| "In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Transcript of Hearing before Personnel Security Board, Washington D.C., April 12, 1954 through May 6, 1954." The hearing took place at the Atomic Energy Commission, Building T-3, Room 2022. Usually 7 or 8 people were in the room, including the Board, two lawyers for the AEC, and Oppenheimer and his two or three lawyers. The Personnel Security Board consisted of Gordon Gray, Ward T. Evans (a chemistry professor) and Thomas A. Morgan. The following is an excerpt from testimony given on April 22 by Norris Bradbury, a Navy physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project during the war, and who became director of Los Alamos after Oppenheimer resigned in October 1945. Like most of the witnesses, he testified in favor of Oppenheimer, but the testimony got a little weirder than usual--the hearing itself in retrospect was titanically weird--about 12 pages into the transcript for April 22. The part that is not unusual for the hearing, and is likely to again be a contentious issue in these times of the PATRIOT Act, is the question of loyalty to one's country versus loyalty to friends. |
| ... Dr. EVANS. Do you think that scientific men as a rule are rather peculiar individuals? The WITNESS. When did I stop beating my wife? Mr. GRAY. Especially chemistry professors? Dr. EVANS. No, physics professors. The WITNESS. Scientists are human beings. I think as a class, because their basic task is concerned with the exploration of the facts of nature, understanding, this is a quality of mind philosophy--a scientist wants to know. He wants to know correctly and truthfully and precisely. By this token it seems to me he is more likely than not to be interested in a number of fields, but to be interested in them from the point of view of exploration. What is in them? What do they have to offer. What is their truth. ... Therefore I think you are likely to find among people who have imaginative minds in the scientific field, individuals who are also willing, eager, to look at a number of other fields with the same type of interest, willingness to examine, to be convinced and without a priori convictions as to rightness or wrongness, that this constant or that curve or this or that function is fatal. I think the same sort of willingness to explore other areas of human activity is probably characteristic. If this makes them peculiar, I think it is probably a desirable peculiarity. Dr. EVANS. You didn't do that, did you? The WITNESS. Well--- Dr. EVANS. You didn't investigate these subversive organizations, did you? The WITNESS. No. Perhaps my interest lay along other lines. I don't think one has to investigate all these political systems. Dr. EVANS. Do you go fishing and things like that? The WITNESS. Yes, I have done a number of things. Some people, and perhaps myself among them, I was an experimental physicist in those days, and I was very much preoccupied with my own investigations. Dr. EVANS. But that didn't make you peculiar, did it? The WITNESS. This I would have to leave to others to say. Dr. EVANS. Younger people sometimes make mistakes, don't they? The WITNESS. I think this is part of people's growing up. Dr. EVANS. We all do. ... Dr. EVANS. You spoke of loyalty. Would you put loyalty to your country above loyalty to your friends? The WITNESS. I would. Dr. EVANS. That is all I have. REDIRECT EXAMINATION By Mr. SILVERMAN: [one of Oppenheimer's lawyers] Q. Doctor, from your knowledge of Dr. Oppenheimer, today, do you think he would put loyalty to his country above loyalty to a friend? A. I believe he would. Mr. SILVERMAN. That is all. ... (This excerpt is from pages 491 and 492 of the 992-page transcript.) |
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