Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations was a setting in which nuclear policy reached beyond classified government deliberations and into an influential foreign-policy circle. In the book, it is both the venue for J. Robert Oppenheimer’s 1953 appeal for candor and an institution closely associated with John J. McCloy, who later defended him during the security hearing.

A Forum for Nuclear Policy

On February 17, 1953, Oppenheimer addressed a closed meeting of Council members in New York. Introduced by his friend David Lilienthal, he spoke on “Atomic Weapons and American Policy,” presenting an unclassified version of a disarmament report recently sent to the Eisenhower administration. The Council’s elite setting gave the speech a reach beyond its immediate audience: the account describes its words as likely to resonate in Washington’s military and policy-making circles.

The audience included banker David Rockefeller, Washington Post publisher Eugene Meyer, New York Times military correspondent Hanson Baldwin, and investment banker Benjamin Buttenwieser. Lewis Strauss was also present. Oppenheimer argued that nuclear facts should be made known authoritatively, even though secrecy prevented him from disclosing many particulars. The venue thus placed his challenge to nuclear secrecy before figures situated near the centers of finance, journalism, and government influence.

John J. McCloy and the Council

The Council’s standing in the account is also conveyed through John J. McCloy. By 1954 he was its chairman, as well as chairman of Chase National Bank and a member of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s private “kitchen cabinet.” He had been seeing Oppenheimer regularly at the Council and, despite the security controversy, said he had no real doubts about Oppenheimer’s loyalty.

After reading a newspaper report on the case on April 13, McCloy wrote to Eisenhower that he was deeply troubled and compared investigating Oppenheimer’s security risk to investigating that of Newton or Galileo. At the end of April, he agreed to attend the hearing as a last-minute defense witness. His roles as Council chairman, regular interlocutor of Oppenheimer, and witness connect the organization’s policy forum to the personal and institutional networks that entered the security case.

Significance in the Narrative

The Council is not presented through a detailed account of its structure or program. Its significance instead emerges from the people who met there and from the political use of the setting. Oppenheimer chose a closed meeting of Council members for a speech that questioned whether secrecy served public understanding or strategic security; the presence of Strauss made the policy disagreement immediate, not abstract.

The later account of McCloy’s intervention gives the Council a second role. It was where he and Oppenheimer met regularly, and McCloy’s position within its leadership accompanied his public defense of the scientist. The institution therefore links elite discussion of nuclear policy with the relationships that shaped Oppenheimer’s defense when his government standing came under challenge.