The Oppenheimer Story

To Washington correspondents, Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's troubles with the Atomic Energy Commission (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) had been no secret. For more than four months, capital newsmen had been picking up bits of the story, but no one could nail it all down. New York Times Washington Bureau Chief James B. Reston went to work to do so. Instead of trying to run it down through Government bureaus, "Scotty" Reston went directly to the one man who was sure to know, Oppenheimer himself.

Oppenheimer confirmed Reston's information that he had been suspended as an AEC adviser, but declined to give further details. Reston felt it would not be in the public interest to print what he knew at that point, quietly put his bureau to work digging out background.

But when Senator Joe McCarthy broadly hinted on TV that he was about to let go a blast at Oppenheimer (TIME, April 19), Reston went to Oppenheimer again. This time Oppenheimer offered to give him both the AEC charges against him and his reply, though he insisted that the documents be for background only and not for publication. Reston refused to accept such conditions, since he knew that the story would break any time and did not want to be tied down to such a promise. Next day Reston went at Oppenheimer again, argued that the Times was entitled to the documents, since the paper had withheld what it already knew. He left with the documents, but promised not to print them until the story broke.

At the same time. Columnists Joe and Stewart Alsop were trying to pry the story loose. They had also gone to their good friend Oppenheimer, suggesting that he release his answers to the entire press, thus depriving themselves of a beat but giving Oppenheimer a better public hearing. The Times and the New York Herald Tribune, the Alsops' home paper, broke the news at the same time, but it was Reston who got the full story. Three days after Reston was handed the documents, Oppenheimer's lawyers called him in Washington, told him to go ahead. Reston dispatched an office boy by plane to New York with a full set of the documents and one of the big news beats of the year.

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