or his counsel always knew because much of the evidence was not disclosed to them. The enquiry was in secret with no independent journalists reporting it.
I was continually reminded of the detestable show trials under Stalin where the conviction was predetermined and the defendant never had a chance. I was appalled, because I have had so much respect for the American judicial system. Of course, it has failed on numerous occasions – there are the terrible stories of McCarthyism at about the same time while those involving blacks go back centuries – but this was the authoritarian state out to get someone. Prometheus was being punished.
The difference from the Soviet Union and similar trials was that there was widespread public uproar from the science community when the verdict was announced; the panel revoked Oppenheimer's security clearance by a 2–1 vote (while unanimously clearing him of disloyalty). That sort of outrage cannot occur in an authoritarian state, so one was still left with some respect for the robustness of American public life.
Eventually the decision was revoked and Oppenheimer’s official status was reinstated. But he was a broken man when the presidency acknowledged him and dead when his security status was restored.
It is difficult for a film to capture the gruelling detail of the ‘trial’. When I saw Nolan’s film, I did not come away with the knowledge or extreme outrage I had following reading the book. The best that the film could do is juxtapose Oppenheimer’s ordeal with a 1957 senate hearing into Strauss’ suitability to be commerce secretary in an Eisenhower cabinet. You may not have a lot of respect for such hearings, recalling the disgraceful McCarthy ones of the 1950s. But it was in public and there was due process. The Senate rejected Strauss in what was described as ‘one of the biggest, bitterest, and in many ways most unseemly confirmation fights in Senate history’. (The nays included John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.) The film makes it seem that Strauss was being punished for his treatment of Oppenheimer, but the charge sheet of his misdeeds was longer, including the Democratic majority’s main argument that Strauss’s statements before the committee included semi-truths and outright falsehoods and that under tough questioning he tended towards ambiguous responses and petty arguments; given the way he treated Oppenheimer one is not surprised.) I doubt the outcome gave much comfort to Oppenheimer.
There are a couple of other themes in the book worth pondering, even if there is not room here to explore them. First is the clash at Los Alamos, where the atom bomb was developed, between Oppenheimer, who headed the scientists, and Lesley Groves, who headed the military. The military wanted great compartmentalisation between scientists for security reasons. Oppenheimer argued that a free flow of information was necessary for scientific endeavour. He won, the scientific community shared, and produced a bomb in a remarkably short time. After the war, Oppenheimer argued that scientific communities sharing their understanding across nations was the best way to prevent the misuse of atomic weapons. He lost that one.
Second, I was also struck by the contrast between Oppenheimer’s success at Los Alamos and his lesser achievements at the smaller Institute of Advanced Studies near Princeton which he headed between 1947 and 1966. (However, his insistence that Fellows at the Institute should include the arts and humanities was farseeing; he was well read, with a wide variety of tastes and interests.)
Oppenheimer came to Los Alamos with little management experience (generic managers would be appalled). His success there was because its scientific community had a single common goal (to produce an atomic bomb). There was no such commitment at the IAS, which was staffed by able eccentrics with personal agendas, just like universities. Vice-chancellors might like to reflect on the parallel; it is not just trying to herd cats but sometimes, to be zoologically inaccurate, the cats hunt in packs.
The film Oppenheimer is doing very well in the rankings. It has many strengths, although its sound is not one – the advice is to go to a session with subtitles (if you can find one). But I can’t help thinking that part of its recognition among Americans arises from its representation of one of the nastier shadows in US history – the repeated failure of its justice system to be judicial. The shadow has not gone away. Perhaps many of the film’s enthusiasts are deeply worried about how Donald Trump is using the courts and how he might use them even more malignantly if he became president again.
Footnote: Many images of Oppenheimer (including the cover of the book) show him with a cigarette or pipe. He died of throat cancer in 1966 at the age of 62; I found the book’s description of the treatment gruelling. It is thought that tobacco killed – caused the premature death of – about a hundred million people in the last century with over 25m this one. The number contrasts with perhaps less than a million killed by atomic weapons. Both are unnecessary scourges of mankind.