He told the AEC’s general counsel, William Mitchell, that “if this case is lost, the atomic energy program . . . will fall into the hands of ‘left-wingers.’ If this occurs, it will mean another Pearl Harbor. . . . if Oppenheimer is cleared, then ‘anyone’ can be cleared regardless of the information against them.” With the country’s future at stake, Strauss reasoned, normal legal and ethical constraints could be ignored.
