This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Oppenheimer security clearance hearing article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1Auto-archiving period: 300 days
![]() |
![]() | Oppenheimer security clearance hearing is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | ||||||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on March 24, 2016, and on December 17, 2023. | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on May 27, 2024. | ||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
![]() | This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Oppenheimer had sympathies with many left-liberal causes that were also being pushed by Communists in the 1930's (like old-age pensions and universal health insurance), but this is not to say he was in any sense a Communist. Indeed he reported that he'd read Marx's Capital, thought it made no sense, and decided the whole thing was nonsense. His brother Frank, however, was a Communist.
Remember, that back in the 1930's, civil rights was a Communist Plot, as was government-tax-supported health care for retirees. Nowadays in the US, as any Republican retiree will tell you, government-run health care is only a Communist plot when it involves younger people. ;) That's kind of the situation Oppenheimer was in. S B H arris 00:48, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
As to your second point, in fact, the hearing very quickly degenerated into matters far beyond Oppenheimer's connections with the Commies in the 1930's, and his refusal to rat out his friend in 1943. For example, the prosecution allowed Teller to testify that he thought Oppenheimer's loyalty was not the problem, so much as his judgement about development of the H-bomb. But that's not a security issue, it's technical issue. So what's it doing in a security hearing? If you want your consultants to give you the answers you want about development of new weapons systems, you should pick your consultants from among military contractors! There are always plenty of them. And if you don't like the answers you're getting from a given consultant about the development of some superweapon that hasn't been demonstrated (some Starwars system, in todays' terms) you need to talk to many physicists, not just some guy who's the major grant-winner for the weapons system from the Air Force. (Take a look at the MIRACL laser: This problem hasn't gone away, you know, but we don't remove the security clearances of nay-sayers)
It didn't help that Truman had announced a push for the H-bomb in early 1950 (rather like Reagan and Starwars, again). But just because the president says it should be done, ala JFK, doesn't mean it can be done (think of Bush deciding to go to Mars on an Earth-orbit budget). Presidents can be fools and it's the job of their advisors to tell them when their great dreams can't be realized for the money they have to spend. From what we know of the history of the H-bomb (read Rhodes' Dark Sun), Oppenheimer opposed H-bomb development when given designs that would not have worked (and actually didn't work-- the "alarm clock/layer cake"), but changed his mind when presented with a design that had a chance to work (Teller-Ulam implosion). That's what you pay consultants for, not to be true-believers like Teller, who push for something maniacally, whether it has a chance or not.
If you know anything about Oppenheimer and Teller's relationship in the Manhattan project, you can see that Oppenheimer's worst piece of judgement was not firing Teller for insubordination in 1944, and sending him packing to any university that would have him. Teller would NOT help with the atomic bomb, which he considered boring. He was only interested in the hydrogen bomb. And Oppenheimer, when faced with this primadona that he didn't have to put up with (nobody should have to put up with such a man on a desperately short and time intensive project like Manhattan) actually paid Teller to work on the H-bomb, and allowed him a precious bit of his Manhattan director's time, each week! Incredible. And his thanks for this kindness to Teller, who was a narcissist of the first water, was to have Teller accuse him of unpatriotically bad judgement!
You couldn't make this kind of thing up-- they'd say you had made bad, unbelievable fiction, ala Ayn Rand. But it really happened just this way. I would suggest reading The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb which is a bit dated, but tells a lot of this tale. Also Rhodes' first book. S B H arris 04:48, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
As to the other, you have your facts wrong. JRO switched from opposing the H-bomb in 1949 (the year the Soviets demonstrated their own atomic weapon, but before it had happened), to supporting it in 1951 (after the president had announced developement in 1950, a workable design had been put forward in 1951, and when it was clear that the Soviets would develop their own H-bomb soon). And the Soviets were even farther from being allies in 1951-- you will remember that they'd stomped out of the U.N. security council when the Korean war started in 1950, thus allowing the U.N. police action to take place against the coummunist-supported North Korea, over the USSR's stated oppostion. So your facts are not only wrong, but completely bass-ackwards. JRO opposed the bomb when the Soviets were toothless former allies, but supported it once the Soviets became a nuclear power in open support of Communist aggression in Korea.
I quote from the JRO article, which sums it up: "Oppenheimer's critics have accused him of equivocating between 1949, when he opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and 1951, when he supported it. Some have made this a case for reinforcing their opinions about his moral inconsistency. Historian Priscilla McMillan has argued,[50] however, that if Oppenheimer has been accused of being morally inconsistent, then so should Rabi and Fermi, who had also opposed the program in 1949. Most of the GAC members were against a crash hydrogen bomb development program then, and in fact, Conant, Fermi and Rabi had submitted even more strongly worded reports against it than Oppenheimer. McMillan's argument is that because the hydrogen bomb appeared to be well within reach in 1951, everybody had to assume that the Russians could also do it, and that was the main reason why they changed their stance in favor of developing it. Thus this change in opinion should not be viewed as a change in morality, but a change in opinions purely based on technical possibilities." This is what JRO himself said. S B H arris 19:20, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
If your last point is that there was due process because McCarthyism was unfair and JRO got treated no more unfairly than anybody else in the country, it's not valid. A lot of unfair institutions from the witchhunts to the inquisition to slavery have affected many people over the ages. Their victims are still worth studying. JRO as much as (say) Galileo. S B H arris 02:17, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
The article says that there is "substantial evidence" that he was in the CPUSA. I think that this needs to be directly supported by an inline footnote. I don't have access to the book cited that evidently is the source, but the Google Books excerpts don't show this. In various other ways this article has been a bit slanted against JRO, and I have tried to fix. Figureofnine ( talk) 19:32, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Communist or a "Commie"?
Apart from the latter-day Dr Strange Loves or hard-right cheerleaders, how many people now use the term "commie"? Almost as if the Cold War never ended? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.147.153.97 ( talk) 16:22, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
"Time magazine literary critic Richard Lacayo, in a 2005 review of two new books about Oppenheimer, said of the hearing: "As an effort to prove that he had been a party member, much less one involved in espionage, the inquest was a failure. Its real purpose was larger, however: to punish the most prominent American critic of the U.S. move from atomic weapons to the much more lethal hydrogen bomb." After the hearing, Lacayo said, "Oppenheimer would never again feel comfortable as a public advocate for a sane nuclear policy."
So, despite the seemingly endless debate, is not the defence of the US atomic policy a major reason for for such Character Assassination? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.147.153.97 ( talk) 17:11, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Hi, FYI I created a category on Commons and uploaded all public domain documents I could find, including the whole transcript of the hearings. Yann ( talk) 15:30, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
Is there any sentiment to reconsidering the title of the article, perhaps to Oppenheimer security clearance hearing? Figureofnine ( talk • contribs) 16:09, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Since there is no opposition since I posted this three weeks ago, it does not appear to be controversial and I will change it. Figureofnine ( talk • contribs) 16:18, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Oppenheimer security clearance hearing article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1Auto-archiving period: 300 days
![]() |
![]() | Oppenheimer security clearance hearing is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | ||||||||||||
![]() | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on March 24, 2016, and on December 17, 2023. | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
![]() | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the " On this day..." column on May 27, 2024. | ||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
![]() | This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Oppenheimer had sympathies with many left-liberal causes that were also being pushed by Communists in the 1930's (like old-age pensions and universal health insurance), but this is not to say he was in any sense a Communist. Indeed he reported that he'd read Marx's Capital, thought it made no sense, and decided the whole thing was nonsense. His brother Frank, however, was a Communist.
Remember, that back in the 1930's, civil rights was a Communist Plot, as was government-tax-supported health care for retirees. Nowadays in the US, as any Republican retiree will tell you, government-run health care is only a Communist plot when it involves younger people. ;) That's kind of the situation Oppenheimer was in. S B H arris 00:48, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
As to your second point, in fact, the hearing very quickly degenerated into matters far beyond Oppenheimer's connections with the Commies in the 1930's, and his refusal to rat out his friend in 1943. For example, the prosecution allowed Teller to testify that he thought Oppenheimer's loyalty was not the problem, so much as his judgement about development of the H-bomb. But that's not a security issue, it's technical issue. So what's it doing in a security hearing? If you want your consultants to give you the answers you want about development of new weapons systems, you should pick your consultants from among military contractors! There are always plenty of them. And if you don't like the answers you're getting from a given consultant about the development of some superweapon that hasn't been demonstrated (some Starwars system, in todays' terms) you need to talk to many physicists, not just some guy who's the major grant-winner for the weapons system from the Air Force. (Take a look at the MIRACL laser: This problem hasn't gone away, you know, but we don't remove the security clearances of nay-sayers)
It didn't help that Truman had announced a push for the H-bomb in early 1950 (rather like Reagan and Starwars, again). But just because the president says it should be done, ala JFK, doesn't mean it can be done (think of Bush deciding to go to Mars on an Earth-orbit budget). Presidents can be fools and it's the job of their advisors to tell them when their great dreams can't be realized for the money they have to spend. From what we know of the history of the H-bomb (read Rhodes' Dark Sun), Oppenheimer opposed H-bomb development when given designs that would not have worked (and actually didn't work-- the "alarm clock/layer cake"), but changed his mind when presented with a design that had a chance to work (Teller-Ulam implosion). That's what you pay consultants for, not to be true-believers like Teller, who push for something maniacally, whether it has a chance or not.
If you know anything about Oppenheimer and Teller's relationship in the Manhattan project, you can see that Oppenheimer's worst piece of judgement was not firing Teller for insubordination in 1944, and sending him packing to any university that would have him. Teller would NOT help with the atomic bomb, which he considered boring. He was only interested in the hydrogen bomb. And Oppenheimer, when faced with this primadona that he didn't have to put up with (nobody should have to put up with such a man on a desperately short and time intensive project like Manhattan) actually paid Teller to work on the H-bomb, and allowed him a precious bit of his Manhattan director's time, each week! Incredible. And his thanks for this kindness to Teller, who was a narcissist of the first water, was to have Teller accuse him of unpatriotically bad judgement!
You couldn't make this kind of thing up-- they'd say you had made bad, unbelievable fiction, ala Ayn Rand. But it really happened just this way. I would suggest reading The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb which is a bit dated, but tells a lot of this tale. Also Rhodes' first book. S B H arris 04:48, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
As to the other, you have your facts wrong. JRO switched from opposing the H-bomb in 1949 (the year the Soviets demonstrated their own atomic weapon, but before it had happened), to supporting it in 1951 (after the president had announced developement in 1950, a workable design had been put forward in 1951, and when it was clear that the Soviets would develop their own H-bomb soon). And the Soviets were even farther from being allies in 1951-- you will remember that they'd stomped out of the U.N. security council when the Korean war started in 1950, thus allowing the U.N. police action to take place against the coummunist-supported North Korea, over the USSR's stated oppostion. So your facts are not only wrong, but completely bass-ackwards. JRO opposed the bomb when the Soviets were toothless former allies, but supported it once the Soviets became a nuclear power in open support of Communist aggression in Korea.
I quote from the JRO article, which sums it up: "Oppenheimer's critics have accused him of equivocating between 1949, when he opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and 1951, when he supported it. Some have made this a case for reinforcing their opinions about his moral inconsistency. Historian Priscilla McMillan has argued,[50] however, that if Oppenheimer has been accused of being morally inconsistent, then so should Rabi and Fermi, who had also opposed the program in 1949. Most of the GAC members were against a crash hydrogen bomb development program then, and in fact, Conant, Fermi and Rabi had submitted even more strongly worded reports against it than Oppenheimer. McMillan's argument is that because the hydrogen bomb appeared to be well within reach in 1951, everybody had to assume that the Russians could also do it, and that was the main reason why they changed their stance in favor of developing it. Thus this change in opinion should not be viewed as a change in morality, but a change in opinions purely based on technical possibilities." This is what JRO himself said. S B H arris 19:20, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
If your last point is that there was due process because McCarthyism was unfair and JRO got treated no more unfairly than anybody else in the country, it's not valid. A lot of unfair institutions from the witchhunts to the inquisition to slavery have affected many people over the ages. Their victims are still worth studying. JRO as much as (say) Galileo. S B H arris 02:17, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
The article says that there is "substantial evidence" that he was in the CPUSA. I think that this needs to be directly supported by an inline footnote. I don't have access to the book cited that evidently is the source, but the Google Books excerpts don't show this. In various other ways this article has been a bit slanted against JRO, and I have tried to fix. Figureofnine ( talk) 19:32, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
Communist or a "Commie"?
Apart from the latter-day Dr Strange Loves or hard-right cheerleaders, how many people now use the term "commie"? Almost as if the Cold War never ended? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.147.153.97 ( talk) 16:22, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
"Time magazine literary critic Richard Lacayo, in a 2005 review of two new books about Oppenheimer, said of the hearing: "As an effort to prove that he had been a party member, much less one involved in espionage, the inquest was a failure. Its real purpose was larger, however: to punish the most prominent American critic of the U.S. move from atomic weapons to the much more lethal hydrogen bomb." After the hearing, Lacayo said, "Oppenheimer would never again feel comfortable as a public advocate for a sane nuclear policy."
So, despite the seemingly endless debate, is not the defence of the US atomic policy a major reason for for such Character Assassination? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.147.153.97 ( talk) 17:11, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
Hi, FYI I created a category on Commons and uploaded all public domain documents I could find, including the whole transcript of the hearings. Yann ( talk) 15:30, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
Is there any sentiment to reconsidering the title of the article, perhaps to Oppenheimer security clearance hearing? Figureofnine ( talk • contribs) 16:09, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Since there is no opposition since I posted this three weeks ago, it does not appear to be controversial and I will change it. Figureofnine ( talk • contribs) 16:18, 28 February 2024 (UTC)