Criminal
03-04-2003, 06:46 PM
Was Oppenheimer a Member of the CPUSA?
By Brian Carnell
Monday, September 9, 2002
In 1954 Robert Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance due to his 1930s-era membership in Communist groups and the testimony of hydrogen-bomb inventor Edward Teller who said that he did not trust Oppenheimer (Oppenheimer was opposed to developing a hydrogen bomb). Oppenheimer repeatedly denied, however, that he had ever joined the Communist Party. A new book suggests that Oppenheimer lied, and that he had joined the Party while he was at Berkeley.
Gregg Herken's just-published Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller maintains that newly discovered evidence establishes Oppenheimer as a member of a secret Communist Party cell that operated on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley.
The source for Herken's charges come from the papers of Haakon Chevalier. Chevalier was a professor at Berkeley at the same time Oppenheimer was there, and the two became friends. Chevalier was forced to flee to France in 1950 after his role in aiding the Soviet atomic spy ring became clear.
In the 1960s Chevalier wrote letters to Oppenheimer referring to a memoir that Chevalier planned to write which would reveal the Communist Party cell and Oppenheimer's role in it. The cell's activities were apparently restricted to writing Communist propaganda, but Chevalier was still impressed by the propaganda that he claimed Oppenheimer had written and felt it was time the whole world should know.
Oppenheimer replied to the letters with a terse message that he was never a member of a Communist Party unit and would sue Chevalier if he claimed as such. Chevalier did not include any details about the cell in his memoir beyond calling it a political discussion group, but wrote a detailed unpublished memoir about the cell.
Herken claims he has since located another unpublished memoir of a cell member describing Oppenheimer as a member, as well as obtaining confirmation from the person responsible for setting up such secret cells.
Source:
By Brian Carnell
Monday, September 9, 2002
In 1954 Robert Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance due to his 1930s-era membership in Communist groups and the testimony of hydrogen-bomb inventor Edward Teller who said that he did not trust Oppenheimer (Oppenheimer was opposed to developing a hydrogen bomb). Oppenheimer repeatedly denied, however, that he had ever joined the Communist Party. A new book suggests that Oppenheimer lied, and that he had joined the Party while he was at Berkeley.
Gregg Herken's just-published Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller maintains that newly discovered evidence establishes Oppenheimer as a member of a secret Communist Party cell that operated on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley.
The source for Herken's charges come from the papers of Haakon Chevalier. Chevalier was a professor at Berkeley at the same time Oppenheimer was there, and the two became friends. Chevalier was forced to flee to France in 1950 after his role in aiding the Soviet atomic spy ring became clear.
In the 1960s Chevalier wrote letters to Oppenheimer referring to a memoir that Chevalier planned to write which would reveal the Communist Party cell and Oppenheimer's role in it. The cell's activities were apparently restricted to writing Communist propaganda, but Chevalier was still impressed by the propaganda that he claimed Oppenheimer had written and felt it was time the whole world should know.
Oppenheimer replied to the letters with a terse message that he was never a member of a Communist Party unit and would sue Chevalier if he claimed as such. Chevalier did not include any details about the cell in his memoir beyond calling it a political discussion group, but wrote a detailed unpublished memoir about the cell.
Herken claims he has since located another unpublished memoir of a cell member describing Oppenheimer as a member, as well as obtaining confirmation from the person responsible for setting up such secret cells.
Source: