Pandora's Keepers (42 page)

If the development is possible, it is out of our powers to prevent it. All that we can do is to retard its completion by some years. I believe, on the other hand, that any form of international control may be put on a more stable basis by the knowledge of the full extent of the problem that must be solved and of the dangers of a ruthless international competition. The terrible consequences of a superbomb will not be avoided by ignoring or postponing the issue but by wise and provident planning.
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His thinking had not changed since then, except to become more fervent. Teller and other advocates of the superbomb believed in the principle—bordering on an imperative—that physicists, like other scientists, had an obligation to understand nature and develop new knowledge. They could not avoid the responsibility of knowing the facts, no matter how terrifying. In Teller’s mind, once he and other physicists had realized an atomic bomb was feasible, a thermonuclear weapon was scientifically the next logical step.

Few physicists had challenged the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and almost no one other than Bohr and Szilard had given thought to the time “after the bomb.” Questions did not emerge until shortly before Hiroshima; and even then, few opposed the use of the bomb against Japan. The atomic bomb debate occurred only
after
the weapon was made. The superbomb debate, in contrast, occurred
before
the weapon was made. What is more, no one now could plead ignorance of its effects. Physicists knew they were confronting in the superbomb a scientific issue, and a personal choice, fraught with large moral and political implications.

The superbomb debate played out before secret boards and committees of the U.S. government. But reduced to its barest essentials, the debate amounted to a personal duel between two proud and brilliant men: Oppenheimer and Teller. Everything about the duel was compelling: the drama it sparked, the struggles it produced, and above all, the clashing perspectives and values it revealed.

For Teller, this moment had been a long time coming. The idea of a superbomb had originated in conversations between him and Fermi at Columbia University back in the fall of 1941. One afternoon, as they walked back to Pupin Laboratory after lunch, Fermi had casually—almost offhandedly—asked Teller whether he thought an atomic explosion might be used to produce a thermonuclear reaction. In the center of an exploding fission bomb, extraordinarily high temperatures—approaching 40 million degrees Fahrenheit—were produced, and so at least one of the conditions necessary for igniting a thermonuclear reaction seemed to be feasible, perhaps even within reach.

The idea had intrigued Teller. It appealed to his immense curiosity and competitiveness. It also appealed to his intense ambitiousness. A scientist who knew Teller sensed this quality in him from the start:

When I first met Teller, he appeared youthful, always intense, visibly ambitious, and harboring a smoldering passion for achievement in physics. He was a warm person and clearly desired friendship with other physicists. Possessing a very critical mind, he also showed quickness, sense, and great determination and persistence. However, I think he also showed less feeling for true simplicity in the more fundamental levels of theoretical physics. To exaggerate a bit, I would say his talents were more in the direction of engineering, construction, and the surveying of existing methods. But undoubtedly he also had great ingenuity.
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Teller’s mind worked with dazzling swiftness and creativity. He liked to discuss ideas with others, using these conversations to strike sparks and generate insights. Teller would slap his forehead as he corrected or discarded an idea—and then dash off another. Fermi, who knew him well, often said of him: “If only he could find one thing to concentrate on!”
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With the superbomb, Teller had found his one thing.

Teller’s superbomb obsession surprised many people because it was so out of character with his flighty personality. “His trouble was
lack
of concentration on any one problem,” said a colleague. “Then this thing hit him and he seemingly couldn’t let loose of it.”
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His commitment reflected a personal passion and emotional involvement not uncommon among scientists. No doubt his fear of the Russians, his sense of scientific curiosity and patriotic duty, and his belief that peace could be achieved only through powerful weapons were sincere and genuine. But his personal ambition was even stronger. The superbomb became the territory that Teller staked out as his own, where he could compete successfully against Oppenheimer’s esteem and Fermi’s achievement. More and more, Teller began to identify himself with the superbomb, mentally classifying physicists into those on “his” side and those “against” him. His emotional temperament also came into play, his habit of getting self-blindingly attached to his own ideas leading him on. Teller pressed his idea forcefully and relentlessly, tirelessly ready at each meeting to start again from the beginning. He was impervious to doubt.

Teller had begun his dogged quest for the superbomb at wartime Los Alamos. In a meeting there with James Conant toward the end of the war, he had pressed for postwar development of the weapon and dismissed moral objections to it as irrelevant to the pursuit of scientific knowledge: “There is among my scientific colleagues some hesitancy as to the advisability of this development on the grounds that it might make the international problems even more difficult than they are now. My opinion is that this is a fallacy. If the development is possible, it is out of our powers to prevent it.”
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After he moved to Chicago, he kept abreast of theoretical developments by spending summers at Los Alamos as a consultant. Unable to get his mind off the superbomb, he lobbied for it whenever and with whomever he could. His message was insistent but simple: If a superbomb could be built (and he believed that it could), then it also could be built by the Russians. America therefore must undertake a crash program to build the superbomb in order to prevent Russia from getting it first, and then using it to intimidate or blackmail the United States in a crisis. In his insecure mind, greater destructive power meant greater military strength, and greater military strength meant greater national security.

Ever since the end of the war, Teller had been trying to find a way to get serious work going on his pet project. The challenge of the Soviet bomb seemed to provide the impetus that was previously lacking, and Teller resolved to use every means and argument he could think of to exploit it. This was his moment, he thought.

Oppenheimer had hoped that Soviet scientists could not soon duplicate what he and his wartime colleagues at Los Alamos had done. Yet even after he learned of the Soviet atomic test, Oppenheimer remained opposed to development of the superbomb. Fission bombs, destructive as they might be, were limited in power. Now, it seemed, scientists such as Teller were seeking to brush even those limits aside and to build bombs whose destructiveness was boundless. Oppenheimer believed that America, as the world’s leading nuclear power, must lead by example. And the example he sought to set was one of restraint.

Oppenheimer’s concern was not new; two years before the Soviet atomic test, Arthur Compton

found Oppenheimer reluctant [about the superbomb]. His chief reluctance was, I believe, on moral grounds. No nation should bring into being a power that would (or could) be so destructive of human lives. Even if another nation should do so, our morality should be higher than this. We should accept the military disadvantage in the interest of standing for a proper moral principle.

He had other reasons—the development of fear and antagonism among other nations, the substantial possibility that the effort to create a [thermonuclear] explosion would fail, questions regarding the H-bomb’s military value. He hoped that no urgent need for its development would arise.
8

Oppenheimer found the superbomb a weapon out of all proportion to whatever America might seek to accomplish in either peace or war. He believed that most policy makers and scientists such as Teller gave far too high a value to nuclear weapons; and that just as the atomic bomb had given America a false sense of security, the nation was in danger of falling into the same error with the superbomb: the fallacy of a cheap, easy alternative to finding a way to coexist—like it or not—with Soviet Russia.

Oppenheimer suspected that most advocates of the superbomb were motivated by a reactive fear of the Soviet atomic test. “Having tried to find something tangible to chew on ever since September 23,” he confided to a friend, they “[have] at last found [their] answer: We must have a Super, and we must have it fast.” Privately admitting that “it would be folly to oppose exploration of this weapon”—a prediction his own career would tragically bear out—and that the basic scientific research “had to be done,” Oppenheimer nonetheless refused to accept the enormously destructive superbomb “as the way to save the country and the peace.” Instead, he believed the allure of the superbomb was “full of dangers,” and represented a doomed effort to “return to a state of affairs approximating monopoly.”
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Lawrence did not share Oppenheimer’s qualms; he was, as Bethe described him, “a terrific nationalist who was completely devoted to making America infinitely strong.”
10
Like Oppenheimer, Lawrence had opposed development of the superbomb just after the war, but the Soviet atomic test had changed his mind. Lawrence hoped the superbomb would prove impossible, but if such a weapon could be built, then he believed the United States must have it first. A longtime associate of Lawrence noted another motivation: “He welcomed it as not only a matter of duty, but a personal opportunity” to return to the “kind of high” experienced in the making of the atomic bomb, the sense that “you were really part of a great movement, doing things which were interesting and consequential.”
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Princeton physicist Henry Smyth, who had known Lawrence for many years, characterized him astutely. “Apart from being an expert in his field and a brilliant scientist,” Smyth wrote that fall, “Lawrence was also something of a promoter;… several times in the past he may have overstepped the line in pushing projects which add to his own ‘Empire.’”
12

Lawrence knew how to build an empire. He was an experienced, effective, and politically savvy promoter of scientific projects. By 1949 Lawrence had spent a decade at the summit of American physics. His Rad Lab had been centrally involved in the Manhattan Project; he had served as a member of the highest scientific advisory councils since the war; and he continued to play a major role in atomic policy through close but unofficial personal contacts in the Pentagon and Congress. Lawrence had made his own laboratory—the only physicist who had—and this put him in a special category. He was used to acting on his own and having his way, though he did not see himself in this light. Rather, he saw himself as simply opposing those—such as Oppenheimer—who, in his mind, were trying to stifle legitimate and patriotic scientific work for their own political, and therefore improper, reasons.

Although Lawrence often piously cautioned other scientists not to “fool around” with politics, he did not follow his own advice.
13
Soon after Truman announced the Soviet test, Lawrence began lobbying vigorously for the superbomb’s development. He phoned Teller at Los Alamos and said he would stop off to see him on his way to Washington. The next morning, October seventh, Lawrence landed in the predawn hours at the airstrip that ran off the eastern end of the Los Alamos mesa, and went straight to a meeting with Teller, who explained to him in convincing detail that a superbomb was feasible. When Teller finished, Lawrence said simply, “In the present situation, there is no question but that you must go ahead.”
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It was late in the day when the two finished their talk. Lawrence needed to leave for Albuquerque because he was going on to Washington the next day. He asked Teller to accompany him, and during their trip down in the small plane that provided service between Los Alamos and Albuquerque, they talked about the importance of enlisting the help of other top physicists. The place to start, Teller thought, was Fermi—after all, he was undeniably brilliant and he had first suggested the idea of a thermonuclear explosion. But Fermi made it clear that he would not help. “You and I and Truman and Stalin would be happy if further great developments were impossible,” he told Teller. “So, why don’t we make an agreement to refrain from such development? It is, of course, impossible without an ultimate test and when that happens we shall know about it anyway.” “Why should the bomb be bigger?” he asked in conclusion.
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The intensity of Fermi’s refusal was surprising; he was a reserved man, and it was unusual for him to show emotion.

Teller was unhappy, upset, and unwilling to take no for an answer. He goaded Fermi by reminding him that he had opposed the Acheson-Lilienthal Report because he distrusted the Russians—yet now he proposed an arrangement with them without guarantees. “Yes,” Fermi shot back, “but what else can we do?” “Go ahead and work on it if you have to,” he added. “I hope you will not succeed.”
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“I felt clearly,” Teller wrote in a letter after their meeting, that “Enrico wants to be rid of the whole problem. (Why talk about it—why think about it?)”
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