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some two dozen specific items of derogatory information about Dr.
Oppenheimer-that he had been a sponsor of the Friends of the
Chinese People, that he had been a member of the Western Council
of the Consumers Union, that his wife had been formerly married to
a Communist and herself briefly a member of the Communist Party,
that his brother had been a Communist, that his brother's wife had
been a Communist, etc., etc. Among these allegations we remember
there appeared a group of four or five points which dealt with Dr.
Oppenheimer's relation to the H-bomb. Quite properly, I think,
when the Gray Board announced its findings, it took up each of
these specific items seriatim, including those which had reference to
the H-bomb issue. In fact, the Gray report devoted what looked at
the time, before the transcript of the inquiry was available to the
public, like a rather disproportionate amount of space to Dr. Oppen–
heimer's attitudes on the hydrogen weapon. The public reaction to
this part of the Gray report was intensely unfavorable. Liberal senti–
ment was outraged that in a democracy a man should be condemned
because his opinions differed from what came to be ruling opinion–
for this was how the public interpreted the Gray Board's evaluation
of Dr. Oppenheimer'S attitudes in the H-bomb controversy.
This experience of the public response to the Gray report behind
it, the Atomic Energy Commission was far more cautious than the
Gray Board had thought to be. With an impressive show of demo–
cratic conscience, it ruled the matter of Dr. Oppenheimer's opinions
on the H-bomb out of the discussion of his fitness for clearance. It
is nevertheless my belief, on my reading of the record, that whatever
pitfalls the Gray Board was led into by its attempt to deal with Dr.
Oppenheimer's attitude toward the H-bomb, it was at least honest
in trying to reach a conclusion on this most considerable aspect of
the case. On the other hand, the Atomic Energy Commission, in
steering clear of the disagreeable charge of punishing a man for his
opinions, evaded the very issue in which, I believe, its differences
with Dr. Oppenheimer and its suspicions of him had crystallized. For
while the two parts of the Commission's case against Dr. Oppen–
heimer-( 1) his Communist associations, his character and his dis–
cretion and (2) his attitude toward the H-bomb-can now be
separated as the Commission has separated them, the record of the
inquiry leaves no doubt in my mind but that the two parts were
