American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

As if to remind them of their status, FBI agents periodically showed up to question their neighbors. Occasionally they’d visit the Oppenheimer ranch and ask Frank to talk about other people in the CP. Once an agent specifically told him, “Don’t you want to get a job in a university? If you do, you have to cooperate with us.” Frank always turned them away. In 1950, Frank wrote: “Finally, after all these years, I have gotten wise to the fact that the FBI isn’t trying to investigate me, it is trying to poison the atmosphere in which I live. It is trying to punish me for being left wing by turning my friends, my neighbors, my colleagues against me and make them suspicious of me.”