THE OPPENHEIMER CASE
605
penheimer appeared by order of the Commission or of their superior
officers in government service. That is, the Commission concerned it–
self to produce only such testimony as would help prove that Dr.
Oppenheimer should be refused clearance. And Mr. Robb, lawyer
for the Commission, addressed himself to the case entirely in this
adversary spirit: it was
his
effort to elicit from. his witnesses not the
whole truth, whichever side it might serve, but solely such evidence
as would discredit the defense. Ruthless and brilliant, Mr. Robb was
a prosecuting attorney with a single-minded purpose, to achieve Dr.
Oppenheimer's defeat.
In addition, the procedure employed in the hearings gave a
large advantage to the Commission. In a trial, the prosecution would
have to state its case first and the burden of proof would lie with it.
In
this
inquiry, as, I gather, in all loyalty hearings, the defense bore
the burden of proof. The defense was on the stand first and had
to make its case without exact knowledge of the evidence that might
be produced against it. Counsel for the Commission had access to all
government files and documents, including Dr. Oppenheimer's own
files from the period of his government service, and was allowed to
produce them at will without first acquainting the defense with their
existence and content. Then, when Dr. Oppenheimer's lawyers raised
the conventional legal objections to this procedure, they were made
to seem unfriendly, even petulant and unreasonable: friendliness was
demanded only of their side. Repeatedly and humiliatingly, Mr. Gar–
rison and Mr. Silverman were reminded of the many courtesies to
which they were responding with an insufficient gratitude.
The courtesies were of course there. It is not to be denied that
Mr. Gray, as Chainnan of the Board, not only made constant scrupu–
lous reference to the rules under which the Board operated but was
also explicitly conscious of the desirability of a certain generosity to
the defense. In essence, however, the procedural framework within
which the Board worked made a mockery of courtesy-or so it seems
to the reader like myself who has no legal training. It is also my
impression that, for all his rather too-elaborate caution, Mr. Gray
did not always succeed in rising above the ambiguous circumstances
in which he had been placed. The procedural latitude permitted him
by the legally unconventional circumstances of the inquiry inevitably
licensed a large play of his personality, and almost from the start of
