AEC Security Hearing Against Oppenheimer Begins Targeting Manhattan Project Director

On April 12, 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission’s Personnel Security Board commenced hearings against J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist who had directed the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. The hearing resulted from a November 7, 1953 letter from William L. Borden, former executive director of Congress’ Joint Atomic Energy Committee, to J. Edgar Hoover stating his opinion “based upon years of study, of the available classified evidence, that more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union.” On December 21, 1953, AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss informed Oppenheimer that his security clearance had been suspended and suggested he resign.

Oppenheimer replied with a 43-page document on March 4, 1954, formally requesting a hearing. A three-member panel chaired by Gordon Gray, president of the University of North Carolina and former secretary of the army, heard testimony through May 6, 1954. On May 27, 1954, by a 2-1 vote, the Personnel Security Board recommended against reinstating Oppenheimer’s clearance. The AEC issued its final decision on June 29, 1954, with a 4 to 1 vote to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance, citing “fundamental defects of character” and Communist associations “far beyond the tolerable limits of prudence and self-restraint.”

The AEC did not claim that Oppenheimer had ever divulged or mishandled classified information, nor did it question his loyalty to the United States. The revocation ended Oppenheimer’s role in government and policy, destroying the career of the man who had led the development of the atomic bomb. In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Oppenheimer with the AEC’s Enrico Fermi Award in partial recognition of the injustice. On December 16, 2022, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm vacated the 1954 revocation, stating the trial was a “flawed process that violated the Commission’s own regulations.” The Oppenheimer case demonstrated how Red Scare persecution could destroy even the most distinguished careers through guilt by association and political targeting.