Leave it to Hollywood to falsely claim that the famed physicist was smeared by a hysterical, anticommunist community of lawmakers, federal bureaucrats, the FBI, President Dwight Eisenhower, and even Oppenheimer’s communist friends, who, in taped conversations by the bureau, repeatedly acknowledged that he was a secret party member who sided with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin over his own country.

Those who rely on the movie for why Oppenheimer was eventually denied his security clearance will be cheated of the truth and think worse of their country for this intentional and knowingly harmful omission. …

In early 1943, Chevalier and Oppenheimer had a brief conversation in Chevalier’s kitchen. Chevalier mentioned that a scientist, George Eltenton, could transmit information of a technical nature to the Soviet Union about America’s progress on the highly secretive atomic bomb project that Oppenheimer was working on.

Oppenheimer initially rejected the overture to assist Eltenton, but didn’t report the incident until six months later, in August 1943. His failure to promptly report what was clearly a Soviet espionage effort would become central to the decision to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance.

[Anyone expecting straightforward truth about history and the Cold War out of Hollywood is forever doomed to disappointment. Nolan wanted to portray Oppenheimer as the wronged party in the mess Oppenheimer made for himself, and did a pretty good job of it. I pointed some of this out in my review of the film, but Ryskind goes into far greater detail and clarity. To be frank, I was more exercised over the predictable treatment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about which I wrote later. — Ed]