page_title: Oppenheimer security hearing
section_title: Board composition and procedures
hierarchical_section_title: Oppenheimer security hearing / Hearing / Board composition and procedures
caption_attribution_description: Gordon Gray
context_page_description: The Oppenheimer security hearing was a 1954 proceeding by the United States Atomic Energy Commission that explored the background, actions, and associations of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist who had headed the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, where he played a key part in the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. The hearing resulted in Oppenheimer's Q clearance being revoked. This marked the end of his formal relationship with the government of the United States, and generated considerable controversy regarding whether the treatment of Oppenheimer was fair, or whether it was an expression of anti-Communist McCarthyism.
  Doubts about Oppenheimer's loyalty dated back to the 1930s, when he was a member of numerous Communist front organizations, and was associated with Communist Party USA members, including his wife and his brother. These associations were known to Army Counter-intelligence at the time he was made director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1942, and chairman of the influential General Advisory Committee of the AEC in 1947.
context_section_description: On December 21, 1953, Oppenheimer was told by Lewis Strauss that his security file had been subject to two recent re-evaluations because of new screening criteria, and because a former government official had drawn attention to Oppenheimer's record. Strauss said that his clearance had been suspended, pending resolution of a series of charges outlined in a letter, and discussed his resigning his AEC consultancy. Given only a day to decide, and after consulting with his lawyers, Oppenheimer chose not to resign, and requested a hearing instead. The charges were outlined in a letter from Kenneth D. Nichols, general manager of the AEC. Pending resolution of the charges, Oppenheimer's security clearance was suspended. Oppenheimer told Strauss that some of what was in Nichols' letter was correct, some incorrect.
  The hearing was held at a temporary building near the Washington Monument housing offices of the AEC. It began on April 12, 1954, and lasted four weeks. The AEC was represented by Roger Robb, an experienced prosecutor in Washington, and Arthur Rolander, while Oppenheimer's legal team was headed by Lloyd K. Garrison, a prominent New York attorney. The chairman of the Personnel Security Board was Gordon Gray, president of the University of North Carolina. The other members of the hearing panel were Thomas Alfred Morgan, a retired industrialist, and Ward V. Evans, chairman of the chemistry department at Northwestern University.
  The hearing was not open to the public and initially was not publicized. At the commencement of the hearing, Gray stated the hearing was "strictly confidential", and pledged that no information related to the hearing would be released. Contrary to this assurance, a few weeks after the conclusion of the hearing a verbatim transcript of the hearing was released by the AEC. Oppenheimer and Garrison also breached the confidentiality of the hearing, by communicating with New York Times journalist James Reston, who wrote an article on the hearing that appeared on the second day of the hearing.
  Garrison applied for an emergency security clearance prior to the hearing, as one had been granted to Robb, but no clearance was granted during the course of the hearing, which meant that Oppenheimer's attorneys had no access to the secrets that Robb was able to see. On at least three occasions, Garrison and his co-counsel were barred from the hearing room for security reasons, leaving Oppenheimer unrepresented, in violation of AEC regulations. During the course of the hearing, Robb repeatedly cross-examined Oppenheimer's witnesses utilizing top-secret documents unavailable to Oppenheimer's lawyers. He often read aloud from those documents, despite their secret status.
  The AEC's former general counsel Joseph Volpe had urged Oppenheimer to retain a tough litigator as his attorney; Garrison's demeanor was gentle and cordial, but Robb was adversarial. Garrison voluntarily provided the board and Robb with a list of his witnesses, but Robb refused to extend the same courtesy. This gave Robb a clear advantage in his cross-examination of Oppenheimer's witnesses. One observer commented that Robb "did not treat Oppenheimer as a witness in his own case, but as a person charged with high treason."
  Members of the hearing panel met with Robb prior to the hearing to review the contents of Oppenheimer's FBI file. The 1946 Administrative Procedure Act included a legal principle known as "the exclusivity of the record" or the "blank pad rule". This meant that a hearing could only consider information that had been formally presented under the established rules of evidence. However, while the act applied to the courts and to administrative hearings held by agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission, it did not apply to the AEC. Garrison asked for the opportunity to review the file with the panel, but this was rejected.
caption: The hearing was chaired by Gordon Gray, president of the University of North Carolina.
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