THE OPPENHEIMER CASE
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intimately connected in the Commission's formulation of its action
against Dr. Oppenheimer. Indeed, I am wholly persuaded that it was
precisely because of Dr. Oppenheimer's differences with the H-bomb
enthusiasts, with all the conflicts of personality that this dissension
aggravated, that his Communist past was reopened and the question
of his loyalty revived.
Now, if this is so, it is obvious that motive is immediately and
most importantly called into question. Is there, we must ask, anything
in Dr. Oppenheimer's Communist past to account for his opposition
to the H-bomb and to warrant the suspicion that his scientific-military
opinions were improperly motivated? Or is improper motive to be
ascribed, not to Dr. Oppenheimer, but to those who oppose him?
I am frank to confess that from the preconceptions of a conven–
tional anti-Stalinist position, the view I first took of this aspect of
Dr. Oppenheimer's case was that Dr. Oppenheimer, once an ad–
mitted fellow-traveler, had favored the fiercest possible weapon which
would presumably be used against Germany or Japan but had op–
posed the fiercest possible weapon which would presumably be used
against Russia. On this line of reasoning I had concluded that Dr.
Oppenheimer's opposition to the H-bomb was wrongly motivated.
The transcript has now profoundly altered this earlier view.
It
is
now my opinion that Dr. Oppenheimer's former political attitudes
are wholly irrelevant to his H-bomb position, and that the reason he
was reinvestigated was because he represented a way of thinking and
perhaps even of being which was antipathetic to a dominant faction
and because the political climate of our times had prepared an
appropriate ground for his defeat.
In large part this change in my view is dictated by the knowl–
edge which the record gives us, which I have already tried to suggest,
of the intense factionalism involved in Dr. Oppenheimer's case and
of the range and quality of the hostilities which surrounded the pro–
fessional divisions. But it is also influenced by the clear light which
the record sheds on the nature of Dr. Oppenheimer's opposition to
a thermonuclear weapon and its evidence of the variety both of
judgments and political backgrounds which could meet on his side
of the controversy.
The allegation in Mr. Nichols' letter, that Dr. Oppenheimer
opposed the H-bomb on moral grounds, by claiming that it was not
