McMillan, Priscilla J. The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race. New York: Viking, 2005.Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov, with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness -- A Soviet Spymaster (New York: Little, Brown, 1994), created a flurry of charge and countercharge surrounding the naming of Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, and Niels Bohr as "voluntary sources" for Soviet intelligence. The large body of review literature on Sudoplatov's book is presented under its own heading (Sudoplatov). Should greater access be gained to the files of the KGB and its predecessor organizations the story of the Atomic Bomb spies of the 1940s could either be rewritten or essentially confirmed.
H. B. Laes, "Theory of Fielding," 14 Jan. 2001, at http://www.tof.blogspot.com/ has a monograph-length article in which he argues that J. Robert Oppenheimer's "career, actions and words are very consistent" with Vladimir Chikov's "story of an American atomic physicist recruited by Soviet agent Morris Cohen before Cohen went in the US Army in July, 1942."
McMillan, Priscilla J. The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race. New York: Viking, 2005.
Powers, NYRB 52.14 (22 Sep. 2005), says that this "short, lucid, and intense book" places the "final episode in Oppenheimer's life on a dissecting table in order to separate and identify, as if it were the nervous system of a rat, the filaments of ambition, rancor, and collusion of the three brooding men who cut Oppenheimer down." The author "writes for the most part with quiet lucidity, letting each act or utterance speak for itself, but from time to time there shoots up from her prose something like a tongue of flame."
According to Freedman, FA 84.5 (Sep./Oct. 2005), the author focuses "on the policy issues at the heart of the [Oppenheimer] drama and illuminates well the surrounding cast of characters, with lots of fascinating detail about the interaction between scientific politics and Washington politics."
Schecter, I&NS 21.4, notes that McMillan "hedg[es] and shy[s] away from" the question of whether Oppenheimer was ever a member of the Communist Party. The author "appears" to have "chosen to ignore" Soviet documents that identify Oppenheimer as "an unlisted member of the CPSU." This "is a powerful book," but at times McMillan's "anger [at the way Oppenheimer was treated] is so hot it distorts the record."
Meyerhoff, Hans. "Through
the Liberal Looking Glass -- Darkly." Partisan Review 22 (1995):
238-245.
For a flavor of the passions of the times, this article should be read in conjunction with Diana Trilling's defense of J. Robert Oppenheimer in "The Oppenheimer Case: A Reading of the Testimony," Partisan Review 21 (1954): 604-635. See also Diana Trilling, "A Rejoinder to H. Meyerhoff," Partisan Review 22 (1955): 248-251.
Moorehead, Alan. The Traitors: The Double Life of Fuchs, Pontecorvo and Nunn May. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1952.
According to West, I&NS 19.2/277, Moorehead was fed "sanitised versions of MI5's files on Allan Nunn May, Klaus Fuchs and Bruno Pontecorvo..., thus ensuring The Traitors provided a less than accurate version of the atomic spies."
Moss,
Norman. The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb. London: Grafton, 1987. Klaus
Fuchs: The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb. New York: St. Martin's, 1987.
Cosslett, I&NS 3.4: "If one merit of a biography is the extent to which it deals with why, as well as how its subject did the deed, then these two books [Norman Moss and Robert Chadwell Williams] both rank highly."
Newman,
Bernard C. Soviet Atomic Spies. London: Robert Hale, 1952. [Petersen]
Pilat,
Oliver Ramsey. The Atom Spies. New York: Putnam, 1952.
Pforzheimer terms this an "excellent account of the Soviet atomic espionage rings operating in the U.S. during the 1940s and 1950s." Constantinides agrees, noting that "the book stands up amazing well.... It is penetrating in its analysis of motives and actions of the main figures and captures the mood of time." On the other hand, much more has become known about the "atom spies" than Pilat had access to. Pilat is not careful about giving the sources for his narrative. He is also inconsistent in his estimate of Julius Rosenberg's work as a Soviet agent.
Polenberg, Richard, ed. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: The Security Clearance Hearing. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
West, cicentre.com, notes that Polenberg has edited the transcript of the 1954 Personnel Security Board hearing to about a quarter of its original 1,000 pges and added an Introduction and Conclusion. According to the reviewer, Polenberg sees Oppenheimer as "a casualty of McCarthyism." West also remerks that "[t]he hearings were not a manifestation of some groundless paranoia about Russian spies, but a direct consequence of the absolute confidence that dozens of NKVD agents had stolen huge quantities of atomic secrets."
Powers, Thomas. "Phantom Spies at Los Alamos." New York Review of Books, 9 Jun. 1994. Chapter 4 in Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda, 59-79. Rev. & exp. ed. New York: New York Review of Books, 2004.
The author rejects the charges in Sudoplatov's Special Tasks (1994) that Oppenheimer, Fermi. Szilard, and Bohr "served as spies for the Soviet Union during the Second World War.... [T]he charges against Oppenheimer in Sudoplatov's book tend to evaporate on scrutiny." There is a "complete lack of the establishing and supporting details[] that are the signature of genuine espionage cases.... [I]n the few cases where details are cited they are irrelevant, misleading, or blatantly wrong." In addition, "[i]t is impossible to distinguish Sudoplatov's real memories, however confused by age and years, from the Schectors' own research and general editorial tidying up."
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