COLUMN: Spies, security and sex

From Miachel Brus's, "Narcissist's Holiday," Fall '98 From Miachel Brus's, "Narcissist's Holiday," Fall '98The scenario: A moralistic, axe-grinding public official wants to rid the government of his enemy, a world-famous official whom many people consider to be personally and politically indulgent. This prosecutor gets permission from the proper authorities and launches a monkey trial to smear the man. While preparing his case, the prosecutor secretly tape records evidence and deposes people who have a personal grudge against the defendant. He doesn't allow the defendant to see these deposed allegations during the trial, nor even the defendant's own previous sworn statements. He is close friends with the judges. Privately, he confesses that it is in the national interest to convict the defendant, no matter what the means. While on the stand, the defendant confesses to having previously fudged small facts in order to protect loved ones. He confesses this in a sudden, bathetic way that makes him look ridiculous, even to his allies. And the testimony reveals the defendant to be both solipsistic and pathologically heedless to consequences. After the defendant is convicted, this prosecutor uses a pretext to leak all of the confidential testimony to the public. The defendant? J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb and occasional defense consultant. The prosecutor? Robert Strauss, commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission. The event? The denial of a security clearance to Oppenheimer in 1954 on grounds of associating with Communists and lying under oath. As a result, Oppenheimer was personally disgraced and humiliated, although he later became a martyr to liberals. They say that history is first tragedy and then farce. If our current constitutional crisis can be called a farce, then this axiom holds true, for Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance on trumped-up charges -- charges based in truth. During the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer had in fact lied to Los Alamos security officials under oath in order to protect friends whom he considered innocent. He continued to associate with known Communists as late as 1953, even thought the FBI and members of Congress had long viewed his associations suspiciously. After the war Oppenheimer was a politically prominent scientific (and some would say political) advisor. He was intellectually snobbish and made enemies easily. One of these enemies was Lewis Strauss, a businessperson and government advisor from the Virginia backcountry. At a Congressional hearing in 1949, Oppenheimer had humiliated Strauss, ridiculing his ignorance of basic physics. When Strauss was appointed commissioner of the AEC in 1953, he proceeded to blacklist Oppenheimer, who now technically worked for him. During Oppenheimer's security clearance hearings, the AEC's lawyer, Roger Robb, caught him in a perjury trap. This was a serious offense, for it opened up the possibility that Oppenheimer may have sheltered friends with links to espionage rings during the war. But this lapse ignored a larger reality: Oppenheimer was no Communist. He had developed the atomic bomb during the war and had developed a way to detect Russian tests after the war. Virtually the entire physics community testified on Oppenheimer's behalf during his hearing. To strip Oppenheimer of his clearance, prosecutors had to portray small lapses of judgement as abuses of power. Here is Robb cross-examining Oppenheimer about a visit he had made to an alleged mistress in 1943: Q: But it is fair to say that during the war years you felt that social contacts between a person employed in secret war work and Communists or Communist adherents were potentially dangerous; is that correct? A: Were conceivably dangerous. I visited Jean Tatlock in the spring of 1943. I almost had to [visit, due to her mental illness]. She was not much of a Communist, but she was certainly a member of the party. There was nothing dangerous about that. There was nothing potentially dangerous about that. Q: But you would have felt then, I assume, that a rather continued or constant association between a person employed on the atomic-bomb project and Communists or Communist adherents was dangerous? A: Potentially dangerous; conceivably dangerous. Look, I have had a lot of secrets in my head a long time. It does not matter who I associate with. I don't talk about those secrets. Only a very skillful guy might pick up a trace of information as to where I had been or what I was up to. And here is Robert Bittman, attorney for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, questioning President Clinton at his grand jury testimony on August 17, 1998: Q: And you also gave her Christmas gifts, is that correct, Mr. President? A: That is correct. They were Christmas gifts and they were going-away gifts. She was moving to New York -- taking a new job, starting a new life -- and I gave her some gifts. Q: And you actually requested this meeting, is that not correct? A: I don't remember that, Mr. Bittman, but it is quite possible.? Q: You were alone with her on December 28, 1997? A: Yes, sir. I was. Q: The gifts that you gave her were [in] a canvas bag from the Black Dog restaurant on Martha's Vineyard, is that right?? [And] you gave her the most gifts you'd ever given her in a single day, is that right? A: Well, that's probably true, sort of like a going-away present and a Christmas present as well.? Q: You mentioned that you discussed her subpoena in the Paula Jones case [at that time]. Tell us specifically what you discu-- A: No, sir. That's not what I said.? The whole concept of 'defects of character' seems a hazardous one," wrote historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in The Atlantic Monthly after the Oppenheimer hearings. "[One] shudders to have the concept of 'security risk' so tortured that it becomes a synonym for a character less righteous than one's own. By the Lewis Strauss interpretation of 'security risk' Alexander Hamilton and Grover Cleveland would have been fired out of government service as adulterers, U.S. Grant as a drunkard, and so on." "Robert Oppenheimer was doubtless at moments a cocky, irritating, even arrogant man," Schlesinger continued. "But surely no arrogance of Oppenheimer equals the arrogance of those who, in the frightening words of the [AEC], affirm that 'it has been demonstrated that the Government can search? the soul of an individual whose relationship to his Government is in question'." Substitute "impeachment candidate" for "security risk," "Kenneth Starr" for "Lewis Strauss," and "independent counsel" for "AEC," and Schlesinger's commentary could have been written last week. "Dr. Oppenheimer has consistently placed himself outside of the rules that govern others," Strauss said in 1954. Sound familiar? Of course, there is an important difference between 1954 and 1998: The stakes were much higher then. In the last 10 years, declassified records from the Kremlin and from U.S. intelligence bureaus has proven many of the McCarthyites worst fears. We now know, for example, that the first Soviet atomic bomb was built entirely from stolen American blueprints. There were at least four valuable Soviet informants at Los Alamos, including -- yes -- Julius Rosenberg. The process of smearing and purging cock robin was remarkably similar then as now. But in some respects Starr's methods are less defensible than those of the McCarthyites. After all, McCarthy and his ilk, despite their crimes against due process, were at least trying to prevent espionage, which was a legitimate threat to national security. Starr, on the other hand, thinks that perjury and caddishness alone are grounds for impeachment.