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