indeed nelson will meet with a member of the soviet consulate in san francisco and hand over a manila envelope. this was the first confirmed evidence that the army and the fbi have of intelligence -- of espionage, russian espionage against the manhattan project. there is ab immediate hunt to find out who joe is. the army will determine that joe is actually joe wineberg who is one of open enpimer's four graduate students in this picture. all theoretical physicists working with oppenheimer. i understand there was a fox photo photographer who was stationed outside the gate and he would take a picture if you wanted a picture taken. and then you would buy the photograph. that's what happened in this case. rossi wanted a picture of he and his buddies taken.

there was an army counter intelligence agent who was in the background. after rossi and the group walked away, the agent went over and bought the negative. so they were there able to identify the other four and all of them were wiretapped and physically surveyed in the rest. and by the way, there was no -- in the course of that, i read all the transports of telephone conversations and conversations they had at home that surfaced in the army and fbi archives. i think it's pretty clear that these three real quli nothing to do with espionage. that there were no secrets being passed from berkeley to the russians through steve nelson with the exception of joe wineberg's conversation with nelson. this is in march 1943. word gets back to los alamos to oppenheimer that his grut students are under surveillance, under suspicion for spying for the russians.

he tells a ratherol incredible story. to the effect that there is an unnamed interimmediate airy who did -- there is espionage going on at berkeley. there is interimmediate airy who approached three scientists working on the project that oppenheimer knows that because the scientists came to him individually and asked what they should do. he gave them the advice they should not get involved with this and that was the end of it. pash asked who is the unknown interimmediate airy? oppenheimer says he is a professor at berkeley. he's a personal friend. he just had a minor role in this. i won't reveal the names unless ordered to by groves. the same thing with the three who were approached. oppenheimer will not reveal the names. there is a long effort basically by pash, by the head of manhattan project security, by

almost everybody in the army to find out who the three were, who the three project scientistses were and who the unnamed interimmediate airy was. but oppenheimer will only say that he revealed the names only if order to by groves and only to groves himself. next slide. well, this will be forgotten in a sense during the war. oppenheimer is the hero at the moment. after the bomb is dropped, the story of the bomb, building the bomb comes out. next slide, please. oppenheimer is known as the father of the atomic bomb. this is the cover of the issue of psychics today. the issue is dedicated to trends in american science. all the magazine had to do to convey what the trends were is put it on a piece of scientific equipment and convey the message that oppenheimer was preeminent in american science and that american science was itself preeminent in the world.

edgar hoover is obsessing with who are the three that didn't come forward and who is the unnamed interimmediate airy? hoover found out in the meantime that unnamed interimmediate airy is -- he wants to know who the other three are. so he has the fbi agents interview oppenheimer. first they interview the frenchman. he tells a different storey. he says well he doesn't know about three. there is only one person he missed. there is only one person approached and that is robert oppenheimer. they interview oppenheimer and he now says well, yes, the story i gave back in august of 1943 to pash and was a fabrication. the true story is only that i was involved and i didn't cooperate.

that incident, both versions incident. slide, please. u.s. government saying that you could not open a door without finding robert oppenheimer behind it. he was chairman to the atomic energy commission. the atomic brain trust that had people like nobel provides winner on it. a very -- it is called the atomic brain trust. a very powerful and influential

group of scientists who made controversial recommendations. against the air force's nuclear powered bomber, against the aec's own program to launch a crash effort to develop civilian atomic power reactors. the gac believed they were too dangerous. but most importantly, against the hydrogen bomb. in october in 1949, the gac will advise almost unanimously that we -- this country should not perceive the development of the next step of weapons of mass destruction. they are nuclear super or hydrogen bomb. it will take effort away from the atomic army of the country. basically the stockpile will suffer. but even more importantly, they impose it for ethical reasons. it's an evil thing considered in any light. and even a weapon of genocide. you can imagine it was a controversial recommendation. it split the aec itself and

certainly opposed by edward teller who since 1942 had been promoting the hydrogen bomb and by 1949 is in effect the scientific head of an h bomb lobby that is lobbying to develop the weapon. other members, other organizations involved in that lobby include the air force, high command and probably most importantly the joint congressional committee on o tomic energy. next slide, please. in november of 1953, the executive director of the joint committee on atomic energy, william boredon who is an interesting figure in itself. i won't go into detail. he was knots a man of measure. he was someone who had suspected oppenheimer was guilty of espionage in the beginning. borden writes a letter to j. edgar hoover. he spends many months agonizing over it. but the gist of it is that and,

in fact, the phrase that is offered is that more probably than not robert oppenheimer is a soviet agent. this is the cause, the impetus for the loyalty investigation will take place in the spring of 1954. there is one slide i left out here. that is that slide of lewis gauze, the most powerful enemy of oppenheimer in washington was the chairman of the atomic energy commission. he hated oppenheimer for personal reasons. there had been a hearing on isotopes a few years earlier. oppenheimer was not one to suffer fools. he thought that straws' position in this was foolish and straws was a fool. so oppenheimer who was certainly arrogant, simply made fun of straws in the congressional hearing. and straws never forgot or forgave oppenheimer for that. but as well as straws, of course, is a primary force behind the lobby for the h bomb.

as the chairman of the gac or the aec. so they came to opposition. straws was the chief figure behind the hearing. it really was his engineering of the hearing that caused it to take place. the hearing, too, was unlike a trial. it's a closed -- actually a secret administrative procedure. it is called a personnel security board hearing that unlike a trial, you're not allowed to confront your accuser. it takes place in, as i say, in secret. the usual rules of evidence do not apply. there is no appeal except to the aec, the commission itself. as the deputy lawyer of the aec, former aec told me, it is not much more than a kangaroo court. this is the mechanism that straws and hoover as aclear from the fbi files, this is the

mechanism by which straws and hoover are going to remove oppenheimer from influence and from washington. and the way they do that is with, well, next slide. that the hearing goes for three weeks in april and may 1954. the same time it almost exactly coincides with the army mackarnma mma mccarthy hearing. is the climatic moment. they confront oppenheimer with a story he told pash back in 1943. oppenheimer didn't know had been recorded. it was recorded and went in the other room when he gave pash the original version. and then confronts him with his 1946 version where he said that only he had been approached and confronts him with a question of why did he do that, doctor? and oppenheimer's incredible

answer is because i was an idiot. and gave us no other defense, no other explanation of why he had committed this felony. well, i think i have found the explanation. but i won't have time to tell you here. you have to read the book. all right. i'll tell you. i'll tell you. there was a third version of the incident that i didn't know about and i don't think anybody else knew about. only two people knew it and they kept it secret. but groves finally flew to los alamos in december of 1943. and he called oppenheimer into his office and he said i'm ordering you to give me the names that you wouldn't give to p pash. and said okay, the

interimmediate airy is shavalet. he said i'll only give you the other names if you promise not to go to the fbi with them. they worked that out. the bureau had no reason to know about what army project people were doing at the lab. and he also believed, groves believed that the three had to be three of the four who were in the picture i just showed you. they had on oppenheimer's graduate students. so he said, okay. and what he then heard surprised him that oppenheimer said there was only one person approached and it was my brother, frank. robert decided he would sacrifice his own career and future and do what he learned in

the ethical culture school that he went to in manhattan when taught the important thing is to do the noble thing when the crunch comes. i think this was his expression of that. and as well, hoover and straws knew very well he was protecting frank. they found out about this. groves kept the story until the hearing. straws found out about it because borden's successor came to the bureau and said there is a story that is not in our files and i don't think you know about. but that i heard and you should know. that is frank's involvement. once straws found out about that, he not only had oppenheimer guilty of a felony and could use that, but he had groves guilty of a felony, too. groves had never revealed this. so -- he lets groves know that. and, again this is -- the oppenheimer file at the fbi is 73 pages long. it is all laid out there. he kocalls groves in. he comes in and where is it?

always been expected that groves will be the witness for the defense and the oppenheimer case. he always defended oppenheimerment he said he had no question it was the rights he changes the story. he asked two questions and he's the first of these questions by straws before the hearing. and then he goes to testify and asked, would you give robert oppenheimer security clearance do you consider robert oppenheimer a security threat? and security risk? he doesn't answer it directly but he says i think you can tell answer would be to that, in other words, it's very critical statement. he had to hide his membership in

the party and the story he told to grefz and only he and groves knew and kept that a full secret. that may be why oppenheimer had -- whether he goes into exile, he speaks out on issues of human rights a arms race. he no longer goes to washington. his membership on the committees a security clearance. oppenheimer never takes a public role. he never really comes out and discusses the arms race. and i had to keep quiet and he didn't that i'll admit is speculation. next slide, please. just one footnote. i think the incident probably finished oppenheimer as far as any possibility of getting a clearance again was concerned. but straws wanted to make sure

that oppenheimer would never come back again and he needed a international stature who could testify essentially for the prosecution. he assumed that was going to be lawrence. lawrence had since had a falling out with oppenheimer over the h bomb, over the creation of livermore and other issues. lawrence is on the way to the hearing. he stops off at a laboratory director's meeting in oak ridge. he's confronted there by robby and other laboratory directors. he is told pretty much no uncertain terms that the hearing is, of course, going on at this time. if he, lawrence, testifies against oppenheimer, he will become a pariah in the scientific community. and what is worse from lawrence's point of view is that the lab will also be ostracized. and that is what would have hurt lawrence. ever since the fight over livermore he was suffering from a severe colitis attack.

he calls up straws and says he's fots goi not going to testify after all. he can't be persuaded. he goes back home. that is only one other scientists of international stature to testify against oppenheimer and that is edward tellerment i won't get into the details here. teller has always claimed he was going to testify for oppenheimer except 15 minutes before he took the stand, he was sharing the testimony that oppenheimer gave the day before on the case. he said because i was an idiot. and he said he could no longer support the man after reading that. that's tellteller's version of truth. it's well documented that he rehearse his testimony well previous to this. and his testimony will be that when asked directly by rob whether oppenheimer should be granted security clearance, whether he is a security risk, teller does not say he is a security risk but oppenheimer is a complex individual whose

motivations have always been opaque to me. and because of that reason, i think it would be wiser not to grant clearance. for oppenheimer's friends, this was in effect sticking the knife in oppenheimer's back and twisting it. it would cause teller to be ostracized. he went to school with these people in germany. teller -- he denies he said it. but there are witnesses who said that upon this occasion he said i have quit the appeasers and joined the facists. he has made his choice. he is going to be exiled from his former friends but he'll have a new group of friends. next slide. lawrence is actually -- i'm sort of running over him tetime here. lawrence is a more interesting figure than he is widely or publicly perceived to be. i think he's perceived to be a kind of right-wing ideologue. lawrence propose that's the bomb should be demonstrated before it is military use against the

japanese. he's also the last to abandon that. i think that he's the sourcer's apprentice in the sense, too, that he realized that he had enabled teller in the h bomb in the case of the h bomb in, the case of the creation of liver more and the fact that liver more will be preeminently a weapons design lab which has not been his original intention. i think that he felt some regret about that at the end of his life. lawrence argue that's point, too. lawrence will be chosen by eisenhower in the summer of 1758 to represent the united states at the geneva talks on nuclear testing bull the lead to the test ban. a lot of people assume he went there to sabotage the talks. i think actually that he, and this is really from the evidence of people who were, there he was actually a believer in putting an end to nuclear testing. i think that he did undergo a kind of conversion experience, if you will, near the end of his life. but he was such a conflicted figure by this time that he comes -- he has another colitis

attack. he comes back. he is operated on at stanford. they discover in the course of the operation that his circulatory system is basically compromised. and he dies of circulatory shock. just shortly thereafter. shock age of 57. next slide. this is my oppenheimer out to pasture picture. but oppenheimer does -- this is at his brother's ranch in colorado. and he does go. he's director for the institute of advanced study at princeton but doesn't take an activist role, doesn't speak out, very much in the background. next slide. and oppenheimer will die in february of 1967. this was the princeton commencement the previous june. he dies of throat cancer. you can see this is near the end. next slide. this picture was taken at los alamos in 1983. teller had come -- this is the

40th anniversary of los alamos. ronald reagan had given his star wars speech two weeks prior to this, on march 23rd. he had come to los alamos to work on sdi. he found a hostile reception there from disk garwin and isadore roby and others. he said on the plane back that he thought all this could be traced to what had happened back in 1954 to the oppenheimer case and in particular to his case, to his testimony against oppenheimer. this enmity the sciences had against defense projects and the enmity scientists had at los alamos for him in particular. next slide, please. if you like to sort of pursue this debate there's a website, brotherhood of the bomb.com. i wasn't able to publish the original footnotes came to 81,000 words. and i couldn't print all of those. so instead i put them on the

website so you can access them and download them if you like. also documents that pertain to the case, especially documents that have not surfaced before, oppenheimer and trevalier. some thing in the book that you just saw. i'll update the author's notes as time goes on. but that's the brotherhood of the bomb. thank you. [ applause ] questions? yeah. >> what was frank oppenheimer doing at the -- he was there, wasn't he? >> the question was what was frank oppenheimer doing at the trinity test. frank was -- had been at oak ridge. he worked with lawrence on the calutrons. but he was invited by his brother to come to los alamos in late '44, if i recall. the thing about that is frank didn't have much of a role at

los alamos. he was anenit at the trinity tower, where he wrote sort of the dos and don'ts -- don't carry hammers up into the tower, that sort of thing. a menial role for somebody who was an accomplished physicist. speculation at the lab was that robert had frank there so he could keep an eye on him. >> frank said that his brother never said anything about the bomb -- >> yeah. actually, i interviewed frank oppenheimer in 1983 at los alamos. one of the questions i asked him was what did your brother really say? if you've ever seen the 1965 nbc point paper on dropping the bomb, that robert oppenheimer near the end of his life is talking about, and the bomb whent off that immediately the words from visnnu takes this multiarmed form and warns the prince, now i become death, the destroyer of worlds. that's typical oppenheimer, it's

eloquent but also after the fact. i asked frank what did he really say, because they were both lying down together when the bomb went off outside the control point. and frank said -- he got up and he said, it worked. which is only human. and reasonable. >> in regards to general groves, i know he hated labor unions especially the federation of engineers, architects. >> faect, yeah. >> he was concerned about espy an j. but he seemed to be to be blase about somebody's political. did he not have a kneejerk reaction to somebody being in the aecp. >> unionizing didn't bother groves, but if it was a communist dominated union, as an army or the fbi believed, then

it would have. and the faecp was closed down by the national labor board during the war at the corequest of the army. groves is a pragmatist. he was certainly willing to put up with left wing views. that didn't concern him. but i don't think he knew the extent -- i'm sure he didn't know the extent to which robert had been active in this closed unit. if you can imagine that if groves had gone to oppenheimer and said, i want you to head the project. is there anything in your past that i need to know about? if robert had said, i'm a member of the closed unit of the professional section of the communist party that that would have been a show stopper, that would have been an end to it. that's the one thing that groves couldn't have abided. i don't want to make this a long answer, but the other interesting thing is that groves would get rid of people within his own organization who questioned oppenheimer's

loyalty. and pash was the case, the head of security da silva, was reassigned overseas. the fellow who replaced him. i interviewed him he said he got a phone call the first day at los alamos from groves. i want you to do a good job. and don't worry about oppenheimer. oppenheimer is my responsibility. you can worriy about everything else. next week on history bookshelf, howard dodson discusses jubilee, the emergence of african-american culture. it examines the political and social identity connected with african-americans. history bookshelf airs on american history tv every saturday at noon eastern. congratulations to all this year's winners of c-span's student cam video documentary

competition. students entered a video on the theme the constitution and you. showing which part of the constitution is important to them and why. watch all the winning videos at our website, student democrcam.. we'll talk with the winners during "washington journal." i believe it is yet possible that we will come to admire this country not simply because we were born here, but because of the kind of great and good land that you and i want it to be and that together we have made. that is my hope. that is my reason for seeking the presidency of the united states. >> as candidates campaign for president this year, we look back at 14 men who ran for the office and lost. go to cspan.org slash the contenders to see video of the contender who had a lasting impact on politics. >> the leadership of this nation has a clear and immediate

challenge to go to work effectively and go to work immediately to restore proper respect for law and order in this land and not just prior to election day either. >> cspan.org/the contenders. ernest hemingway is considered one of the great american writers, and his works still influence readers today. but not many people know of his work as a spy during world war ii. >> there were a couple of instances of german submarines approaching fishing boats and saying, hey, we'll take your catch and your fresh food. ernest says wait for them to come alongside, then my jai alai players are going to lob hand grenades down the open hatches and the other members of the crew are going to machine gun the germans on deck. >> nicholas reynolds on hemingway the spy. sunday night at 8:30, part of american history tv this weekend on c-span3.

in the 19th century middle class american families began displaying wealth and status in their homes by purchasing globes, portraits and furniture made by local craftsmen. up next author david jaffee looks at the social impact of these decorations and how they helped develop an early american material culture. this is about an hour. >> it's really a pleasure to be here. and i wanted to start with winthrop chandler who in many ways sort of begins my project both in chronological terms as well as how i sort of thought about it. i've spent a lot of time with the antiquarian society and also in worcester county. the clockmakers, chairmakers thinking about gardner and