Why Did Lewis Strauss Hate Oppenheimer? Atomic Feud Explained BYMEGAN HEMENWAYPUBLISHED DEC 2, 2023
Though Oppenheimer centers on the atomic bomb, an important piece of the movie is the strained relationship between Lewis Strauss and Oppenheimer.
SUMMARY The feud between Lewis Strauss and J. Robert Oppenheimer was a significant element in their lives with lasting consequences for both parties. (94 characters) The Strauss/Oppenheimer feud plays a prominent role in Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" film, affecting their careers and personal lives. (132 characters) Lewis Strauss's hatred of Oppenheimer eventually backfired, leading to his failed cabinet appointment and tarnished reputation. (123 characters)
While Oppenheimer depicts many different parts of the famous physicist's life, from his romances and his time at Los Alamos to his ties with Communism and his later political activism, there is one vital part of the film that is a crux which the movie relies on from the beginning to the end: the feud between Lewis Strauss and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Though this rivalry could be seen as overdramatized for the sake of the film, the reality is that this strained relationship truly did happen in real life, and did have major consequences for both parties. Ultimately, the feud continued to hurt them a decade after it started.
In Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, the Strauss/Oppenheimer feud is something of a B-plot that becomes more and more relevant as the film goes on. In Oppenheimer's cast, J. Robert Oppenheimer is played by Cillian Murphy, while Lewis Strauss is portrayed by Robert Downy Jr. According to the film, the two meet at Princeton and have an immediate dislike for one another. Then, a disagreement soon after only serves to make their enmity worse. This leads to Lewis Strauss actively targeting Oppenheimer later in his life via the intense AEC hearing. And finally, at the end of Oppenheimer, Strauss' hatred of Oppenheimer prevents him from getting a prestigious job.
The rivalry between Lewis Strauss and Oppenheimer first began in 1947. This was two years after Oppenheimer had created the atomic bomb, and two years after the bomb had been used to destroy Nagasaki and Hiroshima. At that point, Oppenheimer's involvement in the Manhattan Project had made him a national hero and a major voice in terms of nuclear power and national security. Due to his popularity, Lewis Strauss, who was a trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, presented Oppenheimer with the opportunity to become the institute's director. Notably, Strauss had also been considered for the position, but Oppenheimer won out against him.
This lead Strauss to immediately dislike Oppenheimer, but their differing politics also played a role as well. Strauss was a firm Republican, while Oppenheimer had more liberal views and Communist ties. Furthermore, in terms of certain decisions on nuclear policy, the two were opposed as well. Oppenheimer was against the creation of the hydrogen bomb and believed in complete openness about the U.S.'s nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Strauss supported the hydrogen bomb and the development of thermonuclear weapons, and thought that openness would only hurt the United States.
Strauss & Oppenheimer's Feud Began In 1947 Due To The AEC
Strauss and Oppenheimer's feud was exacerbated later that same year because of a disagreement the men had in 1947. Aside from both working at Princeton, they were both part of the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of senior atomic scientists. Oppenheimer was the group's chair, and it existed under the rule of the AEC. During a discussion on the safety of transporting radioisotopes for medical purposes, Strauss was overpowered by Oppenheimer and the committee. As a result, Strauss held a grudge against Oppenheimer, while Oppenheimer and the other scientists looked down on Strauss for his views.
Oppenheimer Humiliated Lewis Strauss In 1949
The ultimate tipping point for Lewis Strauss and J. Robert Oppenheimer occurred two years after the men had met in 1949. The radioisotope problem had still not been settled between Strauss and the GAC, and therefore, Oppenheimer was called to speak at a public hearing on the issue before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. This hearing was orchestrated by Strauss because of how the GAC had overruled him in 1947, which is an interesting piece of foreshadowing for later events between Strauss and Oppenheimer. Ultimately, the hearing led to Strauss' utter embarrassment.
When asked about the importance of exporting radioisotopes, Oppenheimer said the following: "My own rating of the importance of isotopes in this broad sense is that they are far less important than electronic devices but far more important than, let us say, vitamins, somewhere in between." Oppenheimer's witty point that radioisotopes are not as dangerous as Strauss claimed them to be made Strauss look like a fool at the public hearing. As a result, Strauss never forgave Oppenheimer, and attempted to ruin him for good.
In Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, the word "vitamins" in the above quote is actually changed to "sandwich." Presumably, this change was made to make the remark seem even more flippant against Strauss.
Strauss Reportedly Held Personal Vendettas Against Oppenheimer For His Behavior
Though this isn't necessarily explored in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, Strauss had other reasons for hating J. Robert Oppenheimer that went beyond the face-to-face conflicts that they had. In particular, Strauss resented Oppenheimer for his lifestyle and choices. Strauss took pride in his Jewish heritage and his ability to rise through the ranks of the U.S. government despite intense anti-semitism. In turn, he looked down on Oppenheimer for not being more public about his own Jewish background, especially considering his success in his field. Furthermore, Strauss disliked Oppenheimer's infidelity to his wife, and resented him for that as well.
Strauss' Hatred Led To Oppenheimer's Security Hearing
Ultimately, Lewis Strauss did get his revenge against Oppenheimer. During the early 1950s, Strauss used his position as chairman of the AEC to keep tabs on Oppenheimer. He asked the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to track Oppenheimer's movements in search of disloyalty, which included illegal tapping of his phones. In 1953, a letter was written to the FBI alleging that Oppenheimer was most definitely a Soviet spy, and as a result, Oppenheimer was forced to undergo an AEC hearing which ended up stripping him of his security clearance. The hearing was completely orchestrated by Strauss, who did everything he could to render Oppenheimer's defense useless.
How Lewis Strauss' Feud With Oppenheimer Hurt His Career
Although Strauss successfully rid Oppenheimer of his access to the government's atomic work, his hatred of Oppenheimer eventually backfired. In 1958, Strauss entered the running to become the Secretary of Commerce. Though he could have been reappointed as the chairman of the AEC, the Oppenheimer affair had made him unpopular among scientists. But, as it turned out, this unpopularity translated to the U.S. government as well. Strauss' manipulation of Oppenheimer's AEC hearing was found out among other deceitful actions, and therefore, Strauss' cabinet appointment failed. This courtroom scene is one of the most climactic in Oppenheimer, and considering the long history behind it, it is for good reason.
Among the captivating characters in Christopher Nolan’s recently released film, "Oppenheimer," one who has notably captured the audience's attention is Lewis Strauss, portrayed by Hollywood actor Robert Downey Jr.
The post-World War II era witnessed intense animosity between Strauss, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and renowned scientist J Robert Oppenheimer. Strauss, in his real-life role as Oppenheimer's nemesis, seemingly went to great lengths to undermine the scientist's career.
Born in 1896 to Jewish emigrant parents in West Virginia, Strauss initially aspired to study physics but found himself working as a shoe salesman to support his father's business. Eventually, he became an assistant to Herbert Hoover during World War II.
Why was Strauss so miffed with Oppenheimer?
The roots of Strauss's resentment against Oppenheimer can be traced back to an incident in 1949 when Oppenheimer publicly humiliated him for selling radioisotopes to foreign nations.
Additionally, a scene depicted in the movie, where Oppenheimer seemingly made a dismissive remark to Albert Einstein while ignoring Strauss, further fueled Strauss's animosity. However, it was later revealed in the movie that Oppenheimer's comment was not directed at Strauss.
In 1953, Strauss requested FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate Oppenheimer, leading to illegal phone tapping to build a case against him. Strauss also initiated a separate security proceeding within the AEC, alleging Oppenheimer's communist affiliations, which eventually led to the revocation of Oppenheimer's security clearances. Strauss accused him of being a Soviet agent.
Raised in Richmond, Virginia, Strauss became an assistant to Herbert Hoover as part of the Commission for Relief in Belgium during World War I and the American Relief Administration after it. Strauss then worked as an investment banker at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. during the 1920s and 1930s, where he amassed considerable wealth. As a member of the executive committee of the American Jewish Committee and several other Jewish organizations in the 1930s, Strauss made several attempts to change U.S. policy in order to accept more refugees from Nazi Germany but was unsuccessful. He also came to know and fund some of the research of refugee nuclear physicist Leo Szilard. During World War II Strauss served as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and rose to the rank of rear admiral due to his work in the Bureau of Ordnance in managing and rewarding plants engaged in production of munitions.
As a founding commissioner with the AEC during the early years of the Cold War, Strauss emphasized the need to protect U.S. atomic secrets and to monitor and stay ahead of atomic developments within the Soviet Union. Accordingly, he was a strong proponent of developing the hydrogen bomb. During his stint as chairman of the AEC, Strauss urged the development of peaceful uses of atomic energy, and he predicted that atomic power would make electricity "too cheap to meter". At the same time he downplayed the possible health effects of radioactive fallout such as that experienced by Pacific Islanders following the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test.
Strauss was the driving force behind the controversial hearings, held in April and May 1954 before an AEC Personnel Security Board, in which physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked. As a result, Strauss has often been regarded as a villain in American history.[2][3][4][5] President Dwight D. Eisenhower's nomination of Strauss to become U.S. Secretary of Commerce resulted in a prolonged, public political battle in 1959 where Strauss was not confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Strauss was born in Charleston, West Virginia,[1] the son of Rosa (née Lichtenstein) and Lewis Strauss, a successful shoe wholesaler.[6] Their parents were Jewish emigrants from Germany and Austria who came to the United States in the 1830s and 1840s and settled in Virginia.[7] His family moved to Richmond, Virginia, and he grew up and attended public schools there.[8][9] At the age of ten, he lost much of the vision in his right eye in a rock fight,[10] which later disqualified him from normal military service.[11]
Having developed an amateur's knowledge from reading textbooks, Strauss planned to study physics.[8] He was on track to be valedictorian of his class at John Marshall High School, which would have entitled him to a scholarship to the University of Virginia, but typhoid fever in his senior year made him unable to take final exams or graduate with his classmates.[12]
By the time he finally graduated from high school, his family's business had experienced a downturn during the Recession of 1913–1914.[13] In order to help out,[13] Strauss decided to work as a traveling shoe salesman for his father's company.[14][8] In his spare time, Strauss studied his Jewish heritage.[15] He was quite successful in his sales efforts;[16] over the next three years, he saved $20,000 (equivalent to $457,000 in 2022): enough money to cover college tuition now that the scholarship offer was no longer in effect.[13][17]
American food administrators in 1918: Hoover is on the far left, Strauss third from left
Strauss's mother encouraged him to perform public or humanitarian service.[16] It was 1917; World War I was continuing to devastate parts of Europe and Herbert Hoover had become a symbol of humanitarian altruism by way of heading the Commission for Relief in Belgium.[11] Accordingly, Strauss took the train to Washington, D.C., and talked his way into serving without pay as an assistant to Hoover.[18] (Strauss and his biographer differ on whether this happened in February[19] or May 1917, but the latter seems more likely.[18])
Hoover became chief of the United States Food Administration.[14] Strauss worked well and soon was promoted to Hoover's private secretary and confidant.[8] In that position he made powerful contacts that would serve him later on. One such contact he made was with attorney Harvey Hollister Bundy.[14] Another was with Robert A. Taft, a counsel for the Food Administration.[20]
Besides the U.S. food relief organization, Strauss worked with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to relieve the suffering of Jewish refugees, who were often neglected by other bodies.[23] Strauss acted as a liaison between Hoover's organization and JDC workers in a number of Central and Eastern European countries.[24] Getting news in April 1919 of the Pinsk massacre, during the Polish–Soviet War, in which 35 Jews meeting to discuss the distribution of American relief aid were summarily executed by the Polish Army in the belief that they were Bolshevik conspirators, Strauss pressed the case to Hoover that a forceful response must be made to the Polish government.[25] Hoover spoke to Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Jan Paderewski and demanded a fair investigation, but Strauss saw Paderewski as an anti-Semite who believed that all Jews were Bolsheviks and all Bolsheviks were Jews.[26] After a while, the situation for Jews in Poland did (temporarily) improve.[27][28]
Strauss had grown up in Virginia, in a culture that venerated Southern military heroes of the "War Between the States",[29] but a tour he took in summer 1918 to the devastated battlefields of Château-Thierry and Belleau Wood disabused him of any romantic illusions about the glory of warfare.[30] Similarly, his exposure to effects of Communism in 1919, as manifested in the Polish–Soviet War, led to a powerful and lifelong anti-Communist sentiment.[31]
At the JDC, Strauss came to the attention of Felix M. Warburg, a JDC leader who was a partner in the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York City, and Harriet Loewentstein, a JDC European head who was an accountant at the bank.[32] In addition Hoover had introduced Strauss to Mortimer Schiff, another partner at Kuhn Loeb,[1][8] who interviewed Strauss in Paris and offered him a job.[32] In so doing, Strauss turned down an offer to become comptroller for the newly forming League of Nations.[33]
Strauss returned to the United States and started at Kuhn Loeb in 1919.[8] As a result, he never did attend college, a fact that may have led to the perfectionist and defensive personality traits that he exhibited later in life.[11]
On March 5, 1923, Strauss married Alice Hanauer in a ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York.[35] Born in 1903, she was the daughter of Jerome J. Hanauer,[36] who was one of the Kuhn Loeb partners.[14] She was a New York native who had attended Vassar College and was a skilled equestrian and potter.[36] The couple had two sons, one of whom did not survive early childhood.[36] While in New York, they lived on Central Park West,[37] then on the Upper East Side,[38] and later on Central Park South.[20]
Hoover was a candidate for the Republican Party nomination in the United States presidential election, 1920; Strauss campaigned for him and attended the 1920 Republican National Convention on his behalf, but Hoover failed to gain significant support.[41] Strauss again worked for the this-time-successful campaign of Hoover in the United States presidential election, 1928, and was a member from Virginia that year of the Republican National Committee.[6] Over several years, Strauss engaged in activities designed to strengthen the Republican Party in Virginia and the South overall.[42] He also was committed to protecting the reputation of President Hoover; in 1930, on behalf of the White House, he conspired with two naval intelligence officers to illegally break into the office of a Tammany Hall follower in New York who was thought to hold documents that would be damaging to Hoover.[43][44]
During the 1930s, following Hoover's re-election defeat by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States presidential election, 1932, Strauss was a strong opponent of the New Deal.[45] He shared this antipathy with Hoover, who increasingly adopted an ideologically conservative, anti-New Deal viewpoint in the years following his defeat.[46]
Strauss was active in Kuhn Loeb until 1941, although he resented restrictions imposed on investment banking by regulators in the Roosevelt administration and derived less enjoyment from the business.[47] Nonetheless, in his role as an investment banker Strauss had become vastly wealthy, and given his humble original circumstances he has been considered a self-made millionaire and a Horatio Alger tale.[48][14][8] As one historian has written, Strauss's business success was the residue of "luck, pluck, hard work, and good contacts".[16] Strauss's biographer reaches a similar conclusion: "Strauss reached the top because of his ability, ambition, choices of the right firm and the right wife, and the good luck to start out at a prosperous time."[49] Due to his lack of higher education, Strauss has also been characterized as an autodidact.[50]
A proudly religious man,[51] Strauss became a leader in Jewish causes and organizations. In 1933 he was a member of the executive committee of the American Jewish Committee.[52] He was active in the Jewish Agricultural Society,[40] for whom by 1941 he was honorary president.[38] By 1938 he was also active in the Palestine Development Council, the Baron de Hirsch Fund, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.[40]
However, he was not a Zionist and opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine.[52] He did not view Jews as belonging to a nation or a race; he considered himself an American of Jewish religion, and consequently he advocated for the rights of Jews to live as equal and integral citizens of the nations in which they resided.[52]
Strauss fully recognized the brutality of Nazi Germany. He first made his concern known in early 1933, writing to President Hoover during the final weeks of Hoover's time in office.[53] Strauss attended a London conference of concerned Jews later that year on behalf of the American Jewish Committee, but the conference fell apart over the issue of Zionism.[52]
Following the November 1938 Kristallnacht attacks on Jews in Germany,[54] Strauss attempted to persuade prominent Republicans to support the Wagner–Rogers Bill that would legislatively allow the entry of 20,000 German refugee children into the United States.[55] Long allied with both Hoover and Taft,[20] he asked each of them to support the bill. Hoover did, but Taft did not, telling Strauss, "With millions of people out of work, I can't see the logic of admitting others."[56] The bill had considerable popular support, but eventually failed to move forward in Congress due to opposition from the American Legion, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and other immigration restrictionists.[54]
At the same time, Strauss joined with Hoover and Bernard Baruch in supporting the establishment of a refugee state in Africa as a safe haven for all persecuted people, not just Jews, and pledged ten percent of his wealth towards it.[55] This effort too failed to materialize.[57] Still another scheme that involved Strauss concerned an international corporation, the Coordinating Foundation, that would be set up to effectively pay Germany an immense ransom in exchange for their allowing Jews to emigrate; that too did not happen.[58] Strauss subsequently wrote: "The years from 1933 to the outbreak of World War II will ever be a nightmare to me, and the puny efforts I made to alleviate the tragedies were utter failures, save in a few individual cases—pitifully few."[59]
Strauss was president of Congregation Emanu-El of New York, the largest such in New York City, for a decade,[60] from 1938 to 1948.[8] He was named to the presidency to replace Judge Irving Lehman, after having previously been chair of the temple's finance committee.[40] He had first joined the board of trustees of the temple in 1929, when the congregation was absorbing the merger of Temple Beth-El.[61]
Strauss succeeded in Washington's social and political circles despite that environment being notoriously anti-Semitic at the time.[60] Indeed, experiences with anti-Semitism may have contributed to the outsider perspective and fractious personality that became evident during his later career.[11][55] He was proud of his Southern upbringing as well as his religion, and insisted his name be pronounced in Virginia fashion as "straws" rather than with the usual German pronunciation.[62][63][20]
Despite his medical disqualification for regular military duty, Strauss applied to join the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1925, becoming effective 1926,[6] and he received an officer's commission as a lieutenant intelligence officer.[33] He remained in the reserve as a lieutenant commander.[64] In 1939 and 1940, as World War II began overseas, he volunteered for active duty.[64] He wanted to go into intelligence but was blocked, reportedly because the Director of Naval Intelligence, U.S. Navy was prejudiced against Jews and because Strauss's contributions to B'nai B'rith had aroused suspicion on the part of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and others in the U.S. intelligence community.[55] Instead, in February 1941, he was called to active duty,[9][38] and was assigned as a Staff Assistant to the Chief at the Bureau of Ordnance,[65] where he helped organize and manage Navy munitions work.[66] Strauss and his wife moved to Washington, D.C.,[36] where they lived in an apartment at the prestigious Shoreham Hotel.[66] She served as an operating room nurse's aide during this period.[36]
During 1941, Strauss recommended actions to improve inspectors' abilities and consolidate field inspections into one General Inspectors' Office that was independent of the Navy's bureau system; these changes took hold by the following year.[67] Strauss organized a morale-boosting effort to award "E for Excellence" awards to plants doing a good job of making war materials.[11] The program proved popular and helped the United States ramp up production quickly in case it entered the war; by the end of 1941 the Bureau of Ordnance had given the "E" to 94 different defense contractors.[66] It was adopted across all services in 1942 as the Army-Navy "E" Award, and over the course of the war over 4,000 of them were granted.[68] (Strauss's biographer has depicted Strauss as also helping to investigate the notorious failures of U.S. torpedoes during the war and coordinate development of the very secret and highly successful anti-aircraft VT (proximity) fuse;[69] however histories of these efforts do not indicate that Strauss played a significant role.[70])
When James V. Forrestal succeeded Frank Knox as Secretary of the Navy in May 1944, he employed Strauss as his special assistant.[20][62] In conjunction with Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, Strauss established the Office of Naval Research, which kept scientific research of naval matters under control of the Navy rather than civilian or academic organizations.[71] Strauss's contributions were recognized by the Navy and by 1945 he was serving on the Army-Navy Munitions Board,[72] a role that concluded by the following year.[73] He was also on the Naval Reserve Policy Board starting in 1946.[74]
Earlier during the war, Strauss was promoted to commander,[75] then by November 1943 was a captain.[76] He rose in rank and influence due to a combination of his intelligence, personal energy, and ability to find favor in higher places.[48] Strauss's rigid manner managed to make enemies during the war as well, including significant disputes with E. N. Toland, chief counsel for the House Committee on Naval Affairs; Representative Carl Vinson, chair of that committee; and Admiral Ernest J. King, the Chief of Naval Operations.[77] A proposed promotion for Strauss in 1944 to rear admiral did not happen at the time due to a variety of factors, including that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had disliked Strauss for years, going back to an incident at an Inner Circle event in 1932, and blocked the move.[78] Roosevelt's death changed matters, as his successor Harry S. Truman had no negative feelings about Strauss. In July 1945 Strauss was promoted to commodore.[72] Then in November 1945, after the war, Strauss was promoted to rear admiral by Truman.[33]
The promotion to flag rank was unusual for a member of the reserve,[20] and as such,[50] he liked being addressed as "Admiral Strauss" even though use of the honorific perturbed some regular officers who considered him a civilian.[8] By this time, Strauss had taken advantage of his ties in both Washington and Wall Street to enter the post-war establishment in the capital.[62] He was also learning how to get things accomplished in Washington via unofficial back channels, something he would become quite adept at.[79]
Strauss's mother died of cancer in 1935, his father of the same disease in 1937.[80] That and his early interest in physics led Strauss to establish a fund in their names, the Lewis and Rosa Strauss Memorial Fund, for physics research that could lead to better radiation treatment for cancer patients.[81] The fund supported the refugee German physicist Arno Brasch, who was working on producing artificial radioactive material with bursts of X-rays.[82] Brasch's work was based on previous work with Leo Szilard, who saw in this work a possible means to developing an atomic chain reaction. Szilard had already foreseen that this could lead to an atomic bomb. Szilard persuaded Strauss to support him and Brasch in building a "surge generator".[83] Strauss ultimately provided tens of thousands of dollars to this venture.[84]
Through Szilard, Strauss met other nuclear physicists such as Ernest Lawrence.[85] Strauss talked to scientists who had left Nazi Germany and learned about atom-related experiments that had taken place there.[86] Szilard kept him up to date on developments in the area, such as the discovery of nuclear fission and the use of neutrons.[87] In February 1940, Szilard asked him to fund the acquisition of some radium, but Strauss refused, as he had already spent a large sum.[88]
Strauss had no further direct involvement with atomic energy developments during the war. Indeed, he was frustrated by Harvey Hollister Bundy, his colleague from the Food Administration days, who kept Strauss away from information regarding the Manhattan Project.[89] At the end of the war, when the first atomic bombs were ready for use, Strauss advocated to Forrestal dropping one on a symbolic target, such as a Japanese cedar grove near Nikkō, Tochigi, as a warning shot.[90] In subsequent years Strauss would say in interviews, "I did my best to prevent it. The Japanese were defeated before the bomb was used."[9]
After the war, Strauss was the Navy's representative on the Interdepartmental Committee on Atomic Energy.[20] Strauss recommended a test of the atomic bomb against a number of modern warships, which he thought would refute the idea that the atomic bomb made the Navy obsolete.[91] His recommendation contributed to the decision to hold the mid-1946 Operation Crossroads tests, the first since the war, at Bikini Atoll.[92]
The five original commissioners of the AEC in 1947; Strauss is rightmost
In 1947, the United States transferred control of atomic research from the U.S. Army to civilian authority under the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). In October 1946, in advance of the commission actually coming into being,[73] Strauss was named by President Truman as one of the first five Commissioners, with David E. Lilienthal as the chairman.[93] Strauss had been recommended for a position on the body by Vice Admiral Paul Frederick Foster, a long-time friend for whom Strauss had earlier provided contacts in the business world (and who had subsequently helped Strauss get his active duty assignment).[94] In their initial discussion about the appointment, Strauss noted to the New Deal-supporting Truman that "I am a black Hoover Republican."[48] Truman said that was of no matter, since the commission was intended to be non-political.[95] Strauss, who had briefly returned to work at Kuhn Loeb after the war, now exited the firm altogether in order to comply with AEC regulations.[95]
Once there, Strauss became one of the first commissioners to speak in dissent from existing policy.[48] In the first two years there were a dozen instances, most having to do with information security matters, in which Strauss was in a 1–4 minority on the commission; in the process he was increasingly perceived as stubborn.[96]
One of Strauss's first actions on the AEC was to urge his fellow commissioners to set up the capability to monitor foreign atomic activity via atmospheric testing.[97] In particular, he saw that WB-29 Superfortress aircraft equipped with radiological tests could run regular "sniffer" flights to monitor the upper atmosphere to detect any atomic tests by the Soviet Union.[98] Other people in government and science, including physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller, argued that the radiological approach would not work, but Strauss and the newly formed United States Air Force continued on regardless.[98] Several days after the first atomic bomb test by the Soviet Union in August 1949, a WB-29 flight did in fact find evidence of the test.[99] While Strauss was not the only person who had been urging long-range detection capabilities,[98] it was largely due to his efforts that the United States was able to discover that the Soviet Union had become a nuclear power.[48]
Strauss believed in a fundamental premise of the Cold War, that the Soviet Union was determined on a course of world domination; as such he believed in having a more powerful nuclear force than the Soviets and in maintaining secrecy about U.S. nuclear activities.[8] This extended to allies: among the commissioners, he was the most skeptical about the value of the Modus Vivendi that was agreed to in January 1948, that provided for limited sharing of technical information between the United States, Britain, and Canada (and that was already a stricter set of guidelines than those established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Quebec Agreement of the Manhattan Project era).[100] During the United States presidential election, 1948, Strauss tried to convince Republican Party nominee Thomas E. Dewey about the dangers of sharing atomic information with Britain, and after Dewey lost, Strauss tried to convince Truman of the same.[101] Following the revelations about the British physicist Klaus Fuchs's espionage for the Soviet Union, and the appointment of the former Marxist John Strachey as Secretary of State for War in the British Cabinet, Strauss argued that the Modus Vivendi should be suspended completely, but no other commissioners wanted to go to that extreme.[102]
Strauss was known for his psychological rigidity; one of his fellow commissioners reportedly said, "If you disagree with Lewis about anything, he assumes you're just a fool at first. But if you go on disagreeing with him, he concludes you must be a traitor."[60] Strauss was increasingly unhappy in his position, but President Truman indicated satisfaction with Strauss's work and the minority stances he was taking on the commission.[103]
Strauss (left) along with Senators Brien McMahon and John Bricker in early 1950
The first atomic bomb test by the Soviet Union in August 1949 came earlier than expected by Americans, and over the next several months there was an intense debate within the U.S. government, military, and scientific communities regarding whether to proceed with development of the far more powerful hydrogen bomb, then known as "the Super".[104] Strauss urged for the United States to move immediately to develop it,[1][8] writing to his fellow commissioners on October 5 that "the time has come for a quantum jump in our planning ... we should make an intensive effort to get ahead with the super."[105] In particular Strauss was unswayed by moral arguments against going forward, seeing no real difference between using it and the atomic bomb or the boosted fission weapon that some opponents of the Super were advocating as an alternative.[106] When Strauss was rebuffed by the other commissioners, he went to National Security Council executive secretary Sidney Souers in order to bring the matter to President Truman directly.[107] It was as a consequence of this meeting that Truman first learned (when Souers informed him) that such a thing as a hydrogen bomb could exist.[108] In a memorandum urging development of the Super he sent to President Truman on November 25, 1949,[109] the pious Strauss expressed no doubt about what the Soviets would do, writing that "a government of atheists is not likely to be dissuaded from producing the weapon on 'moral' grounds."[110]
On January 31, 1950, Truman announced his decision to go forward with hydrogen bomb development.[104] A few narratives, including ones promoted by Strauss and that of Strauss's biographer, have placed Strauss as having had a central role in Truman's decision.[111][112] But by the time the decision was made, Strauss was one of an increasingly large coalition of military and government figures, and a few scientists, who strongly felt that development of the new weapon was essential to U.S. security in the face of a hostile, nuclear-capable, ideological enemy.[113] Thus in the absence of Strauss's action, the same decision would almost surely have been reached.[114] In any case, when the decision was announced, Strauss, considering that he had accomplished as much as he could, submitted his resignation the same day.[115] Within the administration there was some consideration given to Strauss being named chairman of the AEC to replace the departing Lilienthal, but Strauss was considered too polarizing a figure.[116] The last day for Strauss during this first stint of his on the commission was April 15, 1950.[117]
Beginning in June 1950, Strauss became a financial adviser to the Rockefeller brothers, where his charter was to participate in decisions regarding projects, financing, and investing.[39] For them, he assisted in the founding of, and served on the first board for, the Population Council.[118] He was also involved in the negotiations with Columbia University that led to a sale and leasing back of real estate associated with part of Rockefeller Center.[119] The relationship with the Rockefeller brothers would last until 1953.[6][11] However Strauss felt the brothers treated him as a second-class asset and in turn he felt no loyalty towards them.[119]
During this time, Strauss continued to take an interest in atomic affairs; as did other former members of the AEC, he had a consulting arrangement with the United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and was active in making his opinion known on various matters.[120] These included his dissatisfaction with the speed at which research and development into actually making a working hydrogen device was taking place.[121]
In the United States presidential election, 1952, Strauss originally supported Robert A. Taft, his friend from the Hoover days, for the Republican Party nomination.[20][122] Once Dwight D. Eisenhower secured the nomination, however, Strauss contributed substantial monies towards Eisenhower's campaign.[123]
Strauss (left) taking the oath of office as chairman of the AEC in 1953
In January 1953, President Eisenhower named Strauss as presidential atomic energy advisor.[123] Then in July 1953, Eisenhower named Strauss as chairman of the AEC.[123]
While Strauss had initially opposed Eisenhower's push for Operation Candor, his view and the administration's goals both evolved, and he endorsed the "Atoms for Peace" program, which Eisenhower announced in December 1953.[124] Strauss was now one of the best-known advocates of atomic energy for many purposes. In part, he celebrated the promise of peaceful use of atomic energy as part of a conscious effort to divert attention away from the dangers of nuclear warfare.[125] Nevertheless, Strauss, like Eisenhower, did sincerely believe in and hope for the potential of peaceful uses.[126] In 1955 Strauss helped arrange the U.S. participation in the first international conference on peaceful uses of atomic energy, held in Geneva.[127] Strauss held Soviet capabilities in high regard, saying after the conference that "in the realm of pure science the Soviets had astonished us by their achievements ... [the Russians] could be described in no sense as technically backward."[128]
Eisenhower signing a modification of the Atomic Energy Act in 1954; Strauss is seated on the far right
Strauss was involved in finding the site and industry partners for the start of construction, in 1954, of the first dedicated U.S. atomic electric power plant, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania;[129] it would eventually go on-line in 1957.[130] While Shippingport was a joint government-commercial collaboration, Strauss advocated for private industry taking on the development of nuclear power plants on its own.[131][132] Strauss made public remarks in 1954 predicting that atomic power would make electricity "too cheap to meter".[133] Regarded as fanciful even at the time, the quote is now seen as damaging to the industry's credibility.[134] Strauss was possibly referring to Project Sherwood, a secret program to develop power from hydrogen fusion, rather the commonly-believed uranium fission reactors.[135][136] Indeed, on the run-up to a 1958 Geneva conference on atomic power, Strauss offered substantial funding to three laboratories for fusion power research.[126]
Following the unexpectedly large blast of the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test of March 1954 at Bikini Atoll, there was international concern over the radioactive fallout experienced by residents of nearby Rongelap Atoll and Utirik Atoll and by the Daigo Fukuryū Maru, a Japanese fishing vessel.[137][138] The AEC initially tried to keep the contamination secret, and then tried to minimize the health dangers of fallout.[139] Voices began to be heard advocating for a ban or limitation on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.[138] Strauss himself downplayed dangers from fallout and insisted that it was vital that a program of atmospheric blasts proceed unhindered;[138] internally within the administration, Strauss was dismissive of the matter and even speculated that the Fukuryū Maru was part of a Communist scheme.[140] However, Strauss also contributed to public fears when, during a March 1954 press conference, he made an impromptu remark that a single Soviet H-bomb could destroy the New York metropolitan area.[79] The remark captured the immense destructiveness of the H-bomb and was featured in headlines in newspapers across the United States.[141] This statement was heard overseas as well and served to add to what UK Minister of Defence Harold Macmillan termed a "panic" over the subject.[142] The AEC had commissioned the Project SUNSHINE report in 1953 to ascertain the impact of radioactive fallout, generated from repeated nuclear detonations of greater and greater yield, on the world's population.[142] The British asked the AEC for the report, but Strauss resisted giving them anything more than a heavily redacted version, leading to frustration on the part of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and other UK officials.[143]
Eisenhower and Strauss discuss what happened with Castle Bravo, March 1954 ...
... and the following day hold the press conference at which Strauss says a single H-bomb could destroy the entire New York metropolitan area
Internal debate ensued over the next several years within the Eisenhower administration over the possibility of an atmospheric test ban with the Soviet Union, with some in favor of trying to arrange one, but Strauss was always one of those implacably opposed.[144] Strauss would continue to minimize the dangers of Bravo fallout to the islanders of the atolls, insisting in his 1962 memoirs that they had been under "continuous and competent medical supervision" and that follow-up tests showed them to be in "excellent health [and] their blood counts were approximately normal".[145] Others in the AEC were equally cavalier.[146] In fact, AEC scientists had seen the islanders as a valuable laboratory case of human exposure.[139] The Limited Test Ban Treaty banning atmospheric tests would not be arrived at until 1963,[147] and the U.S. government engaged in a series of reevaluations of the health of the islanders, and relocation and economic packages to compensate them, over the next several decades.[148] Strauss and others in the AEC were also dismissive of the dangers Americans faced who were downwind of the Nevada Test Site.[146]
Regarding the prospect of nuclear proliferation, Strauss was skeptical that attempts to prevent it would accomplish anything,[149] and Strauss and the AEC also doubted that the problem was as severe as some others in the administration maintained.[150] During 1956, Harold Stassen, who had been chosen by Eisenhower to lead an effort on disarmanent policy, focused on making nonprofileration a key goal of the United States, including proposals to halt not just to testing but also the continued expansion of the U.S. fissionable material stockpile.[151] Eisenhower was at least partially receptive to the proposals, but Strauss argued that nuclear materials production could not be stopped yet and that testing could never be halted completely.[152]
The Sputnik crisis of 1957 led Eisenhower to create the President's Science Advisory Committee. Once that body was in place, Eisenhower began to directly receive a broader selection of scientific information; Strauss lost his ability to control scientists' access to the president and his influence within the administration began to recede.[153] While Strauss had maintained his hostility towards Anglo-American cooperation on nuclear matters since becoming AEC chairman, Sputnik gave impetus to renewed cooperation on this front.[154] Strauss visited Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to give a message from Eisenhower to this effect, and subsequent talks and hearings resulted in the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement coming into place.[155]
As AEC chairman, Strauss was informed regarding U.S. intelligence findings on the Dimona reactor in Israel. He met with Ernst David Bergmann, chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and a key early force in the Israeli nuclear program (and years later would help Bergmann get a visiting fellowship in the United States). While Strauss's thoughts on the Israeli effort to develop nuclear weapons are not documented, his wife later said that he would have been in favor of Israel being able to defend itself.[156]
During his terms as an AEC commissioner, Strauss became hostile to Oppenheimer, the physicist who had been director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project and who, after the war, became a celebrated public figure and remained in influential positions in atomic energy.[157]
In 1947, Strauss, a trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, presented Oppenheimer with the institute's offer to be its director.[158] Strauss himself, as a man of high intelligence and financial skills if not higher education, had also been considered for the job; he was the institute's faculty's fifth-ranked choice, while Oppenheimer was their first ranked.[158]
Strauss, a conservative Republican, had little in common with Oppenheimer, a liberal who had had Communist associations.[159]
Oppenheimer subsequently was a leading opponent of moving ahead with the hydrogen bomb and proposed a national security strategy based on atomic weapons and continental defense; Strauss wanted the development of thermonuclear weapons and a doctrine of deterrence.[160]
Oppenheimer supported a policy of openness regarding the numbers and capabilities of the atomic weapons in America's arsenal; Strauss believed that such unilateral frankness would benefit no one but Soviet military planners.[160]
In addition,Strauss disliked Oppenheimer on a variety of personal grounds. Starting in 1947, Strauss had been in a dispute with the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of senior atomic scientists, which Oppenheimer chaired and which reported to the AEC, over whether exporting radioisotopes for medical purposes was a risk to U.S. security, from which the scientists on the GAC developed a poor image of Strauss.[161]Then during a public hearing in 1949, Oppenheimer had given a mocking answer to a point Strauss had raised on the subject, a humiliation that Strauss did not forget.[162] Strauss was also offended that Oppenheimer had once engaged in adulterous relations.[60] And Strauss did not like that Oppenheimer had seemingly left his Jewish heritage behind, whereas Strauss had become successful – despite the anti-Semitic environment of Washington – while still maintaining his prominent roles in Jewish organizations and his Temple Emanu-El presidency.[163][60]
Strauss (center-left in rear) and Oppenheimer (alongside him, center-right in rear) in a group of scientists and engineers, c. 1953
When Eisenhower offered Strauss the AEC chairmanship, Strauss named one condition: Oppenheimer would be excluded from all classified atomic work.[164] Oppenheimer held a highest-level Q clearance,[165] and was one of the most respected figures in atomic science, briefing the President and the National Security Council on several occasions.[166] Oppenheimer's AEC consultancy, and the clearance that went with it, had just been renewed for another year by Gordon Dean, the outgoing chairman of the AEC; it would extend through June 30, 1954.[167][168]
Strauss's misgivings about Oppenheimer went beyond dislike and disagreement. He had become aware of Oppenheimer's former Communist affiliations before World War II and had begun to think that Oppenheimer might even be a Soviet spy.[169] For instance, Strauss was suspicious of Oppenheimer's tendency to downplay Soviet capabilities. In 1953, Oppenheimer stated in the July edition of Foreign Affairs that he believed the Soviets were "about four years behind" in nuclear weapons development.[170] The United States had exploded the first thermonuclear device the previous year; however, only a month after Oppenheimer made his proclamation, in August 1953, the Soviet Union declared that it had tested its own fusion-based bomb, which U.S. sensors identified as a boosted fission weapon.[171]Strauss was not alone in having his doubts; a number of other officials in Washington also suspected that Oppenheimer might be a security risk.[172]
In September 1953, Strauss, hoping to uncover evidence of Oppenheimer's disloyalty, asked FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to initiate surveillance to track Oppenheimer's movements.[173] The director readily did so; the tracking uncovered no evidence of disloyalty but that Oppenheimer had lied to Strauss about his reason for taking a trip to Washington (Oppenheimer met a journalist but had told Strauss that he had visited the White House).[174] Strauss's suspicions increased further with the discovery that in 1948 and 1949 Oppenheimer had tried to stop the long-range airborne detection system that Strauss had championed and that had worked in discovering the Soviet Union's first atomic weapon test.[175] At first Strauss moved cautiously, even heading off an attack on Oppenheimer by Senator Joseph McCarthy,[164] due to Strauss's belief that any case that McCarthy might make would be premature and lack a solid basis of evidence.[176]
In November 1953, William L. Borden, the former executive director of the United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, wrote a letter to the FBI alleging that "more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union."[177] This action set into motion a chain of events.[178] On December 3, 1953, Eisenhower, after consulting with Strauss and others, ordered a "blank wall" between Oppenheimer and all areas of government.[179] On December 21, Strauss told Oppenheimer that his security clearance had been suspended, pending resolution of a series of charges outlined in a letter from Kenneth D. Nichols, general manager of the AEC.[180][181]
Rather than resign, Oppenheimer requested a hearing.[182] Upon Strauss's request, FBI director Hoover ordered full surveillance on Oppenheimer and his attorneys, including tapping of phones;[172] these wiretaps were illegal.[183][184]
The hearing was held in April and May 1954, before an AEC Personnel Security Board.[185]Strauss selected the three-man board, headed by Gordon Gray.[186] He also picked the person who would lead the case against Oppenheimer, the trial attorney Roger Robb.[187][188] Strauss had access to the FBI's information on Oppenheimer, including his conversations with his lawyers, which was used to prepare counterarguments against those lawyers in advance.[183][189] Strauss was not present at the hearings, instead reading daily transcripts.[190]
At the hearing, many top scientists, as well as government and military figures, testified on Oppenheimer's behalf.[191][190] Physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi stated that the suspension of the security clearance was unnecessary: "he is a consultant, and if you don't want to consult the guy, you don't consult him, period."[192][193][194]
Oppenheimer, however, admitted that he had previously lied to a military counterintelligence officer about a conversation his friend Haakon Chevalier had had with him about passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets.[195][196] He also admitted that he had stayed with Chevalier only the previous December.[197]Leslie R. Groves, Jr., the former director of the Manhattan Project, testified that under the stricter security criteria in effect in 1954, he "would not clear Dr. Oppenheimer today".[198]
At the conclusion of the hearings, Oppenheimer's clearance was revoked by a 2–1 vote of the board.[199] They unanimously cleared Oppenheimer of disloyalty, but a majority found that 20 of the 24 charges were either true or substantially true and that Oppenheimer would represent a security risk.[200] Then on June 29, 1954, the AEC upheld the findings of the Personnel Security Board, by a 4–1 decision, with Strauss writing the majority opinion.[201] In that opinion, Strauss stressed Oppenheimer's "defects of character", "falsehoods, evasions and misrepresentations", and past associations with Communists and people close to Communists as the primary reasons for his determination.[202][203] He did not comment on Oppenheimer's loyalty.[204]
Oppenheimer was thus stripped of his clearance: one day before it would have expired,[205] and seven months after it had been suspended on the orders of the president.[206]
The successor agency to the AEC later ruled that the hearing was "a flawed process that violated the Commission's own regulations."[207] The loss of his security clearance ended Oppenheimer's role in government and policy.[208] Oppenheimer returned to his directorship at the Institute of Advanced Studies, but Strauss, who was still on the board of trustees there, attempted to have him dismissed.[209] However, in October 1954, the board voted to keep Oppenheimer on.[210] In the years that followed, Strauss still hoped to remove Oppenheimer, but never got the votes on the board he needed.[211]
In the wake of the AEC decision, public opinion and most scientists were firmly against Strauss.[212] Nearly 500 of the scientists at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory signed a petition saying "this poorly founded decision ... will make it increasingly difficult to obtain adequate scientific talent in our defense laboratories."[213] Strauss responded by first sending a letter to the petitioners saying that they were not trying to quash the expression of professional opinions – "We certainly do not want 'yes men' in the employ of the Atomic Energy Commission" – and followed that with a July 1954 visit to the laboratory to try to mollify the scientists.[214][213] An editorial in The New Mexican newspaper nicknamed Strauss's efforts as "Operation Butter-Up".[214]
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