Yes, J. Robert Oppenheimer Was a Security Risk

The publicity campaign surrounding Oppenheimer strikes as more posthumous reputational rehabilitation than movie promotion.

Last year, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm vacated the Atomic Energy Commission’s 1954 decision to revoke the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Given that the Department of Energy did not come into existence until 23 years after that decision, and the Atomic Energy Commission ceased to exist 48 years prior to Granholm’s proclamation, the relevance, let alone legal authority, of Granholm vacating this decision felt suspect. (READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn: The Undeserved Rehabilitation of J. Robert Oppenheimer)

On Sunday, MSNBC aired a documentary depicting the father of the atom bomb belatedly losing his security clearance as a profound injustice.

Kai Bird, co-author of the book that provided the basis of the film to be released next week, conceded on the MSNBC program that during the 1930s Oppenheimer had “drifted politically to the left.” Another voice talked vaguely of his “association with left-wing friends.”

Of course, what they said about Oppenheimer applies to almost all MSNBC viewers, who naturally concluded that the punishment of the loss of security clearance did not fit the “crime” of associating with progressives. Alan Carr, the Los Alamos National Laboratory house historian, calling the pursuit of Oppenheimer a “McCarthy-era witch hunt” felt redundant after hearing all that.

The MSNBC documentary left much on the cutting-room floor. While the question before the AEC in 1954 involved whether allowing Oppenheimer access to classified information represented a “security” risk, the information revealed since that time goes beyond this to call into question Oppenheimer’s loyalty to the United States.

As described in this column previously, Pavel Sudoplatov, so high-ranking that the Soviets placed him in charge of murdering Leon Trotsky, maintained in his autobiography that “Oppenheimer supplied … the Soviet Union with crucial information for it to successfully test its own atomic bomb in 1949.” He details Oppenheimer’s role, “which included allowing moles access to secret data to copy it, and describes him as ‘knowingly part of the scheme.’”

Material from the files of both Soviet and U.S. intelligence supports Sudoplatov’s claim: “An Oct. 2, 1944, memo from the Soviet archives, signed in receipt by chief of secret police Lavrentiy Beria, identifies Oppenheimer as a ‘member of the apparatus of Comrade [Earl] Browder’ who ‘provided cooperation in access to research for several of our tested sources including a relative of [the Communist Party USA leader].’”

Venona project decrypts refer to Oppenheimer under a codename, monikers in most but not all circumstances reserved for Soviet assets. A decoded March 1945 intercept “instructs Soviet agents to ‘re-establish contact with “Veskel” … as soon as possible.’ Veskel, the National Security Administration determined conclusively, referred to Oppenheimer.”

In The Venona Secrets, late authors Herb Romerstein and Eric Breindel wrote: “In May [of 1945] the Rezidentura sent Moscow another report from [Theodore] Hall on atom bomb research. It revealed the locations of work being done and the names of the heads of each research group. All of the names were clearly written out except one, that of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was listed as ‘Veskel,’ the head of Los Alamos.”

Oppenheimer’s critics lacked this information in 1954, so one better understands their restrained classification of him as merely a security risk rather than charging that he lacked, in the words of President Dwight Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, a “complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States.” What’s the excuse of the NBC News Studios documentary airing on MSNBC for omitting so much information from credible sources in the U.S. and U.S.S.R. intelligence apparatus painting a grim picture of Oppenheimer’s trustworthiness?

The NBC News Studios production at least does include much of the information available to the main players in 1954. Oppenheimer donated large sums to Communist causes, subscribed to Communist publications, and married a Communist. Other associates in the party included his brother, sister-in-law, landlady, the girlfriend who later became his mistress, and numerous students. He attended secret meetings of Communist professors while teaching at Berkeley.

Most damning of all, Haakon Chevalier, a friend and professor at Berkeley, approached Oppenheimer with the idea of passing on Manhattan Project secrets to the Soviet Union. Oppenheimer did not report this event to his superiors for many months and, when he did, described the events dishonestly, i.e., by omitting both himself and Chevalier from the story. Rather than steer clear of someone petitioning him to commit espionage, Oppenheimer continued to see Chevalier socially for years.

Kai Bird said of the AEC stripping Oppenheimer’s clearance, “It sent a really nefarious message to all working scientists.” Do not associate with members of a political cult worshiping a homicidal maniac hostile to the United States if you wish to perform work in sensitive areas of that country’s government seems a nefarious message only to the nefarious. If someone associated in such close ways to devotees of, say, Vladimir Putin instead of Joseph Stalin, would MSNBC air a fawning documentary in defense of the accused?

In 2023, honest people can and do debate whether Oppenheimer acted on behalf of the Soviet Union. No debate among serious people exists as to the justification of the government taking away his security clearance. But almost 70 years later, after time naturally clouds the public’s knowledge of events, propagandists can and do omit some facts and invent others to propel a narrative.

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