Letter from J. Robert Oppenheimer to Dean Acheson

THE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR 18 May 1953 S. ANATIONAL us SERVICET Dear Dean: Thank you for your note of May llth and for the copy of your letter to Mac. Mac has now sent me a copy of his answer to you. I have, not con- flicting, but other, comments to make. Here they are: First: to your alternatives between the chronological and systematic approach on one hand and the episodic and less formal on the other, you were right in thinking that my preferences would be for the latter; but I do not think episodic or chronological is the right characterization of what I had in mind, or what would most appeal to you. I think the word should be "thematic. ff I believe that this will avoid the very real danger of giving a partial and undocumented account of the history that you have lived and made. I am sure that the danger is great. I think it should also help to give structure and order to your recollections. Thus, it seems to me, not, perhaps, as a good example, but as a possibility, you might wish to talk of incidents which threw light on the relationship between the military departments on the one hand and the other agencies, particularly the Department of State, on the other. No such talk could possibly be exhaustive; but it can give a depth and vividness and a sense of reality to the subject because you have lived with it as few others have. Analogous examples come easily to my mind, but surely as easily and far more relevantly to yours. This brings me perhaps to my second point: I tried when I saw you at Sandy Spring not to make this undertaking appear too formidable; but it would be futile and perhaps a little wicked of me to suggest that it can be done without some reflection and some effort on your part. I have tried to find a form in which that effort would not be complicated by preoccupations of security, of discretion and of expediency; but the effort of formulation and understanding is, I am afraid, an integral part of any attempt to communicate even to an intimate and a qualified audience. I am sure that many of those of whom we spoke as possible auditors will be eager and often qualified to help you; but they can only help. The third point perhaps is this: in thinking over our talk it seemed to me that the number of people in the group that I first suggested-- ten or twelve- may be a little too small--ev the list we wrote down suggests that. If we agree that we need not reach all others and cannot reach all others who are con- cerned with the understanding of public affairs, or teach about them or help explain them, we ought to do a reasonably good job within the limits that we do have. I have thus found myself thinking of a group of fifteen or twenty people; that image may be helpful to you in finding your own way. There is still another point. I suppose because it began that way during our talk the time at the farm you will have been asking yourself whether this