Transcripts Kept Secret for 60 Years Bolster Defense of Oppenheimer’s Loyalty
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
His consulting contract to the AEC was expiring in December 1953, but as a political takedown he was officially accused instead of simply not renewing. Oppenheimer had the option to compromise and resign, but he declined writing Strauss: “Under the circumstances, this course of action would mean that I accept and concur in the view that I am not fit to serve this government, that I have now served for some twelve years. This I cannot do. If I were thus unworthy I could hardly have served our country as I have tried, or been the Director of our Institute in Princeton, or have spoken, as on more than one occasion I have found myself speaking, in the name our science and our country”.*
He was found to be absolutely loyal, he was not even accused of violating any security regulations. But was accused of not being sufficiently enthusiastic about a crash program to build a hydrogen bomb, and that this lack of enthusiasm was a sign of a character flaw.
This “trial” marked an end of extremely wide public respect for scientists. And a new era where technical and scientific achievements are to be harvested by military industrial complex, and used by right wing strategists. It put scientists in their place..
*American Prometheus - p484
Also, there are at least two kinds of secrets to consider: "structural" ones, like "this program exists" and specific details "agent Bob is part of this program". I could see the need to keep some of the latter even from other parts of the government, but it seems the former could do with some review. That's where the problems usually come from, after all: either government programs that overreach their authority or failures swept under the rug. At the same time, they're much less of a security threat than specific details of a program.
I don't think the parent claimed that.
>In 1953, a former congressional aide charged in a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the celebrated physicist was a Soviet spy.
The congressional aide's name was William Liscum Borden. If Borden's views had been adopted by the US Government, it is likely that we would have had a nuclear world war[0], instead the US built its strategy on the views of Brodie[1].
[0]: Borden's strategic views http://ethanheilman.tumblr.com/post/29405762446/there-will-b...
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Brodie_(military_strate...
1. There is no limit on the number of nuclear weapons that should be built, each side should always strive for more weapons than the other side. Thus, increasing the scale of nuclear wars.
>Nuclear war is so fast that destroying a city does not provide any military benefits to the attacker nor any military costs to a defender.
2. Since the other side will not waste weapons on cities (by his calculus of attacking to disarm), mutually assured destruction will not work and therefore nuclear wars are inevitable and largely bloodless (low human cost).
3. Any time one side has more weapons it should immediately use those weapons to disarm the other side. That is, strike when you gain an advantage even if you have no good cause, since the other side would do the same.
Unfortunately present experience suggests that while cities might not be on the initial target list, once one side started to loss heavily they would likely target the other sides cities to spoil the victors post-war advantage.
It may reduce disastrous false negatives at the cost of an increase in false positives.
In the 1940s, the Soviet Union had hundreds of agents in the executive branch of the US government. KGB records opened in the last 20 years largely vindicate McCarthy (Edit: in that the threat was real; infiltration had happened; most of his targets were Soviet agents, Communists, or associated with Communists; and security risks had to be removed from positions in which they could do harm for the good of freedom-loving people everywhere).
[ChrisIsWrong] The number of employees in the executive branch in the 1940's peaked at 3,370. [1] So by "hundreds of agents in the executive branch" do you mean that say, 10% of the executive branch were communist agents? [/ChrisIsWrong]
My Dad remembers McCarthy and his famous speech but doesn't know that he was discredited or even what the term "McCartheism" means.
[1] http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docum...
Edit: Thanks for acknowledging the mistake. I made the same one here.
The figures are "in thousands". The Executive Branch at the time had over 3.3 million employees.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_the...
It might do if he had restricted himself to the threat of spies in the government, rather than instituting a campaign against communists and homosexuals throughout much of US society.
Spies in the executive does not justify Hollywood blacklists, the censoring of library books resulting in book burnings, attacks on the clergy, attacks on academics, the 10000 people forced into unemployment by the loyalty review boards or the repeated burglaries against lawyers who would represent those who were targeted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
> historian John Earl Haynes concluded that, of 159 people identified on lists used or referenced by McCarthy, evidence was substantial that nine had aided Soviet espionage efforts.
9/159. A 94% false positive rate.
Since we now have access to the ground truth we can compute the actual false positive rate. The great-grandparent post suggests that such an examination would vindicate McCarthy, but I have trouble sympathizing with this view. A 94% false-positive rate (96% if you use McCarthy's original figure) is bad no matter how you slice it.
McCarthy identified many more people in sensitive positions who were security risks, many with Communist associations. Even if those people were not actively engaged in espionage, they should not have held sensitive positions.
KGB/NKVD archives reveal they had hundreds of agents in the executive branch in the 1940s. McCarthy spurred the removal of Soviet moles, Communist sympathizers, and other security risks from sensitive positions. In this, he did the US a great service, as regrettable as false accusations are.
Edit: In response to your questions, it's as if you didn't read what I just wrote. Regarding the Soviet records of infiltration, several books have been written on these records and their revelations.
That said, we continue to disagree about the numbers, and I would like to know the resolution. Could you expand on your claim that "KGB/NKVD archives reveal they had hundreds of agents in the executive branch in the 1940s"? Did McCarthy have a very high false negative rate (thereby finding only 9 of the hundreds of spies)? Are you counting "security risks" as "agents"? What gives?
Ironically, Communists wished to overthrow the US government and were anti-democratic.
To start, what defines a sensitive position?
For example, Pete Seeger was a member of the Communist party in the US. He's a singer. He was castigated for his association with Communists, subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and found guilty of contempt of Congress before an appeals court overturned it.
Is singing a sensitive position? What about screenwriting or directing movies?
We know that "Israel's espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly" (see http://www.newsweek.com/israel-wont-stop-spying-us-249757 ) . That makes Israeli citizens a risk, no? What about Israeli sympathizers in sensitive positions? At what point do we declare that any Americans with a pro-Israeli viewpoint are a security risk and should be barred from sensitive positions? (Including singing?)
You mentioned overthrowing the government. Should all people with such ideas be removed from any sensitive position? We know that various US citizens to this day 'demand the dissolution of the Federal government', as for example http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/adam-kokesh-and-pete-santil... , as just one example of people who call for a peaceful overthrow.
My answer to all of those is "no". Having a strongly held belief which happens to be aligned with a foreign power's stated goals does not immediately make one a security risk.
Consider that in South Africa during Apartheid, and after abandoning the Native Republic policy in 1948, the South African Communist Party was one of the few that called for the end of Apartheid and equality of the races. The Suppression of Communism Act in 1950 formally banned the party and all those who supported communists. In practice then, that power was used to prosecute anyone against apartheid, since after all their aims were aligned with the presumed aims of communism.
Mandela was a member of the SACP and served on its Central Committee. As he wrote, "There will always be those who say that the Communists were using us. But who is to say that we were not using them?"
Why? They'll just do a shitty job anyway. People rightfully get up in arms when Republicans want to see an opponent of the EPA appointed to the EPA, or department of education, because they know why it's being done, to undermine it. HUAC was set up to rout out Nazi sympathizers before it started going after communism, should they have been left alone?
As an entirely aside if he identified a few real spies and missed hundreds doesn't that suggest he was ineffective, to the point of actual harm?
Removing people with known security risks from sensitive positions is not unAmerican.
He missed hundreds of agents, identified several agents and many more security risks, and spurred heightened security awareness that was a very good thing at the time. Expecting him to know the identity of every Soviet agent before attempting to remove any security risks is unreasonable.
I don't know what 'unamerican' means, I know how it was used, but I don't think anyone really knows what it means. Therefore I'm bringing up common law. Whether something is unamerican or not is irrelevant. We're supposed to live in a nation of laws, not arbitrary standards.
On the other hand, it sure is a handy standard if your actual goal is to remove your opponents from office...
This was justified by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment:
> No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
Following the logic that birthed the foul Espionage Act, "not wanting to go to war" = "aiding the enemy", hence Berger wasn't seated in 1919 nor, after rewinning the election, in 1920.
He was a Socialist, not a Communist. Not that it really matters; an anti-war Communist would have had no better chance.
That said, I'm as confused as you about jjoonathan' comment, as removing (or at least preventing) elected officials from holding office was at best a contingency plan during the Red Scares.
American citizens of Japanese ancestry were labeled "security risks" during WWII and sent to internment camps.
Do you agree that they were risks and therefore should be removed from all sensitive positions? And if so, what defines "sensitive position"?
(We know, by the way, that there absolutely were spies for Japan in the US. http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/04/sorelle/poetry/wwii/... says that 10 were found, and none were Japanese. The only one I found by name was Velvalee Dickinson. Perhaps the risk factor was actually not having Japanese ancestry?)
If there was a risk, why the lack of serious sabotage, espionage, etc. on Hawaii, where 1/3rd of the population had Japanese ancestry and therefore economically infeasible to intern them? Was it only because the islands were under martial law, and if so, how does that make a difference?
Or do you agree with the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians that there was, in fact, little evidence of disloyalty? Do you agree with U.S. legislation saying that the "security risk" label was actually due to "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership"?
If the latter, how does one distinguish between a (supposed true) claim for being a security risk based on political party affiliation and a (demonstrably false) claim for being a security risk based on ancestry?
I see nothing which says that "sensitive positions" is or was meant as a term limited to the executive branch or to administrative positions.
Wouldn't a non-administrative physicist on the atomic bomb project, like Theodore Hall, count as a "sensitive position"? Since I'm pretty sure that was the view back then.
Keeping people in an internment camp rather made it difficult to have an administrative position, so I don't really see the difference. Well, there's a different mechanism, but the same end goal - keep Japanese/Communists out of possible sensitive positions because some people who are Japanese/Communists are the enemy. No?
>94% false positive rate (9/159) >95% false negative rate ((200-9)/200)
If it's unreasonable to call this a shit screening process, what would you consider reasonable?!
In any case, it seems virtually certain that McCarthy's accusations were far more effective as political tools rather than as filters against soviet subversion, in accordance with the traditional narrative.
If you're going to argue about a hiring preference being "unamerican" or not instead of its inherent morality, I don't know what game you're playing. Did you get your posting techniques from the Simple Sabotage Field Manual?
If a nuclear missile launch team has the position that nuclear weapons are unjustified and that pacifistic solutions are the only correct solution to national disagreements, then I think it's okay to remove them from their position, even if they've never acted on their views by not launching when the launch order came.