On December 21, 1953, Lewis Strauss summoned J. Robert Oppenheimer to tell him that the AEC believed he was a security risk. Strauss gave him twenty-four hours either to challenge the AEC charge or to concur in his own repudiation. Oppenheimer, for all his awareness of the growing resentment of him in high places, was stunned. He sat that first day with his two lawyers (with the FBI listening in on electronic bugs), shaking his head and saying, “I can’t believe what is happening to me!”
