Read Online Fifties by David Halberstam - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Halberstam
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day. As a young salesman he had been on the road in towns too small for a synagogue, but he took the Sabbath off and read the Bible in his hotel room. Once, with his young son, he wrote a child’s version of the Old Testament.
During World War Two Strauss served with the Navy in a desk job, and he rose to the rank of rear admiral. It was a title he quite liked, and he preferred thereafter to be known as the Admiral. He had long been interested in nuclear physics, and he hoped that eventually it might provide a cure for cancer, which had caused the death of both his parents. By dint of his years with Hoover, he was a skillfuland forceful bureaucratic infighter. “He has more elbows than an octopus,” said one critic describing Strauss in internal bureaucratic battles. He brooked no dissent from those underneath him, yet with those above him, like Eisenhower and James Forrestal, he was, as Joseph and Stewart Alsop noted, “all pliability.” In his own words, he was a Herbert Hoover black Republican, and he was well connected with conservatives. He was a hard-liner on relations with the Soviet Union, and he was absolutely convinced that the Russians were further ahead on their atomic program than we believed. It had been his idea to create the aerial-surveillance program that found the radioactive fallout from the first Soviet test.
Strauss already had a reputation among the scientists. When Teller first heard he was coming on the AEC, he asked Oppenheimer what he knew of him. “Very smart and very vain,” Oppie answered—a phrase, ironically, that some of Oppenheimer’s critics would have used to describe him.
Strauss was, for his part, wary of scientists. When he first met Edward Teller, who was Jewish, and by Strauss’s lights politically on the side of the angels, he was disturbed that Teller seemed to lack serious religious commitment. He disliked those he believed to be soft on Communism, and developed particular animosity toward Oppenheimer. Earlier, during the testimony on whether or not to share atomic information with the British, Oppenheimer was asked about the overall military value of research isotopes, which Strauss thought were extremely important. “Far less important than electronic devices,” Oppenheimer answered. Then he had paused for a moment. “But far more important than, let us say, vitamins. Somewhere in between.” That had been the answer of Oppenheimer, the snobbish Berkeley professor at his worst. It had, of course, generated a good deal of laughter in the hearing room, and Strauss had flushed. At the end of his testimony, Oppenheimer turned to Joseph Volpe, an AEC aide, and asked if he had done well. Volpe, remembering the look of anger on Strauss’s face, answered, “ Too well, Robert, much too well.”
From the moment the announcement was made about Joe One, Strauss went on red alert; on October 5 he wrote his fellow commissioners a letter reflecting the rapid polarization of political positions at that moment: “It seems to me that the time has come for a quantum jump in our planning (to borrow a metaphor from our scientist friends)—that is to say that we should make an intensive effort to get ahead with the Super. By intensive effort I am thinking of a commitment in talent and money comparable if necessary tothat which produced the first atomic weapon. That is the way to stay ahead.”
Strauss now became the leader of the more conservative scientists and politicians who were steadily gaining in power. By contrast, the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the AEC, made up of scientific experts, became the last stronghold of the old guard, men still wary of the H bomb on both moral and technical grounds.
Onetime colleagues were now poised to become sworn enemies. On October 21, 1949, Oppenheimer (who had been surprised by the Russian explosion) wrote James Conant, a fellow member of the General Advisory Committee, of the force gathering against them in favor of the Super.
During World War Two Strauss served with the Navy in a desk job, and he rose to the rank of rear admiral. It was a title he quite liked, and he preferred thereafter to be known as the Admiral. He had long been interested in nuclear physics, and he hoped that eventually it might provide a cure for cancer, which had caused the death of both his parents. By dint of his years with Hoover, he was a skillfuland forceful bureaucratic infighter. “He has more elbows than an octopus,” said one critic describing Strauss in internal bureaucratic battles. He brooked no dissent from those underneath him, yet with those above him, like Eisenhower and James Forrestal, he was, as Joseph and Stewart Alsop noted, “all pliability.” In his own words, he was a Herbert Hoover black Republican, and he was well connected with conservatives. He was a hard-liner on relations with the Soviet Union, and he was absolutely convinced that the Russians were further ahead on their atomic program than we believed. It had been his idea to create the aerial-surveillance program that found the radioactive fallout from the first Soviet test.
Strauss already had a reputation among the scientists. When Teller first heard he was coming on the AEC, he asked Oppenheimer what he knew of him. “Very smart and very vain,” Oppie answered—a phrase, ironically, that some of Oppenheimer’s critics would have used to describe him.
Strauss was, for his part, wary of scientists. When he first met Edward Teller, who was Jewish, and by Strauss’s lights politically on the side of the angels, he was disturbed that Teller seemed to lack serious religious commitment. He disliked those he believed to be soft on Communism, and developed particular animosity toward Oppenheimer. Earlier, during the testimony on whether or not to share atomic information with the British, Oppenheimer was asked about the overall military value of research isotopes, which Strauss thought were extremely important. “Far less important than electronic devices,” Oppenheimer answered. Then he had paused for a moment. “But far more important than, let us say, vitamins. Somewhere in between.” That had been the answer of Oppenheimer, the snobbish Berkeley professor at his worst. It had, of course, generated a good deal of laughter in the hearing room, and Strauss had flushed. At the end of his testimony, Oppenheimer turned to Joseph Volpe, an AEC aide, and asked if he had done well. Volpe, remembering the look of anger on Strauss’s face, answered, “ Too well, Robert, much too well.”
From the moment the announcement was made about Joe One, Strauss went on red alert; on October 5 he wrote his fellow commissioners a letter reflecting the rapid polarization of political positions at that moment: “It seems to me that the time has come for a quantum jump in our planning (to borrow a metaphor from our scientist friends)—that is to say that we should make an intensive effort to get ahead with the Super. By intensive effort I am thinking of a commitment in talent and money comparable if necessary tothat which produced the first atomic weapon. That is the way to stay ahead.”
Strauss now became the leader of the more conservative scientists and politicians who were steadily gaining in power. By contrast, the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the AEC, made up of scientific experts, became the last stronghold of the old guard, men still wary of the H bomb on both moral and technical grounds.
Onetime colleagues were now poised to become sworn enemies. On October 21, 1949, Oppenheimer (who had been surprised by the Russian explosion) wrote James Conant, a fellow member of the General Advisory Committee, of the force gathering against them in favor of the Super.
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