Transcripts Kept Secret for 60 Years Bolster Defense of Oppenheimer’s Loyalty

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/us/transcripts-kept-secret-for-60-years-bolster-defense-of-oppenheimers-loyalty.html?ref=science

by dnetesn • 12 years ago

53 45 12 years ago

nytimes.com

throwwit• 12 years ago

Is any organizational structure resistant to McCarthyism?

aurelian6• 12 years ago

Any organization with secrets worth keeping must try to detect spies and repel infiltrators.

It may reduce disastrous false negatives at the cost of an increase in false positives.

In the 1940s, the Soviet Union had hundreds of agents in the executive branch of the US government. KGB records opened in the last 20 years largely vindicate McCarthy (Edit: in that the threat was real; infiltration had happened; most of his targets were Soviet agents, Communists, or associated with Communists; and security risks had to be removed from positions in which they could do harm for the good of freedom-loving people everywhere).

chrisbennet• 12 years ago

Edit: Someone is wrong on the Internet and that person is me. ;-) When I quoted the 3,370 number I missed the "(end-of-fiscal-year count, excluding Postal Service, in thousands)

[ChrisIsWrong] The number of employees in the executive branch in the 1940's peaked at 3,370. [1] So by "hundreds of agents in the executive branch" do you mean that say, 10% of the executive branch were communist agents? [/ChrisIsWrong]

My Dad remembers McCarthy and his famous speech but doesn't know that he was discredited or even what the term "McCartheism" means.

[1] http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docum...

lotsofmangos• 12 years ago

I don't see that evidence of spies in government vindicates MCCarthy.

It might do if he had restricted himself to the threat of spies in the government, rather than instituting a campaign against communists and homosexuals throughout much of US society.

Spies in the executive does not justify Hollywood blacklists, the censoring of library books resulting in book burnings, attacks on the clergy, attacks on academics, the 10000 people forced into unemployment by the loyalty review boards or the repeated burglaries against lawyers who would represent those who were targeted.

jjoonathan5• 12 years ago

According to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

historian John Earl Haynes concluded that, of 159 people identified on lists used or referenced by McCarthy, evidence was substantial that nine had aided Soviet espionage efforts.

9/159. A 94% false positive rate.

CamperBob2• 12 years ago

Are you referring to the Venona intercepts? Those were from WWII, not the 1950s, weren't they?

ska• 12 years ago

In this, as in all classification schemes, there is a real risk of falling into a "dropping FN will raise FP" category error. The core issue may be be that your algorithm is bad, and you can find another with bother better FN and better FP.

DanielBMarkham• 12 years ago

The thing I keep telling my younger, more idealistic friends: organizations created by politicians run on political value systems. What Oppenheimer did or not? Not relevant. How he fit into the larger political picture of the cold war? Critical.

EthanHeilman3• 12 years ago

As an aside:

In 1953, a former congressional aide charged in a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the celebrated physicist was a Soviet spy.

The congressional aide's name was William Liscum Borden. If Borden's views had been adopted by the US Government, it is likely that we would have had a nuclear world war[0], instead the US built its strategy on the views of Brodie[1].

[0]: Borden's strategic views http://ethanheilman.tumblr.com/post/29405762446/there-will-b...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Brodie_(military_strate...

raldi• 12 years ago

I don't see how your citation 0 supports the claim it's attached to. Can you elaborate on the connection?

EthanHeilman3• 12 years ago

His belief that nuclear wars would be won by the side that disarmed the other side means that:

1. There is no limit on the number of nuclear weapons that should be built, each side should always strive for more weapons than the other side. Thus, increasing the scale of nuclear wars.

Nuclear war is so fast that destroying a city does not provide any military benefits to the attacker nor any military costs to a defender.

2. Since the other side will not waste weapons on cities (by his calculus of attacking to disarm), mutually assured destruction will not work and therefore nuclear wars are inevitable and largely bloodless (low human cost).

3. Any time one side has more weapons it should immediately use those weapons to disarm the other side. That is, strike when you gain an advantage even if you have no good cause, since the other side would do the same.

Unfortunately present experience suggests that while cities might not be on the initial target list, once one side started to loss heavily they would likely target the other sides cities to spoil the victors post-war advantage.

mkempe• 12 years ago

undermining the idea that it was all somehow a plot by evil Republicans: Borden, the scum who initiated the witch-hunt against Oppenheimer, was a protégé of Democrat Senator McMahon, who was deeply in love with hydrogen bombs. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brien_McMahon

EthanHeilman3• 12 years ago

Borden himself advocated for a one-world government, which is the opposite of the Republican, Bircher, and McCarthyist positions.

rjsw• 12 years ago

The article just confirms to me the reasons that Groves chose Oppenheimer to lead the Manhattan project, Oppenheimer was able to see the bigger picture.

schience• 12 years ago

Oppenheimer was probably lucky to have gone through this, long term, to be accused by these clowns instead of endorsed. He saw it as the sham it was, and the characterization of a “broken man” is misleading. Had many years of lecturing, writing books, and leading the Institute for Advanced study after this, with deep support from the scientific community. Although it was deeply hurtful.. he was a loyal man, a soldier basically during the war, and his country betrayed him.

His consulting contract to the AEC was expiring in December 1953, but as a political takedown he was officially accused instead of simply not renewing. Oppenheimer had the option to compromise and resign, but he declined writing Strauss: “Under the circumstances, this course of action would mean that I accept and concur in the view that I am not fit to serve this government, that I have now served for some twelve years. This I cannot do. If I were thus unworthy I could hardly have served our country as I have tried, or been the Director of our Institute in Princeton, or have spoken, as on more than one occasion I have found myself speaking, in the name our science and our country”.*

He was found to be absolutely loyal, he was not even accused of violating any security regulations. But was accused of not being sufficiently enthusiastic about a crash program to build a hydrogen bomb, and that this lack of enthusiasm was a sign of a character flaw.

This “trial” marked an end of extremely wide public respect for scientists. And a new era where technical and scientific achievements are to be harvested by military industrial complex, and used by right wing strategists. It put scientists in their place..

*American Prometheus - p484

gregd• 12 years ago

American Prometheus is an excellent book and I highly recommend people put it on their shortlist.

guelo• 12 years ago

I don't understand how the absolute power to mark any information secret is compatible with democracy. The way the constitution was designed was to try to balance powers and checks between branches. But there is no check on the executive's ability to mark things secret. In this case the secrecy seems to have just been about covering up an embarrassment. They should not have the power to cover up an embarrassment. Seems like this invented absolute power needs judicial review.

philwelch• 12 years ago

If you think the executive branch has no legitimate purpose in keeping secrets, you should study history.

tikhonj• 12 years ago

I think it's pretty reasonable to say the executive branch has no legitimate purpose in keeping secrets from select parts of the judicial and legislative branches. That completely undermines our system of checks and balances, which seems to work quite well otherwise.

Also, there are at least two kinds of secrets to consider: "structural" ones, like "this program exists" and specific details "agent Bob is part of this program". I could see the need to keep some of the latter even from other parts of the government, but it seems the former could do with some review. That's where the problems usually come from, after all: either government programs that overreach their authority or failures swept under the rug. At the same time, they're much less of a security threat than specific details of a program.

dllthomas• 12 years ago

"the executive branch has no legitimate purpose in keeping secrets"

I don't think the parent claimed that.

Transcripts Kept Secret for 60 Years Bolster Defense of Oppenheimer’s Loyalty

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