Senator MILLIKIN. No one will substitute his judgment for that of → the military liaison committee as to the field in which it is interested? Mr. LILIENTHAL. The answer to that is definitely that it is up to the military liaison committee to decide what it regards as an appropriate military field.

Senator MILLIKIN. And there are no impediments which will be put in its way?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. No impediments will be put in its way.

Senator MILLIKIN. I mention that because those of us who were most actively instrumental in getting this law adopted considered that those matters were inseparable; that there could be no departmentalizing as far as the military liaison and the civilian activity are concerned.

Are we in complete agreement on that?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. We are in complete agreement. It is a matter of fact that they cannot be separated. They are virtually interchangeable.

Senator MILLIKIN. Does the military liaison committee understand that, as far as you believe and have observed?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I am confident of that; yes.

Senator MILLIKIN. Have they kept themselves fully acquainted with everything that has been going on?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I am confident that whenever questions were asked, they certainly received information.

Senator MILLIKIN. Are they in attendance at all sessions of the Commission?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. No; and we do not contemplate that.
Senator MILLIKIN. Why not?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I think there is a distinction between these two things. One is the responsibility which the Commissioners have, and the other is the responsibility of liaison with the military liaison committee. There will be many joint sessions, and there will be a great deal of interchange of information. But it would be very difficult for the Commission to feel free to discuss many matters except within a Commission meeting.

Senator MILLIKIN. What would be the difficulty of that? I mean, how can the Military Liaison Committee know what is going on, unless they are actively participating in the discussions with the Commission as the Commission does its business?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I have difficulty in conceiving of that, Senator. But it would be comparable to the joint committee of the Congress, which has also a continuing responsibility, not simply by which they review matters, but by concurrent consideration of the problems before the Commission.

There will be nothing withheld from the Military Liaison Committee.

Senator MILLIKIN. But you are putting that as a matter within your own judgment and discretion as to what should be put out to the Military Liaison Committee.

I am suggesting to you that possibly the Military Liaison Committee should be privileged to attend all of the sessions of the Commission; and that if you do not permit that, the Military Liaison Committee has no way to protect its own responsibility.

Senator VANDENBERG. Senator, you mean as observers?
Senator MILLIKIN. As observers, of course.

I do not mean that they shall vote, but I mean that they shall be present whenever the Commission is meeting.

Are we in agreement or disagreement on that?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. No; we are in disagreement on that, I am afraid, Senator. I think that would become very unwieldy.

Senator KNOWLAND. Would your answer be the same as to the joint committee sitting in when the Commission is meeting?

Senator MILLIKIN. Do you mind if I put that in a different way? Supposing that the joint committee should decide that it should have one or two men in constant contact with your Commission. Would you cooperate with that design, or would you oppose it?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. We would cooperate with any and all measures looking toward the providing of complete liaison and knowledge of what is going on-within the limits of security, which I am sure would be developed. But I am not at all sure-I have some doubts and would like to think about-whether it would be workable as an administrative matter to have present in Commission discussions-in which men put forward ideas that they are not completely persuaded of but want to test them by discussion--to have present another group, however closely related, actually sitting in those deliberations. I think it might produce a kind of formalized meeting that wouldn't be desirable.

But there are many other ways of effecting the same result, Senator. For example, here is a problem that arises in response to a change in process engineering at one of the plants. This, let us say, is a great improvement in economy. It produces a certain kind of material, which appears to be quite satisfactory, at lesser cost, or with lesser facilities, or with less use of raw materials.

Although that is quite a long way from the bomb itself, there ought to be and will be staff discussion between the production staff, the technicians of the Commission, and the staff of the Military Liaison Committee, and between the Director of Military Application of the Commission and the staff of the Military Liaison Committee, saying that: "This matter is under consideration. Here are the reports. This is the status of things. We ought to go down to the plant and take a look at it."

Senator MILLIKIN. I suggest to you, Mr. Lilienthal, that you have not met the intent of Congress that the Military Liaison Committee should be advised of everything that is going on in the Commission. Your observation, your formula, do not admit of that.

Mr. LILIENTHAL. Because they are not present at all meetings of the Commission?

Senator MILLIKIN. That is right. I am not talking about the right to vote. I am not even sure that I am talking about the right of unlimited discussion. But it is the intent of Congress, I suggest, that they should have the right to know everything that is going on in the Commission. And they can't do that unless they are present.

Senator KNOWLAND. And I also suggest, along the same line, that if the joint committee is to fulfill its responsibility under the law, and to the Congress and the American people, there should be no question of doubt but that they would have the same opportunity, and I should say the same obligation, to have continuous liaison as to the meetings of the Commission.

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I just simply say that this conception of how to effect that liaison, including participation in meetings of the Commission itself, is a new idea. We did not conceive it to be required.

Senator MILLIKIN. Will you give that your consideration and give us your further reactions?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I think it is pretty largely a matter of whether, under such an arrangement, the Commission meeting would be still one in which men would feel free to lay out tentative ideas and have that free play of discussion which ought to exist, or whether there would not be a feeling, with as many people present as that, that they should only discuss things when they have matured them in their own minds. That is the only problem.

Senator MILLIKIN. We are having that same free play of ideas here now. The intent of Congress was that the joint committee should be completely and continuously informed of everything that the Commission is doing.

How can that be, unless they are physically present?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I would personally like to think about it first, because it is a new idea.

Senator MILLIKIN. I now would like to come back to Senator Johnson's question.

Senator VANDENBERG. Before you leave that, Senator, I would like to underscore what you have said. Because in my opinion it will not be satisfactory if there is anywhere a single closed door to the military liaison or the congressional committee. The responsibility is too great.

Senator MILLIKIN. I would like to put another underscore to that. Mr. Lilienthal, Senator Johnson has developed that from midnight of the day you took over control, you have not consulted with General Groves. I think that those of us who have worked on the congressional side of this regard General Groves as the best-informed man, over-all, in the whole subject. It seems rather incredible to me that the benefit of his advice has not been had from the time that you have taken over.

Will you elaborate on your motives for that?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. There are no motives, particularly, Senator. We have been engaged in a job of reorganization and of staffing, and General Groves is our predecessor. We are presumably developing a staff to carry out a new law and a new mandate. It is our responsibility to be thoroughly familiar, as well as we can, the light of human fallibility, with what this new mandate means, and to develop a staff to carry it out. There will be problems where the history of the project, the past experience, becomes distinctly relevant. And for that purpose, we have asked the Secretary of War and received the consent of General Groves to serve as general consultant on such problems. But at the moment, when we are in an organization period, we have had hardly hours enough in the day to do that kind of work. Take, for example, our consideration of the patent policy. I am sure General Groves may have his ideas about the patent provisions, but these provisions are new; they did not exist under the Manhattan district. So it is appropriate to turn not so much to him as to the members of the Patent Bar, the Commissioner of Patents, and so on. And the same thing is true as to other problems. It is not any reflection on General Groves at all.

Here

Senator MILLIKIN. Well, it continues to seem strange to me. is the most valuable single source of information in this whole business; and from the time you took over, you have not had a single consultation with him.

Mr. LILIENTHAL. We had a great many before the take-over, and I may be in error about after that date. It is quite possible I am. But as problems arise in which we feel the need for General Groves' judgment--when we get to those problems, and his experience becomes relevant, then either he or his aides have been consulted. As an example, I might cite this change in operation, which I referred to hypothetically, which actually took place. There, Colonel Nichols, General Groves' deputy in charge of that sort of thing, was the man who presented the matter to the Commission; very ably, giving us the whole background. In that sort of situation, of course, General Groves and his aides' experience will be invaluable.

Senator MILLIKIN. Mr. Chairman, may I explore one more point? The CHAIRMAN. Certainly, Senator.

Senator MILLIKIN. You have spent a great part of your life, Mr. Lilienthal, either directing monopolistic enterprises or supervising monopolistic or quasi-monopolistic enterprises.

It was the intention of Congress that these extraordinary grants of power that we have given to the Government, both on the operating side and on the patent side, would be restored to private enterprise at the very first time that it can be done, consistent with safety and the national welfare.

Are you temperamentally fitted to make that sort of a transition? Mr. LILIENTHAL. Well, it is more than that-yes. The answer is "Yes," and let me expand it.

Senator MILLIKIN. I would like to get your reactions in full on that. It seems to me very important.

Mr. LILIENTHAL. It seems to me that in terms of the national defense, the common defense and security, perhaps as important as the weapon aspect of this undertaking is that somehow, in spite of the peculiar characteristics of atomic energy which have led the Congress to provide for this latter extraordinary Government operation-it seems to me that our differential in respect to other nations consists very largely in the kind of industrial system we have developed; which is unique and far ahead of anything else in the world. And the reason it is unique is that there is a fluidity about it that has not been achievable under any other set of circumstances.

Somehow we must see to it, in respect to atomic energy, that, to use a colloquialism, "There will be something in it for industry."

We must see to it that there will be the kind of incentive-to-development that has developed the automobile and many other things. At the moment, nobody is quite wise enough, as far as I can see, to figure out just how that will happen.

As to the efforts that I think ought to be taken: During the present period when there really is not anything commercially developable here anyway, we have a little leeway of time. In the meantime, by entering into contracts with great industrial enterprises-such enterprises as have taken ideas, inventions, and developed an industry out of them because "there has been something in it for them"-which is a colloquial way of saying that they have had a spur, a continuing incentive, and not just being paid off at one time-by entering into

these contracts with such concerns as the General Electric Co. or the Monsanto Chemical Co., or quite a number of others of that kind, having them develop the technologies of this enterprise as contractors, as agents for the Government-a way will develop whereby there are aspects of that development that can be severed and commercialized, without the common defense and security being endangered. We don't quite know what that will be yet.

Senator MILLIKIN. Let's take an assumption-and there is no mist in my eyes. Let us assume that we can develop the ways in which this energy can be handled.

Are you temperamentally suited to the release of the whole subject to private enterprise?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. Yes. And let me point to one indication of my feeling about that.

In the course of our development of the report on international control of atomic energy by the State Department Board of Consultants, this problem arose: It seemed to us clear-and there were two industrialists on this board-that somehow there must be an international monopoly of the dangerous aspects. It was in part due to my concern about the enormous centralization that that would involve, that avenues were explored to find some way whereby this complete monopoly could be avoided. Denaturing was the one thing, technical thing, at the moment that looked possible; there will undoubtedly be others-whereby you can have your monopoly over dangerous activities, as well as your fluid enterprise, both as to research and development, in connection with the nondangerous aspects. Where the line will rest, nobody is wise enough to know. But I point with some pride, I may say, to the fact that there was some stubbornness on the part of some of us in those deliberations to try to find some way of indicating that this whole field need not be permanently an international monopoly.

Well, of course, domestic monopoly is an analogy. I am persuaded that that would be true. For example, I don't see now, from what relatively little I know about the production of isotopes, why that could not, in the very near future, be made quite free for private undertakings.

I see no real danger in it. I think that if we are rather cautious about this, and proceed from case to case, there will be ample room found for just the sort of thing that you were saying.

The reason I am so sure that this is right is that the story of the TVA, the story of the development of the Tennessee Valley, is the story of the encouragement and stimulation of more and more private activity, with the help of Government, and especially the technical help of Government.

I think you will find, by talking to the people of the Tennessee Valley, that that is what has occurred. There are more and more prosperous individual enterprises, and that has been our objective. Senator MILLIKIN. Has that not coincided with the extension of the powers of TVA?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. No; the powers of TVA during the period have been so delegated away, that there are less powers in the TVA today than there were when the Congress passed the act. There has been a diffusion through the region by the fact that there are stronger State and local governments and many more private undertakings.