American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

“Oppenheimer is not a gypsy like me,” Einstein confided to his close friend Johanna Fantova. “I was born with the skin of an elephant; there is no one who can hurt me.” Oppenheimer, he thought, clearly was a man who was easily hurt—and intimidated.

This was 1954, the apogee of the McCarthy years, and forcing former communists, fellow travelers and left-wing activists called before congressional committees to name names was precisely the McCarthyites’ political game. It was a humiliating experience in a culture that despised a “snitch,” a Judas, and that was the point: to destroy a witness’ sense of personal integrity.

When it came to the mind of Dr. Oppenheimer, he said, “I would accept a considerable amount of political immaturity in return for this rather esoteric, this rather indefinite, theoretical thinking that I believe we are going to be dependent on for the next generation.”

How should a man be judged, by his associations or by his actions? Can criticism of a government’s policies be equated with disloyalty to country? Can democracy survive in an atmosphere that demands the sacrifice of personal relationships to state policy? Is national security well served by applying narrow tests of political conformity to government employees?

I believe it was Addison, and someone correct me if I am wrong, that said, ‘Great wits are near to madness, closely allied and thin partitions do their bounds divide.’ ”

The term ‘security risk’ is such a broad one that you can start out accusing a fellow of treason and end up by convicting him of fibbing, but still impose the same punishment.

FOR A FEW YEARS after World War II, scientists had been regarded as a new class of intellectuals, members of a public-policy priesthood who might legitimately offer expertise not only as scientists but as public philosophers. With Oppenheimer’s defrocking, scientists knew that in the future they could serve the state only as experts on narrow scientific issues.

The narrowest vision of how American scientists should serve their country had triumphed.

Asked whether humanity now had the capability to destroy itself, Oppenheimer replied, “Not quite. Not quite. You can certainly destroy enough of humanity so that only the greatest act of faith can persuade you that what’s left will be human.”

To say the least, the Oppenheimers were not easy houseguests. Kitty was invariably up half the night, often groaning with pain from what she called her “pancreas attacks.” These only got worse with her drinking. Both Kitty and Robert “were great believers in drinking and smoking in bed.”

I feel it to be a waste of the life that is left to you for you to be caught up in such guilt feelings.” He then reminded Oppenheimer of a play by Jean-Paul Sartre “in which the hero is finally freed of guilt by recognizing responsibility. As I understand it, one feels guilty for past actions, because they grew out of what one was and still is.” Bohm believed that mere guilt feelings are meaningless. “I can understand that your dilemma was a peculiarly difficult one. Only you can assess the way in which you were responsible for what happened. .

Now, I don’t know how to describe my life without using some word like ‘responsibility’ to characterize it, a word that has to do with choice and action and the tension in which choices can be resolved. I am not talking about knowledge, but about being limited by what you can do. . . . There is no meaningful responsibility without power. It may be only power over what you do yourself—but increased knowledge, increased wealth, leisure are all increasing the domain in which responsibility is conceivable.”

I think a lot of people have given up trying to comprehend things, and when they give up with the physical world, they give up with the social and political world as well. If we give up trying to understand things, I think we’ll all be sunk.”

“Kitty managed her life so much that Toni never became independent.”