What was the background to Oppenheimer’s security hearing? How did such a travesty happen?
A great debate over the role of nuclear weapons in American strategic and diplomatic policy broke out in the fall of 1949 after the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb in August. The first part of the debate was over whether the US should respond by building a hydrogen bomb–a nuclear weapon with absolutely no physical limit to its power. Oppenheimer and all the other members of the General Advisory Committee to the AEC believed it was a genocidal weapon that was unnecessary for our security and he and they opposed its development. A few years later, Oppenheimer proposed that the government be more open about the nuclear decisions. He called this “operation Candor” and wrote about it in Foreign Affairs. He believed that too much secrecy was dangerous for a democracy in general and for the intelligent discussion of nuclear issues in particular. He also opposed the plans of the Strategic Air Command whose intention it was to kill over two hundred million Soviet citizens should war occur. T
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- What was the background to Oppenheimer’s security hearing? How did such a travesty happen?
