WE LEFT AND the Director would be taken to trial on accusations of disloyalty. Though he was trusted to orchestrate the creation of the atomic bomb, he was now deemed a security risk. Had he consorted with Communists? Was he a spy? We were asked to speak against him and we refused, as did our husbands.
THE DIRECTOR DID not encourage the creation of a hydrogen bomb, something even more destructive than the atomic bomb. He doubted it was feasible and said it would be too destructive to use in war, even if it would be, he said, technically sweet. Helen’s husband wanted to make this bomb and he wanted to be in charge of it. Her husband spoke against the former Director and told the Senate Committee: One would be wiser not to grant security clearance to Oppenheimer. We thought her husband was bitter for not being chosen for the lab leader way back when, and many of us, including our husbands, said if they were ever alone with him they would give him what for.
WE FELT BAD for Helen—who somehow had to put up with the bravado, late night piano playing, and ignorance of him. To be the wife of a man that spoke out against the Director, who worked to get the Director’s security clearance revoked, to be the wife of the man who became the father of the superbomb. Her husband was on record, in court, saying: In a great number of cases I have seen Dr. Oppenheimer act—I understood that Dr. Oppenheimer acted—in a way which for me was exceedingly hard to understand. I would personally feel more secure if public matters would rest in other hands.
AND BECAUSE ALL of Oppenheimer’s business was in the news and for many years he was followed by the FBI, we learned that while he was Director, and married to Kitty, he had flown to California and stayed the night at his former girlfriend’s home. She was a psychologist, a colleague’s daughter, and a Communist. Soon after his visit, she was found dead, and the death was considered a suicide. Her last note said: I wanted to live, but I got paralyzed somehow. This was fascinating and horrifying information, and some of us were not surprised, but what did it all mean?
THE DIRECTOR’S SECURITY clearance was revoked by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954 and his office at the White House was terminated. But nine years later, he was given a $50,000 award by the Atomic Energy Commission, an award named after one of our husbands, for his outstanding contributions to theoretical physics and his scientific and administrative leadership. He died, before many, but not all, of our husbands, from cancer, in 1967. The trouble with Oppenheimer, the famous but uninvolved scientist Einstein remarked, was that he loved a woman who did not love him back: the U.S. government.