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interpret Dr. Oppenheimer's confusion as evasion or downright un–
truthfulness and to take the fullest possible advantage of it.
And Dr. Oppenheimer's counsel are totally unequipped to help
their client in this area where he desperately needs assistance; indeed,
they confound confusion. The defense made by Mr. Garrison and
his colleagues is certainly no pro-Communist defense. But neither is
it an anti-Communist defense of a knowledgeableness such as the
situation demands. It is a typical liberal-progressive defense with all
this implies of unwillingness or unreadiness to make a close year-by–
year appraisal of the evolving relationship, over the last two decades,
between the typical liberalism of our time and the Soviet Union. The
result of this political inadequacy, shared by Dr. Oppenheimer and
his lawyers, is that Dr. Oppenheimer's honesty is impugned where
it
might have been most affirmed and his simplicity in confessing past
mistakes, instead of ringing a note of sincerity, sounds like manipula–
tion or inverse vanity. Most serious of all, because they lack the in–
tellectual framework for comprehending his political conduct, Dr.
Oppenheimer and his lawyers are unable to defend hint as they should
against concrete charges.
We must keep it in mind that Dr. Oppenheimer's clearance was
finally denied him on grounds of character and associations. On the
issue of associations, the Commission rests the weight of its decision
on the charge that Dr. Oppenheimer has continuing association with
Communists, as evidenced by the fact that he has associated with
Haakon Chevalier as recently as 1953. (I shall return to this point
presently.) On the issue of character there are six charges:
(1) In the matter of the Chevalier-Eltenton incident, he is
charged with either having lied to Federal officers in 1943, as he
says he did, or of lying today. (The implication being, of course,
that he is lying today.) This incident concerns an approach to Dr.
Oppenheimer in 1943 by Haakon Chevalier on behalf of George
Eltenton for the purpose of obtaining scientific information for
Russia. Dr. Oppenheimer rejected Chevalier's overture but did not
report the approach until some months after it took place, and when
he did finally speak of it to Colonel Pash of Military Intelligence and
Colonel Lansdale, security officer at Los Alamos, he told a story
which he now says was a tissue of lies except for the mention of
