The Biden Administration has rescinded a long-standing order revoking the security clearance for physicist Robert Oppenheimer which was revoked in the 1950s, posthumously reissuing the credential to clear his record, NBC News reports.
In 1954, Oppenheimer was the subject of a formal investigation into potential un-American activities. His affinity toward communist interests was known to military intelligence when he led the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos Laboratories, helping to end World War II.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the Atomic Energy Commission, the governing agency at the time of Oppenheimer’s clearance revocation, acted not because he was a threat to national security, but because he expressed pacifist viewpoints and spoke out against nuclear weapons proliferation.
“The Oppenheimer matter concerned a man who, not long before, had played an indispensable and singular role in the war effort, a man whose loyalty and love of country were never seriously questioned,” Granholm said in the written order. “More troubling, historical evidence suggests that the decision to review Dr. Oppenheimer’s clearance had less to do with a bona fide concern for the security of restricted data and more to do with a desire on the part of the political leadership of the AEC to discredit Dr. Oppenheimer in public debates over nuclear weapons policy.”