THE G-MEN AND THE H-BOMB

...The matter should have ended there, but it didn't...

...But no H-bomb program could succeed without the cooperation of key physicists, and their individual decisions to participate became matters of paramount concern to Washington...

...How, then, could the Government persuade the atomic scientists, many of whom were idealists and internationalists, that they should suppress their scruples and devote their talents to research aimed at producing weapons of mass destruction...

...For example, a Bureau memo titled "Espionage-Russian]" on Feynman cited as "derogatory information" the fact that he was "very friendly with Dr...

...Strauss "thought that if this information is eventually published it will very much reinforce the hands of the President on the...

...he believed Bethe was "basically bad," and offered to send Strauss a summary of FBI material on the scientist...

...The purpose of the book," the FBI document stated, "was to...

...Julius Robert Op-penheimer...

...He was reported to have been present at a party in New York City in 1944 "at which time relatives of Marshak discussed Russia, the Communist Party, and political and world affairs...

...Oppenheimer...

...In April 1952, the dean of the school of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, told the FBI he was "doubtful as to the loyalty of Dr...

...Most of the documents bearing on these investigations have not been released by the Bureau, and many of those we do have are heavily censored...

...FBI documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act disclose for the first time the kind of intimidation to which the Bureau subjected the nation's small, close-knit community of atomic scientists at the height of the McCarthy period...

...By then, the worst of the madness had passed...

...The Rosenberg-Sobell files reveal that on February 2,1950, Atomic Energy Commissioner Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, a strong supporter of the H-bomb, telephoned FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to discuss the Fuchs confession...

...In July 1950, agents searching the Ithaca, New York, home of Alfred Sarant, an acquaintance of Julius Rosenberg's, found a baby book that recorded the fact that Bethe, a Cornell professor, had given an article made of silver to the Sarants' newborn...

...An "urgent" teletype to Hoover requested authorization for an "immediate interview" with the world-famous physicist...

...the second demanded its construction and the quadrupling of the military budget...

...Another scientist advised the FBI that Victor Weisskopf "originally advocated world-wide dissemination of scientific data but in a recent conversation...

...Strauss wanted to show Bethe a portion of Fuchs's technical confession, which he believed would "straighten Bethe out...

...In his interview, Bethe asserted he had never been approached about espionage...

...A message from the San Francisco Bureau to the FBI director stated: "It is recalled that Hans Bethe is the scientist whom Julius Rosenberg allegedly received atomic energy information from through Alfred Sarant...

...THE G-MEN AND THE H-BOMB How the FBI silenced the atomic scientists BY WALTER AND MIRIAM SCHNEIR When the Truman Administration decided in 1950 to build the hydrogen bomb, many leading atomic scientists disagreed...

...Among the suspects were such eminent atomic scientists as Bethe, Victor Weisskopf, Philip Morrison, Feynman, Robert Marshak, McMillan, Joseph W. Kennedy, Cyril S. Smith, Stanislaw Ulam, Robert Serber, Alvarez, Edward Teller, and George Kistiakowsky...

...But on June 17, Hoover dispatched a message to Brownell with an "attached summary of information" on Urey...

...Bethe, the physicist Hoover had called "basically bad," may have come closest to being ensnared in the FBI's scientist-spy dragnet...

...Instead, association with Klaus Fuchs, the presence of relatives in Eastern Europe, leave or travel on particular dates, or expression of political ideas contrary to those held by the FBI director were reason enough to be labeled a suspect...

...H-bomb] decision he made a few days ago," Hoover wrote, "and furthermore he thinks it will make a good many men who are in the same profession as Fuchs very careful of what they say publicly...

...However, Libby noted that a group had been formed to secure the release from prison of the Rosenbergs' co-defendant, Morton Sobell, and asserted "that if Urey continues to support this group he would conclude that Urey is so naive and innocent as to constitute a security risk...

...The FBI's scientist-spy probes were launched just after President Truman announced to a shocked and frightened citizenry in September 1949 that the United States had lost its atomic monopoly...

...We uncovered this bizarre and hitherto secret chapter in the short history of the atomic age while studying more than 200,000 pages of FBI files on the Rosen-berg-Sobell case for a revised edition of our book, Invitation to an Inquest...

...the most important scientists who had developed America's A-bomb were targets of a widespread FBI atom spy hunt...

...A few days later an FBI memo noted: "An investigation is presently being conducted in connection with Bethe's contacts and association with individuals involved in the Julius Rosenberg case...

...Only a few years before, in the wake of Hiroshima, the same scientists had joined in a remarkable crusade to educate Americans about the stark realities of nuclear weaponry...

...Some officials found an answer in the confession of British physicist Klaus Fuchs and his arrest on charges of atomic espionage a few days after President Truman's H-bomb statement...

...A memo on physicist Robert Marshak sounded a more serious note...

...on what they consider to be moral grounds...

...Sarant's father-in-law, a lawyer, had been helpful to Bethe and the baby gift had been an expression of appreciation...

...Now, a possible explanation for their acquiescence comes from an unexpected source: the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

...By the early spring of 1950, the FBI had mounted a massive atom spy hunt that involved scores of scientists and technicians...

...The documents show that some of Walter and Miriam Schneir are the co-authors of "Invitation to an Inquest," a study of the Rosenberg "atom spy" case that has just been reissued in expanded and updated form by Pantheon...

...Teller, like Luis Walter Alvarez, was among the earliest and most enthusiastic boosters of an accelerated hydrogen bomb program, yet each was described as an "excellent suspect" in FBI espionage reports...

...he, in turn, came up with stories that implicated everyone the FBI suspected...

...But their public opposition to development of the H-bomb turned out to be sporadic and short-lived...

...Typical was the comment of one scientist who, asked about a former colleague at Los Alamos, recalled being "present in a group" in Chicago in 1947 at which she had "endorsed several ideas favorable to Russia...

...Though Oppenheimer's name is noticeably absent from this list, the FBI's attitude toward him was unambiguous...

...But even the limited material available to us suggests the scope of Hoover's spy hunt...

...The FBI chief added: "Admiral Strauss wanted to know if an agent in Princeton or Newark could find out if Fuchs visited the Institute for Advanced Study in 1947...

...This memo suggested that the Bureau seek further information from the CIA...

...Hoover reported their conversation in a memo to his inner circle of Bureau associates...

...Four months later, long after Rosenberg had been transferred to the Sing Sing death house, Tartakow recalled that Rosenberg had said Sarant had two Cornell contacts, Hans Bethe and Philip Morrison...

...Bethe's name came up as a person whom Oppenheimer had possibly persuaded not to work on the development of the hydrogen bomb...

...The files were pried from a reluctant Bureau in an eight-year-old, still continuing lawsuit conducted by attorney Marshall Perlin on behalf of the Rosenbergs' sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol...

...Weisskopf would not have any part in the program as long as the development of atomic weapons was the principal goal...

...For the FBI it was a link, however tenuous, between Bethe and the so-called Rosenberg spy ring...

...Hundreds of men and women were being questioned about themselves and about the opinions and conversations of their colleagues and friends...

...No FBI report on the scientists offers evidence of any illegal activity, let alone espionage...

...A report on Bethe mentioned that he had contributed an article to One World or None, a book prepared by the Federation of American Scientists...

...A 1950 espionage report on Weisskopf, a professor of physics at MIT, noted that "various officials at Los Alamos had endeavored to persuade Weisskopf to return to the installation to take an active part in the program, but...

...In midBOB GALE March, McMahon suggested in a letter to the AEC (with a copy to the FBI) that "the Commission is experiencing difficulty in recruiting scientific and technical personnel needed in our own hydrogen project, and the Fuchs documents, if made public, might influence the needed people to make available their services...

...Within the foreign-policy establishment, two responses were secretly debated: One called for new and serious negotiations with the Soviet Union and the banning of the hydrogen bomb...

...It's hardly surprising, then, that by the end of the following year, when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg faced execution for stealing the "secret" of the atomic bomb, the only prominent scientists prepared to question the convictions and demand clemency were Nobelist Harold C. Urey and Albert Einstein...

...He now feels that if the Fuchs confession could be made public that the scientists of the Hans Bethe type would be forced to get on a white horse and really go to work...

...In the relatively small community of nuclear physicists, already the subject of years of loyalty investigations, this sudden new round of interrogations engendered fear and mutual suspicion...

...One "key person" was Hans Bethe...

...Another FBI spy memo, stamped "top secret," reported that Edward Teller's "parents and parents-in-law are believed to be in Budapest, Hungary at the present time...

...Many political and military leaders harbored deep suspicions of the atomic scientists on whom they needed to depend...

...The same report stated that Weisskopf had been "identified as an active leader of the Cambridge Association of American Scientists, a branch of the Federation of American Scientists...

...The FBI's espionage suspects included such luminaries in the world of physics as Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman, Luis Walter Alvarez, and Edwin M. McMillan—each of whom later was to be awarded a Nobel Prize—as well as many other top scientists...

...indicated that he had changed his opinions along these lines to a certain extent...

...In an April 1951 report, Tartakow was said to have claimed that "Sarant had a contact in Cornell University who Rosenberg once referred to as Bedda [phonetic...

...Soon after, Urey, who had already been investigated many times, was the subject of a new FBI loyalty probe...

...Like General Leslie R. Groves, chief of the wartime Manhattan Project that had produced the A-bomb, they regarded the scientists as an untrustworthy "collection of crackpots" who had to be tolerated and even humored, but always carefully controlled...

...Though the Bureau's approach was often crude and indiscriminate, it probably achieved the desired effect...

...Bethe, the teletype noted, "has been recently reported to have spoken publicly against use of H-bomb...

...The partisans of rearmament prevailed, and on January 31, 1950, Truman made another momentous announcement: The United States would embark on a crash program to produce the H-bomb...

...The meaning was clear: Since 1947, the director of the Institute had been J. Robert Oppenheimer, who opposed development of the H-bomb...

...It is suggested that it may have been as a result of some conversation by Robert E. Marshak at that time that might have caused MGB [predecessor of the KGB] to contact him concerning espionage activities...

...Later that month, McMahon contacted the FBI directly and, according to a Bureau memo, "stated that after the revelations in the Canadian spy case [1946] the attitude in the scientific community changed materially...

...Not until more than a year later did the Bureau conclude that the allegation was not substantiated...

...What we can see now is certainly only a keyhole view of a much larger operation...

...But so had an opportunity that may have existed for a brief time—an opportunity to abort the hydrogen bomb and perhaps prevent the terrifying nuclear arms race that threatens us today...

...Still, "Admiral Strauss felt [Bethe] was not so far off the beam that he could not be saved...

...One of the scientists questioned by the FBI was Willard F. Libby, who said "he and Urey have maintained adjoining offices at the University of Chicago and are close friends both professionally and personally...

...Senator Brien McMahon, who headed the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, shared Strauss's concern about lack of support for the H-bomb program in the scientific community...

...The Fuchs confession was never made public, but Hoover had his own ways of winning friends and influencing people...

...Strauss felt offers of additional money had persuaded the physicist to join the H-bomb program, but "Bethe then went off to Princeton where a conversion job was done on him...

...The following year, a prison inmate, Jerome Tartakow, who was incarcerated with Julius Rosenberg at West Street jail in New York City, offered to inform for the FBI in return for early parole...

...The Bureau's method of working with Tartakow was to feed him enough information to let him know what was wanted...

...warn the public that world control of atomic energy is an essential of human survival...

...More than a month later, Hoover informed his aides of another call from Strauss, who had stated "that there are several scientists who have been quite outspoken against the [H-bomb] program...

...classified by responsible faculty members at MIT as being an unstable group...

...Sarant confirmed a social acquaintance with Bethe and his wife...

...In August 1953, the FBI opened an espionage investigation based on the "allegation that Urey furnished [a] French Communist with information regarding our progress in atomic research...

...Urey received no response from the President or Attorney General Herbert Brownell, though he had requested interviews with both...

...If scientists should band together once again in opposition to the H-bomb program, they might derail the Administration's plans...

...Government leaders had not forgotten the scientists' anti-bomb lobbying in the immediate postwar years...

...Hoover had no objection but doubted that this would work...

...On June 12, 1953, a week before the Rosenbergs were electrocuted, Urey wired President Eisenhower: "New evidence makes even more plain what was plain enough before, that the prosecution's case has no logic in it, and that it depends upon the blowing up of patently perjured testimony...