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- This is One-On-One.

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(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone, Steve Adubato with my colleague, Jacqui Tricarico.

Jacqui, I feel like I'm shot out of a cannon talking about the great Robert Oppenheimer.

We interview Kai Bird, who is the author of "American Prometheus."

Kai Bird was exceptional.

He really understood Oppenheimer and tells a powerful story, please.

- Yeah, and his book was the basis used for the blockbuster hit, "Oppenheimer," which just won a ton of awards this award season.

- Directed by Christopher Nolan, if I'm not mistaken?

- Exactly, yeah, and they, Christopher Nolan and his team and the actors came here to New Jersey, to Princeton, to the Institute for Advanced Studies, where Oppenheimer was the director, to shoot parts of the film here, right here in New Jersey, which is really great.

And I know Kai Bird was really pleased with the way that that film came out.

So another great tool for our viewers to check out, to watch that incredible film, to learn about this, a really important time in our history, in American history, but world history as well.

- Yeah, you know, again, go see the movie, that's fine.

But this book, "American Prometheus," and Kai Bird's research on it tells the story of Oppenheimer as a man, as a scientist, as a leader, as a husband, as a person who struggled on a lot of levels to keep it all together at an extraordinary time, and who was, in fact, targeted by the American government, by the US government.

He was targeted.

After he did what he did on behalf of the country, his patriotism was questioned.

And the story is told a lot better So for Jacqui and myself and the entire team here at "Remember Them and One-on-One," we check out Kai Bird talking about Oppenheimer.

- Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato.

Way more importantly, we are honored to have Kai Bird, who is the author of "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer."

Kai, you honor us by being with us.

Thank you.

- Thank you for having me.

My pleasure.

- This book, you know, been by my bedside and millions of others who have read it.

But I wanna ask you this, for those who have not seen the movie, who have not read the book, Robert Oppenheimer was who?

And why does he still matter so much today?

- Well, he was on an American physicist, quantum physicist, who was essentially known as the father of the atomic bomb.

He led the scientific project to develop the atom bomb in World War II.

And then he was brought down nine years later in a terrible sort of kangaroo court trial, becoming the sort of chief celebrity victim of the entire McCarthy witch hunts.

So his story conveys a lot of history.

He gave us the dawn of the Atomic Age and we're still living with the atomic bomb, of course, and all of its dangers.

And what happened to him during the McCarthy era is a story that still resonates to our divisive politics today.

- Let me ask you this, the connection, because we're based in New Jersey.

We're a New Jersey based operation.

Put Oppenheimer, Princeton, and not so much Princeton University, but Princeton and New Jersey in context, what was Oppenheimer's connection to Princeton?

- Well, he spent the last years of his life living in Princeton.

He was the Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, which is right next door to the university, but not part of it.

And in that job he was as such for a while.

He was, you know, as such, Albert Einstein's boss, Einstein was a fellow there.

- He was.

- What was their relationship Kai?

- Oh, they were very close.

They admired each other.

They're very respectful.

They argued about quantum physics.

You know, Einstein didn't quite believe that God could play dice with the universe in that way.

You know, he was skeptical of the uncertainty principle in quantum physics, but Oppenheimer thought he was kind of old fashioned for that.

But otherwise they were very close and congenial.

- Kai, the film "Oppenheimer," how much of it is based on the book?

A and B, what role, if any, did you play in it?

- Well, it is entirely based on the book.

- Right.

- Not, not entirely.

Actually, Christopher Nolan did some of his own research, but when I read the script the first time, I was astonished to recognize, you know, a whole lines and paragraphs that really came straight out of the book.

And I think it's just a remarkable artistic achievement, a real reflection of this biography of Robert Oppenheimer.

And it's historically accurate and it captures the spirit of Oppenheimer's personality and tells, you know, conveys a lot of very complicated history.

It's an amazing film.

- The Los Alamos community, describe what it was and Oppenheimer's role as the leader there.

- Well, he was the scientific director.

It was a secret city that was built from scratch.

It started out being based at the Los Alamos Boys School, which the government took over and sort of nationalized.

And then, - Was it, sorry for interrupt.

Was it the Department of Defense that set this up?

- Well, it was the War Department at that time.

- Okay.

- And, you know, it was run by General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, and he selected Robert Oppenheimer to be the Scientific Director at Los Alamos, which grew to be, you know, a secret city of 6,000 people living behind barbed wire working on this secret project.

- What kind of leader was Oppenheimer?

- He was amazing.

You know, when he was selected, he was only 38 years old.

He'd administered nothing more than a handful of graduate students at Berkeley, but he turned himself into an amazing manager, extremely charismatic and popular with these large ego scientists that he had working for him.

And everyone we interviewed from those years told us that, you know, the atomic bomb never would've been produced in two and a half years if they had selected anyone else to be the director, it was all Oppenheimer.

- Oppenheimer's relationship with his wife, complicated?

- Yes.

They had a, I would say a turbulent marriage, but they were devoted to each other.

They were in love.

And you know, Kitty Oppenheimer was a vivacious, strong-minded, educated woman with a master's in biology and kind of frustrated as a woman having to sort of stand behind her man in those years in Los Alamos.

But it was, you know, it was a rocky relationship, but one which endured to the end of Oppenheimer's life.

- So let's talk a little bit more about this McCarthy thing and also bring in the FBI.

So why was J. Edgar Hoover as the head of the FBI obsessed with Oppenheimer, and what did that have to do with Oppenheimer being labeled a communist or a communist sympathizer, which ultimately caused him to lose his security clearance and destroy his life on a lot of levels.

What the heck was going on with Hoover and Oppenheimer?

- Well, Hoover was in charge of security and such all over the country during World War II, internal security, and specifically also at Los Alamos, although Army Counterintelligence also was involved and had Oppenheimer under surveillance.

But J. Edgar Hoover had put Oppenheimer on his radar screen as early as 1940, a full two years before he became scientific director at Los Alamos.

And it was because his car license plate had been picked up at a meeting of, who were working to desegregate the local pool in Berkeley.

You know, those are the kinds of issues- - Could you imagine.

- that the communist were involved in at the time.

So they get his license plate, he's now on the FBI or the Hoover.

- The watch list, yeah.

- Yeah.

A lot of extraordinary Americans on that list too.

So that being said, what does this have to do with Oppenheimer's brother Frank, who was, in fact, I don't know any card carrying ridiculous term, I don't even like that term.

He was a communist.

- Yes, he was a member of the Communist Party.

He had joined sort of, we think over Robert's advice against joining the party.

But, you know, it was the 1930s.

It was the depths of the depression.

Capitalism seemed to be faltering.

- Right.

- The Communist Party was on cutting edge of a lot of sort of social issues like desegregation and support for the Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War.

And it wasn't uncommon for, you know, American intellectuals to be associated or join the Communist party.

And Oppenheimer was surrounded by activists of that sort.

His brother Frank, as you mentioned, was a party member.

Kitty had been a party member earlier, before they married.

- That's right.

- You know, there were a lot of friends and associates, and students, and colleagues of Oppenheimer at Berkeley who were close to the Communist Party.

And we argued that actually Oppenheimer himself was pink, but not red.

That he actually never joined the party himself, but he attributed money to causes of the Communist Party.

- And put this in perspective, 'cause we look at this from a 2024 perspective, when in fact we're talking about the 1940s.

The US Soviet relations color a lot of this, is that fair to say, Kai?

- Yes.

Oh, sure.

You know, Soviet Union was ruled by a dictatorship of the proletariat through the Communist party of the Soviet Union.

We had though, you know, Roosevelt did recognize, had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union starting in 1933.

And, you know, during World War II, the Soviets were our allies against Nazi fascism.

- Okay.

So now, as the Cold War, you know, becomes very real, it's either you're with us or with them.

And the reality is, as you were saying, for a lot of folks who are either pink, as you described Robert Oppenheimer or others who were in fact members of the Communist Party, they were involved in and committed to a whole range of issues about racial, social justice and equity and fairness.

And that being said, but I'm curious about this.

Let's start talking about the regret.

How much did Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the 225,000 people who were killed, was that the primary impact or influence on Oppenheimer saying, "What did I/we do?"

- Well, you know, it's complicated and Oppenheimer is a complicated man, but, you know, his motivation for building this terrible weapon was precisely the fact that he knew that the German physicists were just as capable as he was of delivering such a weapon of mass destruction to Hitler.

And he feared the bomb would result in fascism triumphing in World War II.

So that was his motivation.

He was in a race with the Germans.

But at the same time, he recognized fully this sort of ethical and moral dilemma, consequences of developing this weapon.

But he thought he couldn't stop it, you know, he had to do it.

But once Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened, you know, he was jarred, he was troubled by the fact that tens of thousands, you know, probably close to a quarter million people died because of those two bombs.

And most of them were civilians, women and children.

And so he plunged into actually a deep depression and then recovered from it and then spent the rest of his life trying to make the argument that we needed to contain this weapon.

We needed to build, regulate, have international law to sort of ban it and make sure that no one is engaged in secretly building these weapons.

But of course, his advice was ignored and he failed.

But he always described this weapon as early as three months after Hiroshima, he gave speeches in which he was talking about it as a weapon for aggressors, a weapon of terror and a weapon that in the first instance had been used on a virtually already defeated enemy, the Japanese.

- We're talking to Kai Bird together with the late Martin Sherwin, who co-wrote this book, "American Prometheus."

Put the title in context for us, Kai.

- Well, Prometheus, of course, is the mythical Greek god, who apparently stole fire from Zeus and gave it to humanity.

And for this, he was punished by Zeus, and chained to a cliff, and had a giant eagle peck out his liver every night.

So he was being tortured for what he had done.

So it's an apt title in that Oppenheimer stole atomic fire and gave it to humanity.

And then nine years later, he was punished in this kangaroo court of a proceeding in 1954 at the height of the McCarthy era.

And humiliated and virtually, you know, destroyed as a public intellectual.

- Let's put that in perspective.

So he loses his security clearance, it's a kangaroo court, as you said.

That's the AEC, the Atomic Energy Commission.

So what did it mean when his clearance, security clearance was revoked?

What was the impact of that, Kai?

- Well, it meant that he could no longer participate as he had for many years in top-secret meetings.

He could no longer brief the generals and the Pentagon about nuclear weapons.

He could no longer advise the president as part of the Atomic Energy Commission's Advisory Committee.

He was denied access to, you know, classified information, meaning nuclear secrets in particular.

And, you know, he was punished in this way actually because he was going public with his criticism of Truman and then Eisenhower's approach to nuclear weapons, and specifically the building of the H-bomb, the thermonuclear, which he thought was just too big a weapon.

You know, a thousand times more powerful than the bomb used on Hiroshima.

It just wasn't necessary.

There was no target large enough for such a weapon, why build it?

- Let's talk about the meeting in the White House.

Now Oppenheimer, as I understand it from the book, he wanted to meet with President Truman.

He gets the meeting with President Truman, I think it was through the Secretary of, I don't think I know who was Defense, but it was one secretary.

- War Secretary Henry Stimson.

- Okay, so he gets the meeting.

And in the meeting, what does he tell Truman, obviously, expresses his concerns, and then how does Truman respond, please?

- Yeah, he, you know, this is his big opportunity to brief the president on what he thinks is necessary in the aftermath of World War II and the creation of this weapon of mass destruction.

And he starts to make the case for international controls, creating an atomic energy authority that would have sovereign rights to inspect any laboratory, anywhere in the world to prevent anyone from building more of these weapons.

And he was trying to explain to Truman that this is a weapon that is not defensive, it's a weapon only for aggression and terror.

And as he was starting to make this argument, Truman interrupted him by all accounts and said, "Well, Dr. Oppenheimer, let me ask you a question.

When do you think the Russians are gonna get the atomic bomb?"

And Oppenheimer hesitates.

He says, "Sir, well, I'm not sure.

In a few years, no doubt.

They have very competent physicists, like we do."

And Truman said, "Well, I know.

They'll never get it."

And at that moment, Oppenheimer understood that the President of the United States did not comprehend that there were no longer any secrets about this weapon.

Everyone knew how to build it.

In fact, it was cheap to build, relatively speaking.

And he was arguing that, you know, any country, however poor could acquire these weapons.

That he was predicting, in fact, the world we live in today with North Korea and Pakistan and India and China having these weapons.

And anyway, at that point, he, Oppenheimer lost his argument with the president.

And out of frustration, he turned to Harry Truman and said exactly the worst thing he could possibly say to the man who made the decision to drop two bombs on Japan.

He said, "Well, Mr. President, you don't understand.

I think we, or I, have blood on our hands."

And, of course, and I think Truman took offense at right away.

And the meeting ended abruptly.

And we have numerous accounts saying that Truman apparently turned to his aide and said, "I don't want to see that crybaby scientist ever again," so.

- Again, we're talking to Kai Bird, the co-author of this book, "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer."

Describe Oppenheimer's later years.

What were they like?

I've looked at some video of him, and making speeches and being out, but what was his life really like, Kai?

- Well, and, you know, it was very sad, actually.

He had been humiliated in this secret security hearing.

And then within weeks, the entire transcript of the security hearing was leaked to The New York Times and other newspapers and his private life was displayed.

These charges of disloyalty, or the fact that he was not a good security risk, that were leveled in newspapers and- - That he wasn't a good American, that he wasn't patriotic?

- That he wasn't patriotic, that he was perhaps disloyal, that he might even be a spy for the Russians.

And now, of course, there was no concrete evidence of any of this.

He was a loyal American, he was a patriot, and he was America's most brilliant scientist.

And after this, he, that summer, actually he fled, took his family on a sailing trip in the Caribbean, discovered the beautiful little island of St. John in the Virgin Islands.

And ended up buying a small piece of property right on the beach and built a very spartan cabin.

And he spent the rest of his life, he spent four or five months of the year there, just walking the beaches, being a hermit.

It was very sad.

You know, he could no longer be a public intellectual.

He was actually disinvited from giving speeches at some universities in 1954 and '55.

And, you know, he became a sort of pariah.

- How has researching Oppenheimer, writing the book, and then having the movie be what it is, not just a success in terms of box office, but critically acclaimed?

How do you think your work around Oppenheimer has impacted you?

- Oh, you know, I spent five years working on this book.

My co-author, Marty Sherwin, who is no longer with us, spent 25 years.

And, you know, we were obsessed with telling this very important story.

We were obsessed as biographers trying to figure out this complicated, enigmatic man, this scientist, but it's a story for our time.

It's a story, you know, about the beginning of the nuclear age and the fact that we're still living with the atomic bomb.

And, you know, it's a dangerous thing.

And it's 75 years-plus have gone by and it hasn't been used again in combat.

But, you know, the story's not over.

There's a war now in the Ukraine with Russia and the Russian dictator, Putin has threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons.

We have a terrible war in the Middle East going.

You know, I fear actually, Oppenheimer, you know, warned in 1947 about the dangers of third, you know, non-state actors getting ahold of such a weapon and using it as a terrorist in a terrorist attack.

This could happen in the Middle East.

I think we've become much too complacent about living with the atomic bomb, so the story is relevant in that way.

- I'm sorry to interrupt, Kai.

Complacent meaning like, it's not possible?

- We don't think about it anymore.

Yeah, and, you know, in 1945 when people read in their newspapers that one bomb had destroyed a whole city.

One airplane, dropping one bomb had destroyed a whole city, and 140,000 people were incinerated, you know, it caused people to sit up straight and think about this and argue about the implications.

But as time goes, went by, you know, we survived the Cold War, barely.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a terrible, you know, almost an instance in which the bomb was used again.

So, I fear, you know, we should be worrying more and paying attention to how to control these weapons.

They're very dangerous.

They're apocalyptic.

And we're facing, you know, in the Middle East, for instance, Iran is now very close to acquiring enough enriched uranium to build their own weapon.

And, you know, God knows what will happen in the Middle East then.

- Kai, I want to thank you for taking the time, not just taking the time to speak with us, but for this book, for your role in the movie, and for helping us understand why Oppenheimer and Oppenheimer's life and his story is as relevant today than ever before.

Kai Bird is the co-author of "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer."

Kai, I want to thank you and wish you all the best.

- Thank you, Steve.

Thank you for having me.

- Thank you so much for joining us.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by PSEG Foundation.

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Let’s be healthy together.

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New Jersey Sharing Network.

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