Word: mcmahon
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They had tentatively agreed on a bill, drafted by Committee Chairman Brien McMahon, which set up a control commission of five civilians. Then they tacked on (by a 10-to-1 vote) an amendment by Michigan's Senator Arthur Vandenberg. It provided for a military board which would have access to all the commission's information and could appeal to the President if anything the civilians did seemed "inimical to the common defense." They also tacked on an amendment by Connecticut's Senator Thomas Hart, adding an advisory board of nine part-time experts to the commission...
...roused once more all the opponents of any kind of military influence. Said Chairman McMahon: "This [military] committee would have the power to interpret its own sphere of interest and activity . . . obstruct the work of the commission" unless the commission followed the military's policies...
Troubles with Congress occupied the President. He talked with Connecticut's Senator Brien McMahon on how to push through his apparently stymied bill for a civilian commission to control atomic-energy research. At his press conference, brisk Harry Truman bristled when a reporter asked about another bogged-down piece of legislation: the universal military training bill. Snapped the President: he had done everything he could possibly do, including a personally delivered message of recommendation; he could not order the Senate and House to pass...
...Supports McMahon Bill...
Shapley vigorously supported passage of the McMahon Bill, now pigeonholed in a Senate committee, which provides for an immediate civilian commission to direct application of atomic energy discoveries in the United States. An expert on the international state of science who visited Russia last year on the 220th anniversary of the founding of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, he said that "science rides high in Russia," and that "we must accept the challenge of the USSR--we the people, the government, the scientists of America must be the leaders in service to mankind through science...