2)

The Chevalier Incident

By ARNOLD BEICHMAN

WITHotrr Oppenheimer, no Chevalier. There was, however, a J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose life and loyalties became a great cause célèbre in the mid-1950s, largely because of what is called the 'Chevalier incident.' This book, by the man who was Oppenheimer's close friend for fifteen years, purports to tell what. the `incident' was about.

It may be useful to recall the central details of the Chevalier incident and the Oppenheimer affair, since a dozen years have passed between the Oppenheimer loyalty hearings before the Personnel Security Board of the US Atomic Energy Commission and publication of Cheva- lier's book.* Oppenheimer was wartime director of the Los Alamos laboratories, which manu- factured the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. He became one of the great organisers and administrators of science and technology in modern history. Even his powerful adversary, Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, who secured his downfall in 1954, described Oppenheimer in 1962 'as the genius who . . .' He was also by his own admission about as close to being a member of the Communist party as a fellow-traveller could be without actually trying. His Communist sympathies survived the Stalin purges. the Nazi-Soviet pact, the Soviet invasions of Poland and Finland and they extended throughout the period that he directed _ Los Alamos.

Some time between late 1942 and early 1943, Chevalier, a French teacher at the University of California in Berkeley, was telephoned by George Charles Eltenton, a British chemical engineer living in San Francisco, for an appointment. According to Chevalier's book, Eltenton had lived with his wife, described as first cousin to Lord Shawcross, 'for several years in Leningrad, where George had a job with a British firm,' before coming to San Francisco. Eltenton and Chevalier knew each other well, and Oppen- heimer, too, all having met in the course of their pro-Communist activities. At this time, Oppenheimer was deeply engaged in atomic research at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory.

When he and Eltenton met, Chevalier writes, Eltenton 'spoke of the importance of the work being done by American and Soviet scientists.' Eltenton argued that 'for the combined war effort it was highly desirable that there be a close collaboration between the scientists of both countries as there was in other fields. . . . Oppenheimer was known to be in charge of an important war project, and was also known to be very much of a left-winger. He therefore was likely to be sympathetic to the idea of closer scientific co-ordination and because of his emin- ence could be effective in promoting it. Since I was a friend of his, the idea was that I was to be asked to sound him out as to how he felt about the possibility of such collaboration.'

Chevalier characterises the Eltenton disquisi- tion and subsequent developments as 'the mole- hill out of which the mountain of the so-called * OPPENHEIMER : THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. By Haakon Chevalier. (Deutsch, 25s.) "Chevalier incident" was subsequently built.' This is astounding in view of the following passages and the phrases which I have italicised:

Ettenton's manner was somewhat embar- rassed. . . . Through his roundabout phrases it gradually became clear to me that what the people behind him were really interested in was the secret project Oppenheimer was working on. It took me a moment or two to grasp some, at least, of the major implications of what was being proposed. The thing made no sense. The fact that Eltenton was making such a proposal made no sense. The answer that I gave was of course an unqualified 'No,' but I did not at the moment see the full gravity of Eltenton's proposal. . . . As we spoke, I gathered that Eltenton himself had not really carefully thought through the implications of what he was suggesting. . . .

I had felt fairly convinced by the time I left him that Eltenton was not deeply involved in any kind of conspiracy. But what about those for whom he was acting? Whoever was behind this was not likely to give up after a first un- successful try. There might be other approaches, and these might cause trouble. Should Opje (Oppenheimer's nickname) be forewarned?

There's a Russian word for dupes like Cheva- lier—v tenmuyu—and until I read this book I thought of Chevalier, translator, litterateur, as just that, the typical chiliast of the 'thirties con- fusing the Kremlin with the Kingdom of the Saints. The phrases I have italicised, however, belie all of Chevalier's protestations of innocence and most certainly his 'molehill' metaphor. His language indicates to me that Chevalier knew then and knows now a great deal more than he has ever let on. Why was Eltenton 'somewhat embarrassed' and how did he know and who told him that Oppenheimer was working on a secret project? Why did Chevalier assume there were 'people' behind Eltenton and why doesn't Chevalier explain his assumptions even at this late date? What were 'the major implications' and what was 'being proposed' and why did it make `no sense'? Will the real Haakon Chevalier please come forward and identify himself?

Since November 1950, Chevalier has elected to live in France, so that there is no way to check his statements and allegations under oath. I say this because I am unsure of Chevalier's reliability as a witness. His rhetoric in 1966 is that of a man for whom history began with the Bolshevik Revolution. All this is peripheral to the fact that to this day nothing has ever been disclosed to show that anybody involved in the Oppenheimer affair committed espionage or leaked a secret. In the end he was denied clearance 'out of concern for the defence and security of the United States.'

But this in no way supports Chevalier's claim that there was no plot. The fact is, and we have Chevalier's perfect grasp of the situation as confirmation, that Oppenheimer was approached to help the Soviet espionage apparat and it just didn't work out the way Eltenton and 'the people behind him' had hoped. But there surely was espionage. While Oppenheimer and probably others were under strict surveillance, two Soviet agents, Dr Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass, were actually working at Los Alamos.

These weren't the only examples of such activity. There were others; perhaps they begin to explain the sense of mistrust which American public officials had for each other and why dissent became a synonym for treason. In Admiral Strauss's memoirs, Men and Decisions (1963), I found these peculiar incidents:

In 1948, Strauss discovered that an alien held a permanent pass to AEC headquarters in Washington, a pass which allowed him access day or night without escort. The pass had been granted to Donald Maclean, then a British Embassy attaché.

An unnamed AEC member in June 1954 fell asleep in a train while reading the then still secret transcript of the Oppenheimer loyalty hearing. When he awoke, the tran- script was missing. The Commission de- cided to publish the 1,000-page transcript virtually overnight.

Most guardedly, Strauss describes an in- cident when an 'individual' travelling to Washington carried with him a Top Secret document. Inadvertently he left the docu- ment—Strauss doesn't say, but the 'indi- vidual' was a major American physicist and the document had to do with the manufac- ture of the hydrogen bomb—in the Pullman lavatory. He rushed back to the lavatory but the document was gone.

As for Oppenheimer, he really made a mess of it. By his own public confession, he lied about the 'Chevalier incident' to army intelligence. For at least six months, he concealed the con- versation at which Chevalier passed on to him Eltenton's request for scientific information. When he did mention it to the US Army, he tossed in three 'approaches' to the Berkeley laboratory staff, but he declined to name the targets and intermediary. At the 1954 loyalty hearings, Oppenheimer described these lurid details as a 'cock-and-bull' story.

A quarter of a century later, it all seems strange, sad and disoriented. It isn't too difficult to understand why brilliant men like Oppenheimer involved themselves for so long in that Com- munist snakepit. It was the world of innocence, presided over by a kindly man with moustaches, wearing peasant boots, the world of Dingley Dell. What is difficult to understand is why Oppenheimer was punished in 1954 for what he had been cleared of in 1943, 1947 and 1950. Professor Benjamin DeMott, I believe, has sug- gested that the public confession was central to the Puritan ethic. The shattering revelations of Soviet espionage in America, Canada and Britain, demagogically exploited in the 1952 Eisenhower campaign, with its slogan, 'Twenty years of treason,' demanded a Hester Prynne to confess and to expiate all our failures.

How suited to this ritual of confession were Oppenheimer's self-lacerating words in the security hearings! For many Americans, Oppen- heimer is a martyr, but somehow he escapes being a tragic figure. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson sought to repair the injustice done to Oppenheimer, but it's all too late. He has just turned sixty-two and he is seriously ill, so that life itself is his punishment. Ruined by the Eisenhower administration, he is now pilloried by the Communist movement, which is using Chevalier's book to prove that there never was any Soviet espionage.

They took Oppenheimer from Dingley Dell and they tossed him into The Fleet, and there he remains until the day he dies.