American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

In Oppenheimer, he said, we were faced with “one of the great minds of this generation of Americans.” Such a man, he suggested, could not “speak dishonestly about a subject which had really engaged the responsible attention of his intellect. . . . I would suppose that you might just as well have asked Leonardo da Vinci to distort an anatomical drawing as that you should ask Robert Oppenheimer to speak . . . dishonestly.” This provoked Robb to ask Kennan under cross-examination if he meant to suggest that different standards should be used when judging “gifted individuals.” Kennan: “I think the church has known that. Had the church applied to St. Francis the criteria relating solely to his youth, it would not have been able for him to be what he was later. . . . it is only the great sinners who become the great saints and in the life of the Government, there can be applied the analogy.”