THE OPPENHEIMER CASE
613
hydrogen weapon. This was a tremendous blow to the H-bomb pro–
ponents. They had to wait for a Presidential decision before being
able to carry forward their program, and even then, according to
the allegations in Mr. Nichols' letter of notification and of the Teller
group in the hearings, although Dr. Oppenheimer no longer voiced
opposition to the pursuit of a hydrogen weapon, he failed to support
the effort with sufficient enthusiasm and therefore seriously ham–
pered its progress. President Truman's order to proceed with the
crash program came in January 1950. A few months later Dr. Op–
penheimer, because he felt that it was perhaps not appropriate for
him to continue as Chairman of a Committee engaged on a program
which he had disapproved, offered his resignation as Chairman of the
General Advisory Committee to Mr. Gordon Dean, then Chairman
of the Commission. Mr. Dean refused the resignation. In company
with other members of the Committee who had shared his position on
the H-bomb, Dr. Oppenheimer continued as adviser to a program
in which he had not concurred but which was now ordered by the
President.
This, most briefly and in terms only of the public record, is
what is behind the Oppenheimer case. In barest outline, it sum–
marizes a policy division the statement and interpretation of whose
details take up, I should say, some two-thirds of the transcript of the
Gray Board investigation. The history of Dr. Oppenheimer's atti–
tudes toward thermonuclear research ever since the start of Los
Alamos; the degree to which Dr. Oppenheimer might have been re–
sponsible for the attitudes of his colleagues and the extent to which
his disagreements might conceivably have hampered the efforts of
the thermonuclear group; the projects on which Dr. Oppenheimer
engaged himself which can be interpreted as diversions from the
main thermonuclear goal; the military policies which Dr. Oppen–
heimer is said to have advocated which differed from the policies
of other scientific advisers to the military-all these are the subject
of many long days of reasoning and conjecture before the Gray
Board, the testimony in which we discover the conflicting scientific
and military views and the personal and professional friendships and
animosities which are at once the fascination and the horror of Dr.
Oppenheimer's peculiar tragedy.
We recall that in Mr. Nichols' letter of notification there were
