In 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission revoked J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance, concerned about that his past communist connections could compromise his loyalty to the United States. His clearance was due to expire 24 hours after the security hearing canceled his clearance.
The humiliating gesture deeply affected Oppenheimer and his whole family. His daughter, Toni, was later unable to receive a clearance for translation work at the United Nations because of her father’s perceived untrustworthiness. According to Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s excellent biography of Oppenheimer, “She avoided discussing the 1954 hearing, other than to say on occasion ‘that those men destroyed my father.’” In 1977, Toni committed suicide.
The Atomic Energy Commission’s full transcripts from the hearing had been classified and sent to the National Archives, where some of the volumes were declassified while others languished in the declassification process or were miscategorized and lost. In 2009, historian Alex Wellerstein submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to review the classified volumes. In 2012, the National Archives sent the volumes to DOE for review. This past month, DOE announced that they had uploaded online the full, unredacted transcripts of the hearing.
William Broad of the New York Times covered the document release, explaining, “Experts who have looked at the declassified transcripts say they cast startling new light on the Oppenheimer case.” Broad quotes Dr. Isidor I. Rabi who defended Oppenheimer saying, “‘We have an A-bomb,’ he told the hearing, ‘as well as a whole series of Super bombs…What more do you want, mermaids?’”