Talk:Oppenheimer security clearance hearing/Archive 1

Expansion
I've fished out my copy of the Stern book and the JRO hearing transcript, and hope to flesh out the article in coming days. Figureofnine (talk) 01:11, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Omission: Stern's book, which is my primary source on the hearing, doesn't talk about the illegal wiretaps, or at least I can't find any references to them as of yet. Can someone else supply a source? They were referred to in a Time magazine book review but I hate to use that as a source. Figureofnine (talk) 16:22, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * See page 231 in the hardback. It's the section where Oppenheimer first seeks legal counsel after being informed of the AEC's allegations against him. S  B Harris 02:53, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did see that they taped him at Volpe, but wasm't the illegal taping with his counsel more extensive than that? I vaguely recall reading somewhere that a number of conversations were bugged. Figureofnine (talk) 23:35, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

A few things
Just a few things as someone who has read a few recent books about Oppenheimer. Also, the "background" as it currently stands seems to imply that Livermore developed the H-bomb. This is not true. Teller developed the H-bomb idea with Ulam at Los Alamos in 1951. Livermore was not founded until 1952. In the meantime, the first successful H-bombs were all developed at Los Alamos by Los Alamos personnel. In fact, Livermore's first designs—including its first thermonuclear—were all duds. Now one need not see that as a fault against Teller or the lab—they were purposefully trying to do "cutting edge" work that was outside of the tried-and-true—but the conception that Teller left "to work on the H-bomb" is very wrong indeed, which was a key point of dispute at Oppenheimer's security hearing. I think a little bit more on Oppenheimer's stance on the H-bomb (e.g. really discussing what the 1949 GAC report on the Super says) would help the article, because he was not really a "dove" at all on the issue. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:58, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * There should be more care taken in what exactly Herken says about his alleged Party membership. Herken suggests that Oppenheimer and Chevailer were "member of a secret or so-called closed unit of the Communist Party’s professional section in Berkeley." That is not quite the same thing as being an official member of the CP (he was not a "card-carrying member" if it was secret and closed, and would not have been under Party discipline), and is more subtly worded than the current description in the article. Most of the debates over his CP membership at the moment are, I gather from the literature, hair-splitting over whether he was technically a member of a closed unit. The relevant point here is that there really is no strong evidence that Oppenheimer was a Communist in the sense that his detractors alleged, and any CP activity he had would have been much earlier in the 1930s. It should also be separated out from the discussions of espionage. Being a CP member (in whatever form) is not the same thing as being a spy. Something probably ought to be said about the Sudoplatov accusations, and the fact that there is no evidence supporting them.
 * McMillan's book alleges, based on documents, that Strauss heavily tipped the outcome of the board in his favor, using such illegal methods as tapping conversations between Oppenheimer and his lawyer, and then feeding that information to the prosecution.


 * These are all important points and I am especially interested in beefing up the illegal wiretap aspects. Figureofnine (talk) 21:20, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * One last, recent thought: it would also be nice if there could be some ferreting out of why it was published, especially since it was originally not going to be published, as the article points out. I seem to recall something on this in McMillan and Bird/Sherwin. Surely there is some story about this. I seem to recall from one of these sources that they turned the whole thing around in 48 hours or something else that was quite remarkable. --Mr.98 (talk) 20:20, 5 July 2010 (UTC)


 * There's something about it in Stern. Strauss was annoyed about the leaks to the press from the Oppenheimer people. Figureofnine (talk) 01:16, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Crouch
I apologize for not checking this out earlier. Crouch's testimony, dramatically taken from executive sessions of a congressional committee in "1953" and supposedly not discovered (eureka!) until a half century later, was actually a subject of much publicity in 1950 (see and he was discredited. See American Prometheus, p. 440-441,  Oppenheimer was somewhere else at the time of the supposed closed Communist party hearing. I guess this explains why Crouch's allegations did come up during the hearing, but they went nowhere and he was not called as a witness. Our lengthy quote of his discredited testimony, particularly in the manner in which it was used, has no place in the article. It needs to be dramatically re-adjusted in the main JRO article too. Figureofnine (talk) 16:47, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest you consider that Crouch's false allegations very much do have a place in this article, as they convey the atmosphere of "witch hunt" that was going on in the hearings. Not pages and pages, but a para is very apropos. Billyshiverstick (talk) 00:54, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Nice post
Nice post, and I totally agree, but the article comes across to the casual observer as Hoover "saving America from Commie spies". It needs some more delicate phrasing, especially in the background. Billyshiverstick (talk) 00:56, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Limited, or Biased Article Tone
Hi - there is a lot of good information in the Wiki articles on the bomb development, and scientists involved.

Reading this article as polished up for main page display, I find the tone a bit limiting in its discussion of the unique role of scientists in the war effort. There was a reason Hoover went after Oppenheimer, and the "background" does not really cover it. The articles on Oppenheimer and Teller are better.

A lot of this was a clash between scientific culture and the military industrial complex that Eisenhower himself so decried just a few years later. As well, historically, "Communism" and "Socialsim" were much broader human endeavours than Senator MaCarthy knew about.

Just saying, imho, the choice of "facts" on display comes off as a bit biased.

best regards, and sorry I forgot my sig on my edit Billyshiverstick (talk) 00:45, 24 March 2016 (UTC)


 * The FBI had reason to investigate Communists and "fellow travelers" because there was evidence that some of them were involved in espionage. The pursuit of Oppenheimer when he was known to be loyal is harder to fathom. At the time, people did not believe that science and political beliefs could be separate, and there was a general feeling among the wider population that science led to atheism, humanism and cosmopolitanism, all antithetical to the American way of life. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:34, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Last paragraph in the intro - sources?
I, like a number of readers today, came to this article due to its listing on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/), which focuses on the final sentence in the last paragraph in the intro. Admittedly, I'm no wiki expert, but I'm pretty surprised that a featured article can have a paragraph that contains such sweeping declarations, and possible opinion/synthesis, without having any citations. Maybe I don't understand the featured article standards well enough (I've only ever brought anything up to GA status), but am I off the mark in thinking that a citation might be due there? Couldn't anyone just show up and legitimately cut all that nice verbage out without one? Please know that I mean no disrespect to those editors who watch over this article and clearly have put a ton of good work into it. Buddy23Lee (talk) 23:42, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
 * As a general rule, the lead should summarise the article, which should be fully cited to reliable sources. Therefore anything in the lead should be supported by the cited information in the main body of the article.  If that's not the case then there would be reason to either cite the statements in question that appear in the lead, or remove them, or ensure that further cited material is added to the main body to support the lead. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:50, 24 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Alright, I think I got it. The intro can contain contain the type of (seemingly) uncited synthesis and conclusions I'm seeing, based on the cited content further down in the article. I'm just going to assume the vetted FA status means it is well established elsewhere. Thank ya. Hopefully any further content debates this question may or may not start, work in the best for the article and all who view it. Buddy23Lee (talk) 04:27, 25 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I was going to post the same thing myself. I see that this is sourced to American Prometheus, which is a book exclusively about Oppenheimer, so I wouldn't be shocked if it overplayed its own topic's importance.  "All scientists working within the government were on notice that dissent was no longer tolerated?"  Is this a quote from the back cover of a sci-fi dystopia novel?  Don't get me wrong, the mistreatment of Oppenheimer was terrible.  It couldn't possibly mean that "dissent" was now forbidden and all Americans marched in perfect lockstep.  Being in "academic exile" and not getting invited to certain conferences is very far from "dissent is no longer tolerated."  There were absolutely still communists in 1950s America, and moreover it did not become some kind of deferential classist society where lessers obeyed their betters or something.   Heck, the very next paragraphs talk about Kennedy rehabilitating Oppenheimer, so clearly it didn't last THAT long.


 * More productively, I think the passage could be changed to something like "Historians Sherwin & Bird argue that...", or otherwise talk about a "chilling effect" on free speech among scientists perhaps, but right now it's terribly overwritten. SnowFire (talk) 00:16, 25 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppenheimer's Q clearance being revoked ended his career, as he could have no further involvement in nuclear weapons development. His "rehabilitation" was symbolic, not practical; his Q clearance was never reinstated. Communists were not allowed to have Q clearances in the 1950s. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:20, 25 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Is there any other kind of rehabilitation? I don't think he particularly wanted to go back to advising the government by then anyway, since he would die in ~3-4 years...  anyway, I'd have no complaints about saying that Q clearance was locked down on a political basis, but that's a far cry from "scientists were forbidden to dissent" (in general), which isn't something I'd say even about the Soviet Union at the height of the purges.  That's either magazine-article exaggeration, or ludicrously false.  I'm sure you can find for yourself a large, large number of left-wing American scientists in the 50s... SnowFire (talk) 02:53, 25 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Bird and Sherwin were summing up the consensus of historians and sociologists:

In a few years after World War II, scientists had been regarded as a new class of intellectuals, members of a public-policy priesthood who might legitimately offer expertise not only as scientists but as public philosophers. With Oppenheimer's defrocking, scientists knew that in the future they would serve the state only as experts only on narrow scientific issues. As sociologist Daniel Bell later observed, Oppenheimer's ordeal signified that the postwar "messianic role of the scientists" was now at an end. Scientists working within the system could not dissent from government policy, as Oppenheimer had done by writing his 1953 Foreign Affairs essay, and still expect to serve on government advisory boards. The trial thus represented a watershed in the relations of the scientist to the government. The narrowest version of how American scientists should serve their country had triumphed.
 * The quote from Bell is from a 1964 paper. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:56, 30 March 2016 (UTC)


 * First of all, as I said before, Sherwin & Bird are slightly biased sources with specific regards to the importance of the incident they were writing about. No historian wants to write a book and end it with "this whole thing you just read about didn't matter at all and it was forgotten."  This is nothing personal to those two, it applies to everyone and is in fact healthy; I'd expect books on a topic to extensively research all the ways that topic did matter.  And quoting 1 person doesn't necessarily mean that's a "consensus of historians and sociologists."  But fine, let's ignore this.  The quote you brought up looks fine!  You'll note I didn't edit very much the sentence that reflected how the role of scientist-as-noble-sage was adversely affected.  The line I'm taking issue with, which I see you've restored, is:
 * "all scientists working within the government were on notice that dissent was no longer tolerated."
 * 1, is there a quote from "American Prometheus" (or elsewhere) more directly on that topic? 2, even if there is, it's a WP:EXTRAORDINARY claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary sources.  That or there's a semantics difference on what exactly "dissent was no longer tolerated" implies.  To me, this sounds like some kind of state-of-emergency, 1st amendment is suspended deal and all American scientists were required to mouth good anti-communist slogans.  But...  that is blatantly false.  In fact, in this very article it discusses continuing support for Oppenheimer, that leftitst scientists existed and spoke out in his favor, and that the President of the United States would later give him an award.  People who aren't "tolerated" rarely get awards!  The line reads as some kind of bizarre revisionist history that claims leftism entirely disappeared among American science which, as I've said above, is blatantly false and really easily checked.  I'd like to revert back to my version, but perhaps either you mean something different by this line (in which case it should be clarified) or there's actually some source that talks about how secretly leftist US scientists were thrown in the Gulag and silenced or something.  SnowFire (talk) 02:08, 3 April 2016 (UTC)


 * , any thoughts on the above? SnowFire (talk) 00:06, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I replaced the line in the article with the block quote from Bird and Sherwin, who say that scientists working within the system could not dissent from government policy. So we are only talking about the lead, which is a summary of the quote. The quote does reflect the consensus among historians, including Bird, Sherwin, Day, Bell, Berstein, Herken, Kaiser, Monk and Stern. It doesn't say that "the 1st amendment is suspended deal" (although, in fact, it doesn't always apply to government employees) or that "all American scientists were required to mouth good anti-communist slogans" (although, in fact, this did happen to some). It is true that Oppenheimer was rehabilitated by President Johnson, but that was nearly a decade later. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:01, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

(de-indent) First off, a quick side note: great work on the article! It is an interesting and solid read, and I'm glad you're giving this terrible incident the attention it deserves. (Figured I should say this lest I come off as too hostile here. :) )

It sounds like we have a semantics difference after all. You are saying that it doesn't mean "the 1st amendment is suspended." Well, great, you read the sources and know that, but my point is that the line in question is a catchy, punchy magazine tagline precisely because it DOES imply something like that. It's shocking! Whoa, scientists weren't allowed to be anything but perfect anti-communists! (Check out the Reddit comments.) Except...  and again, I feel on fairly solid ground because I'm quoting this very article you helped write...
 * I would be interested in reading the Reddit comments; I don't know where to find them. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:40, 7 April 2016 (UTC)


 * "Many top scientists, as well as government and military figures, testified on Oppenheimer's behalf. Among them were Fermi, Isidor Isaac Rabi, Hans Bethe, John J. McCloy, James B. Conant and Bush, as well as two former AEC chairmen and three former commissioners.[68] Also testifying on behalf of Oppenheimer was Lansdale..."

I don't know what to say other than this doesn't add up. Let me put it to you this way: if you were reading through an article about a trial of a Soviet scientist who was eventually "exiled", and it said "dissent would no longer be tolerated", how do you think a reader would interpret it? Would they think that lots of scientists would be speaking up in their favor and not getting hassled or imprisoned or the like? It's going to mean something a lot more extreme than scientists no longer being able to easily comment on certain affairs. Like I said, I'm totally fine with the part about "it became harder for scientists to disagree with government policy about stuff like the export of radioactive isotopes." I don't see what's wrong with the version I used, which says "there was a chilling effect on the speech of scientists employed by the government." Isn't this accurate to what the sources say? Your quote uses "dissent", sure, but in a much narrower context: expecting to serve on advisory boards afterward. Dissent being "no longer tolerated" with no qualifiers and no context implies, at best, being on a research station in Siberia and ignored, or in prison or executed at worst. That's a huge difference.

Surely there's some phrasing that we can both agree on that's clear about what's exactly being claimed about the status of American government scientists? SnowFire (talk) 02:44, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I habitually use words precisely and with their narrowest meanings. So by "dissent" I mean "the holding or expression of opinions at variance with those officially held"; whereas if I say "chilling effect" I mean "the inhibition or discouragement of the legitimate exercise of legal rights by the threat of legal sanction". The former is correct. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:40, 7 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I strongly agree with SnowFire. This article is clearly very well written and structured, and I respect and appreciate the work that all the relevant editors have put into that. However, after having read only the lead and not the rest yet, my experience was finding most of it very good (I'm not used to not seeing at least some minor copy error to edit, for a start) and then the last paragraph shockingly editorial-like. I actually came to this talk page to add a section on my opinion that that paragraph does not line up with Wikipedia's neutrality policy and should be amended, before seeing this, and was very surprised to see that it was a featured article after having seen that paragraph.


 * Again, the rest of the article seems very good, and I hate how this is probably sounding quite rude and dismissive regarding the effort put in and the high quality article which genuinely resulted from that. Having read this discussion, I now understand how that paragraph could be added not just in a mistaken good faith effort but very understandably, based on a different, and defensible, view of what phrases like "dissent was no longer tolerated" would imply. However, I would like to add my voice to the others suggesting that at least some people, and I would imagine actually the majority, would read that as meaning something much larger than what it sounds like you intend for it to mean, Hawkeye7.


 * I think this issue can be fairly readily resolved, as well. The content is good and the point made is valid. I think all that needs to be done is to make some phrasings more just about the facts, letting them speak for themselves, rather than using the sort of language that feels like a hero's journey or terms that come with connotations and possible greater implications - even if just some people will take those implications, that's still unnecessarily misleading. For example, "He became an academic exile, cut off from his former career and the world he had helped to create" could be replaced with something like "He became cut off from much of the academic world, from his former career, and from involvement in many of the works and innovations his efforts had contributed to." (I am not an expert on the subject at all; this is unlikely to be an optimal encapsulation of the exact events. I'm just trying to show the sort of thing that would be required to, in my view, resolve the issue and make it so that no one would take from this an overly extreme implication - however much that's not intended - as well as making this read in a manner that's more encyclopedic and less sensationalist - however genuinely compelling and well-written.)


 * I think the second sentence is perfectly good. As for the third, I second SnowFire's suggestions that it would be much assisted by something like "X argues that" and/or making it clearer what precisely is meant by "dissent was no longer tolerated". I see the word dissent as very fitting here, but think that "no longer tolerated" is a very vague phrase that could mean a lot of things. It could just be specified what the consequences for dissent were not expected to be, in terms of explicit or legal consequences, more generalised social consequences, and whatever else. I don't at all dispute that there would be consequences, but "dissent was no longer tolerated" doesn't make it clear what sort of things that might mean, leaving it open to interpretations anywhere from a government official making a grumpy comment to the press about an instance of dissent to the dissented being thrown in the aforementioned gulags.


 * Does that seem a reasonable set of suggestions for the sort of changes that could be made here? I could do them myself, but, seeing as there's already a discussion and Hawkeye7 is clearly a very beneficial and reasonable contributor to the discussion and the article, I would of course want to raise the idea first. Regardless, I imagine you would do a better job of it, given you clearly know the subject better than I.


 * (Also, as a side note/disclaimer, any motivated reasoning on my part would actually lead me to want to believe the grand form of these claims, as a leftist believer in the importance of information and of science being unbiased by any political interference, and thus someone who wants to see as many faults in McCarthyism as I can get my hands on. But still, that viewpoint should only be allowed to materialise to the extent the world supports it - and regardless, the specific, clear, and unemotionally-stated facts here would do that anyway, in my view; no need for anything contestable.) BreakfastJr (talk) 10:55, 27 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I really don't see the bias, as the last paragraph sums up what is in reliable sources, the lead itself is reasonably neutral and the entire article is both detailed and even-handed. Why not tweak it and see how it flies? Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:02, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have linked "dissent" to make its meaning clearer. The "X argues that" form was not used because (1) it is not normal in the lead, which is a summary; (2) because it is cumbersome; (3) but mostly because it might give the impression that it represents a minority view, when in fact is is the unanimous agreement of our reliable sources. I fear that a re-wording process would not lead to "compelling and well-written" material, but what would call grey goo.
 * As a side note, the idea of "science being unbiased by any political interference" was unheard of in 1954, when there was widespread concern then that science, particularly physics, would lead to socialism. Such concerns persist today; scientists say that we will wreck the planet unless we change our way of life - an unacceptable political position. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:38, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I concur with Hawkeye7 on this. I've slacked off in my Wiki-participation and frankly was shocked to see such a long and impassioned discussion here. Having trouble grasping the problem. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 21:02, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

illegal wiretaps, violation of attorney client
when I point out faults that means those needed to be included in article, FBI broke law, tainted evidence was allowed, due process was not followed, attorney phone calls tapped,  Lansdale more than Groves knew oppenheimer loyalty better. Groves was aspiring for hire position. no link to transcripts Juror1 (talk) 17:41, 24 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Feel free to share with us your sources for that material. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 23:28, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Great article
I just want to note that this is a remarkably well-written and balanced article (I am a long-time Cold War and JRO fan who has contributed about 30-40% to the Wikipedia JRO entry over the last several years). I think it brings out the essence of the security hearing quite accurately. I think it also quite fairly conveys Oppenheimer's character: a brilliant scientist and patriot who nonetheless was a very complex and flawed man. Kudos on a job well-done. I also see discussions about Oppenheimer's communist associations which seem to remarkably endure. I think the facts are quite straight by now; as far as I know, except for Gregg Herken, no major JRO historian (and I would consider Rhodes, Bird & Sherwin, Cassidy and McMillan in this category) believes that JRO was a member of the communist party. As with other aspects of his personality, his communist ties were also complicated; it was more of an intellectual interest than anything else, and it's also worth noting that stories of Stalin's purges and the Nazi-Soviet pact quickly disillusioned him of communism quite early, even after these things failed to sway his left-leaning associates and students. I also realize that Wikipedia has a very reasonable NPOV policy, and some people seem to think that discussions of JRO's security hearings somehow are filled with left-wing views of the whole matter. However, I think that the sum of all evidence uncovered until now makes it quite clear that his hearing was carefully orchestrated by right-wingers in the government on the basis of less-than-convincing evidence. I think most serious historians agree by now that he made some mistakes, but those weren't a reason for the kind of shameful hearing that resulted. This is simply a factual assessment of the matter, not some overly liberal interpretation. Ashujo (talk) 21:20, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for your very kind thoughts on this. If you can help fill in any of the blanks, especially on the surveillance of JRO, it would be very helpful. Figureofnine (talk) 02:28, 28 July 2010 (UTC)


 * this is NOT a great article - did you pay someone to write that ?

history shows that people lied and the FBI broke the law, the man did not get a fair hearing it was COMPLETeLY rigged! at least LBJ showed true courage.Juror1 (talk) 09:18, 24 November 2017 (UTC)


 * If you have any concrete suggestions for the improvement of this article, please place them in a new section at the bottom of the page. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:39, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

It's good, but the phrase "scientists working in government were on notice that dissent was no longer tolerated. ", is needless editorializing. And in any case oppenheimer was a government contractor, not a government scientist. It doesn't belong in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.51.227.35 (talk) 11:37, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Neutral point of view
Since the US government nullified the AEC decision in 2022, is the introduction of the article really neutral? I think it has become pretty clear that the hearings were in fact an expression of McCarthyism and not a neutral hearing with regards to national security. I would argue it gives a false false balance in the beginning, leaving open the option that it was in fact a fair hearing. PhotographyEdits (talk) 15:22, 24 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I've made it clearer at the ending of the lead section that the fairness of the proceeding has been contested for years. That does need to be there. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 16:03, 24 August 2023 (UTC)