Introduction
CHESS PLAYER is a covername that appears in several espionage books. It is not, however, found in Venona. The first and primary occurrence of CHESS PLAYER is from former KGB General Pavel Sudoplatov's Special Tasks, Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness:
"Elizabeth Zarubina's other mission was to check on the two Polish Jewish agents established on the West Coast as illegals by Eitingon in the early 1930's. They had remained under deep cover for more than ten years. One of these agents was a dentist with a French medical degree that the OGPU had subsidized. His code name was CHESS PLAYER. The dentist's wife became a close friend of the Oppenheimer family, and they were our clandestine contacts with Oppenheimer and his friends, contacts that went undetected by the FBI." [1]
Seventeen Names of Kitty Harris
The second, later instance of “CHESS PLAYER” comes from KGB Colonel Igor Damaskin. During the declassification program in Russia in the 1990’s, Damaskin was given access to “four large volumes of files on Kitty Harris.” In 1999, he published a Russian language book about Harris’ KGB career titled, Seventeen Names of Kitty Harris. Subsequently, two Russian-fluent authors, the Jarrold Schecters and Geoffrey Elliott, obtained the Damaskin book and published accounts in English of the Harris saga. The first was from the Schecters, who included Harris in Sacred Secrets (1999); Elliot followed in 2001 with an English translation of the complete Damaskin book. As the story goes, in 1941 Moscow Center sent Harris to America with the mission of contacting two dormant KGB moles, one of whom was CHESS PLAYER. The narratives from Schecter and Elliott—both stemming from Damaskin—are consistent with each other and corroborative of Sudoplatov. Taken together they provide a detailed account of the operation to reactivate two illegals in California planted by Leonid Eitingon. Excerpted below from both Schecter and Elliott, with some overlap, is an abstract on CHESS PLAYER:
“After the German invasion of the Soviet Union [22 June 1941], the NKVD decided to send Kitty Harris to the United States. She was selected for the mission by Vasili and Elizbeth Zarubin, who preferred to rely on people who were known to them or had previously worked for them. Harris proceeded to San Francisco ahead of the Zarubins and registered at a hotel as Eleanor Drevs.”
“Kitty arrived in San Francisco on 6 December 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor. The local resident Gregory Kheifetz, code-named KHARON, cabled the Centre to report her safe arrival. Kitty spent a fortnight in a San Francisco hotel registered as Elizabeth Dreyfus from Chicago.”
“When Kitty arrived in San Francisco, her first mentor was Gregory Kheifetz. He received his instructions from Zarubin, chief resident for all of North and South America.”
“Kitty’s role as a contact agent and courier focused on the Manhattan Project, but the Soviet records for this key operation were not open to Damaskin. He did note from Kitty’s own file that one aspect of the operation involved two agents, both pre-war emigrants from Poland. As shown in Kitty’s file, Kheifetz was directed by Moscow to activate them. One was a dentist whose training in France had been financed by Yakov Serebryanskii, a senior NKVD officer who had instructed him to settle in San Francisco in the early 1930’s. The other had been given similar orders and settled in Los Angeles, where he ran a small grocery store. At the end of 1941, the Centre had learned that these agents were close to members of Robert Oppenheimer’s family.”
“Yakov Serebryansky (code-named YACOB), chief of the administration that ran illegals from 1934 to 1938, was the institutional memory for the illegals. From Moscow Center, Serebryansky supervised the search. After he briefed Kitty by cable, she quickly found the shop owner but had problems reestablishing contact with the dentist. The San Francisco telephone directory listed three dentists, all with the same first and family names. She made an appointment with the first listing, and asked for three false gold teeth on the right side of her mouth. The dentist opened her mouth and looked at her quizzically, ‘Miss, you don’t need any false teeth.’ The second dentist made a pass at her and invited her to dinner, which she declined. The third dentist at first looked at her in confusion and appeared frightened, then answered with the prearranged reply, ‘You need false teeth not on the right side but on the left side.’ This agent, code-named CHESS PLAYER, had received funds from the NKVD while he earned his medical degree in France before he emigrated to America in the 1930’s.”
“Despite his initial apprehension, CHESS PLAYER, soon grasped what was going on and agreed to meet a case officer. Both of these agents played a part in organizing the effort to uncover American atomic secrets, together with the ubiquitous Naum Eitingon, who had also played a part in infiltrating the dentist into the country. CHESS PLAYER’s wife was a close friend of the Oppenheimer family.”
“CHESS PLAYER and his wife were friends of the Oppenhiemers and introduced Elizabeth Zarubina to them. They were active assets in Elizabeth’s assignment to set up a ring of satellite agents around Robert Oppenheimer.” [2]
San Francisco Dentists—1942
The Business section for Dentists in the 1942 San Francisco telephone directory consists of four pages of listings. There are 16 sets of three dentists with the same family or surname. Among these, however, there was no set in which the three individual dentists had the same first name and/or initial. For whatever reason, this aspect of the CHESS PLAYER legend is an incorrect artifact. One of the sets of three dentists with the same family name was:
Jacobs, George L 450 Sutter
Jacobs, Harry Flood Bldg
Jacobs, M. Malcolm Sutter Hospital
In addition to the listings in the Dentist section, the 1942 residential directory shows the following entries for the three above named dentists:
Jacobs, George L Dr 450 Sutter
Jacobs, George L r 13—28th Ave
Jacobs, Harry dentist Flood Bldg
Jacobs, Harry r 2240 Bay
Jacobs, M Malcolm dntst Sutter Hospital
Jacobs, M Malcolm Dr r 1288 4th Ave. [3]
An identification of CHESS PLAYER cannot be made based solely on the Damaskin information and the San Francisco telephone directory, although apparently author Geoffrey Elliot made an effort to do so. However, if one noted that Serebryansky’s first name and codename, Yakov and YACOB respectively, are alternate forms of the name Jacob, and if one further considered that the mole dentist's name would necessarily be an alias, one might be tempted to wager on Jacobs.
Capitol Pharmacy, Santa FE, NM
In 1950 new security charges against Robert Oppenheimer surfaced when a former Communist Party organizer in the Bay Area, Paul Crouch, claimed that in the summer of 1941 Oppenheimer had attended a high level, secret meeting of the Party's professional section in Berkeley. In trying to determine Oppenheimer's exact whereabouts in July-August 1941, the FBI in 1952 conducted extensive interviews in Santa Fe, NM. One of the entities approached was the Capitol Pharmacy on the Plaza near the renowned La Fonda Hotel. The FBI report on this interview reads as follows:
"Mr. Forrest Jones, Pharmacist, Capitol Pharmacy, made available copies of prescriptions filled by the Capitol Pharmacy during 1941. The writer checked this file and found that prescripition #2100738 for Mrs. V. Oppenheimer was filled on July 14, 1941. This prescription was for nunbutol Gr. 1 1/2 and the doctor's name was shown as Hannah Peters, M.D. The directions were given as '1 as needed for sleep.'
"Prescription #210739 was filled for Robert Oppenheimer on July 14, 1941. This prescription was for elix phonobarbitol, oz. V III. The doctor's name was M. Jacobs, M.D. The directions were given as '1 teaspoonfull 3 times a day, one half hour before meals.'
"Mr. Morris Yashvin, owner, Capitol Pharmacy, advised that he had known Robert Oppenheimer for approximately 25 years as a customer in his drug store. He stated that he had had no contact with Robert Oppenheimer other than his store. Yashvin examined the 2 prescription blanks described above and noted that the penciled initials W/Y appeared on these 2 prescriptions. He stated that this indicated that the prescriptions had been filled by Mr. Wisner who is no longer employed in the store and had been checked by himself. He stated, however, that he could recall nothing about the person who had these prescriptions filled. It was his opinion that the person filling these prescriptions had requested that the prescription be returned to them in order that they might have it refilled later and that this was the reason why his files contained a typewritten copy of the prescription.
"Yashvin stated that he had been in the pharmacy business in Santa Fe, New Mexico, since 1924 and that he was sure that doctors Hannah Peters and Dr. M. Jacobs had never practiced medicine in Santa Fe.
“Yashvin stated that he knew of no close friends of Oppenheimer around Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the early 1940's except Mrs. Katherine Page Kavanaugh. He stated that during the time Robert Oppenheimer was at Los Alamos, there was one couple that nearly always came to the drugstore with them. He remembered the last name of these people as being Serber. He was asked if this was Robert and Charlotte Serber. He stated that he did not remember the name Robert but that he was sure that the woman's name was Charlotte." [4]
Bernard and Hannah Peters
The literature is clear that Bernard and Hannah Peters were friends of Robert Oppenheimer. Their connection came about through Hannah Peters’ relationship with Jean Tatlock, Oppenheimer’s girl friend in the late 1930’s. Tatlock was a member of the Communist Party. The Peteres immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1934. Hannah Peters received a medical degree in 1937 at Long Island Medical School in New York. Bernard Peters’ education was in Electrical Engineering. Although he did not have a four-year degree, Oppenheimer brought Peters into his graduate physics program at Berkeley where he was awarded a PhD. Subsequently or concurrently, Oppenheimer placed him in a position at the Radiation Lab. In regards to the two prescriptions written for the Oppenheimers in Santa Fe in July 1941, it is noted that they were written on the same day, and probably at the same time since the prescription numbers are consecutive. [5]
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Two independent sources, Sudoplatov and Damaskin, connect Robert Oppenheimer to a Soviet agent who was a dentist in San Francisco in 1941. The key attribute of that dentist is that he was the third of three dentists who had the same last name. There are 16 dentists in the 1942 directory who meet that criteria, one of them had the name M. Malcolm Jacobs.
A third source, a 1952 FBI report, connects Robert Oppenheimer to an unidentified doctor, one “M. Jacobs MD.” This doctor wrote a prescription for Oppenheimer in Santa Fe NM in July 1941. M. Jacobs MD was not known to the pharmacy owner, a long time resident of Santa Fe. On the same day as the Jacobs prescription, a second Oppenheimer prescription was written by Dr. Hannah Peters. Peters was not known at the pharmacy either. Informed readers will appreciate that this is because Hannah Peters was an Oppenheimer friend who lived in the San Francisco Bay area. It is reasonable to conclude that Peters was a houseguest at the Oppenheimer ranch, Perro Caliente, in New Mexico. It is reasonable, then, to conjecture that M. Jacobs MD was also an out-of-town Oppenheimer acquaintance and houseguest. Unlike the Peteres, however, M. Jacobs is an unidentified name in the voluminous literature on Oppenheimer.
Who was M. Jacobs, MD? All evidence and logic suggest that M. Jacobs MD, the doctor who wrote a prescription for Robert Oppenheimer, is identical to CHESS PLAYER. [6]
Op-Ed
For fifty years, 1953 to 2003, historians have condemned the U.S. Government's decision to remove J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance. In doing so, they denigrated accountable government officials, including the President, Dwight Eisenhower, who ordered it. The Government's cause of action was not about espionage but about security risk. The security file on Oppenheimer, begun in 1942 and still accumulating in 1953, was massive. It included derogatory data relating to Communist activities/associations, major security violations and compelling moral turpitude.
In 2003 Professor Gregg Herken obtained evidence that proved Oppenheimer had been a secret member of the Communist Party. In 2005, twenty historians joined in an Oppenheimer Reapprasial to mark the centennial of his birth. The aim was an updated "contextualization" of JRO's life. However, not one of the contributors, including Herken, contextualized the new, salient fact that Oppenheimer had been a Communist, that he had lied on his 1942 Personnel Security Questionaire for employment on the Manhattan Project, that he committed perjury at his 1954 Security Board, that by definition a Communist's allegiance is to Russia and that a witness (albeit "unwanted") had written that Oppenheimer had been a "source" for Soviet intelligence.
Oppenheimer apologists have deployed three lines of defense. The first is the tried and true, 'impugn the motives' of others. The second takes the form, there is no Party card with JRO's name and fingerprints on it, therefore, ipso facto, he had never been a Party member, and any suggestions/conclusions to the contrary are false. However, with Herken's result that Oppenheimer had indeed been a Communist, now certified by Vassiliev's Notebooks, those bulwarks are demolished. Robert Oppenheimer's defenders have only a third redoubt remaining, to wit, he may have been a felonious liar, he may have been a committed Communist, but there is no credible evidence that he spied for the Soviet Union. That circumstance has changed: CHESS PLAYER. History will eventually record that, in fact, William Borden in 1953 reached a correct conclusion based on the then available evidence. [7]
Final Word. Soviet atomic espionage during the 1940's is not 'ancient history,' nor yet settled history, i.e. truth. It is still unknown and unwritten history. If it is the job of historians to tell us exactly what happened, especially the critical how and why, then the new espionage book Spies captures the issue in a single sentence: "Confident that his possession of atomic weapons neutralized America's strategic advantage, Stalin was emboldened to unleash war in Korea in 1950."
The foregoing is opinion and analysis by the author, and is not intended to imply facts beyond those explicitly stated as such.
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Notes, Sources, References
1. Special Tasks, Pavel and Analtoli Sudoplatov with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter, 1995, p.194.
Note Special Tasks contained a second, lengthy account of the illegal mole "CHESS PLAYER": “Kheifetz in San Francisco was provided with funds to support the two moles established by Eitingon. They led normal lives, one a dentist, the other posing as the owner of a medium-sized retail business. They were both Jewish emigrants from Poland. The dentist, was known to Serebryansky and, in fact, we had given him the money to receive his dental degree from a French medical college. The two moles were in place, ready for their next assignment, which might come in one year or ten. Soon enough the American Southwest came into Moscow’s focus. From Mexico City our illegals fanned out into California and New Mexico. From this seedbed we made our first contacts with Robert Oppenheimer and the builders of the American atomic bomb.” (ST, p. 86)
2. Seventeen Names of Kitty Harris, Igor Damaskin, Moscow, Gaia Iteru, 1999, p.233; Sacred Secrets, Jerrold and Leona Schecter, 2002, p. 61-2.; Kitty Harris, Igor Damaskin with Geoffrey Elliott, St. Ermin’s Press, 2001.
“After the German invasion … registered at a hotel as Eleanor Drevs.”: Sacred Secrets, p. 61.
“Kitty arrived in San Francisco on 6 December 1941 … registered as Elizabeth Dreyfus from Chicago.”: Seventeen Names, p. 202.
“When Kitty arrived in San Francisco … for all of North and South America.”: Sacred Secrets, p. 61
“Kitty’s role as a contact agent and courier … these agents were close to members of Robert Oppenheimer’s family.”: Seventeen Names, p. 203-4.
“Yakov Serebryansky (code-named YACOB) … he earned his medical degree in France before he emigrated to America in the 1930’s.” Sacred Secrets, p. 62.
“Despite his initial apprehension … a close friend of the Oppenheimer family.” Seventeen Names, p. 204.
“CHESS PLAYER and his wife … a ring of satellite agents around Robert Oppenheimer.” Sacred Secrets, p. 62.
3. San Francisco Telephone Directory, 1942, Dentists section, p. 115; Residential section, Jacobs, p. 221.
Note The 1942 Dentists section has three entries for a J. C. Campbell. Directly above these entries is a display ad for the J. C. Campbell Dentistry which reflects a main office and three branch offices. Thus, the three J. C. Campbells are branch office listings, not three individual dentists with the same surname. It is possible that this is somehow the source of error re the same given name for three different dentists. Indeed, such would be an extraordinarily rare circumstance. For example, in the 1942 Dentists section, it was not found for any three, four, five or six same surname dentists. It did finally occur for the most common dentist surname, Smith. Among seven Smith dentists, two shared the same first name, i.e. 2 out of 7. Thus, 3 out of 3 would be prohibitively rare.
4. FBI FOIA File AQ 100-1266, p. 14-16.
5. Bernard and Hannah Peters: American Prometheus, The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, Alfred a Knopf, 2005, p. 116/7; Brotherhood of the Bomb, The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller, Gregg Herken, Henry Holt and Company, 2002, p. 110-111.
6. Research re M/Malcolm Jacobs (M/MJ) M/MJ had only a residential listing in the 1936 San Francisco telephone directory. In 1937 directory, M/MJ had both a residential listing and a dentist listing. Both residential and dentist M/MJ listings remained in the SF directory through 1954 (the year of JRO's Security Hearing). In 1955-1957 M/MJ had just a residential listing. In 1960 M/MJ was unlisted in the SF telephone directory. Enquiries with the dental licensing authority of the State of California returned the information that no application by M/MJ for a dental license was found.
7. “In 2005, twenty historians … the centennial of his birth.”: Reappraising Oppenheimer, Centennial Studies and Reflections, Edited by Cathryn Carson and David A. Hollinger, Regents of the University of California, 2005. Pages 78, 89.
“Robert Oppenheimer’s defenders … for the Soviet Union.”: In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Transcript of Hearing Before Personnel Security Board, Washington, D.C., April 12 through May 6, 1954, p. 10, 21, 103.
Note The Oppenheimer Personnel Security Board opened with a reading of a letter to Oppenheimer from K. D. Nichols, Gerneral Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission. Nichols’ letter constituted a statement of charges which called into question whether Oppenheimer’s continued employment on Atomic Energy Commission work was consistent with the national security interests of the United States. Oppenheimer replied to the Nichols letter on March 4. 1954. Oppenheimer’s letter was read into the record following the reading of the Nichols letter. A portion of Oppenheimer’s reads as follows: “Because of these associations that I have described, and the contributions [financial] mentioned earlier, I might well have appeared at the time as quite close to the Communist Party—perhaps even to some people as belonging to it. As I have said, some of its declared objectives seemed to me desirable. But I never was a member of the Communist Party. I never accepted Communist dogma or theory; in fact, it never made sense to me. I had no clearly formulated political views.” This was a false statement by the person who wrote and published Report to Our Colleagues in 1940. Later on the first day of the Board the following exchange occurred:
Dr. Gray. I think that before you proceed, Mr. Garrison [Oppenheimer counsel], that it would be well to administer the oath to Dr. Oppenheimer. ~ J. Robert Oppenheimer, do you swear that the testimony you are about to give the board shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Dr. Oppenheimer. I do.
On April 14, 1954, the following exchange occurred between Oppenheimer’s counsel, Lloyd Garrison, and Robert Oppenheimer under oath.
Q. Did you ever belong to the professional section of the Communist Party of Alameda County?
A. I did not. I would be fairly certain that I never knew of its existence.
Q. Did you ever belong to any other section or unit of the Communist Party or to the Communist Party?
A. No
"an eyewitness ... Oppenheimer had been a friendly source for Soviet intelligence.": Special Tasks, p.492, et al.
Note Eyewitness Pavel Sudoplatov, a firsthand, contemporaneous party to atomic espionage, wrote: "In developing Oppenheimer as a source, Vassili Zarubin's wife, Elizabeth, was essential ... Oppenheimer, together with Fermi and Szilard, helped us place moles in Tennessee, Los Alamos, and Chicago ... I never wrote that Oppenheimer, Fermi, Szilard and Bohr were agents of Soviet intelligence. They cooperated, but we never recruited them. It is noteworthy that Klaus Fuchs and Bruno Pontecorvo never signed any formal recruitment obligations, despite their regular, clandestine contacts with Russian intelligence officers and agents in the USA and Britain." United States espionage laws do not differentiate between a friendly source and a foreign agent, a circumstance that scholars should rigorously respect. The validity of CHESS PLAYER should allow perceptive and impartial authors to come to grips with the reason that Oppenheimer is not incriminated in Venona or Vasilliev, namely that he was not controlled by the First Chief Directorate headed by Pavel Fitin. He was a special case, administered by another, autonomous intelligence bureau, Special Tasks.
“That circumstance … then available facts.”: William L. Borden letter to FBI Director - J. Edgar Hoover
William Borden
November 7, 1953
Dear Mr. Hoover,
RE: This letter concerns J. Robert Oppenheimer
As you know, he has for some years enjoyed access to various critical activities of the National Security Council, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Army, Navy, and Air Force, the Research and Development Board, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Resources Board and the National Science Foundation. His access covers most new weapons being developed by the Armed Forces, war plans at least in comprehensive outline, complete details as to atomic and hydrogen weapons and stockpile data, the evidence on which some of the principal CIA intelligence estimates is based, United States participation in the United Nations and NATO and many other areas of high security sensitivity.
Because the scope of his access may well be unique, because he has had custody of an immense collection of classified papers covering military, intelligence, and diplomatic as well as atomic-energy matters, and because he also possesses a scientific background enabling him to grasp the significance of classified data of a technical nature, it seems reasonable to estimate that he is and for some years has been in a position to compromise more vital and detailed information affecting the national defense and security than any other individual in the United States.
While J. Robert Oppenheimer has not made major contributions to the advancement of science, he holds a respected professional standing among the second rank of American physicists. In terms of his mastery of Government affairs, his close liaison with ranking officials, and his ability to influence high-level thinking, he surely stands in the first rank, not merely among scientists but among all those who have shaped postwar decisions in the military, atomic energy, intelligence, and diplomatic fields. As chairman or as an official or unofficial member of more than 35 important Government committees, panels, study groups, and projects, he has oriented or dominated key policies involving every principal United States security department and agency except the FBI.
The purpose of this letter is to state my own exhaustively considered opinion, based upon years of study, of the available classified evidence, that more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union.
This opinion considers the following factors, among others:
1. The evidence indicating that as of April 1942:
a) He was contributing substantial monthly sums to the Communist Party.
b) His ties with communism had survived the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the Soviet attack upon Finland.
c) His wife and younger brother were Communists.
d) He had no close friends except Communists.
e) He had at least one Communist mistress.
f) He belonged only to Communist organizations, apart from professional affiliations.
g) The people whom he recruited into the early wartime Berkeley atomic project were exclusively Communists.
h) He had been instrumental in securing recruits for the Communist Party.
i) He was in frequent contact with Soviet espionage agents.
2. The evidence indicating:
a) In May 1942, he either stopped contributing funds to the Communist Party or else made his contributions through a new channel not yet discovered.
b) In April 1942 his name was formally submitted for security clearance.
c) He himself was aware at the time that his name had been so submitted.
d) He thereafter repeatedly gave false information to General Groves, the Manhattan District, and the FBI concerning the 1939 - April 1942 period.
3. The evidence indicating that:
a) He was responsible for employing a number of Communists, some of them non-technical, at wartime Los Alamos.
b) He selected one such individual to write the official Los Alamos history.
c) He was a vigorous supporter of the H-bomb program until August 6, 1945 (Hiroshima), on which day he personally urged each senior individual working in this field to desist.
d) He was an enthusiastic sponsor of the A-bomb program until the war ended, when he immediately and outspokenly advocated that the Los Alamos Laboratory be disbanded.
4. The evidence indicating that:
a) He was remarkably instrumental in influencing the military authorities and the Atomic Energy Commission essentially to suspend H-bomb development from mid-1946 through January 31, 1950.
b) He has worked tirelessly, from January 31, 1950, onward, to retard the United States H-bomb program.
c) He has used his potent influence against every postwar effort to expand capacity for producing A-bomb material.
d) He has used his potent influence against every postwar effort directed at obtaining larger supplies of uranium raw material.
e) He has used his potent influence against every major postwar effort toward atomic power development, including the nuclear-powered submarine and aircraft programs as well as industrial power projects.
From such evidence, considered in detail, the following conclusions are justified:
1. Between 1929 and mid-1942, more probably than not, J. Robert Oppenheimer was a sufficiently hardened Communist that he either volunteered espionage information to the Soviets or complied with a request for such information. (This includes the possibility that when he singled out the weapons aspect of atomic development as his personal specialty, he was acting under Soviet instructions.)
2. More probably than not, he has since been functioning as an espionage agent.
3. More probably than not, he has since acted under a Soviet directive in influencing United States military, atomic energy, intelligence, and diplomatic policy.
It is to be noted that these conclusions correlate with information furnished by Klaus Fuchs, indicating that the Soviets had acquired an agent in Berkeley who informed them about electromagnetic separation research during 1942 or earlier.
Needless to say, I appreciate the probabilities identifiable from existing evidence might, with review of future acquired evidence, be reduced to possibilities; or they might also be increased to certainties. The central problem is not whether J. Robert Oppenheimer was ever a Communist; for the existing evidence makes abundantly clear that he was. Even an Atomic Energy Commission analysis prepared in early 1947 reflects this conclusion, although some of the most significant derogatory data had yet to become available. The central problem is assessing the degree of likelihood that he in fact did what a Communist in his circumstances, at Berkeley, would logically have done during the crucial 1939 - 1942 period...that is, whether he became an actual espionage and policy instrument of the Soviets. Thus, as to this central problem, my opinion is that, more probably than not, the worst is in fact the truth.
I am profoundly aware of the grave nature of these comments. The matter is detestable to me. Having lived with the Oppenheimer case for years, having studied and restudied all data concerning him that your agency made available to the Atomic Energy Commission through May 1953, having endeavored to factor in a mass of additional data assembled from numerous other sources, and looking back upon the case from a perspective in private life, I feel a duty simply to state to the responsible head of the security agency most concerned the conclusions which I have painfully crystallized and which I believe any fair-minded man thoroughly familiar with the evidence must also be driven to accept.
The writing of this letter, to me a solemn step, is exclusively on my own personal initiative and responsibility.
Very truly yours,
William L. Borden
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