Volume 15, Number 1 · July 2, 1970
Closing the Oppenheimer Case
By H. Stuart Hughes
The Oppenheimer Case: Security on Trial
by Philip M. Stern
Harper & Row, 591 pp., $10.00
The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story
by Peter Michelmore
Dodd, Mead, 273 pp., $6.95
The Great Weapons Heresy
by Thomas W. Wilson Jr.
Houghton, Mifflin, 275 pp., $5.95
Oppenheimer: The Story of a Friendship
by Haakon Chevalier
Braziller, 219 pp., $5.00
Lawrence and Oppenheimer
by Nuel Pharr Davis
Simon & Schuster, 384 pp., $7.50
The death of J. Robert Oppenheimer three years ago was bound to prompt another look at his already well-chronicled security hearing of 1954. Countless members of the American intellectual community recalled it as the episode that touched them most closely in an era of general political squalor—or perhaps, as the private counterpoint, played behind closed doors, of the Army-McCarthy hearings, which were staged almost simultaneously and which caused ordinarily conscientious people to drop their labors and cling to their television sets for days. These hearings marked both the apex of power and the start of the downhill slide for the master demagogue of the 1950s. At the time of his ordeal, Oppenheimer and his counsel could not possibly have known that Joe McCarthy's end was so close; nor could they tell that a great revulsion of public sentiment on 'security' matters would come within a half decade. They played their roles partly blind and partly in panic—like the rest of us. We should do well to remember this when, with the serenity of hindsight, we are tempted to find fault with their defense.
Review, 4663 words
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