12/19/2022
Earlier, by Pat Buchanan: They WERE Communists — Dalton Trumbo Had It Coming
A recent decision by Jennifer Granholm, head of the Department of Energy, to “restore” the security clearance of long-dead security risk, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the technical side of the Manhattan Project that (a) won the War With Japan (good!), and (b) gave the A-Bomb to the Soviet Union via an embedded Soviet spy ring (Bad!) seems to show once again that the Communists are now actually in charge.
[Energy Dept vacates 1950s decision revoking security clearance for ‘father of the atomic bomb’ J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Rachel Frazin, The Hill, December 16, 2022]
Energy Dept. vacates 1950s decision revoking security clearance for "father of the atomic bomb" J. Robert Oppenheimer https://t.co/OTmBN36c8t pic.twitter.com/PJBkH8UeYv
— The Hill (@thehill) December 16, 2022
I referred to Oppenheimer as long-dead, above, but he died so long ago (1967) that in 1995, the now long-dead himself anti-Communist writer Eric Breindel was already calling him that.
In a memoir published last year[ 1994], an important ex-KGB general, Pavel Sudoplatov, wrote that Oppenheimer had knowingly made it possible for Soviet “moles,” planted at the Los Alamos research center, to copy secret documents related to the development of the bomb. The book, written with the assistance of the general’s son and two American journalists — Jerrold and Leona Schecter — didn’t actually label Oppenheimer a Soviet spy. But the activities it describes bespeak a distinction without a difference.
The furor in the academic community was immense. Many charged Sudoplatov and the Schecters with posthumous character assassination. Long since dead, Oppenheimer — whose wife, mistress, brother, and sister-in-law had all been Communists — was deprived of his security clearance in 1954.
[J. Robert Oppenheimer, aka Veksel, July 27, 1995 (in A Passion for Truth: The Selected Writings Of Eric Breindel,1999)]
The fact that Oppenheimer had his security clearance lifted was a huge issue for the Left at the time.
One online (Theory of Fielding: An Investigation, by H. B. Laes, January 14, 2001) source points to a biographer who asked “Was the lifting of Oppenheimer’s Q clearance in 1953 justified?” answered “No.”
”His reasoning is that, in 1953, there was no new, compelling, derogatory information on JRO since his last security review in 1947.”
My immediate thought was that a lot happened between 1947 and 1953, especially involving atom bombs and loose lips, and author Laes thinks so too.
He writes:
The key decision makers in the Oppenheimer affair were President Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover and Lewis Strauss (Chairman of the AEC, 1953). “On December 3, Strauss was summoned to the White House to attend a meeting that had been called by President Eisenhower to discuss the Borden letter [sent to the White House by Hoover].” (O, p. 149) To understand the suspension of JRO’s clearance you have to recall the other contextual events surrounding the Borden letter:
- In August of 1949 the Soviet Union exploded an atomic device, several years at minimum before they were thought capable of doing so.
- In September of 1949 Klaus Fuchs was identified as a Soviet agent. The investigation revealed his Tube Alloys work in Birmingham, his work on diffusion in New York, his work on the implosion weapon at Los Alamos, his exposure to research on the Super (hydrogen bomb) at Los Alamos, his post-war employment in the British atomic energy program allowing him continued access to US information, etc. It was mind boggling: Fuchs was in a position to give the Soviets virtually everything. As Director at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer had a role and responsibility in Fuchs’ being in the lab’s most sensitive area, the Theoretical Division. On a visit to England in 1948 Oppenheimer and Fuchs had dinner together.
- The Iron Curtain and the Cold War
- The atomic espionage of Greenglass and the Rosenbergs
- The McCarthy anti-communist hearings
We would argue, that if you stop consideration at this point, and reflect that a security clearance is not a personal right, and government has the duty to act with an abundance of caution, the removal of Oppenheimer’s security clearance was 100% justified. But there is another straw that has to break the back of even the most conflicted on this question. A decrypted KGB message (Venona) listed the heads of the major U.S atomic facilities. The head of Los Alamos was given a codename (VEKSEL) while all of the other directors were identified with their real names. (more) The fact of this Venona message was available to the decision makers named above and we think it is an unaccounted for ’smoking gun’ in the matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer. [Some typos have been corrected.]
The Venona Files, things that the U.S. Government knew by codebreaking about the Soviets in the fifties, and the Soviet Government and U.S. public didn’t know they knew, are also covered in Breindel’s 1995 column:
It’s not surprising that press coverage has focused on the guilt of the Rosenbergs and their compatriots. Many of the Venona documents concern the Rosenbergs directly; moreover, such doubt as may have remained about their guilt has finally been set to rest.
But it’s curious that there’s been virtually no discussion of what the intercepts indicate about Oppenheimer. A guide to the documents published by the NSA virtually invites inquiry in this realm; it notes that “the [espionage] role played by the person covernamed ‘Veksel’ remains uncertain, but troubling.” It’s clear “Veksel” is J. Robert Oppenheimer, although the footnotes to the actual documents suggest only that the covername may “possibly” be that of “Dr. Julius Robert Oppenheimer.”
Actually, there’s no room for doubt. Veksel is described as the director of “the reservation” (Los Alamos), the site of “the main practical research work” on “normous” (the Manhattan project).
It appears that a Soviet agent was dispatched to Chicago in early 1945 to “re-establish contact” with Veksel. At a minimum, therefore, Oppenheimer had been in contact with Soviet intelligence at some earlier stage. This accounts for the NSA’s sense that Oppenheimer’s role “remains troubling.”
In all likelihood, forthcoming Venona documents will tell us more about Oppenheimer. As things stand, however, Sudoplatov and the Schecters have considerable cause for satisfaction. Not so, their critics.
Well, the Communists have had the last laugh. Creating the atomic bomb was an amazing technological feat, and will be memorialized in a Christopher Nolan movie soon:
But giving the Bomb to the Soviets was the worst thing ever.
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