"American Prometheus" If you don't believe your gov't is capable of evil

[hector459]

you must listen to this program. It's about J. Oppenheimer, the hydrogen bomb, his position, and how the US government smeared and ruined the life of a respected scientist because he was AGAINST nulear proliferation. AMAZING. You just won't be able to learn true history from the history books they put in school.

http://www.wamu.org/programs/kn/

I heard this show while in my car. I plan on tuning in everyday. It was great and has a reasonable host.

[punpirate]

1. The guy who really put the knife in his back...

... though, was Edward Teller. Teller almost single-handedly destroyed Oppenheimer, and his testimony was the primary reason for pulling Oppenheimer's security clearance.

Teller was insane about a bomb design of his (his so-called "Super") and the desire to see it built (even though it would not have worked--Hans Bethe and others eventually came up with a workable design) that he saw Oppenheimer as the principal obstruction. Teller simply could not see the larger implications of his obsessions, that they would inevitably lead to an arms race with the Soviet Union. He prevailed, and the arms race was on.

Which is not to say that there weren't many in the government and in the military who were egging Teller on....

[calzone]

3. ...and the cold-hearted smug guy never...

...changed. He was a senior fellow at the hard rights favorite policy research snake pit...The Hoover Institute. Boy do they love to quote that source in debates, like it's some kind of exalted highly credible institution of truth & higher learning. It's just an crocodile club to me.

[lateo]

5. Diane Rhem has these clowns on a lot.

Which is something that I love about the "liberal" NPR.

[whistle]

2. Correct and his nemeses were Edward Teller a brilliant physicist...

...but also a Hungarian fascist and Ernest O. Lawrence director of the radiation laboratory at the University of California and a right wing conservative. Both of these men pushed for a nuclear arms race involving the hydrogen bomb and were responsible for muscling out Robert Oppenheimer.

<snip>

Oppenheimer celebrated the end of the war and the success of the Manhattan Project, but the death toll and chilling descriptions of radiation sickness had a sobering effect. He informed government officials that most scientists in the project would not continue to pursue such work. "I feel we have blood on our hands," he told President Harry S. Truman. "Never mind. It'll all come out in the wash," Truman replied. In October Oppenheimer resigned from Los Alamos.

Oppenheimer nevertheless remained an important figure in atomic policy. He served as the guiding light of the Acheson-Lilienthal committee, which proposed that the United States relinquish its nuclear monopoly to avoid a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Issued in early 1946, the committee report recommended creation of a United Nations atomic energy commission to supervise the use of fissionable material throughout the world. Groves denounced the plan, and Truman rejected it as unworkable. The nuclear arms race was now on.

From 1947 through 1952 Oppenheimer directed the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, which became a leading center of theoretical physics and attracted notable scholars in the social sciences and humanities. He also chaired the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the U.S. agency responsible for the control and development of fissionable materials. When the Soviet Union detonated an atom bomb in 1949, Teller and Lawrence lobbied feverishly to develop the hydrogen bomb. In October the GAC, with Oppenheimer as chair, repudiated the hydrogen bomb as a weapon of "genocide" and argued that it was so indiscriminately destructive as to be militarily worthless; the GAC recommended against its development. The joint Chiefs of Staff disagreed, as did Truman, who in early 1950 authorized a crash program to build the hydrogen bomb.
<snip>

On 21 December Strauss accused Oppenheimer of disloyalty and presented a list of the charges against him. Oppenheimer refused to resign, demanded a hearing, and hired a lawyer. Strauss arranged for, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to tap Oppenheimer's phones, and detailed transcripts of Oppenheimer's discussions with his lawyer were provided to Strauss, a gross and illegal violation of Oppenheimer's rights. The AEC lawyers were predictably well prepared when the hearing began on 12 April 1954. After Oppenheimer had described Chevalier's initial approach to him as relatively innocuous, Strauss's lawyers cited Oppenheimer's far more incriminating description of events eleven years earlier, which, unbeknownst to Oppenheimer, had been tape-recorded by intelligence officers. Oppenheimer admitted that his original story was a "lie" concocted in a moment of "idiocy." Many scientists and public officials attested to Oppenheimer's loyalty and indisputable service to the nation, but Teller provided the final blow. After acknowledging Oppenheimer's loyalty, Teller said that he had serious doubts about Oppenheimer's judgment, leftist leanings on political matters, and opposition to the hydrogen bomb: "I would feet personally more secure if public matters would rest in other hands." On 27 May the security board affirmed Oppenheimer's loyalty but denied him security clearance. The AEC canceled his contract.
<more>
<link> http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ai/aboutopp.htm

[hector459]

4. Thanks for the additional information. Amazing history the US has.

We think more highly of ourselves than we ought.

[whistle]

6. The Evil Empire of Star Wars mythology I suppose....

...a nation suffering from schizophrenia!