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Oppenheimer Clearance Removal Vacated

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Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm vacated the 1954 decision of the Atomic Energy Commission, the predecessor of the Department of Energy, to revoke J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance.

Many people have worked to remove this unfair judgment against Oppenheimer for many years. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has been instrumental. Jeff Bingaman, when he was New Mexico’s senator worked hard on the issue. Many organizations and individuals were involved, even me to a small extent.

Here’s what’s not in the Granholm statement or an NYT article on the decision. In the early 1950s, Oppenheimer was not sufficiently in favor of developing the hydrogen bomb. Edward Teller had been pushing the idea since the Manhattan Project, when he had pursued it to minimizing his work toward the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer had humiliated Lewis Straus, the chairman of the AEC, in a congressional hearing for his lack of knowledge of science. The knives were out.

As Granholm’s statement points out, no evidence was presented in the hearing that the two men precipitated on Oppenheimer’s security clearance that he was disloyal to the United States. Just that they didn’t like the cut of his jib. And they won at the time.

Now that has been reversed. Sadly, it doesn’t remove the harms of the past, to Oppenheimer and his family.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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