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Over four weeks in 1954, the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) explored the background, actions, and associations of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist who directed the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. The hearing resulted in Oppenheimer's Q clearance being revoked. This marked the end of his formal relationship with the government of the United States and generated considerable controversy regarding whether the treatment of Oppenheimer was fair, or whether it was an expression of anti-communist McCarthyism.

Doubts about Oppenheimer's loyalty dated back to the 1930s, when he was a member of numerous Communist front organizations and was associated with Communist Party USA members, including his wife, brother and sister-in-law. These associations were known to Army Counterintelligence at the time he was made director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1942 and chairman of the influential General Advisory Committee of the AEC in 1947. In this capacity, Oppenheimer became involved in bureaucratic conflict between the Army and Air Force over the types of nuclear weapons the country required, technical conflict between the scientists over the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb, and personal conflict with AEC commissioner Lewis Strauss.

The proceedings were initiated after Oppenheimer refused to voluntarily give up his security clearance while working as an atomic weapons consultant for the government, under a contract due to expire at the end of June 1954. Several of his colleagues testified at the hearings. As a result of the two-to-one decision of the hearing's three judges, he was stripped of his security clearance one day before his consultant contract was due to expire. The panel found that he was loyal and discreet with atomic secrets, but did not recommend that his security clearance be reinstated.

The loss of his security clearance ended Oppenheimer's role in government and policy. He became an academic exile, cut off from his former career and the world he had helped to create. The reputations of those who had testified against Oppenheimer were tarnished as well, though Oppenheimer's reputation was later partly rehabilitated by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. The brief period when scientists were viewed as a "public-policy priesthood" ended; thereafter, they would serve the state only to offer narrow scientific opinions. Scientists working in government were on notice that dissent was no longer tolerated.

The fairness of the proceedings has been a subject of controversy, criticized in the acclaimed Oppenheimer biography American Prometheus and dramatized in film and television. On December 16, 2022, United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm nullified the 1954 decision, saying that it had been the result of a "flawed process" and affirming that Oppenheimer had been loyal. (Full article...)

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Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Krakatau subcritical experiment being lowered into the floor of the tunnel of the U1a Complex at the Nevada Test Site. The cables extending from the hole will carry data from the experiment to recording instruments.

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Leslie Richard Groves Jr. (17 August 1896 – 13 July 1970) was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project, a top secret research project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II.

The son of a U.S. Army chaplain, Groves lived at various Army posts during his childhood. In 1918, he graduated fourth in his class at the United States Military Academy at West Point and was commissioned into the United States Army Corps of Engineers. In 1929, he went to Nicaragua as part of an expedition to conduct a survey for the Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal. Following the 1931 Nicaraguan earthquake, Groves took over Managua's water supply system, for which he was awarded the Nicaraguan Presidential Medal of Merit. He attended the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1935 and 1936, and the Army War College in 1938 and 1939, after which he was posted to the War Department General Staff. Groves developed "a reputation as a doer, a driver, and a stickler for duty". In 1940 he became special assistant for construction to the Quartermaster General, tasked with inspecting construction sites and checking on their progress. In August 1941, he was appointed to create the gigantic office complex for the War Department's 40,000 staff that would ultimately become the Pentagon.

In September 1942, Groves took charge of the Manhattan Project. He was involved in most aspects of the atomic bomb's development: he participated in the selection of sites for research and production at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington. He directed the enormous construction effort, made critical decisions on the various methods of isotope separation, acquired raw materials, directed the collection of military intelligence on the German nuclear energy project and helped select the cities in Japan that were chosen as targets. Groves wrapped the Manhattan Project in security, but spies working within the project were able to pass some of its most important secrets to the Soviet Union.

After the war, Groves remained in charge of the Manhattan Project until responsibility for nuclear weapons production was handed over to the United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1947. He then headed the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, which had been created to control the military aspects of nuclear weapons. He was given a dressing down by the Chief of Staff of the Army, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, on the basis of various complaints, and told that he would never be appointed Chief of Engineers. Three days later, Groves announced his intention to leave the Army. He was promoted to lieutenant general just before his retirement on 29 February 1948 in recognition of his leadership of the bomb program. By a special act of Congress, his date of rank was backdated to 16 July 1945, the date of the Trinity nuclear test. He went on to become a vice president at Sperry Rand. (Full article...)

Nuclear technology news


14 May 2024 –
Russia places its nuclear capable submarine-launched Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile into service. (Reuters)
9 May 2024 – Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran–Israel relations
Iran warns that it will build a nuclear weapon if Israel continues to target its nuclear facilities. (Al Jazeera)
25 April 2024 – Russia–NATO relations
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warns that Russia will make NATO nuclear weapons in Poland one of its primary targets if they are deployed there. (The Jerusalem Post)
23 April 2024 – North Korea and weapons of mass destruction
North Korea claims that it tested a new command-and-control system in a simulated nuclear counterstrike. (CNN)

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