The Oppenheimer Case

ONE year ago this month the President's personal advisor on atomic energy matters, Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, succeeded Gordon Dean as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Four days after assuming office, Strauss had taken steps to initiate a new security and loyalty investigation of the theoretical physicist who had served a decade earlier as the chief architect of the atomic weapons program to which the AEC owes its existence. Robert Oppenheimer, as wartime laboratory director at Los Alamos, had demonstrated qualities of wisdom, imagination, and leadership that were remarkably suited in that urgent atmosphere to the administration of a laboratory staffed predominantly by civilian scientists, both American and foreign born, whose work had to be done in close cooperation with professional military personnel. The spectacular success of the undertaking is now history, the A bomb has been dwarfed by the H bomb, patterns of international tension have been drastically altered, traitorous disclosures of secret atomic information have come to light, and security clearance requirements for secret work have been stiffened and made subject to new and uncompromising standards.