Lewis Strauss

Lewis Strauss
Strauss in 1962
United States Secretary of Commerce
Acting
In office November 13, 1958 – June 30, 1959
President	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Preceded by	Sinclair Weeks
Succeeded by	Frederick H. Mueller
Chair of the United States Atomic Energy Commission
In office July 2, 1953 – June 30, 1958
President	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Preceded by	Gordon Dean
Succeeded by	John A. McCone
Member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission
In office November 12, 1946 – April 15, 1950
President	Harry S. Truman
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	T. Keith Glennan
Personal details
Born	Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss (1896-01-31)January 31, 1896 Charleston, West Virginia, U.S.
Died	January 21, 1974(1974-01-21) (aged 77) Brandy Station, Virginia, U.S.
Resting place	Hebrew Cemetery
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Alice Hanauer
Children	2
Civilian awards	Medal of Freedom
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch/service	United States Navy
Years of service	1926–1945
Rank	Rear Admiral
Unit	Bureau of Ordnance
Military awards	Distinguished Service Medal Legion of Merit (4)

Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss (

Strauss was the driving force behind Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing, held in April and May 1954 before an AEC Personnel Security Board, in which physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance was revoked. As a result, Strauss has often been regarded as a villain in American history.^[2][3][4][5] President Dwight D. Eisenhower's nomination of Strauss to become U.S. secretary of commerce resulted in a prolonged, public political battle in 1959 where Strauss was not confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Early life

Strauss was born in

Having developed an amateur's knowledge from reading textbooks, Strauss planned to study

By the time he finally graduated from high school, his family's business had experienced a downturn during the Recession of 1913–1914.^[13] In order to help out,^[13] Strauss decided to work as a traveling shoe salesman for his father's company.^[14][8] In his spare time, Strauss studied his Jewish heritage.^[15] He was quite successful in his sales efforts;^[16] over the next three years, he saved $20,000 (equivalent to $476,000 in 2023): enough money to cover college tuition now that the scholarship offer was no longer in effect.^[13][17]

Career

World War I

Strauss's mother encouraged him to perform public or humanitarian service.^[16] It was 1917; World War I was continuing to devastate parts of Europe and Herbert Hoover had become a symbol of humanitarian altruism by way of heading the Commission for Relief in Belgium.^[11] Accordingly, Strauss took the train to Washington, D.C., and talked his way into serving without pay as an assistant to Hoover.^[18] (Strauss and his biographer differ on whether this happened in February^[19] or May 1917, but the latter seems more likely.^[18])

Hoover became chief of the United States Food Administration.^[14] Strauss worked well and soon was promoted to Hoover's private secretary and confidant.^[8] In that position he made powerful contacts that would serve him later on. One such contact he made was with attorney Harvey Hollister Bundy.^[14] Another was with Robert A. Taft, a counsel for the Food Administration.^[20]

Following the Armistice of 11 November 1918, Hoover became head of the post-war American Relief Administration, headquartered in Paris, and Strauss joined him there once more as his private secretary.^[21] Acting on behalf of a nearly destitute diplomatic representative of Finland, Rudolf Holsti, whom he met in Paris, Strauss persuaded Hoover to urge President Woodrow Wilson to recognize Finland's independence from Russia.^[22]

Besides the U.S. food relief organization, Strauss worked with the

Strauss returned to the United States and started at Kuhn Loeb in 1919.[8] As a result, he never did attend college, a fact that may have led to the perfectionist and defensive personality traits that he exhibited later in life.^[11]

Kuhn Loeb's major customers were railroads, and by the mid-1920s, Strauss was helping to arrange financing for new railroad terminal buildings in Cincinnati and Richmond and for the reorganizations of the

On March 5, 1923, Strauss married Alice Hanauer in a ceremony at the

However, he was not a Zionist and opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine.^[52] He did not view Jews as belonging to a nation or a race; he considered himself an American of Jewish religion, and consequently he advocated for the rights of Jews to live as equal and integral citizens of the nations in which they resided.^[52]

Strauss fully recognized the brutality of Nazi Germany. He first made his concern known in early 1933, writing to President Hoover during the final weeks of Hoover's time in office.^[53] Strauss attended a London conference of concerned Jews later that year on behalf of the American Jewish Committee, but the conference fell apart over the issue of Zionism.^[52]

Following the November 1938 Kristallnacht attacks on Jews in Germany,^[54] Strauss attempted to persuade prominent Republicans to support the Wagner–Rogers Bill that would legislatively allow the entry of 20,000 German refugee children into the United States.^[55] Long allied with both Hoover and Taft,^[20] he asked each of them to support the bill. Hoover did, but Taft did not, telling Strauss, "With millions of people out of work, I can't see the logic of admitting others."^[56] The bill had considerable popular support, but eventually failed to move forward in Congress due to opposition from the American Legion, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and other immigration restrictionists.^[54]

At the same time, Strauss joined with Hoover and Bernard Baruch in supporting the establishment of a refugee state in Africa as a safe haven for all persecuted people, not just Jews, and pledged ten percent of his wealth towards it.^[55] This effort too failed to materialize.^[57] Still another scheme that involved Strauss concerned an international corporation, the Coordinating Foundation, that would be set up to effectively pay Germany an immense ransom in exchange for their allowing Jews to emigrate; that too did not happen.^[58] Strauss subsequently wrote: "The years from 1933 to the outbreak of World War II will ever be a nightmare to me, and the puny efforts I made to alleviate the tragedies were utter failures, save in a few individual cases—pitifully few."^[59]

Strauss was president of Congregation Emanu-El of New York, the largest such in New York City, for a decade,^[60] from 1938 to 1948.^[8] He was named to the presidency to replace Judge Irving Lehman, after having previously been chair of the temple's finance committee.^[40] He had first joined the board of trustees of the temple in 1929, when the congregation was absorbing the merger of Temple Beth-El.^[61]

Strauss succeeded in Washington's social and political circles despite that environment being notoriously anti-Semitic at the time.^[60] Indeed, experiences with anti-Semitism may have contributed to the outsider perspective and fractious personality that became evident during his later career.^[11][55] He was proud of his Southern upbringing as well as his religion, and insisted his name be pronounced in Virginia fashion as "straws" rather than with the usual German pronunciation.^[62][63][20]

World War II

Despite his medical disqualification for regular military duty, Strauss applied to join the

During 1941, Strauss recommended actions to improve inspectors' abilities and consolidate field inspections into one General Inspectors' Office that was independent of the Navy's bureau system; these changes took hold by the following year.^[67] Strauss organized a morale-boosting effort to award "E for Excellence" awards to plants doing a good job of making war materials.^[11] The program proved popular and helped the United States ramp up production quickly in case it entered the war; by the end of 1941 the Bureau of Ordnance had given the "E" to 94 different defense contractors.^[66] It was adopted across all services in 1942 as the Army-Navy "E" Award, and over the course of the war over 4,000 of them were granted.^[68] (Strauss's biographer has depicted Strauss as also helping to investigate the notorious failures of U.S. torpedoes during the war and coordinate development of the very secret and highly successful anti-aircraft VT (proximity) fuse;^[69] however histories of these efforts do not indicate that Strauss played a significant role.^[70])

When

The promotion to flag rank was unusual for a member of the reserve,^[20] and as such,^[50] he liked being addressed as "Admiral Strauss", even though use of the honorific perturbed some regular officers, who considered him a civilian.^[8] By this time, Strauss had taken advantage of his ties in both Washington and Wall Street to enter the post-war establishment in the capital.^[62] He also was learning how to get things accomplished in Washington via unofficial back channels, something at which he would become quite adept.^[79]

Introduction to atomic energy

Strauss's mother died of cancer in 1935, and his father of the same disease in 1937.

Through Szilard, Strauss met other nuclear physicists, such as Ernest Lawrence.^[85] Strauss talked to scientists who had left Nazi Germany and learned about atom-related experiments that had taken place there.^[86] Szilard kept him up to date on developments in the area, such as the discovery of nuclear fission and the use of neutrons.^[87] In February 1940, Szilard asked him to fund the acquisition of some radium, but Strauss refused, as he had already spent a large sum.^[88]

Strauss had no further direct involvement with atomic energy developments during the war. Indeed, he was frustrated by Harvey Hollister Bundy, his colleague from the Food Administration days, who kept Strauss away from information regarding the

After the war, Strauss was the Navy's representative on the Interdepartmental Committee on Atomic Energy.[20] Strauss recommended a test of the atomic bomb against a number of modern warships, which he thought would refute the idea that the atomic bomb made the Navy obsolete.^[91] His recommendation contributed to the decision to hold the mid-1946 Operation Crossroads tests, the first since the war, at Bikini Atoll.^[92]

Atomic Energy Commission member

In 1947, the United States transferred control of atomic research from the U.S. Army to civilian authority under the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). In October 1946, in advance of the commission actually coming into being,^[73] Strauss was named by President Truman as one of the first five Commissioners, with David E. Lilienthal as the chairman.^[93] Strauss had been recommended for a position on the body by Vice Admiral Paul Frederick Foster, a long-time friend for whom Strauss earlier had provided contacts in the business world (and who had subsequently helped Strauss get his active duty assignment).^[94] In their initial discussion about the appointment, Strauss noted to the New Deal-supporting Truman that "I am a black Hoover Republican."^[48] Truman said that was of no matter, since the commission was intended to be non-political.^[95] Strauss, who briefly had returned to work at Kuhn Loeb after the war, now exited the firm altogether in order to comply with AEC regulations.^[95]

Once there, Strauss became one of the first commissioners to speak in dissent from existing policy.^[48] In the first two years, there were a dozen instances, most having to do with information-security matters, in which Strauss was in a 1–4 minority on the commission; in the process, he increasingly was perceived as stubborn.^[96]

One of Strauss's first actions on the AEC was to urge his fellow commissioners to set up the capability to monitor foreign atomic activity via atmospheric testing.

Strauss was known for his psychological rigidity; one of his fellow commissioners reportedly said, "If you disagree with Lewis about anything, he assumes you're just a fool at first. But if you go on disagreeing with him, he concludes you must be a traitor."[60] Strauss was increasingly unhappy in his position, but President Truman indicated satisfaction with Strauss's work and the minority stances that he was taking on the commission.^[103]

The

On January 31, 1950, Truman announced his decision to go forward with hydrogen-bomb development.[104] A few narratives, including ones promoted by Strauss and that of Strauss's biographer, have placed Strauss as having had a central role in Truman's decision.^[111][112] However, by the time that the decision was made, Strauss was one of an increasingly large coalition of military and government figures, and a few scientists, who strongly felt that development of the new weapon was essential to U.S. security in the face of a hostile, nuclear-capable, ideological enemy.^[113] Thus, in the absence of Strauss's action, the same decision almost surely would have been reached.^[114] In any case, when the decision was announced, Strauss, considering that he had accomplished as much as he could in his role as commissioner, submitted his resignation that same day.^[115] Within the administration, there was some consideration given to Strauss being named chairman of the AEC to replace the departing Lilienthal, but Strauss was considered too polarizing a figure.^[116] The last day for Strauss during this first stint of his on the commission was April 15, 1950.^[117]

Financial analyst

Beginning in June 1950, Strauss became a financial adviser to the Rockefeller brothers, where his charter was to participate in decisions regarding projects, financing, and investing.^[39] For them, he assisted in the founding of, and served on the first board for, the Population Council.^[118] He was also involved in the negotiations with Columbia University that led to a sale and leasing back of real estate associated with part of Rockefeller Center.^[119] The relationship with the Rockefeller brothers would last until 1953.^[6][11] However, Strauss felt that the brothers treated him as a second-class asset and, in turn, he felt no loyalty towards them.^[119]

During this time, Strauss continued to take an interest in atomic affairs; as did other former members of the AEC, he had a consulting arrangement with the

In January 1953, President Eisenhower named Strauss as presidential atomic energy advisor.^[123] Then in July 1953, Eisenhower named Strauss as chairman of the AEC.^[123]

While Strauss had initially opposed Eisenhower's push for

Strauss was involved in finding the site and industry partners for the start of construction, in 1954, of the first dedicated U.S. atomic electric power plant, the

Eisenhower and Strauss discuss what happened with Castle Bravo, March 1954 ...

... and the following day hold the press conference at which Strauss says a single H-bomb could destroy the entire New York metropolitan area

Internal debate ensued over the next several years within the Eisenhower administration over the possibility of an atmospheric test ban with the Soviet Union, with some in favor of trying to arrange one, but Strauss was always one of those implacably opposed.

Regarding the prospect of nuclear proliferation, Strauss was skeptical that attempts to prevent it would accomplish anything,^[149] and Strauss and the AEC also doubted that the problem was as severe as some others in the administration maintained.^[150] During 1956, Harold Stassen, who had been chosen by Eisenhower to lead an effort on disarmanent policy, focused on making nonprofileration a key goal of the United States, including proposals to halt not just to testing but also the continued expansion of the U.S. fissionable material stockpile.^[151] Eisenhower was at least partially receptive to the proposals, but Strauss argued that nuclear materials production could not be stopped yet and that testing could never be halted completely.^[152]

The

During his terms as an AEC commissioner, Strauss became hostile to Oppenheimer, the physicist who had been director of the

In 1947, Strauss, a trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, presented Oppenheimer with the institute's offer to be its director.^[158] Strauss himself had also been considered for the job; he was the institute's faculty's fifth-ranked choice, while Oppenheimer was their first ranked.^[158] Strauss, a conservative Republican, had little in common with Oppenheimer, a liberal who had had Communist associations.^[159] Oppenheimer subsequently was a leading opponent of moving ahead with the hydrogen bomb and proposed a national security strategy based on atomic weapons and continental defense; Strauss wanted the development of thermonuclear weapons and a doctrine of deterrence.^[160] Oppenheimer supported a policy of openness regarding the numbers and capabilities of the atomic weapons in America's arsenal; Strauss believed that such unilateral frankness would benefit no one but Soviet military planners.^[160]

In addition, Strauss disliked Oppenheimer on a variety of personal grounds. Starting in 1947, Strauss had been in a dispute with the General Advisory Committee (GAC) of senior atomic scientists, which Oppenheimer chaired and which reported to the AEC, over whether exporting radioisotopes for medical purposes was a risk to U.S. security, from which the scientists on the GAC developed a poor image of Strauss.^[161] Then during a public hearing in 1949, Oppenheimer had given a mocking answer to a point Strauss had raised on the subject, a humiliation that Strauss did not forget.^[162] Strauss was also offended that Oppenheimer had engaged in adulterous relations.^[60] And Strauss did not like that Oppenheimer had seemingly left his Jewish heritage behind, whereas Strauss had become successful – despite the anti-Semitic environment of Washington – while still maintaining his prominent roles in Jewish organizations and his Temple Emanu-El presidency.^[163][60]

When Eisenhower offered Strauss the AEC chairmanship, Strauss named one condition: Oppenheimer would be excluded from all classified atomic work.^[164] Oppenheimer held a highest-level Q clearance,^[165] and was one of the most respected figures in atomic science, briefing the President and the National Security Council on several occasions.^[166] Oppenheimer's AEC consultancy, and the clearance that went with it, had just been renewed for another year by Gordon Dean, the outgoing chairman of the AEC; it would extend through June 30, 1954.^[167][168]

Strauss's misgivings about Oppenheimer went beyond dislike and disagreement. He had become aware of Oppenheimer's former Communist affiliations before World War II and had begun to think that Oppenheimer might even be a Soviet spy.

In September 1953, Strauss, hoping to uncover evidence of Oppenheimer's disloyalty, asked FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to initiate surveillance to track Oppenheimer's movements.^[173] The director readily did so; the tracking uncovered no evidence of disloyalty but that Oppenheimer had lied to Strauss about his reason for taking a trip to Washington (Oppenheimer met a journalist but had told Strauss that he had visited the White House).^[174] Strauss's suspicions increased further with the discovery that in 1948 and 1949 Oppenheimer had tried to stop the long-range airborne detection system that Strauss had championed and that had worked in discovering the Soviet Union's first atomic weapon test.^[175] At first Strauss moved cautiously, even heading off an attack on Oppenheimer by Senator Joseph McCarthy,^[164] due to Strauss's belief that any case that McCarthy might make would be premature and lack a solid basis of evidence.^[176]

Oppenheimer security hearing

In November 1953,

The hearing was held in April and May 1954, before an AEC Personnel Security Board.[188] Strauss selected the three-man board, headed by Gordon Gray.^[189] He also picked the person who would lead the case against Oppenheimer, the trial attorney Roger Robb.^[190][191] Strauss had access to the FBI's information on Oppenheimer, including his conversations with his lawyers, which was used to prepare counterarguments against those lawyers in advance.^[186][190] Strauss was not present at the hearings, instead reading daily transcripts.^[192]

At the hearing, many top scientists, as well as government and military figures, testified on Oppenheimer's behalf.^[193][192] Physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi stated that the suspension of the security clearance was unnecessary: "he is a consultant, and if you don't want to consult the guy, you don't consult him, period."^{[194][195][196]}

Oppenheimer, however, admitted that he had previously lied to a military counterintelligence officer about a conversation his friend

At the conclusion of the hearings, Oppenheimer's clearance was revoked by a 2–1 vote of the board.[201] They unanimously cleared Oppenheimer of disloyalty, but a majority found that 20 of the 24 charges were either true or substantially true and that Oppenheimer would represent a security risk.^[202] Then on June 29, 1954, the AEC upheld the findings of the Personnel Security Board, by a 4–1 decision, with Strauss writing the majority opinion.^[203] In that opinion, Strauss stressed Oppenheimer's "defects of character", "falsehoods, evasions and misrepresentations", and past associations with Communists and people close to Communists as the primary reasons for his determination.^[204][205] He did not comment on Oppenheimer's loyalty.^[206]

Oppenheimer was thus stripped of his clearance: one day before it would have expired,^[207] and seven months after it had been suspended on the orders of the president.^[208]

The successor agency to the AEC later ruled that the hearing was "a flawed process that violated the Commission's own regulations."^[209] The loss of his security clearance ended Oppenheimer's role in government and policy.^[210] Oppenheimer returned to his directorship at the Institute of Advanced Studies, but Strauss, who was still on the board of trustees there, attempted to have him dismissed.^[211] However, in October 1954, the board voted to keep Oppenheimer on.^[212] In the years that followed, Strauss still hoped to remove Oppenheimer, but never got the votes on the board he needed.^[213]

In the wake of the AEC decision, public opinion and most scientists were firmly against Strauss.

Strauss's term as Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chair completed at the end of June 1958.^[117] Eisenhower wanted to reappoint him,^[217] but Strauss feared the Senate would reject or at least subject him to ferocious questioning.^[218] Besides the Oppenheimer affair, he had clashed with Senate Democrats on several major issues, including his autocratic nature as AEC chair and his secretive handling of the Dixon–Yates contract.^[219] That contract involved a supply of electrical power in Tennessee without going through the Tennessee Valley Authority and Strauss had embarked on discussions about the idea without informing his fellow commissioners.^[220] The plan itself was controversial and eventually became a losing issue for Republicans in the 1954 U.S. midterm elections.^[135] Strauss had stated to an interviewer in late 1954, "For the first time in my life, I have enemies."^[221] By the end of the 1950s, Strauss had garnered the reputation, as a Time magazine profile put it, of being "one of the nation's ablest and thorniest public figures".^[11]

Eisenhower offered him the post of White House Chief of Staff to replace Sherman Adams but Strauss did not think it would suit him.^[222] Eisenhower also asked if Strauss would consider succeeding John Foster Dulles (who was ill) as Secretary of State but Strauss did not want to preempt Undersecretary Christian Herter, who was a good friend.^[222]

Finally, Eisenhower proposed nominating Strauss as

During and after the Senate hearings, McGee charged Strauss with "a brazen attempt to hoodwink" the committee.[11] Strauss also overstated his role in the development of the H-bomb, implying that he had convinced Truman to support it. Truman was annoyed by this and sent a letter to Anderson undermining Strauss's claim, a letter that Anderson promptly leaked to the press.^[226] Strauss attempted to reach Truman through an intermediary to rescue the situation but was rebuffed and felt bitter at the lack of support.^[227] A group of scientists who were still upset over the role Strauss had played in the Oppenheimer hearings lobbied against confirmation, playing upon the pronunciation of their target's name by calling themselves the Last Straws Committee.^[63] Physicist David L. Hill, the former chairman of the Federation of American Scientists, was one of several scientists who testified before the Commerce Committee against Strauss's nomination, saying that "most of the scientists in this country would prefer to see Mr. Strauss completely out of the Government".^[228][229]

After 16 days of hearings the Senate Commerce Committee recommended Strauss's confirmation to the full Senate by a vote of 9–8.^[11] By now the struggle was in the forefront of the national political news,^[230] with a Time cover story calling it "one of the biggest, bitterest, and in many ways most unseemly confirmation fights in Senate history".^[11] In preparation for the floor debate on the nomination, the Democratic majority's main argument against the nomination was that Strauss's statements before the committee included semi-truths and outright falsehoods and that under tough questioning Strauss tended towards ambiguous responses and engaging in petty arguments.^[11] Despite an overwhelming Democratic majority, the 86th United States Congress was not able to accomplish much of its agenda since the President had immense popularity and a veto.^[11] With the 1960 elections approaching, congressional Democrats looked for issues on which they could demonstrate their institutional strength in opposition to Eisenhower.^[231] On June 19, 1959, just after midnight, the Strauss nomination failed by a vote 46–49.^[232] Voting for Strauss were 15 Democrats and 31 Republicans, voting against him were 47 Democrats and 2 Republicans.^[233] The nays included future U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.^[234]

At the time, it marked only the eighth instance in U.S. history in which a Cabinet appointee had failed to be confirmed by the Senate^[33] and it was the first time since Charles B. Warren in 1925,^[233] and would be the last one until John Tower in 1989.^[235] President Eisenhower, who had invested both personal and professional capital in the nomination of Strauss,^[11] spoke of the Senate action in bitter terms, saying that "I am losing a truly valuable associate in the business of government. ... it is the American people who are the losers through this sad episode."^[233] Strauss sent a letter of resignation from his recess appointment as Commerce Secretary on June 23, a resignation that took effect on June 30, 1959.^[236]

Final years

The Commerce defeat effectively ended Strauss's government career.^[237] The numerous enemies that Strauss had made during his career took some pleasure from the turn of events.^[63] Strauss himself was hurt by the rejection and, never fully getting over it,^[237] tended to brood over events past.^[238]

Strauss published his memoir, Men and Decisions, in 1962.^[239] At the time, Time magazine's review said they "may now remind readers of [Strauss's] many real accomplishments before they were obscured by political rows."^[239] The book sold well, spending fifteen weeks on the New York Times Best Seller for non-fiction and rising as high as number five on that list.^[240] The general view of historians is that the memoirs were self-serving.^[238]

The tie between Herbert Hoover and Strauss remained strong throughout the years, in 1962 Hoover wrote in a letter to Strauss: "Of all the men who have come into my orbit in life, you are the one who has my greatest affections, and I will not try to specify the many reasons, evidences or occasions."^[241] Strauss assisted in the organizing of support for the Barry Goldwater 1964 presidential campaign.^[33] He also remained on good terms with President Eisenhower and for several years in the 1960s Eisenhower and Strauss advocated construction of a nuclear-powered, regional desalination facility in the Middle East that would benefit both Israel and its Arab neighbors but the plan never found sufficient Congressional support to move forward.^[242]

During his retirement Strauss devoted time to philanthropic activities

Alice Hanauer Strauss lived until 2004, when she died at age 101 in Brandy Station.[36]

Legacy

The Oppenheimer matter quickly became a cause célèbre, with Strauss frequently being cast in the role of villain.^[2] This was an image that would persist in both the near term^[4] and the long term.^[5] Strauss had his defenders as well, who saw the hero and villain roles as being reversed.^[2] Such polarized assessments followed Strauss for much of his career.^[11]

Even such matters as the unusual, Southern-based pronunciation of his surname could be perceived as a puzzling artificiality.

For about a dozen years at the outset of the atomic age Lewis Strauss, an urbane but sometimes thorny former banker with a gifted amateur's knowledge of physics, was a key figure in the shaping of United States thermonuclear policy. ... In the years of his mightiest influence in Washington, the owlish‐faced Mr. Strauss puzzled most observers. He was, on the one hand, a sociable person who enjoyed dinner parties and who was adept at prestidigitation; and, on the other hand, he gave the impression of intellectual arrogance. He could be warm-hearted yet seem at times like a stuffed shirt. He could make friends yet create antagonisms.[8]

At the start of his 1962 memoir, Strauss states his belief that "the right to live in the social order established [at the American founding] is so priceless a privilege that no sacrifice to preserve it is too great."

Oppenheimer biographers Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin state that Strauss's decision to publish the transcript of the Oppenheimer security hearing even though witnesses had been promised their testimony would remain secret, rebounded against him in the long run, as the transcript showed how the hearing had taken the form of an inquisition.^[257] In 2022, Jennifer Granholm, the United States Secretary of Energy – head of the successor organization to the AEC – vacated the 1954 revocation of Oppenheimer's security clearance.^[258] Her decision was not based on revisiting the merits of the case against Oppenheimer, but rather on the flawed processes in the hearings that had violated the AEC's own regulations.^[259] Historian Alex Wellerstein states that Strauss had been a major culprit in those process violations.^[260]

In 2023, Bernstein stated that recent evidence that Oppenheimer had been a secret member of the Communist Party partially vindicated Strauss. "Strauss was devious, thin-skinned, mean-spirited, and even vicious in helping to do in Robert Oppenheimer. But on some important matters—in even somewhat suspecting Oppenheimer’s political past—Strauss was not unreasonable."^[261]

Awards and honors

For his European relief work during and after World War I, Strauss was decorated by six nations.^[38] These honors included the Chevalier, Belgian Order of Leopold I, the First Class Commander of the White Rose of Finland, and the Chevalier, Star of Roumania.^[262] He received a similar medal from Poland.^[262] Per a biographical account presented in the Congressional Record, he was also awarded the Grand Officer level of the Legion of Honour of France.^[263]

Strauss, then with the rank of captain, was awarded a Legion of Merit by the Navy in September 1944 for his work on Navy requirements regarding contract termination and disposal of surplus property.^[37] At the war's end he received an Oak Leaf Cluster—Army in lieu of a second such award, for his work in coordinating procurement processes.^[264] A Gold Star—Navy in lieu of a third award was given in 1947, for his work during and after the war as a special assistant to the Navy secretary and on joint Army–Navy industrial mobilization boards.^[264] Finally in 1959 he received a Gold Star in lieu of a fourth award, this time for his work on atomic energy as it benefited the Navy as a source of power and ship propulsion.^[264] He also received the Navy Distinguished Service Medal.^[11] On July 14, 1958, Strauss was presented with the Medal of Freedom, a civilian honor, by President Eisenhower.^[265] The award was for "exceptional meritorious service" in the interest of the national security in his efforts towards both military and peaceful uses of nuclear energy.^[265]

Strauss received a number of honorary degrees during his lifetime; indeed his advocates during the Secretary of Commerce confirmation hearings gave twenty-three as the number of colleges and universities that had awarded him such honors.

Strauss served on boards of directors for several corporations, one of which was the

The cover of Time magazine featured Strauss twice. The first was in 1953 when he was AEC chair and the nuclear arms race was underway,^[274] and the second was in 1959 during his Secretary of Commerce confirmation process.^[275]

In media

Strauss is played by Phil Brown in the 1980 BBC miniseries Oppenheimer,^[276] and by Robert Downey Jr. in Christopher Nolan's 2023 film Oppenheimer.^[277]

See also

• Unsuccessful nominations to the Cabinet of the United States

Writings

• Strauss, Lewis L. Men and Decisions (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1962).

Bibliography

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• Stern, Philip M. (1969). The Oppenheimer Case. New York: Harper & Row.
• Wentling, Sonja P. (September 2000). "'The Engineer and the Shtadlanim': Herbert Hoover and American Jewish non-Zionists, 1917–28". American Jewish History. 88 (3): 377–406.
  S2CID 161722695
  .
• S2CID 154257639
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• Young, Ken (2016). The American bomb in Britain: US Air Forces' strategic presence, 1946–64. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-7190-8675-5
  .
• Young, Ken;
  ISBN 978-1-5017-4516-4
  .

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Lewis Strauss.

• Lewis L. Strauss Papers at the Hoover Presidential Library, link no longer given
  • Strauss, Lewis L.: Papers, 1914–74 Archived January 7, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  • Lewis L. Strauss Papers, Scope and Content Note Archived September 7, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  • "Lewis Strauss and Robert Oppenheimer", blog entry at the Herbert Hoover Library and Museum
• Annotated bibliography for Lewis Strauss from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Archived August 28, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
• Guide to the Papers of Admiral Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss (1896–1974) at the American Jewish Historical Society, New York.
• Full text of "too cheap to meter" speech, at Nuclear Regulatory Commission site
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, Remarks on Presentation of the Medal of Freedom to Lewis L. Strauss, at The American Presidency Project site

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