THE MEN WHO DECIDED

The three U.S. citizens who ruled on the case of Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer last week gave their decision no political complexion. Oppenheimer was hired under a Democratic Administration, challenged under a Republican Administration. On the Atomic Energy Commission's special Personnel Security Board, the two Democrats opposed Oppenheimer, the Republican supported him. The three men who decided:

Gordon Gray, 45, chairman of the board, is president of the University of North Carolina. Born to wealth (his father was president of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.), Gray took to heart a remark made to him by his cousin Polly: "Now remember, Gordon, you never earned a cent of the money you are about to enjoy." Gordon thereupon set out to make a record that money couldn't buy, led his class at Virginia's swank Woodberry Forest School (the Groton of the South), was president of Phi Beta Kappa at the University of North Carolina and editor of the Law Journal at Yale. He went on to a career in which, so far, he has succeeded as a lawyer, newspaper publisher, soldier, Government official and educator. In 1942, at 32 and the father of three, he turned down a commission and enlisted in the Army as a private (a favorite camp story: when on cleanup detail, Private Gray carefully inspected each cigarette butt to determine how Camels were doing). Within seven years after his first camp cleanup detail, he was appointed Secretary of the Army by President Harry S. Truman. An intellectual, liberal Democrat, Gray is a poor target for critics who contend that there was an anti-intellectual basis for the decision that Oppenheimer is a security risk. His brief description of his job as chairman of the AEC board: "The most difficult assignment I ever had."

Thomas Alfred Morgan, 66, who agreed with Gray that Oppenheimer is a security risk, is the retired president and board chairman of the Sperry Corp. Like Gray, he grew up in North Carolina, but on a different level. The son of an impoverished tobacco farmer, he worked his way through high school, enlisted in the Navy (he still bears a permanent souvenir of his Navy days: a forearm rose tattoo). One day in 1911, aboard the battleship U.S.S. Delaware, Chief Electrician Morgan helped an inventor named Elmer Sperry install a new gyroscopic compass for a test. Sperry was so impressed that he hired Morgan, who worked up through the Sperry ranks, became president in 1928, expanded the firm into a wide field (e.g., guided missiles, hay balers), and retired in 1952. A working, organization Democrat, Morgan summed up his view of the Oppenheimer case: "This is not small peanuts. It is bigger than Dr. Oppenheimer, and it is bigger than the Eisenhower Administration . . . The question is whether you are going to have one security system for the scientist who built a bomb and another for the chauffeur who drives a Congressman around Washington."

Ward Evans, 71, who disagreed with Gray and Morgan, and suggested that Oppenheimer's security clearance be restored, is professor emeritus of chemistry at Loyola University of Chicago. A product of a Pennsylvania farm, Evans has found himself in difficult positions all his life (from trapping skunks as a boy to testing explosives as a soldier and a scientist). Recognized as a brilliant teacher and a foremost U.S. expert on explosives, Evans has retired twice, and is still working. In 1946 he retired as head of Northwestern University's chemistry department. Then, in 1947, at his country home near Lancaster, Pa., he received a wire asking him to join the staff at Loyola. He promised his wife he would not take the job, set off to walk a quarter of a mile to the village store to wire his refusal, changed his mind on the way, accepted. He retired as chairman of Loyola's chemistry department in 1951, but stayed on in an advisory capacity. Evans, who has served in a number of AEC loyalty-security cases in the past five years, describes himself as a "rock-ribbed Republican" who voted for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 "and has regretted it ever since." He expresses a strong faith in the individual and his right to make mistakes. Said he: "The FBI has investigated me, too. They found out I'd caught two short trout once and got arrested for it."

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