Genius_ The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - James Gleick [175]
Earlier that year Feynman had picked up the telephone in Pasadena to hear the chairman of the AEC, Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, say that he had won his first major prize, the Albert Einstein Award: fifteen thousand dollars and a gold medal. He was the third winner, after Kurt Gödel and Julian Schwinger. Strauss informed him of the award (Feynman amused him by saying, “Hot dog!”). The public announcement came from Oppenheimer as director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Only gradually did it occur to Feynman that this was the same Strauss who was in the process of permanently removing Oppenheimer from public life. Strauss had carried out President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s order to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance, after a letter to J. Edgar Hoover accused him, in the fashion of the time, of being a “hardened Communist” who was probably “functioning as an espionage agent.” The AEC began four weeks of hearings in April. Many physicists publicly defended the man they had so admired over the past decade. The famous, damaging exception was Teller, who complained that Oppenheimer had not supported his hydrogen bomb project and testified, choosing his words carefully, “I feel that I would like to see the vital interests of this country in hands which I understand better, and therefore trust more.” Under the circumstances Feynman did not relish the prospect of accepting the award from Strauss. But Rabi, who was visiting Caltech, advised him to go ahead. “You should never turn a man’s generosity as a sword against him,” he recalled Rabi saying. “Any virtue that a man has, even if he has many vices, should not be used as a tool against him.”
In the frightened climate, atomic scientists developed an invisible trail of agents, questioning their friends and childhood neighbors, painstakingly uncovering the obvious, trying to tune in to a hearsay of who liked whom, who resented whom, who might be likely to inform on whom. Feynman’s own file at the FBI grew bulky. His Los Alamos friend Klaus Fuchs had been imprisoned in 1950 for spying for the Soviet Union. Fortunately for Feynman, the bureau did not realize how often Fuchs had lent Feynman his car. It was noted that Feynman had once made a speech at Temple Israel in Far Rockaway, “at which time he had spoken on brotherhood.” He was described as a shy, retiring, introverted type of individual. Neighbors vouched for his loyalty and doubted that he had participated in the high school’s Young People’s Socialist League, which an investigating agent described as “a militant, pro-communistic group of students.” Bethe was pestered by an officer of the Department of Commerce for information regarding Feynman’s “loyalty.” Finally he replied curtly, “Professor Feynman is one of the leading theoretical physicists of the world. His loyalty to the United States is unquestioned. Any further elaboration would be an insult to Dr. Feynman.”
On one occasion the bureau discovered a “contact by Oppenheimer with one ‘FINEMAN’ (phonetic)” and surmised “that this ‘FINEMAN’ is in fact subject RICHARD FEYNMAN.” Officials discussed the possibility of turning him into a confidential informant against Oppenheimer. They authorized a discreet approach and then placed Feynman on the “no contact” list when he refused to be interviewed by the bureau about anything at all. Agents interviewed his Los Alamos colleagues, who generally described him as a “prodigy” of “excellent character.” Yet it was learned that he sometimes boasted of having “out-foxed” the Selective Service psychiatrists to obtain a 4-F classification. One colleague considered him a “screwball.” Another felt that his interest in “jazz