WASHINGTON – The Biden administration has reversed a decades-old decision to revoke the security clearance of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist dubbed the father of the atomic bomb for his leading role in the Manhattan Project of World War II.
That said US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm The Atomic Energy Commission’s 1954 decision was made using “defective procedure” in violation of the commission’s own regulations.
“As time has passed, more evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the trial that Dr. Oppenheimer, while the evidence of his loyalty and love for the fatherland only continued to be corroborated,” Granholm said in a statement on Friday.
Oppenheimer, who died in 1967, directed the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The theoretical physicist was later accused of having communist sympathies and his security clearance was revoked after a four-week closed-door hearing.
In withdrawing Oppenheimer’s license, the Atomic Energy Commission did not allege that he disclosed or mishandled classified information, nor did it question his loyalty to the country under Granholm’s order. However, the commission concluded that his character had “fundamental flaws”.
Years later, after an internal review, a lawyer for the Atomic Energy Commission concluded that “the system has failed” and that “a loyal American has been seriously wronged,” according to the secretary’s order.
Granholm said the commission’s decision was driven by her political leadership’s desire to “discredit Oppenheimer in public debates about nuclear weapons policy.”
“Such political motives must have no place in our personnel security process,” she wrote.
US Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont welcomed the reversal, saying the 1954 decision followed a “manifestly unfair and unethical hearing which would be condemned in the strongest possible terms today.”
“This decision reaffirms that government scientists, whether as famous as Oppenheimer or a technician going about his or her day-to-day work — including those who are willing to raise security concerns or express unpopular opinions on national security matters — are free to do so and that their cases will be fairly reviewed, based on facts, not personal animus or politics,” Leahy said in a statement.
The decision comes like the story of Oppenheimer it goes to the big screen. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” film is expected to hit theaters in July. He is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin and plays Cillian Murphy in the title role.
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