and built there. The other members, all
scientists, were Oliver E. Buckley, James
B. Conant, Lee A. DuBridge, Enrico
Fermi, I. L. Rabi, Hartley Rowe, Glenn
T. Seaborg and Cyril S. Smith. Many of
the members of this committee and later
General Advisory committeés also served
on other high-level standing committees
and some key ad hoc committees, and so
a rather complex web of interlocking
advisory-committee memberships developed. As a result several of these men,
including Oppenheimer, had much more
influence than the simple sum of their
various committee memberships would
indicate.
Oppenheimer was not only the formal
leader of the General Advisory Committee but also, by virtue of his personality
and background, its natural leader. His
of the Oppenheimer committee was
held on October 29 and 30, 1949; all
members were present except Seaborg,
who was in Europe. The committee in
the courseof its deliberations heard from
many outside experts in various relevant fields, including George F. Kennan, the noted student of Russian af-
fairs, General Omar Bradley, Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the
physicists H. A. Bethe and Robert Ser-
ber. Toward the end of the two-day
meeting the advisers had a longsession
with the Atomic Energy commissioners
and with their intelligence staff. The
next day the committee prepared its
report,
Ihe General Advisory Committee
report consisted of three separate
sections that were unanimously agreed
on and two addenda giving certain specific minority views. In 1974 the report
was almost entirely declassified, with
only a very few purely technical details
views were therefore of special importance in setting the tone and determining the content of the committee’s re- remaining secret.
Part I of the report dealt with all
ports in this matter, as in most other —
pertinent questions other than those dimatters.
Throughout Oppenheimer’s service on rectly involving the Super. The advisory
the committee he generally supported committee in effect reacted favorably to
the various programs designed to pro- the proposals of the various AEC divi-
duce and improve nuclear weapons, At
the same time he was deeply troubled
by what he had wroughtat Los Alamos,
and he found the notion of bombs of
sion directors with regard to the expansion of the facilities for separating uranium isotopes, for producing plutonium
Ever since the end of the war he hadde-
mittee’s endorsement of them were followed eventually by a substantial increase in the rate of production of fissionable materials.
In Part I the committee also recommended the acceleration of research and
unlimited power particularly repugnant.
voted much of his attention to promoting the international control of atomic
energy with the ultimate objective. of
achieving nuclear disarmament. He and
Rabi had in effect been the originators
of the plan for nuclear-arms control that
later became known as the Baruch Plan.
Oppenheimer’s inner feelings about nuclear weapons were clearly revealed in
an often quoted remark: “In some sort
of crude sense which no vulgarity, no
humor, no overstatement can quite ex-
tinguish, the physicists haveknownsin,
andthis is a knowledge which they cancs
not lose,”
The call for the special meeting, in
addition to raising the question of a
high-priority program to develop the
Super, also asked the committee to con-
sider priorities in the broadest sense,
including “whether the Commission is
now doing things we ought to do to
serve the paramount objectives of the
common defense and security.” As for
the Super, the Commission wanted to
know “whether the nation would use
such a weapon if it could be built and
what its military worth would be in re-
lation to fission weapons.” The meeting
1OQ
and for increasing the supplies of urani-
um ore, These proposals and the com-
development workon fission bombs, par-
defensive purposes, and they regularly
promoted programs designed to increase their variety, flexibility, efficiency
and numbers. For the next few years,
tight up to the time Oppenheimer’s security clearance was removed, he con-
tinued strongly to promote the idea of
an expanded arsenal of tactical nuclear
weapons, The only typeof nuclear weapon the General Advisory Committee op-
posed~and it did so openly—was the
Super.
Part I of the report further recom-'
mended that a project be initiated for
the purpose of producing “freely absorbable neutrons” to be used for the
production of uranium 233, tritium and
other potentially useful nuclear materi-
als. Perhaps most importantofall in the
present context, Part I also stated: “We
strongly favor, subject to favorable out-
come of the 1951 Eniwetok tests, the
booster program.” This short phrase
makes it abundantly clear that the Oppenheimer committee favored conducting research fundamental to understanding the thermonuclear process, and that
its grave reservations were specifically
and solely focused on oneparticulat application of the fusion process.
3
Part II discussed the Super. Itout-
lined what was known aboutthe hydro-
gen bomb, and it expanded on the
unusual difficulties its developmentpresented, but it concluded that the bomb
could probably be built. In part it said:
“It is notable that there appears to be
no experimental approach short of actual test which will substantially add
to our conviction that a given modelwill
or will not work. Thus, we are faced with
a development which cannot be carried
to the point of conviction without the
actual construction and demonstration
of the essential elements of the weapon
in question. A final point that needs to
ticularly for tactical purposes. Under the
heading “Tactical Delivery” the report
stated: “The General Advisory Committee recommends to the Commission an
intensification of efforts to make atomic
weaponsavailable for tactical purposes,
and to give attention to the problem of
integration of bomb and carrier design
in this field.”
This quoted paragraph deserves special emphasis, since it has often been
suggested that Oppenheimer, Conant
and someof the others opposed nuclear
weapons in general. They did apparently find them all repugnant, and they did
try hard to create an intemmational control organization that would ultimately
lead to their universal abolition. In the
required before a workable model has
been evolved or before it has been established beyond reasonable doubt that
no such model can be evolved. Although
we are not-able to give a specific probability rating for any given model, we
believe that an imaginative and concerted attack on the problem has a
better than even chance of producing
the weapon within five years.”
tation agreements with reliable control
Oppenheimerin particular were decep-
recognized the need to possess nuclear
prospects of the Super; in other words,
absence of any international arms-limimechanisms, however, they explicitly
weapons, particularly for tactical and
be stressed is that many tests may be
Stafford Warren
«w DOE/UCLA
had been director of the Los Alax__.
laboratory during the period when the
first atomic bomb had been designed
hat last sentence (the italics are add-
ed) deserves special emphasis. It has
been suggested in the past that the General Advisory Committee in general and
tive in their analysis of the technological
that they deliberately painted a falsely