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Hoover's folly over Einstein

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2002 Phys. World 15 (10) 43

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Jeremy Bernstein
Hoover’s folly over Einstein
The Einstein File: J Edgar Hoover’s Secret War Against
the World’s Most Famous Scientist
Fred Jerome
2002 St Martin’s Press 358pp $27.95hb
On the face of it, one would think that this
book was the perfect subject for the perfect
author. After some years of trying, the jour-
nalist Fred Jerome has been able to obtain
the almost unredacted FBI files on Albert
Einstein. One knows, if one has done this,
that FBI files, when they are released, often
come with lines of thick black ink that cover
things the bureau thinks you should not
know. These include the names of inform-
ants and FBI agents.
In my case, I wanted my own file as I was
thinking of writing a piece that I was going
to call “Friends and neighbors”, but the re-
dacted file was useless. My file had been
assembled because I needed a clearance to
work at Los Alamos. In Einstein’s case it was
because J Edgar Hoover – the then head of
the FBI – had an obsessive hatred of Ein-
stein, who, for Hoover, represented every
left-wing tendency he despised.
Jerome wanted Einstein’s files because he
saw they represented a marvellous story –
spying on the greatest scientist of the 20th
century. It should also be noted – as the
author does – that Jerome’s father was jailed
for being a member of the Communist Party.
He does not tell us the details, but he has a
vivid memory of being followed by men in
grey suits wearing fedoras – FBI agents.
In short, as I said, one seems to have the
perfect subject for the perfect author. But as
I was reading The Einstein File, I kept asking
myself why I did not like the book more.
First there is the writing, which I found
sloppy. For example, Jerome describes the
July 1939 visit of Eugene Wigner and Leo
Szilard to Einstein, who was vacationing
on Long Island. Their purpose was to get
Einstein to sign a letter to President Roose-
velt warning of a possible German attempt
to make nuclear weapons. On the way they
drove past the hypermodern structures that
had been erected for the World’s Fair that
was being held in New York. Jerome writes
(page 30): “For all that Szilard loved inven-
tions and the benefits of technology, at that
moment the glitzy exhibition must have
seemed an ironic backdrop to the catastro-
phic drama he sensed was about to unfold.”
How does Jerome know what impression
these structures made on Szilard, to say
nothing of their being an “ironic back-
drop”? This is a trivial example, but I will
give a very serious one later.
On top of this, there is the matter of the
PHYSICS WORLD OCTOBER 2002
REVIEWS
UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN
Hoover’s hang-ups – Einstein with the actor and
singer Paul Robeson (far right).
page notes. Many of the pages are festooned
with stars and daggers indicating some note
or notes at the bottom of the page. Not only
are these notes exceedingly distracting, but
also many of them seem pointless. For ex-
ample, after a largely irrelevant divagation
about the bubonic plague, we are informed
at the bottom of page 29 that “before sub-
siding in 1656, the Plague killed more than
100 000 Londoners”. Unless one is Gibbon,
it is better to let sleeping page notes lie.
Apart from the problems with the writing
there is another problem that is really not
“Hoover seemed intent to
have Einstein deported.”
Jerome’s fault. The book quotes extensively
from the FBI files and, to put the matter
bluntly, they are so stupid as to be excruci-
atingly dull. Apart from the absurdity of try-
ing to show that Einstein was a spy for the
former Soviet Union, one is struck again
and again by how totally incompetent these
people were – and, God help us, perhaps
still are. In the case of Einstein they could
not get even the elementary facts straight.
Considerable resources were spent inves-
tigating an imaginary son, Albert Junior,
who was supposed to have some sinister
connection with the Soviets. A biographical
sketch of Einstein from 1950, meanwhile,
contains so many basic mistakes that it
appears to have been written by a child.
What is not childish is its allegation that Ein-
stein had a connection with Klaus Fuchs,
who, as we know, did spy successfully for the
Soviet Union.
In this respect Jerome makes such a
monumental error that when I first read it I
was sure that it must have been taken from
one of the FBI reports. A speech writer for
physicsweb.org
Senator Joseph McCarthy named Howard
Rushmore had published a series of articles
in the New York Journal American that claimed
that Einstein had a connection with Fuchs.
Hoover, and his deputy Clyde Tolson, even-
tually read and relied on them. Jerome com-
ments: “Whether or not Hoover and Tolson
had already read the Rushmore article,
Tolson no doubt remembered that Einstein
and Fuchs were both German Jews and had
lived in Berlin around the same time.”
Not only is this statement totally false, it is
also very dangerous. Anyone who has taken
five minutes to read about Fuchs knows that
he came from generations of Protestant pas-
tors, including his father, who converted to
Quakerism. Moreover, Fuchs did not live in
Berlin at around the same time as Einstein.
He was a student in Leipzig and then Kiel
until he was forced to flee Germany in 1933.
Jerome’s statement is dangerous because if
you search for Fuchs on the web, you will find
virulently anti-Semitic sites that claim that
Fuchs was a Jew. Incidentally, when asked,
Fuchs said that he had never met Einstein.
If one has studied Einstein’s life, it comes as
no surprise that he took an active part in poli-
tics. One of my favourite stories told by one
of his assistants was of Einstein coming into
the office to announce that now Kurt Gödel
had really gone crazy. He had voted for
Eisenhower for president, Einstein explained.
But, to Jerome’s credit, he has put toget-
her a chronicle of Einstein’s political and
social activity in the US that is valuable and,
at least to me, in some parts novel. I had not
realized, for example, Einstein’s involve-
ment with racial injustice. He spoke out
against lynching and he lectured at black
educational institutions. He became friends
with Paul Robeson, the magnificent black
actor and singer, whose left-wing views put
him at the top of Hoover’s list of enemies,
with Einstein close by. It seems to have been
Hoover’s intent to put together enough of
a dossier to have Einstein deported. (To
where? Germany?) It is easy to be smug
about this and to say that it is all in the past.
But these are difficult times and I am sure
there are Hoovers out there making lists.
Jeremy Bernstein is a professor emeritus at the
Stevens Institute of Technology and has written
often about Einstein, email jbernste@earthlink.net
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