In the Floodlight

For two weeks Chairman David Lilienthal of the Atomic Energy Commission had been on the congressional grill. Members had questioned him and his aides about Government-financed scholarships for Communists, about security precautions, about the wisdom of shipping radioactive isotopes abroad. They wanted absolute answers to many questions which could not be absolutely answered.

Harassed and sometimes angry, Lilienthal admitted some mistakes. He had already promised a change in AEC's handling of federal scholarships (TIME, May 30). As the inquisition went on, he also admitted that the Argonne Laboratory's delay in reporting the loss of a quantity of uranium 235 was "a substantial error ... I don't object to the chairman of the commission being given hell for it."

He was getting hell. Iowa's Senator Bourke Hickenlooper, who was among Lilienthal's defenders in the row over his appointment two years ago and apparently became one of Lilienthal's best friends on the Hill, had charged him with "incredible mismanagement" and demanded that he resign.

De Mini mis. Last week the case of Lilienthal and AEC became a matter for the Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee's full attention. In the Senate's big caucus room, Chairman Brien McMahon, puffing on a cigar, ceremoniously took command.

"Shut off that sun," he ordered, pointing to a newsreel floodlight. He asked Lilienthal solicitously: "It bothers you too, doesn't it?"

"An additional bother of that kind is de minimis,"-smiled the bald-headed chairman of the AEC. The newsreel men doused their floodliehts. Referring only occasionally to some notes, Lilienthal made his statement.

In a letter to McMahon, he had said that if the AEC had failed, then no single fact could be "more disturbing to the peace of mind of the people." But certain tests of AEC's efficiency could be applied, among them: "what is the state of our atomic weapons," how big is the stockpile, how much progress has been made in new weapon design? The record, he had written, "is a proud one." Now, on the witness stand, he invited the committee to ask some 30 prominent scientists and industrialists what they thought of AEC. The joint committee itself, he said, had enough information to determine whether the program had been "incredibly mismanaged." He had told them everything they had wanted to know. He had kept no secrets from them, with one major exception: the number of bombs in the stockpile, withheld at the committee's own jittery request. Last session, AEC had sent the committee 100 letters and met with it 25 times. There were almost daily discussions between staffs of the committee and the AEC. "[But] the real issue," he summed up, "is how we are going to answer these charges that shake the confidence of the people."

"Trivial Items," It was an impressive performance. Iowa's Hickenlooper looked a little sheepish. He pulled a statement from his pocket and read it. It was not the activities of AEC's zealous and loyal helpers to which he objected but Lilienthal's administrative policies. He ended: "At this time I am not prepared to present my case in an orderly fashion. But I will in a few days."

The first round had gone to Lilienthal. From the White House he got a reassuring pat. Said Harry Truman: "I deplore the fact that relatively trivial items have been blown up to proportions that threaten the integrity of the program. It is time people stopped getting hysterical when the word atom is mentioned . . . I have entire confidence in Mr. Lilienthal."

Some things they wanted to know, Congressmen still felt, were not "relatively trivial." Congress' interest was based on a legitimate preoccupation with how more than $1 billion a year was going to be spent by an agency that was in some respects a law unto itself. Congressmen were baffled by a science too abstruse for them to comprehend. They were baffled by the need for national security on the one hand, the obvious necessity for un-hobbled scientific inquiry on the other. Beyond everything else, they were baffled by the problem of fitting absolute Government control of atomic power into the framework of the cherished U.S. system of free enterprise.

Since the uproar over his confirmation as atomic boss in the spring of 1947, they had paid little attention to David Lilienthal--a fact which Lilienthal himself privately deplored. But they had their light fixed on him now. As baffled as they were, and as unprepared as they were, they were still determined to know a lot more about the details of how Lilienthal had been running his atomic empire. The trick would be to strengthen what was weak in AEC without weakening all that was strong.

-Lawyer's Latin for a mere trifle.

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