American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

Strauss persuaded his fellow commissioners to have all 3,000 typewritten pages of the hearing transcript published by the Government Printing Office. This violated the Gray Board’s promise to all the witnesses that their testimony would remain confidential. But Strauss felt that he was not winning the public relations battle and so he brushed aside this concern. Comprising some 750,000 words in 993 densely printed pages, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer soon became a seminal document of the early Cold War. To be certain that the initial news stories embarrassed Oppenheimer, Strauss had the AEC staff highlight the most damaging testimony for reporters. Walter Winchell—the right-wing mudslinging syndicated columnist—obligingly wrote: “. . . Oppenheimer’s testimony (which most people skip over) included the name of his mistress (the late Jean Tatlock), a fanatical ‘Redski’ with whom he admitted associations after his marriage ‘of the most intimate kind.’ . . . This when he was working on the Big Bomb and knew his Doll was an active member of a Commy apparatus.