Introduction to Donald Flanders Atomic Energy Commission Hearing
In David Caute's "The Great Fear" he describes the effect of the atmosphere of the post-war "witch-hunt" on those scientists who had worked on the development of the atomic bomb.
He states that..."Soon after the war the issue was raised whether the further development of atomic energy should fall under civilian or military control. With the support of local atomic scientists' committees, and of the Federation of Atomic Scientists, formed in November 1945 from nuclei at Columbia, Chicago, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, the
Fat Man and Little Boy, the bombs dropped on Japan
civilian cause triumphed and the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 transferred control of nuclear research and development from the Army-run Manhattan Engineer District to a new civilian Atomic Energy Commission. The defeated proponents of civilian control now launched a rearguard action by impugning the loyalty of the AEC's five members and of the atomic scientists themselves.
The AEC's loyalty-security program extended to about 200,000 employees in all, including those working on classified contracts for private corporations like Westinghouse Electric and the Bethlehem Steel Company. The Atomic Energy Act generated a system of scrutiny that, as an Atomic Scientists of Chicago poll conducted in March 1948 showed, antagonized the majority of scientists working on government projects. Five times as many respondents criticized the AEC's security methods as praised them-the complaints raised most frequently were lack of due process, concealment of the nature and source of the charges, the use of hearsay, assumption of guilt by association, and the tendency to regard liberalism as tantamount to disloyalty.
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By the end of 1952, about 400,000 personnel had been investigated by the AEC. Of these, we can estimate that scientists and technicians working on the staffs of the AEC's national laboratories, or working on the AEC's research projects in nongovernmental laboratories, numbered at any one time about nine to ten thousand."
One of those scientists was mathematician Donald Flanders, who had headed up the computation group at Los Alamos for the Manhattan Project. Donald was the youngest of Albert Flanders children.
Donald Flanders problem with the loyalty program was no ordinary one. He was a friend of Alger Hiss, the bete noire of the witch-hunters, most prominently Richard Nixon. Hiss was a high-ranking New Dealer who was accused of spying for the Soviet Union, and who had been convicted of perjury in relation to those accusations.
Here are transcriptions of excerpts from Donald Flanders AEC hearing, including testimony from mathematician Richard Courant, and Donald's wife, Sara. I have left in the page headings and numbers from the hearing transcript.
Jon Flanders