All language subtitles for PBS.American.Experience.2008.The.Trials.of.J.Robert.Oppenheimer.1080p.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

(lighter snaps shut)

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GORDON GRAY, US Special Counsel:
The hearing will come to order.

Dr. J.R. Oppenheimer,

the Institute for Advanced Study,

Princeton, New Jersey.

There has developed
considerable question

whether your continued employment

on Atomic Energy Commission work
is consistent

with the interests
of the national security.

In view of your access

to highly sensitive
classified information,

and in view of allegations
which, until disproved,

raise questions
as to your veracity, conduct,

and even your loyalty,

the Commission has
no other recourse

but to suspend your clearance

until the matter
has been resolved.

NARRATOR: The hearings
were held in a makeshift courtroom

in a shabby government
office in Washington, D.C.

GORDON GRAY, US Special Counsel:
It was reported that your wife,

Katherine Puening Oppenheimer,
was a member of the Communist Party.

It was reported that your brother

Frank Friedman Oppenheimer
was a member of the Communist Party.

NARRATOR: J. Robert Oppenheimer,

the most eminent
atomic scientist in America,

stood accused,
a risk to national security.

It was 1954.

The cold war with Russia
was fueling fears

of Communist infiltration

at the highest levels
of government.

GORDON GRAY, US Special Counsel:
It was reported that you stated

that you were not a Communist,

but had probably belonged
to every Communist front organization

on the West Coast

and had signed many petitions

in which Communists
were interested.

NARRATOR: The news
shocked Americans everywhere.

If Robert Oppenheimer
could not be trusted

with the nation's secrets,
who could be?

Brilliant, proud, charismatic,

a poet as well as a physicist,

Oppenheimer had seemed to enjoy
the full trust and confidence

of his country's leaders.

He was a national hero,

the man who had led
the scientific team

which devised the atomic bomb...

(explosion)

...the ultimate weapon
of mass destruction.

Oppenheimer came to prominence
through unspeakable violence

and suffered all the ambiguities
and contradictions

he had helped to create.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, (archival):
We knew the world would not be the same.

A few people laughed.

A few people cried.

Most people were silent.

I remembered the...

line from the Hindu scripture,
the Bhagavad Gita.

Vishnu...

is trying
to persuade the prince that

he should do his duty,

and to impress him,

takes on his multi-armed form

and says,

"Now I am become death,
the destroyer of worlds."

I suppose we all thought that
one way or another.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: What he was
trying to help the world to understand

is that these are not weapons.

These are forces of destruction
so great

that we finally, as a species,
are in a position

where we can destroy
the entire human world,

without question.

NARRATOR: As the nation's
top nuclear weapons advisor,

Oppenheimer tried to warn his countrymen

of their dangers,

but powerful figures
within the government feared

he was a threat to America's security.

They determined to destroy him.

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist:
The country asked him to do something,

and he did it brilliantly,

and they repaid him

for the tremendous job he did

by breaking him.

ROGER ROBB, Courtroom Prosecutor:
Doctor, do you think that social contacts

between a person
employed in secret war work

and Communists or Communist adherents

is dangerous?

Are we talking about today?

Yes.

Certainly not necessarily so.

They could conceivably be.

Was that your view in 1943
and during the war years?

NARRATOR: The hearings
would go on for nearly a month,

the story of Oppenheimer's life
laid bare;

His secrets exposed;

His brilliance and arrogance,

naiveté and insecurities

debated, dissected and judged.

A special three-man board,

appointed by the Atomic
Energy Commission,

would rule on the charges.

To defend himself,

the embattled scientist
felt compelled

to tell his own story
in his own way.

OPPENHEIMER: The items of
so-called derogatory information

cannot be fairly understood

except in the context
of my life and-and work.

I was born in New York in 1904.

My father came to this country
at the age of 17

from Germany.

NARRATOR: Julius Oppenheimer
was a penniless Jewish immigrant

who arrived in America in 1888

unable to speak a word
of English,

and went to work in his uncle's
textile importing business.

By the time he was 30,

he was a partner in the company
and a wealthy man.

When he fell in love,

it was with a sensitive,
talented woman

of exquisite taste
and refinement.

My mother was born in Baltimore,

and before her marriage,

she was an artist
and teacher of art.

NARRATOR:
Ella Oppenheimer was "very delicate,"

a friend remembered,

with an air of sadness about her.

Robert was
precociously brilliant,

and both parents were protective
of his uncommon gifts.

Frail, frequently sick,

he was attended to by servants,

driven everywhere.

He rarely played
with other children.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer:
He wasn't mischievous.

He was too brilliant to be
just one of the children.

But his parents treasured him,

treated him like a little jewel,

and he just skipped being a boy.

NARRATOR: "My childhood
did not prepare me for the fact

that the world is full
of cruel and bitter things,"

Oppenheimer said.

"It gave me no normal, healthy way
to be a bastard."

Sometime around the age of five,

Robert's grandfather gave him
a small collection of minerals.

"From then on," he said,

"I became,
in a completely childish way,

"an ardent mineral collector.

"But it began to be also a bit
of a scientist's interest,

a fascination with crystals."

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian: He wrote
to the New York Mineralogical Society

on a typewriter.

They were so impressed
with what he had to say that,

of course, thinking he was an adult,

they invited him to give a lecture,

and little Robert,
at age ten or 11,

shows up at the New York
Mineralogical Society,

and has to stand on a box

in order to see over the lectern
to give this lecture.

That is not a normal average childhood.

NARRATOR: Eight years separated
Robert from his brother Frank,

too many for companionship.

Robert was a loner.

And at New York's
Ethical Culture school,

he inhabited his own rarefied world,

more comfortable with his teachers

than with the other students,

who nicknamed him
"Booby" Oppenheimer.

To protect himself,

he relied on his
preternatural brilliance

and grew aloof and arrogant.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer:
He didn't grow up.

He studied a great deal,
which shielded him from the world,

and the emotional side of him

didn't catch up until much later.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer
graduated high school valedictorian

and then conquered Harvard.

He studied chemistry,
physics, calculus,

English and French literature,

Western, Chinese
and Hindu philosophy.

He even found time
to write stories and poems.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
He described it as being

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
like the Huns invading Rome,

by which he meant he was going
to swallow up every bit

of culture and art and science
that he could possibly do.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian: Harvard is an
environment in which the intellectual life

is a rich feast,

but the social life is a desert.

NARRATOR: In all his years
at Harvard, he never had a date.

He remained immature, uncertain,

easily bewildered
in social situations.

One friend remembered
"bouts of melancholy

and deep, deep depressions."

"In the days of my almost
infinitely prolonged adolescence,"

he said later,
"I hardly took an action,

"hardly did anything
that did not arouse in me

"a very great sense
of revulsion and of wrong.

"My feeling about myself

was always one
of extreme discontent."

His doubts about himself
came clear in his poems:

OPPENHEIMER (David Strathairn): The
dawn invests our substance with desire

And the slow light betrays us,
and our wistfulness...

We find ourselves again

Each in his separate prison

Ready, hopeless for negotiation

With other men.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer
graduated in just three years,

and in 1925 headed
for Cambridge, England,

and an advanced degree at the
celebrated Cavendish laboratory.

Academic success had always come easily.

Ambitious, determined to succeed,

in England he would learn
what it was like to struggle

and fail.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: Oppenheimer,
like so many theoretical physicists,

it turns out that if he
walks through a lab,

the instruments all break.

And he's trying to do
a rather delicate physical experiment

and he's not getting anywhere.

And he's sinking deeper and deeper

into that special despair

that comes along when prodigies grow up

and have... and realize
they can't just do it

by being a prodigy anymore.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
His eyes and his hands and his mind

are not coordinated.

He's can't do what all
of the other young people

are able to do.

And he finds himself one day
standing at a blackboard,

staring into space, saying,
"The point is...

The point is... The point is..."

There is no point.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: He fell
into despair. He fell into depression.

Here was a point where he was
suddenly doubting his intellect,

his ability to do science,

so it's not surprising
that at that point,

the whole thing
would go collapsing down for him.

At the same time,
he had never really learned

how to approach women,

how to close the sale,
if I may call it that,

and he was dealing
with that as well.

NARRATOR:
Wrestling with inner demons

that threatened to overwhelm him,

he was, he later said,
"at the point of bumping myself off."

In 1926,
Oppenheimer would save himself.

He cut free from the English
experimental laboratory

and headed for Göttingen,
Germany,

to study theoretical physics

with some of the greatest
scientific minds of the century.

"I had very great misgivings
about myself on all fronts,"

he said.

"I hadn't been good;
I hadn't done anybody any good;

And here was something
I felt just driven to try."

In Göttingen, Oppenheimer would
make his mark in a new science

which explored a world
that ran counter to everyday experience:

Quantum Physics.

HERBERT YORK, Physicist:
Quantum Physics is the basic Physics

behind electrons and atoms.

It turns out that classical ideas about

Newtonian mechanics and
particle motion and so on,

do not apply to things of...
to things of atomic scale.

You needed a new kind of physics.

So if you're going to change
on a different scale

the-the whole structure of the physics,

everything has to be redone,
if you will,

and that means there are
enormous opportunities available

for a young graduate student

with talent to come in and make
various aspects of this his own.

NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer immersed himself

in the mysteries
of the subatomic universe,

where nothing was certain,
and probability the only rule.

He found the work exhilarating.

"There was terror," he wrote,

"as well as exaltation."

FREEMAN DYSON, Physicist:
Oppenheimer really flourished there.

He annoyed everybody, of course, by

talking too much and...

pretending he knew everything.

He always considered
very carefully what he said

as though he was
speaking for the ages.

And he expected everybody
to be seduced

by his Renaissance man knowledge

of everything.

NARRATOR: In Göttingen,
Oppenheimer came into his own

as a theoretical physicist,

publishing 16 papers
in three years.

By the time he was ready
to return to America,

he was focused and confident,

an ambitious young man
with an international reputation.

OPPENHEIMER: In the spring of
1929, I returned to the United States.

I was homesick for this country.

I had learned in my student days

a great deal about the new physics.

I wanted to pursue this myself,
to explain it,

and to foster its cultivation.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer was just 25

and already knew more
about the Quantum Universe

than nearly any other American.

He settled in California

and began teaching at Cal Tech
in Pasadena

and the University of California
in Berkeley.

But at first,

his lectures were incomprehensible.

ROBERT CHRISTY, Physicist:
It was customary until I got there

for students to take his main
course in Theoretical Physics

twice in a row.

They would take a second year
to fully understand it.

Other students were taking it in pairs.

One would listen,
the other one would write notes

and they'd work out the lecture
afterward.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
He spoke at a very fast clip,

puffing on his cigarette,
which he always had;

He was writing with his chalk,
and he was moving back and forth

between his left hand
and his right hand so quickly

that people thought
he was going to smoke the chalk,

you know,
and write with the cigarette,

uh... and...
they couldn't follow him.

But he was able
to transform himself

into an excellent lecturer
who was charismatic

and extremely effective.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer
became a magnetic, dazzling teacher,

but his arrogance could make
even his colleagues wince.

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist:
He was not likable

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist:
because he wouldn't let you look at him.

He was always on stage.

You never had a feeling

that he was speaking
from the heart somehow.

He never came across
as a real person.

There was always a studied remark

intended to convey some sort of,

I don't know, superiority

or deeper knowledge
than you pos...

you slobs could possibly understand.

He could be devastating,
especially to young people.

He became very impatient

and was always all over them,

and sometimes
reduced them practically to tears.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
His sharp remarks were not inadvertent.

They had to do with a kind
of arrogance and contempt.

I take it to be a way

that he disguised his anxieties,

that he disguised
his social insecurities,

but it was immensely cruel.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer
called his behavior "beastliness."

"It is not easy,"
he wrote in a letter to his brother,

"at least it is not easy for me,

to be quite free of the desire
to browbeat somebody."

Ever since Oppenheimer
had visited New Mexico

as a teenager,
he had been haunted by its wild beauty.

In 1927, his father took
a lease on a rustic cabin

high in the mountains
45 miles northeast of Santa Fe

and gave it to both his sons.

The Oppenheimers called it
Perro Caliente,

Spanish for "hot dog."

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
He found peace there.

He found a different self there,

one that he liked, a cowboy self.

Friends who went to visit him
later would talk about the fact

that he would go out riding
for three days at a time

up the ridge
of the Rocky Mountains

with a bar of chocolate

and a pint of whiskey
in his hip pocket,

and they would be starving
and terrified

riding through mountain storms
and lightning,

and he would just be having
a wonderful time.

NARRATOR: "My two great loves,"

he once told a friend,

"are physics and desert country.

It's a pity
they can't be combined."

(birds singing)

(loud shouting, whistle blowing)

(gunshots)

In 1934, San Francisco
longshoremen battled police,

shutting down the waterfront
just across the bay

from Oppenheimer's home
in Berkeley.

America itself
seemed on the verge of revolution,

with violence in the streets,

strikes, a failing economy,

a third of the nation unemployed.

But Oppenheimer remained aloof.

OPPENHEIMER:
I had no radio, no telephone.

I never read a newspaper
or a current magazine.

I learned
of the stock market crash

in the fall of 1929
only long after the event.

I voted for the first time

in a presidential election
in 1936.

I was deeply interested in my science,

but I had no understanding

of the relations of man to his society.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian: The
Depression didn't affect him personally.

He had an income from his father,

who was wealthy.

And politics

seemed gross to him.

OPPENHEIMER:
Beginning late in 1936,

my interests began to change.

I saw what the Depression
was doing to my students.

Often, they could get no jobs.

But I had no framework

of political conviction
or experience

to give me perspective
in these matters.

In the spring of 1936,

I was introduced by friends
to Jean Tatlock.

In the autumn,
I began to court her.

We were at least twice
close enough to marriage

to think of ourselves as engaged.

NARRATOR: Jean Tatlock
was Oppenheimer's first real love.

She was 22,
studying to be a doctor,

and passionately involved

with the contentious issues
of her day:

The civil war in Spain,

organizing workers,

racial discrimination.

She was also a member
of the Communist Party

and introduced Oppenheimer
into her political circle.

I made left-wing friends,

and felt sympathy for causes

which hitherto would have seemed
so remote from me,

like the Loyalist cause in Spain

and the organization
of migratory workers.

I liked the new sense of companionship

and, at the time,
felt that I was coming to be part

of the life of my time and country.

I did not then regard Communists
as dangerous,

and some of their declared objectives

seemed to me desirable.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
In the 1930s,

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
in the bottom of the Depression,

there was a deep
and fundamental concern

about the future of this country,

whether its economic

and, to some degree,
political system was adequate.

We came later in America
to demonize people

who belonged to the Communist Party,

but it was a very common
business in the '30s.

NARRATOR: Workers,
teachers, doctors, writers.

Americans of every stripe
and color were party members,

but although he shared many
of their political concerns,

there is nothing to prove

that Oppenheimer himself
was a Communist.

Oppenheimer never joined the party.

The FBI spent 30 years

trying to prove
that Oppenheimer had been a Communist

and was never able to do so.

That's probably good evidence
that he never joined the party.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer
was deeply bound to Tatlock,

but she was volatile, moody,

sometimes distraught.

After three years,
she broke off their relationship.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer:
Their relationship appears to have been

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer:
quite a stormy one,

and Jean Tatlock,

although for many years
people who knew her didn't say this,

was uncertain whether she...

wanted to be with men or women,

whether she was lesbian
or heterosexual,

and, I believe,
that must have been at the bottom

of her crises with Oppenheimer.

And how that fed into his own

sexual certainties and uncertainties,

one can only imagine.

He was troubled.

That's why he was attracted
to troubled women.

He was troubled.

He didn't know who he was.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer would
always feel a tender attachment to Jean,

but they had gone
their separate ways.

When Kitty Harrison set her cap
for him.

Kitty was 29

and also a former
Communist Party member.

She was married to a doctor,

but that didn't stop her

from going after
the well-known scientist.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: When
she saw Oppenheimer, she grabbed him.

They were together, of course,
for the rest of their lives,

but it was...

God knows, a tumultuous relationship

with a lot of bickering
and a lot of fighting

and a lot of drinking.

You know, Kitty and Jean
were both dominant women.

They were passionate women,

and in some way,
he could comfort them.

He could save them, or try to.

Here were two women
who both presented themselves

as people who needed saving,

and Robert jumped in like the...

like the white knight that he...
I think, wanted to be.

NARRATOR: In 1940,

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer
became Kitty's fourth husband.

Less than seven months later,

their first child,
Peter, was born.

Although they continued to see
some of their left-wing friends,

the Oppenheimers were, by now,

detaching themselves
from Communist Party politics.

OPPENHEIMER:
My views were evolving.

At that time,
I did not fully understand,

as in time I came to understand,

how completely the
Communist Party in this country

was under the control of Russia.

Many of its declared objectives
seemed desirable to me,

but I never accepted
Communist dogma or theory.

In fact,
it never made any sense to me.

NARRATOR:
What did make sense was science.

He would never let politics interfere
with his teaching

or his physics.

ROY J. GLAUBER, Physicist: Of
course, he paid attention to experiment,

but he was a theorist.

He probed very deeply.

He was interested
in the deepest ideas,

and he did contribute
to some of them.

FREEMAN DYSON, Physicist:
In 1939,

he published with his student
Hartland Snyder,

really a great piece of work,

explaining how stars collapse,

how they can actually
end up as black holes,

which had never been understood before.

NARRATOR:
That same year, a startling dispatch

from the abstruse
world of nuclear physics

changed the course of history

and Oppenheimer's life.

Two German chemists

reported that the uranium nucleus

could be split.

The discovery soon had a name:

Nuclear Fission.

"The U-business is unbelievable,"

Oppenheimer wrote.

"Many points are still unclear.

"I think it really not too improbable

"that a ten-centimeter cube
of Uranium deuteride

might very well blow itself to hell."

The discovery of Nuclear Fission
began a race that would end

with the atomic bomb.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
He saw already

at the beginning, as, I think,

any really good physicist did,

just by doing the numbers,

about the

amount of energy
released in this reaction,

that this was going
to change the world.

With that discovery came a change

in the relationship between science

and the nation state.

Every country in the world

in 1939 and 1940
that had the capability

of even beginning
to work on a bomb

began that work,

not only England and Germany
and the United States,

but also France, Japan
and the Soviet Union.

NARRATOR:
But the only threat came from Germany.

OPPENHEIMER:
We had information in those days

of German activity in
the field of nuclear fission.

We were aware
of what it might mean

if they beat us to the draw

in the development of atomic bombs.

I had relatives there,

and was later
to help in extricating them

and bringing them to this country.

(weapons firing)

NARRATOR: Nine months after
the discovery of nuclear fission,

Germany invaded Poland.

World War II had begun.

When the United States
entered the war two years later,

American scientists feared

that Germany was already well ahead

in the race to build an atomic bomb.

If America was going
to develop a bomb first,

they would have to work fast.

(train whistle blowing)

In October 1942,

the 20th Century Limited
was speeding toward New York City.

Sharing a private Pullman car
were Robert Oppenheimer

and a 46-year-old career Army officer,

General Leslie Groves.

Groves had been placed in command

of the Manhattan Project,

the staggering enterprise

to marshal the vast technical
and industrial resources

to develop an atomic bomb.

Now, he was looking over the man

he hoped might head up
the secret laboratory

where the bomb would
be designed and built.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: Groves's way
of operating was to be blunt and brutal.

He knew, as they said
during the First World War,

how to get the Spam to the front lines.

He knew how to get the job done.

NARRATOR:
The two men talked for hours.

When they were done,

Groves had made up his mind.

Oppenheimer, he believed,

had the ambition,
discipline and brilliance

to lead the most
complex scientific effort

America had ever undertaken.

"He's a genius,"
Groves said later.

"A real genius.

"He can talk to you
about anything you bring up.

"Well, not exactly.

He doesn't know anything about sports."

ROBERT CHRISTY, Physicist:
Groves went a way out on a limb

ROBERT CHRISTY, Physicist:
in choosing Oppenheimer.

No one would have

would have supposed
that this esoteric person,

with an interest in French poetry

and Hindu mysticism,

would be a practical person
to lead a laboratory.

He'd never directed anything really,

to speak of.

He hadn't even been
a department chairman.

Most of his friends think

that Oppenheimer could
not run a hamburger stand.

NARRATOR:
Groves wanted Oppenheimer anyway,

but the United States Army refused

to give the scientist
a security clearance.

The country was at war.

Even though Russia was America's ally,

anyone with Communist associations

was considered a possible spy.

It was the first time

Oppenheimer's loyalty to America

would be questioned.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
The security people are appalled.

Oppenheimer is the last person
they would want as director,

and he's the next to the last person

they'd even want
involved in the project at all

as a... uh... as a janitor.

Groves is very conservative.

He hates Communists.

But Groves does not allow

Oppenheimer's left-wing
activities during the 1930s

to trump his belief

that Oppenheimer will be
just the right person.

OPPENHEIMER: In early
1943, I received a letter,

appointing me director
of the laboratory.

Almost everyone knew
this was a great undertaking.

It might determine
the outcome of the war.

It was an unparalleled opportunity

to bring to bear the
knowledge and art of science

for the benefit of the country.

This job, if it were achieved,

would be part of history.

NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer had once fantasized

combining his passion for physics

with his love of the desert
and mountains of New Mexico.

Now, he suggested a remote wilderness

near the Los Alamos Canyon,
northeast of Santa Fe,

as the site for the
atomic bomb laboratory.

General Groves quickly agreed.

Oppenheimer's fantasy had come true.

Before leaving for Los Alamos,

Oppenheimer entertained
an old friend for dinner,

Haakon Chevalier,

a French professor teaching at Berkeley

and a dedicated Communist.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: Oppenheimer
had known Chevalier for years.

He was...
Chevalier was one of his closet friends.

He knew Chevalier was a Communist.

It didn't really worry him.

He judged that Chevalier
wouldn't do anything

that would compromise
Robert Oppenheimer.

NARRATOR:
But Chevalier put Oppenheimer at risk.

He told his friend
that a British engineer

named Eltenton

wanted information about
Oppenheimer's scientific work

to pass on to a diplomat
at the Soviet Embassy.

Oppenheimer dismissed the idea.

"That would be treason," he said.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
Oppenheimer did not, at the time,

take this approach as something serious.

It was only later
that it came to be a problem

because it was useful
to people who wanted to destroy him

to make it a problem.

ROGER ROBB, Courtroom Prosecutor:
Doctor, do you think that social contacts

between a person
employed in secret war work

and Communists or Communist adherents

is dangerous?

Certainly not necessarily so.

They could conceivably be.

My awareness of the danger
would be greater today.

Doctor, in your opinion,

is association with the
Communist movement

compatible with a job
on a secret war project?

I was associated with
the Communist movement,

and I did not regard it as inappropriate

to take the job at Los Alamos.

Doctor, let me ask you a blunt question.

Don't you know,
and didn't you know certainly by 1943,

that the Communist
Party was an instrument

or a vehicle of
espionage in this country?

I was not clear about it.

I am asking you now...

if fear of espionage

wasn't one of the reasons

why you felt that association
with the Communist Party

was inconsistent with work
on a secret war project?

Yes.

Your answer is that it was?

Yes.

You would have felt then,
I assume,

that a rather continued
or constant association

between a person employed
on the atomic bomb project

and Communists or Communist adherents

was dangerous?

Potentially dangerous,
conceivably dangerous.

Look, I have had a lot of
secrets in my head a long time.

It does not matter who I associate with.

I don't talk about those secrets.

NARRATOR:
In times of spiritual trial,

Oppenheimer would
search the Bhagavad Gita,

a sacred Hindu text,

for meaning and comfort.

He often turned to the story
of the warrior Prince Arjuna,

who, to fulfill his destiny,
must fight and kill.

OPPENHEIMER:
"In battle, in forest,

"at the precipice in the mountains,

"on the dark great sea,

"in the midst of javelins and arrows,

"in sleep, in confusion,

in the depths of shame,

the good deeds a man has done before

"defend him."

NARRATOR: In April 1943,
Oppenheimer was 38 years old,

about to take on a task

for which few people
thought him capable:

Harnessing the forces of the atom

to build a bomb
of awesome destructive power.

There was little doubt

that a potentially world-shattering
undertaking lay ahead.

We began to see
the great explosion.

We also began to see
how rough, difficult, challenging

and unpredictable
this job might turn out to be.

ROBERT CHRISTY, Physicist: A
whole town was being constructed,

and Oppenheimer
was trying to organize the science.

But in addition,
they were constructing roads,

laboratory buildings and homes.

We had no sidewalks anywhere,

and in one season of the year,

walked around
in mud up to our ankles.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: They were trying
to build a first-class physics laboratory

out in the middle of
a howling wilderness.

It was a hell of a place
to try to move a linear accelerator

up the narrow switchback mountain roads

to install it at the top.

NARRATOR: The laboratory at Los
Alamos was a closely guarded secret.

From its beginnings,
security had the highest priority.

Army intelligence watched over
everything and everybody,

especially the laboratory director
with the left-wing past.

Oppenheimer's phones were tapped,

his mail opened,

his office wired,

his comings and goings
closely monitored.

His driver and bodyguard
was an undercover agent.

Oppenheimer, who knew everything
that was going on at Los Alamos,

was still waiting
for his security clearance.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian: Oppenheimer goes
about doing the job as best he can do it,

but the security people
are like flies on a hot summer day.

They're constantly buzzing
around him.

They're constantly annoying him.

He does his best to shoo them,
you know, away,

but there's one instance

where he makes a terrible,
terrible mistake.

OPPENHEIMER: I had visited
Jean Tatlock in the spring of 1943.

I almost had to.

She was not much of a Communist,

but she was certainly
a member of the party.

There was nothing
dangerous about that.

There was nothing
potentially dangerous about that.

NARRATOR: The government
knew all about Oppenheimer's visit.

Agents from Army intelligence

waited outside Tatlock's apartment,

while Oppenheimer spent the night,

and reported the details
to the FBI.

ROGER ROBB, Courtroom Prosecutor:
Why did you have to see her?

She had indicated a
great desire to see me

before we left for Los Alamos.

At that time, I couldn't go.

For one thing,
I wasn't supposed to say

where we were going or anything.

I felt that she had to see me.

She was undergoing
psychiatric treatment.

She was extremely unhappy.

Did you find out why she had to see you?

Because she was still in love with me.

When did you see her after that?

She took me to the airport,
and I never saw her again.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: Jean
Tatlock was a wounded, lonely woman,

who was at wit's end,

and she wanted this man whom she loved

to come to her and he did.

From the point of view
of the gumshoes who sat outside

Jean Tatlock's apartment
all night in their car,

writing down who came
and who went and at what hour,

and when the lights were on
and when the lights were off,

there may have been a security problem.

But for him,

human need, human compassion,

caring for someone you love

trumped the security system.

NARRATOR:
The FBI feared that Tatlock

might be passing atomic secrets
to the Russians.

They tapped her phone,

but persistent eavesdropping
revealed nothing.

Six months
after Oppenheimer's visit,

Jean Tatlock killed herself.

"I am disgusted with everything,"

she wrote in an unsigned note.

"To those who loved me and helped me,

all love and courage.

"I wanted to live and to give,

and I got paralyzed.

"I tried like hell to understand

and couldn't.

"I think I would have
been a liability all my life.

"At least I could take away
the burden of a paralyzed soul

from a fighting world."

You have said that you knew
she had been a Communist?

Yes. I knew that
in the fall of 1937.

Was there any reason for you to believe

that she wasn't still a
Communist in 1943?

No.

Pardon?

There wasn't. I do not know
what she was doing in 1943.

You had no reason to believe
she wasn't a Communist, did you?

No.

You spent the night with her,

didn't you?

Yes.

That is when you were working
on a secret war project?

Yes.

You have told us, this morning,

that you thought that at times

social contacts with Communists

on the part of one working
on a secret war project

was dangerous.

Could conceivably be.

You didn't think spending a night

with a dedicated Communist...

I don't believe
she was a dedicated Communist.

You don't?

No.

NARRATOR: Five weeks after
Oppenheimer's visit to Tatlock,

General Groves rammed through
his security clearance.

But Oppenheimer continued to operate

under a shadow of suspicion,

and by the summer of 1943,
the pressure began to tell.

That August,
Oppenheimer volunteered to talk

with Colonel Boris Pash,

chief of Army counterintelligence
for the West Coast.

He had begun to worry
about his conversation

with his friend Haakon Chevalier.

He realized
that he should have reported it at once,

but he still didn't want to get
his old friend in trouble.

BORIS PASH, Colonel US MI: General
Groves has, more or less, I feel,

BORIS PASH, Colonel US MI:
placed a certain responsibility in me.

I don't mean to take up
too much of your time.

OPPENHEIMER:
That's perfectly all right.

Whatever time you choose.

I have no firsthand knowledge,

but a man attached to the Soviet Consul

has indicated
indirectly through an intermediary

that he was in a position
to transmit information.

I think it might not hurt
to be on the lookout for it.

If you wanted to watch him,

I think it would be the
appropriate thing to do.

His name is Eltenton.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer had
simply wanted to alert Army intelligence

that Eltenton might be a threat,

but Pash did not trust Oppenheimer

and his left-wing past.

He hid a microphone
in the telephone receiver

and recorded their entire conversation.

Oppenheimer had no idea
that everything he said was set down,

transcribed
and added to his security file,

where it would be unearthed
years later

with disastrous consequences.

OPPENHEIMER:
There were approaches to other people

who were troubled by them

and sometimes they came
and discussed them with me.

And that's as far as I can go on that.

BORIS PASH, Colonel US MI: These people,
were they contacted directly by Eltenton?

OPPENHEIMER: No.

BORIS PASH, Colonel US MI:
Oh, through another party?

Yes.

Well, now,

could we know through whom
that contact was made?

I think it would be a mistake.

Oppenheimer makes up
this complicated story

so that the security people
are looking all over the place,

and they won't finger Robert
and they won't finger Chevalier.

He evidently hadn't learned to think

the way security people think.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: Every time he said
something else, he just made it worse.

Pash ended up, of course,

believing Oppenheimer
was a Communist spy.

OPPENHEIMER: But I think
in mentioning Eltenton's name,

I essentially said that
he may be acting in a way

which is dangerous to the country

and which should be watched.

I'm not going to mention
anyone else's name in the same breath.

I just can't do that.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer quickly
put the whole incident behind him.

There was too much work to do.

Los Alamos was growing
into a bustling town

with thousands of people.

He had wildly underestimated
the magnitude of the job.

But he was thriving.

In spite of the initial doubts
of his scientific colleagues,

he was proving that he was more than up

to the enormous task.

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist: He
showed an ability to motivate and inspire

that, I think, surprised everyone.

ROY J. GLAUBER, Physicist: Everyone
loved him because he was everywhere.

He understood all of these

absurdly

difficult and intractable problems,

and he often had witty things to say
about them.

HAROLD AGNEW, Physicist: He
had a certain charisma, a certain charm,

a certain flair.

He had a robin's egg blue
convertible Cadillac, you know.

And if you're a young kid,
and here's the boss,

and he's driving around
with his porkpie hat

and his tweed jacket
and cigarette always,

you know, like in the movies.

You know, you're impressed.

ROY J. GLAUBER, Physicist:
Oppenheimer inspired everyone.

He expressed the intellectual essence

of what we were doing,

the deepest sense of what it was.

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist: I don't know
in retrospect who could have done it better;

Who could have pulled that gang...

80% of which were
prima Donnas of their own.

Could have pulled that gang together and

and made them work
as a... as a unit.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: In being the
director of this historic laboratory,

Oppenheimer found his greatest
and most natural role.

He was cruel to people
before the war.

He was cruel to people
after the war,

but he wasn't cruel to people
during the war.

The period at Los Alamos
was the only time in his life

when he wasn't plagued
by existential doubt,

when all the parts came together
and worked together.

It was the first chance
he'd ever had

to serve the country
and forget himself.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer
shaped an array of brilliant,

eccentric scientists into a team.

The Hungarian refugee
Edward Teller was his biggest problem.

ROY J. GLAUBER, Physicist: Teller
was always an ebullient scientist.

Very bright, quite impatient.

When I showed up at Los Alamos,

I saw this name
chalked next to the door:

E. Teller,

but there was no one in the office.

I learned that
he was rather unhappy

that he had not been chosen
as leader of the theory division

and had gone off in a huff.

His passion from the very first
was to create

what he called "the Zupa,"
the super-bomb.

NARRATOR:
The "super" was a hydrogen bomb,

a weapon with nearly
unlimited destructive power.

But since a hydrogen bomb would need

an atomic bomb to set it off,

Oppenheimer gave
Teller's super a low priority.

Oppenheimer, said,
"No, no, we got enough on our hands.

"We're not going to,
we're not going to...

"we got to make the hy...
we got to make the atomic bomb.

"That's what we're going to do.

"That's our job

and that's what
we're going to focus on."

NARRATOR:
Teller threatened to quit

until Oppenheimer relented
and let him work independently

to try and design his super-bomb,

but there would always be
bad blood between them.

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist:
Teller was obsessive.

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist: He
would not accept Oppenheimer's judgment

about the feasibility of this project.

He was not a crackpot
or anything like that.

He was an excellent physicist,

but he got off on something
that was simply wrong,

and he couldn't let it go.

Teller never forgave Oppenheimer,

and, uh...

he paid him back...

unfortunately.

NARRATOR: By summer of 1944,

the enormous burden of responsibility

had begun to take its toll.

Losing weight,
afflicted with a rasping cough,

Oppenheimer chain-smoked his way

through increasingly demanding months.

Kitty was an additional burden.

She refused to take on the role
of the director's wife

and found herself at loose ends.

After their second child was born

in the Los Alamos Hospital,
a girl they named Toni,

she became even more distracted.

She was drinking hard,

on the verge of emotional collapse

while Oppenheimer was preoccupied,

desperately pushing the project forward.

For me it was a time
so filled with work,

with the need for decision
and action and consultation,

there was room for little else.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: They
had to invent all these new technologies

in these very short months

from the summer of '44
to the summer of '45.

Oppenheimer nearly broke down.

He was really depressed.

He thought he'd blown it.

He thought they had found
themselves at a dead end.

ROY J. GLAUBER, Physicist:
It was devilishly difficult

ROY J. GLAUBER, Physicist:
grappling with problems

which were on the edge of absurdity.

Just imagine trying to find out

what's going on within an explosion

all of which is over in less
than a thousandth of a second.

He seriously considered
leaving the project,

and one of his friends
finally took him aside

and said, "Robert, you can't leave."

"You're the only person
who can make this happen.

You have to stay.
I don't care what you think."

And he did stay.

The consensus of all our opinions

and every directive I had

stressed the extreme urgency
of the work.

Time and time again
we had in the technical work

almost paralyzing crises.

Time and again
the laboratory drew itself together

and we faced the new problems
and got on with the work.

We worked by night and by day.

NARRATOR:
While Oppenheimer and his team raced on,

the war against Japan and Germany

was reaching a bloody climax.

On May 7, 1945,

the Nazis surrendered.

The race with Germany
to build the bomb was over.

ROY J. GLAUBER, Physicist: We had joined
this project fearing that the Germans

were working on trying to produce a bomb

and if they succeeded
in reaching it before we did,

they wouldn't be
very sentimental about using it.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
When Germany surrenders,

the bomb is several months away
from being built.

And the question is,
should we continue?

Is it the right thing to do?

Is it ethical?

We never heard any suggestion
from Oppenheimer that uh...

there was any course other
than continuing.

There was a kind of momentum involved

in our efforts in this direction.

It was an enormous project.

We were all deeply involved in

finding out whether the
darn thing would work.

When you see something
that is technically sweet,

you go ahead and do it

and you argue about
what to do about it

only after you have had
your technical success.

NARRATOR: Caught up in
the momentum of the project,

driven by the desire
to finish the job he had begun,

Oppenheimer was
determined to see it through.

"This might help to convince everybody,"
he argued,

"that the next war would be fatal.

"For this purpose,

actual combat use

might even be the best thing."

He rejected the idea
of demonstrating the bomb first.

HERBERT YORK, Physicist:
If you have a demonstration,

what it is
is a fantastic firework

with nobody getting hurt.

What's important about nuclear weapons

is not that it's fantastic fireworks.

What's important about nuclear weapons

is the fact they kill people.

NARRATOR: On May 31, 1945,

Oppenheimer joined a meeting

of high-ranking government officials,

scientists and military men.

It was agreed that

"the most desirable target

"was a vital war plant

"employing a large number of workers

and closely surrounded
by workers' houses."

Oppenheimer made no objection.

What worried him
was whether the bomb would work.

The answer would come
in New Mexico's Alamogordo desert,

the place the Spanish had called
the Jornada del Muerto,

"The Journey of Death."

On July 15,

Oppenheimer climbed
a 110-foot tower

for one last look at the bomb.

It would be tested the next day.

He was down to 115 pounds,

tense, on edge.

ROY J. GLAUBER, Physicist:
There was great tension about the test,

great uncertainty
whether it would work

or produce a pathetic fizzle.

This had never been done before,
and it was a...

no one had a clear picture at all
of what to expect.

NARRATOR: The evening
before the test, someone recalled,

"The frogs had gathered
in a little pond by the camp

and copulated and squawked
all night long."

Oppenheimer chain-smoked nervously

and sat quietly
reading the French poet Baudelaire.

OPPENHEIMER: Seductive twilight,

the criminal's friend.

Silent like a wolf.

The sky is closing down.

A dark cloth drawn
across an alcove.

Where the impatient man changes

into a beast of prey.

NARRATOR:
At 5:10, the countdown began

at zero minus 20 minutes.

As loudspeakers ticked off the time
at five-minute intervals,

Oppenheimer wandered
in and out of the control bunker,

glancing up at the sky.

At the two-minute mark,

he was heard to say to himself,

"Lord,
these affairs are hard on the heart."

Minus one minute.

Minus 55 seconds.

ROBERT CHRISTY, Physicist:
We were given a piece of welder's glass

to hold in front of our eyes,

so that we could look at it
without being blinded.

It was pitch-dark outside,
just before dawn.

A lot of tension.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer lay on his
stomach, his face dreamy, withdrawn.

"He grew tenser
as the last seconds ticked off,"

an Army general remembered.

"He scarcely breathed.

"For the last few seconds,

he stared directly ahead."

(explosion)

ROBERT CHRISTY, Physicist: There was
a brilliant flash like daylight outside.

Suddenly, from pitch-dark
to daylight over a huge area.

There was this rapidly expanding
glowing sphere

with swirling, dark clouds in it.

And finally as it dimmed,
you could see on the outside

a faint blue glow.

It was simply fantastic.

NARRATOR: "It worked,"
was all that Oppenheimer said.

"It worked."

ROY J. GLAUBER, Physicist:
We were just awestruck.

There it was. It had happened.

The test was evidently a success.

But we had no idea
when the next thing would happen.

Nobody had said to us

that a bomb had
already been shipped out.

There was total silence,

fear and tension.

Now we're into something.

Now
who knows what's going to ensue?

We heard not a single word

until the sixth of August.

(explosion)

NARRATOR: On August 6, 1945,

the United States
exploded an atomic bomb over Hiroshima,

a city with a population of 350,000.

Even before the blast,

Oppenheimer had been darkly mourning.

"Those poor little people,"
he said.

"Those poor little people."

Yet, he had given the military
precise instructions

to ensure that the weapon
would be delivered on target.

"No radar bombing," he wrote.

"It must be dropped visually.

"Don't let them detonate it too high

or the target won't get as much damage."

Oppenheimer was of two minds.

His success had been exhilarating,

but he was in anguish
over the human costs.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: There's no doubt
that there was ambivalence about it.

I think Oppenheimer saw the question
in all its complexity.

It wasn't so simple as,

"Was he guilty about
building such a weapon?"

He understood that
the bomb was going to change history.

He might have hoped
that there was some other way

to demonstrate its effectiveness.

They knew what they were making.

They knew it was going
to kill a lot of people.

They didn't like that aspect of it,

but there you were.

(explosion)

NARRATOR: The second atomic bomb,

exploded over Nagasaki
on August 9,

left him morose,
consumed by doubts,

fast sinking into depression.

"This undertaking,"
he wrote a friend,

"has not been without its misgivings.

"They are heavy on us today,

"when the future,

"which has so many
elements of high promise,

is yet only a stone's
throw from despair."

"Some of you will have seen photographs

of the Nagasaki strike,"

he told the American
Philosophical Society

three months after the blast.

"Seen the great steel
girders of factories

twisted and wrecked."

"Atomic weapons are
weapons of aggression,

"of surprise, and of terror.

"If they are ever used again,

"it may well be by the thousands,

or perhaps by the tens of thousands."

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian: He
was a great supporter of using the bomb,

but he understood all along

that he was on the cusp
of a new terror...

...even at the moment

when the scientists believed

that there was no other choice.

They knew that most of the
people killed were civilians.

They knew that the targets

for these bombs were
the centers of cities.

It's a very heavy burden

that he carries into the postwar period,

after Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are destroyed.

I have been asked
whether in the years to come,

it will be possible to kill
40 million American people

in the 20 largest American towns

by the use of atomic bombs
in a single night.

I am afraid that
the answer to that question is yes.

NARRATOR: In 1945,

America was the only
country in the world

with the atomic bomb.

President Harry Truman believed
that national security

depended on keeping
nuclear technology secret.

Oppenheimer, along with nearly
every other nuclear scientist,

disagreed.

OPPENHEIMER, (TV Archive): I have been asked
whether there is hope for the nation's security

in keeping secret some of the knowledge

which has gone
into the making of the bombs.

I am afraid
there is no such hope.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
President Truman really did seem to feel

that if you just
kept the lid on enough,

we'd always have the secret

and no one else would ever get it.

There wasn't any secret.

The secret was it worked.

NARRATOR: On October 25, 1945,

Oppenheimer met
with President Truman

to share his concerns.

When the president assured his visitor

that the Soviets
would never get the bomb,

Oppenheimer became frustrated.

"Mr. President," he said,

"I feel I have blood on my hands."

"Blood on his hands,"
Truman complained later.

"Damn it, he hasn't half as much
blood on his hands as I have.

You just don't go around
bellyaching about it."

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
It's not surprising

Truman just about
threw him out of his office.

It was the president's decision.

It wasn't Oppenheimer's decision.

NARRATOR: Later, Truman
told his secretary of state,

"I don't want to see that son of a bitch
in this office again."

In the years after the war,

Robert Oppenheimer's fame grew.

His name became a household word.

He was "the father of the A-bomb,"

the government's top advisor
on atomic weapons,

privy to all the
nation's atomic secrets.

HERBERT YORK, Physicist:
He was instantly famous.

Nuclear weapons, nuclear energy

such a surprise to nearly everyone,
that it was very widespread

to ask your local physicists,

"What does this all mean
and what should we do?"

You know the Rotary clubs did it,

the Kiwanis did it,
the PTAs, I mean, everybody.

And not only that,
whenever there was a...

anything in the papers about it,

it was always a "brilliant
nuclear physicist."

There was no other kind.

Now,
Oppenheimer was right at the top of it,

so it was the president
or the Congress

or the senators or the UN,

you know, who asked him,

and for whom he gave his advice.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer:
He was interested in power.

He was drawn to it.

He wanted to have a say
in what became of those weapons.

He wasn't going
to go back down on the farm

after he'd seen Paris.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: He realized
that he might turn this fame and power

into statesmanship.

That he might become
the sort of philosopher-scientist,

and philosopher-statesman,

who could bring
the rest of the message to government

about how you go about eliminating

nuclear weapons in the world.

Oppenheimer was naive in that.

He really thought that if he got inside,

he could change things.

Immediately after the war,

I was deeply involved in the effort

to devise effective means

for the international control
of atomic weapons.

NARRATOR: In 1946, Oppenheimer
hammered out the details

of a visionary proposal

with some of America's most
distinguished statesmen.

The plan was designed
to put atomic energy

into the hands of an
international agency,

controlling uranium mines,
atomic power plants

and atomic laboratories.

HERBERT YORK, Physicist:
It involved giving up nuclear weapons

and internationalizing
the entire nuclear enterprise.

And Oppenheimer writes,

"We know that people will say,
'This is impossible.

You can't do this.'

Our answer is, 'We must.'"

NARRATOR: But Oppenheimer's
hope for an international accord

that would lead
to the elimination of nuclear weapons

was facing fierce resistance,

foundering on the deepening antagonisms

between two former allies:

The Soviet Union
and the United States.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
Oppenheimer believed that

if we could figure out

how to create a postwar period

in which the foundation
of international affairs

- was U.S.
- Soviet cooperation,

the world would be
a very different place.

NARRATOR: But the Soviet Army
already occupied much of Eastern Europe.

Americans feared that Western Europe
might be overrun.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin
had fears of his own.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: The Soviet Union
was not about to let the United States

have a monopoly on these weapons.

They didn't trust us,

with reason. We had, after all,

built a weapon in secret,

telling our allies, Great Britain, but
not telling our allies, the Soviet Union

and actually used the thing

on an enemy population.

Stalin had every reason to believe

that we would use it on him.

NARRATOR:
In the face of opposition

from both the Soviets and the Americans,

Oppenheimer's plan
to internationalize nuclear energy

went nowhere.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
So, it was a brilliant and radical

and evidently premature idea.

Because national sovereignty
trumped everything.

(explosion)

NARRATOR: On July 1, 1946,

the United States
tested a 21,000-ton atomic bomb,

exploding it in Bikini Atoll
in the Pacific Ocean.

Two months before,
Oppenheimer had written President Truman

a letter opposing the tests.

Truman paid no attention,

calling Oppenheimer
"that crybaby scientist."

By now,
Oppenheimer was disillusioned

with America's efforts

to eliminate the threat
of nuclear weapons,

but he was even
more disillusioned with the Russians.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer: He saw how
intransigent the Russians were going to be,

and he went into another mode

in his thinking about
what should be done about the bomb.

He felt that what you had to do...

instead of you had to
accomplish the impossible,

what you had to do
was accomplish another impossibility,

and that is live
successfully and peacefully

with nuclear weapons.

NARRATOR: That fall,
Oppenheimer was made a key advisor

to the newly created
Atomic Energy Commission.

As chairman of its
General Advisory Committee,

he reached what he described
as a "melancholy" conclusion.

OPPENHEIMER:
As the prospects of success receded

and as the evidence of Soviet hostility

and growing military power accumulated,

we were more and
more to devote ourselves

to finding ways of adapting our atomic
potential to offset the Soviet threat.

We concluded
that the principal job of the Commission

was to provide atomic weapons

and good atomic weapons

and many atomic weapons.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer
was now a scientific statesman.

He had little time
to be a scientist.

After the war,
he had given up teaching

to become the director of the Institute
for Advanced Study at Princeton,

a center for theoretical research,

renowned as the home of the
most famous scientist in the world,

Albert Einstein.

But Oppenheimer rarely did
any research himself anymore.

He published only a
few scientific papers,

and after 1950,
never published one again.

FREEMAN DYSON, Physicist:
And that was a great grief to him.

He had had dreams
of getting back into science and

doing something great
while he was here.

His wife, Kitty, begged me if I
couldn't actually work with Robert and

actually do some science with him,

and I never could.

Some... you know, it was...

he never got down to the nitty-gritty.

He was older.

What, he was 40?

He was past the age when
people do their best scientific work.

NARRATOR: The popular
press continued to depict him

as a scientist on the cutting edge

and a model American,

a happily married man
with two small children

and a German shepherd
called Buddy.

No one knew that he was under
close surveillance by the FBI

because of his past ties
to the Communist Party.

J. EDGAR HOOVER, (Archive):
Communists have been,

still are, and always will be

a menace to freedom,
to democratic ideals,

to the worship of God,
and to America's way of life.

NARRATOR: With America's
relationship with Russia deteriorating,

the fear of Communism seemed
to be spreading everywhere,

and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover

continued to find
Oppenheimer suspicious,

in spite of Oppenheimer's
leadership at Los Alamos

and his immense reputation.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian: There
were periods in which there was a letup,

but the FBI started to follow

and surveil Oppenheimer
in about 1940, 1941,

and never stopped.

Never stopped.

NARRATOR: As the Soviets
tightened their grip on Eastern Europe,

the hunt for Communist spies

was becoming a national obsession.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer:
Looked at from outside,

the United States was the most
powerful country in the world,

but in the U.S.,

there was this awareness that the Russians
had walked all over Eastern Europe

and that Communism was being foisted

on the peoples of those countries,

and that was terrifying
to the American public.

And it wasn't long
before there were politicians

who learned to exploit that fear.

NARRATOR: The House
Un-American Activities Committee

had begun investigating
what they called

the Communist threat
to the American way of life.

In June 1949,
it subpoenaed Oppenheimer.

The famous scientist
tried to charm the congressmen.

When they asked, he confirmed the
names of Communist Party members.

Some had been his students.

Later, he said
that his nerve just gave way.

FREEMAN DYSON, Physicist: It looked as though
he was just trying to save his own skin by

incriminating the students.

To me, it was horrible.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer: He
must have sensed that the flames could

get to him sometime.

And it wasn't clear to him
what he should do.

NARRATOR: That same June, Oppenheimer
appeared before Congress again,

but this time,
made a formidable enemy.

Lewis Strauss

was the president
of the Institute for Advanced Study.

He had hired
Oppenheimer as its director.

Strauss was also a member
of the Atomic Energy Commission.

A self-made millionaire,
ambitious, proud,

fiercely anti-Communist,
he did not like to be crossed.

"If you disagree with
Lewis about anything,"

a fellow atomic energy
commissioner said,

"he assumes you're just a fool at first,

"but if you go on disagreeing with him,

he concludes
you must be a traitor."

Oppenheimer and Strauss
clashed over a minor issue

at a congressional hearing,

and Strauss never forgave him.

OPPENHEIMER, (Archival): My opinion
is that if the determination were made

that isotopes should
not be shipped abroad,

the Congress will be making
a profound mistake.

NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer was testifying in support

of exporting radioisotopes to Europe

while Strauss looked on, seething.

Strauss violently disagreed,

fearing that the isotopes
might fall into the hands of Russia.

In a reckless display of arrogance,

Oppenheimer aimed a jibe
directly at Strauss,

telling the congressmen
that radioisotopes

were no more dangerous
than a shovel or a bottle of beer.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
And everybody laughed,

and a journalist said
he looked over at Lewis Strauss,

who had turned beet red.

He had never seen so much hate and anger

on anyone's face as he saw
on Strauss's face at that moment.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer:
Strauss was very sensitive to criticism.

If he didn't like people,

he dealt with them.

And he had a long memory.

He could deal with them
a long time afterward,

um, if he wanted to.

(explosion)

NARRATOR: On August 29, 1949,

the Soviet Union tested
its first atomic bomb.

America was still the most
powerful nation on earth,

but the confidence of many
of its citizens was shattered.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
There was near-hysteria in Washington.

People were running around screaming,
"The sky is falling."

Now, why would they do that?

If you've got all of your eggs
in the basket that it's a secret,

and then the secret is lost,

then of course you think
you've lost everything.

NARRATOR:
The day the test made headlines,

Oppenheimer received a call
from an agitated Edward Teller.

"What should I do now?"
Teller wanted to know.

"Keep your shirt on,"
Oppenheimer told him.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: From Teller's point
of view, there was a balance of forces

between us and the
Soviet Union in Europe.

They had four million men on the ground
in Eastern Europe,

and we had the bomb.

Now, suddenly, they had four
million men on the ground in Europe,

we had the bomb,
and they had the bomb,

so the balance of forces was upset.

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist:
He hated the Soviet Union.

He grew up in Hungary,

and Communism was a four-letter word,

so he thought the only way
you could deal with the Soviet Union was

to have more bombs than they did,

that they would be influenced by force

and by nothing else.

NARRATOR: Teller believed he
had the answer to the Soviet threat:

The Super, the hydrogen bomb,

which had remained
his pet project ever since Los Alamos.

It was up to Oppenheimer
and his General Advisory Committee

to recommend
to the Atomic Energy Commission

whether or not to try and create

the most awesome weapon of
mass destruction ever devised.

OPPENHEIMER:
A good many people came to me

or called me or wrote me letters
about the Super program.

It was not clear to me
what the right thing to do was.

Was it crash development,
the most rapid possible

development and construction
of the Super?

NARRATOR: The debate over
the H-bomb sparked a controversy

fraught with danger
for the unsuspecting scientist.

Ever since he war had ended,

Teller had been trying
to convince

any high official
who would listen

that the Super
would keep Americans safe.

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist:
He thought that if we didn't develop it,

the Russians surely would,

and we would be at their mercy.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer: He thought
that it would be crazy not to develop it

and then those who opposed it
might possibly be unpatriotic.

NARRATOR: But Oppenheimer and the
General Advisory Committee worried more

about the destructive power
of the H-bomb

than they did about the Russians.

They voted eight to zero
against it.

There was a surprising unanimity,

to me, very surprising,

that the United States ought not
to take the initiative

in an all-out program

for the development
of thermonuclear weapons.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
The committee concluded

that it shouldn't be built,

because this was a weapon
of genocide

that had absolutely
no military necessity,

and that our stockpile
of atomic bombs

was a sufficient deterrent.

NARRATOR:
The debate seemed to be over.

Oppenheimer,
along with some of the country's

most experienced nuclear scientists,

had rendered their opinion,

but President Truman,

fearing the Russians
would develop an H-bomb first,

dismissed it.

(explosion)

On November 1, 1952,

the world's first
hydrogen bomb explosion

vaporized the tiny island
of Elugelab in the Pacific.

HAROLD AGNEW, Physicist:
It became a great big lagoon.

It just went away.

And the whole water
around it was milky white.

It was scary.

The heat from this thing
was really very frightening.

It started getting hotter
and hotter and hotter and hotter.

This is almost 30 miles away.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: These were no
longer weapons that were military devices.

They were simply
weapons of mass destruction

on the most terrible scale.

Well, let's take New York.

The blast would destroy
the entire greater New York area.

The fallout would take out
the rest of the East Coast.

One bomb.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer: It meant
that a new era of warfare was upon us.

We now had in our possession

a weapon of genocide,
not just warfare.

The modern arms race started

with the invention of the hydrogen bomb,

and after which,
it was escalation all the way.

OPPENHEIMER:
If the development by the enemy,

as well as by us,
of thermonuclear weapons

could have been averted,

I think we would be
in a somewhat safer world today

than we are.

God knows, not entirely safe,

because atomic bombs
are not jolly, either.

NARRATOR:
Once the decision was made,

Oppenheimer did nothing to oppose it.

Frustrated,

he considered leaving
the government altogether,

but instead,
played the loyal soldier.

Later,
Oppenheimer's lack of enthusiasm

would be interpreted
as outright opposition.

Did you, subsequent to
the president's decision

of January 1950,

ever express any opposition

to the production of the hydrogen bomb

on moral grounds?

I would think
I could very well have said,

"This is a dreadful weapon,"

or something like that.

Why do you think that you could
very well have said that?

Because I have always thought
it was a dreadful weapon.

Even if from a technical point of view,

it was a sweet and lovely
and beautiful job,

I have still thought
it was a dreadful weapon.

And have said so?

I would assume
I have said so, yes.

You mean,

you had a moral revulsion

against the production

of such a dreadful weapon?

This is too strong.

Beg pardon?

That is too strong.

Which is too strong,
the weapon or my expression?

Your expression.

I had grave concern and anxiety.

You had moral qualms about it.

Is that accurate?

Let us leave the word "moral"
out of it.

You had qualms about it.

How could one
not have qualms about it?

I know no one
who doesn't have qualms about it.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: Oppenheimer wasn't
opposed to building nuclear weapons.

He was just opposed to building

huge nuclear weapons

that wouldn't...
that were bigger than the targets.

(rapid gunfire)

NARRATOR: In 1950,

the United States went to war in Korea.

Soon, Americans were fighting

both Korean
and Chinese communists,

while the Russians seemed to be growing

increasingly belligerent.

Oppenheimer knew

that America's military planned
a devastating response

to any Soviet attack.

In 1951,

he was shown the Air Force's
top-secret strategic war plan.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
The plan was that we would

bomb our way across Eastern Europe
with nuclear weapons.

We would then destroy the Soviet Union,

and then as a kind of an extra,

we'd go on and destroy China, because,
after all, it was a Communist country.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
The American government was planning,

in its nuclear weapons response
to any Soviet attack,

to kill 200 and something million people

within a week or two.

I mean, Oppenheimer just
felt that this was madness,

sheer madness.

NARRATOR:
Oppenheimer spoke out for moderation.

He took a stand against
building nuclear-powered aircraft

and submarines,

and advocated open discussion
of the growing arms race.

It is a grave danger for us

that these decisions are taken

on the basis of facts held secret.

If we are guided by fear alone,

we'll fail in this time of crisis.

NARRATOR:
But powerful Washington insiders

believed he was standing in the way

of America's ability to defend itself.

They were led by Lewis Strauss.

With the election of Dwight
Eisenhower to the presidency,

Strauss became the chairman
of the Atomic Energy Commission.

He now had the power to build a case

to rid the government
of the influential scientist.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: Strauss would
deliberately destroy the name and reputation

and government position
of Robert Oppenheimer.

And when he destroyed something,
he destroyed it thoroughly.

NARRATOR: Strauss began
by orchestrating a campaign

in America's most
popular news magazines,

alleging that Oppenheimer
was undermining

the nation's atomic weapons program.

The stories depicted Edward Teller

as a scientific patriot.

Teller readily joined the crusade
against his old boss.

He had long wanted
to remove Oppenheimer from public life.

In 1951, he told the FBI that

"a lot of people believe Oppenheimer opposed
the development of the hydrogen bomb,

on direct orders from Moscow."

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist:
Teller sincerely believed

that we were in a dangerous
arms race with the Russians

and that Oppenheimer
was standing in the way

of protecting the country
against this dreaded foe.

I think he may well
have sincerely believed that.

And I'm sure for Teller,

it was also
a very personal jealousy.

Oppenheimer likes his bomb,
but he doesn't like my bomb.

I know that sounds absurd,

and yet, I have no doubt
that it was part of the equation.

So, get rid of him,
and then Teller,

like cream,
would rise to the top of the bottle.

They needed to get Oppenheimer
out of the way

so that Strauss and Teller
could realign the physics community

around the dream of building
new and better bombs.

(explosion)

NARRATOR: Late in August 1953,

the Russians exploded what
the press called a hydrogen bomb.

The news seemed to confirm
what Americans feared.

Their nuclear secrets
were being stolen.

Two years before,

reports that Soviet agents
had penetrated Los Alamos

and passed atomic
secrets to the Russians

under Oppenheimer's watch
had stunned them.

Convinced that America was vulnerable,

many began searching
for someone to blame.

One Communist on the faculty

of one university
is one Communist too many.

NARRATOR: The reputations
and careers of loyal citizens

in universities, businesses
and government

were already being ruined.

Are you a member of the Communist
conspiracy as of this moment?

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: People
were really convinced that tomorrow,

Soviets were going to take over America,

and they were convinced that it would be
because of internal subversion,

not because of external activity,

but because we had spies,

and they were destroying
the American way.

NARRATOR:
The former executive director

of the congressional
Joint Committee on Atomic Energy

was convinced that Oppenheimer
was one of them.

William Borden had harbored doubts
about Oppenheimer for years

and shared his suspicions with Strauss.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian: Borden
is a natural ally of Lewis Strauss.

And Strauss allows Borden

to take Oppenheimer's
security file home,

and Borden studies it for months,

and writes this letter
to J. Edgar Hoover.

NARRATOR:
Borden outlined a series of charges

against Oppenheimer.

He concluded with an accusation
that went off like a bombshell.

"More probably than not,"
Borden wrote,

"J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent
of the Soviet Union."

Hoover forwarded the letter
to the White House.

The President called in Lewis Strauss

to help him decide what to do.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
Strauss convinces Eisenhower that

if this letter was sat on
by the administration,

it would cost Eisenhower politically,

and Eisenhower declares

that a wall should be put
between Oppenheimer and secrecy.

NARRATOR: On December 21,
1953, Strauss told Oppenheimer

that his security clearance
had been suspended.

The country's most famous authority
on atomic weapons,

"the father of the A-bomb,"
was stunned.

He fell into
a "despairing state of mind,"

a friend remembered.

The following evening,
after meeting with his lawyers

and more than one drink,

he fainted on the bathroom floor.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
When he began to think about

the consequences of what he was facing,

I think, he realized that he was in

deep, deep trouble
for the first time in his life.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer: Oppenheimer
realized that he was going to pay.

I think he had the tragic sense.

He understood the drama
that he had to play out,

even though he later called it
a farce.

NARRATOR:
The hearings were enveloped

in an atmosphere of fierce
anti-Communism.

GORDON GRAY, US Special Counsel:
It was reported that in 1940,

you were listed as a sponsor of
the Friends of the Chinese People,

an organization characterized by the
House Committee on Un-American Activities

as a Communist-front organization.

NARRATOR:
At stake was a man's dignity

and the role that nuclear
weapons would play

in America's military strategy.

GORDON GRAY, US Special Counsel: It
was reported that you strongly opposed

the hydrogen bomb on moral grounds,

and by claiming that it was not feasible

and not politically desirable.

And even after it was determined
to proceed,

you continued to oppose the project.

NARRATOR: Confronted with
charges that could ruin his reputation,

Oppenheimer himself
insisted on the hearing

despite the warnings
of some of his friends.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: Oppenheimer
couldn't see tucking tail and walking away.

What would that say
about the charges against him?

On the other hand,
it's too bad he didn't understand

what sort of forces
he was up against.

NARRATOR:
With no credible evidence

to prove that Oppenheimer
had put America's security at risk,

Prosecutor Roger Robb
would have to wear the scientist down,

force him into contradictions,
confuse and embarrass him.

Your brother Frank
told you in 1936, probably in 1937,

that he and his wife Jackie
had joined the Communist Party.

Did he ask your advice about it?

Oh, Lord, no.

He had taken the step.

I had confidence in his decency
and straightforwardness

and in his loyalty to me.

Tell us the test that
you applied to acquire

the confidence
that you have spoken of.

In the case of a brother,
one doesn't make tests;

At least I didn't.

Well...

I knew my brother.

When did you decide
that your brother was no longer

a member of the party
and no longer dangerous?

I never regarded my brother
as dangerous.

NARRATOR:
Robb was an experienced trial lawyer,

but Lewis Strauss
wasn't taking any chances.

The hearings turned into a trial
in which Strauss made the rules.

Strauss selected the judges,

kept the defense
from seeing all the relevant documents

and from knowing in advance
which witnesses would be called.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian:
They are in a war against Communism

and, therefore,
the normal rules of justice

have to be set aside

in order to protect the body politic.

NARRATOR: Strauss even
broke the law to get his man.

The FBI bugged
Oppenheimer's lawyer's offices,

his home,

nearly everywhere he went,

then passed the information along
to the prosecutor.

The defense strategy
was known to the prosecution in advance.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer:
It was the worst kind of kangaroo court.

They had them ten ways to Sunday.

OPPENHEIMER (on record): There were approaches
to other people who were troubled by them

and sometimes they came
and discussed them with me.

And that's as far as I can go
on that.

NARRATOR: Unknown to
Oppenheimer or his lawyer,

Robb had discovered
the secret recording

of Oppenheimer's conversation

with Army Intelligence Officer
Colonel Pash.

He carefully studied the transcript

and prepared a trap
to catch Oppenheimer in a lie.

ROGER ROBB, Courtroom Prosecutor: Did Chevalier
tell you or indicate to you in any way

that he had talked to anyone
but you about this matter?

No.

You are sure about that?

Yes.

Did you learn

from anybody else or hear

that Chevalier had approached
anyone but you

about this matter?

No.

You are sure about that?

That is right.

Doctor, I would like to read
from the transcript

of your interview with Colonel Pash.

"There were approaches to other people

"who were troubled by them,

"and sometimes came and
discussed them with me.

That's as far
as I can go on that."

Do you recall saying
something like that?

I don't recall that
conversation very well.

I can only rely on the transcript.

Doctor, for your information,

I might say that we have
a record of your voice.

Sure.

Do you have any doubt
that you said that?

No.

So as to be clear,

did you discuss with
or disclose to Pash

the identity of Chevalier?

No.

Let us refer to him then,
for the time being, as "X."

All right.

Didn't you say that X
had approached three people?

Probably.

Why did you do that, Doctor?

Because I was an idiot.

Is that your only explanation,
Doctor?

I was reluctant
to mention Chevalier.

Yes?

No doubt somewhat reluctant
to mention myself.

So you told Pash

that there were several people
that were contacted.

Right.

And your testimony now

is that was a lie?

Right.

That wasn't true?

That is right.

You did, you are sure,

tell Colonel Pash

there was more than
one person involved.

This whole thing is a pure fabrication

except for the one name Eltenton.

Why did you go to such great

circumstantial detail about this thing

if you knew

it was a cock-and-bull story?

I fear this whole thing
is a piece of idiocy.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: Oppenheimer was up
against a kind of psychological torture.

He was broken down
by a very, very skillful prosecutor,

made to look stupid...

made to look like a fool.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer:
The purpose in proving him a liar

was to impress the hearing board

that he couldn't be trusted

and that they should declare him
a security risk.

It had to be totally humiliating

and destroy his confidence
in himself.

He's being told

that he's a liar,
untrustworthy, unworthy,

and he folded.

OPPENHEIMER: The story
I told Pash is not a true story.

There were not
three or more people involved.

I believe I can do no more

than say
that the story I told is a false story.

It is not easy to say that.

Now, when you ask
as to why I did this,

other than that I was an idiot,

I am going to have more trouble
being understandable.

I found myself, I believe,
trying to give a tip

to the intelligence people
without realizing

that when you give a tip,
you must tell the whole story.

But I am, in any case,
solemnly testifying

that there was no conspiracy
in what I knew

and what I know of this matter.

I wish I could explain to you better
why I falsified and fabricated.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer:
The trial proved to him his worst fears.

Oppenheimer had been troubled
all his life about who he was.

He later said that
he was repulsive to himself.

The trial said that he
had defects of character,

that he was not a good human being,

and unfortunately he agreed.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer
testified for 27 hours.

A parade of witnesses was called
on both sides.

He looked wan, demoralized

by the time Edward
Teller took the stand.

Teller drove the final nail
into Oppenheimer's coffin.

EDWARD TELLER (dramatized): I thoroughly
disagreed with Dr. Oppenheimer

in numerous issues,
and his actions, frankly,

appeared to me confused and complicated.

I feel that I would like to

see the vital interests of this country

in hands which I understand better

and therefore trust more.

I would feel
personally more secure

if public matters would
rest in other hands.

I'm sorry.

After what you've just said...

I don't know what you mean.

NARRATOR:
The hearing lasted nearly four weeks.

In his closing remarks,
Oppenheimer's lawyer warned,

"America must not
devour her own children."

GORDON GRAY, US Special Counsel: We find
that Dr. Oppenheimer's continuing conduct

and associations
have reflected a serious disregard

for the requirements
of the security system.

We have found a
susceptibility to influence,

which could have serious implications

for the security
interests of the country.

We find his conduct
in the hydrogen bomb program

sufficiently disturbing.

We have regretfully concluded

that Dr. Oppenheimer
has been less than candid

in several instances in his testimony.

NARRATOR:
By a vote of two to one,

the board concluded that, although
Oppenheimer was a loyal citizen,

his security clearance
should be revoked.

Numb and bewildered,
Oppenheimer told a friend,

"I have so little sense
of self remaining."

In a futile gesture, he appealed
to the Atomic Energy Commission,

chaired by Lewis Strauss.

The Commission upheld the verdict,
four to one.

JEREMY BERNSTEIN: I took a
train ride with him to New York,

and for some reason,
he started talking about "my case."

"My Case."

And he said to me

that at the time, he thought it
was happening to somebody else.

PRISCILLA J. McMILLAN, Writer: He wasn't
accused in the course of the hearing

of having ever betrayed a secret.

It was about getting Oppenheimer

out of the security councils
of the U.S. government.

NARRATOR: America's most
influential voice for nuclear moderation

had been stilled.

MARTIN SHERWIN, Historian: The
Oppenheimer hearing was a political battle

between the Strauss view...

"We need more and more
and more nuclear weapons"...

And the Oppenheimer view
that nuclear weapons are

a part of our defense,

but we have to, you
know, use them sensibly

and we can't rely on them totally.

That hearing had a profound effect
on the nuclear arms race.

It essentially opened the floodgates.

It removed the legitimacy
of criticism

against more and more nuclear weapons.

NARRATOR: In 1954, the year
of the Oppenheimer hearings,

America had some 300 nuclear weapons.

By the end of the 20th century,

the United States would have
at the ready more than 70,000.

We built
so many more than we ever needed,

and the Soviets followed suit.

NARRATOR: In 1954,
Robert Oppenheimer turned 50.

His security clearance
had been revoked.

His connection to the government
had been severed.

He would live for 13 more years,
but he was never the same man.

ROBERT CHRISTY, Physicist: He had been
a strong, forceful leader before that,

and he was a beaten man
afterwards.

RICHARD RHODES, Writer: He gave lectures on
science and its interaction with humanity.

He continued to direct the
Institute for Advanced Study.

He became what Yeats calls
a smiling public man.

MARVIN L. GOLDBERGER, Physicist:
I saw a lot of him at that time,

and I saw the impact
that this tragedy had on him.

I can't recall ever seeing him happy,

you know, just relaxed and having fun.

I don't have the feeling
that he ever felt good about himself

and if he was ever
in any sense at peace with himself.

NARRATOR: In 1963,

Oppenheimer received what many saw
as an official apology.

President Lyndon Johnson presented him

with one of the nation's highest
scientific honors:

The Fermi Award
from the Atomic Energy Commission.

With countless other men and women,

we are engaged
in this great enterprise of our time,

testing
whether men can live without war

as the great arbiter of history.

I think it's just possible,
Mr. President,

that it has taken
some character and some courage

for you to make this award today.

NARRATOR:
Edward Teller was there that day,

come to offer his congratulations.

When he extended his hand,

once again, Oppenheimer shook it.

After the ceremony,

Lewis Strauss
wrote an angry letter to Life magazine,

complaining that honoring Oppenheimer

"dealt a severe blow

to the security system
which protects our country."

Robert Oppenheimer died
four years later.

He was 62.

In those twilight years,

he seldom returned to the New Mexico
where he had come to feel at peace.

When he was 24,

he had written a poem inspired
by the wilderness he loved so well

and the allure of death.

OPPENHEIMER:
It was evening when we came to the river

With a low moon over the desert

That we had lost in the
mountains, forgotten,

What with the cold and the sweating

And the ranges barring the sky.

We waited a long time in silence.

Then, we heard the oars creaking,
and afterwards,

I remember the boatman called to us.

We did not look back at the mountains.