(The matter referred to is as follows:)

EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS OF MR. DAVID LILIENTHAL

Born Morton, Ill., July 8, 1899; graduated from DePauw University, 1920; Law School of Harvard University, doctor of laws, 1923.

Practiced law in Chicago from 1923 to 1931.

Appointed a member of the Public Service Commission of the State of Wisconsin, 1931. Served until 1933.

June 1933, appointed and confirmed for 3-year term as Director of Tennessee Valley Authority; reappointed and confirmed for 9-year term in May 1936; appointed Chairman 1941; reappointed and confirmed by the Senate for a second 9-year term in May 1945.

As head of the TVA, Mr. Lilienthal was responsible for the administration of a Federal corporation of great magnitude and complexity. During Mr. Lilienthal's incumbency the TVA carried on an extensive construction program, particularly during the war years, one of the largest projects of design, construction, and operation in American history. It designed and operated a chemical plant and laboratories at Muscle Shoals, conducted research and development of natural resources, and conducted the largest integrated electric power generating system in the country.

January 1945, named by the Secretary of State as a member and chairman of board of consultants to the Secretary of State's Committee on Atomic Energy. This board made a study of the technical problems involved in the international control of atomic energy, visited facilities of the Manhattan District, and prepared a report which was useful in the development of the American proposals for atomic energy control to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, commonly referred to as the Acheson-Lilienthal Report.

November 1, 1946, appointed Chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.

The CHAIRMAN. I may say that Mr. Lilienthal has come to this appointment from the Tennessee Valley Authority chairmanship, and from other activities in governmental service.

Mr. Lilienthal, will you sit down?

Senator KNOWLAND. Mr. Chairman, are the witnesses going to be sworn?

The CHAIRMAN. I think they may well be sworn. (The witness was duly sworn by the chairman.)

The CHAIRMAN. I would suggest, Mr. Lilienthal, that you give the committee a résumé, in your own words, of your past activities in private life and in public service. And you may start, And you may start, if you please, with your origin, your place of birth, and proceed to give your education and your experience.

TESTIMONY OF DAVID LILIENTHAL, APPOINTEE TO THE CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE UNITED STATES ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I was born in Tazewell County, Ill., on July 8, 1899. I was educated in Indiana in the schools, and graduated from the high school of Michigan City, Ind., and received an A. B. degree at DePauw University, at Greencastle, Ind., in 1920.

I was graduated from the law school of Harvard University in 1923 and in the summer of that year began the practice of law in Chicago in the office of Donald R. Richberg, and 3 years later opened my own office. I practiced law in Chicago for some 9 years, until I was appointed by the Governor of Wisconsin as a member of the then Railroad Commission of Wisconsin, which shortly became known as the public service commission of that State.

In 1933, I was appointed a director of the Tennessee Valley Authority at the time of the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority; and until my resignation, on November 1, 1946, I was a member of the Board of Directors of that Federal organization, and for a number of years prior to the time of my resignation, served as Chairman.

I was designated by President Truman as a member and as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission on the 28th of October and took my oath of office under that appointment on November 1.

My experience in Federal Government administration is therefore entirely confined to my experience with TVA.

The CHAIRMAN. With the exception of your experience in State governmental activities in Wisconsin?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. Yes.

A year ago, I was one of a group called a board of consultants, appointed by the State Department to study questions of safeguards of this country in the international control of atomic energy; and in the discharge of that appointment my colleagues and I prepared the report which is known as A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, which has been published by the State Department. Senator KNOWLAND. You served as chairman of that committee? Mr. LILIENTHAL. I served as chairman of that committee. The CHAIRMAN. How long a time, Mr. Lilienthal, did you devote to the study and preparation of that report?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. We were appointed on the 16th of January, as I recall, and our report was completed, my recollection is, the 18th of March, after a period of 2 months of rather intensive activity.

During that time, my associates and I visited some of the principal installations of the Manhattan district.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you go to Oak Ridge?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. Yes, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you go out to Hanford?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. No; we did not. We discussed the scientific and industrial background with a great many people during the course of that time. Two of the members of this Board, Dr. Charles A. Thomas, of the Monsanto Chemical Co., and Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, of the University of California, were and are distinguished scientists, and participated in the development of the atomic energy project, and they, of course, were largely instrumental in giving us a great deal of the insight that was necessary in order to prepare this report.

I think that about covers my background, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. In your activities in connection with the Tennessee Valley Authority, what have been your more or less detailed duties and experience in that field? I am trying to find out whether you are an engineer or whether you have had technical experience or scientific experience, what your general background is.

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I am a lawyer by profession and training. I am not an engineer, nor do I have any technical or scientific background worth mentioning.

My responsibilities in the TVA were largely in the development of policy and in getting things done.

The CHAIRMAN. Business administration and such things as that? Mr. LILIENTHAL. Yes. My function, especially as the head of the agency, was administrative; to translate into action the things that

had been authorized by the Congress, for which funds had been provided, and in which policy development was required. So that my experience in the TVA has been pretty largely that of an administrator. However, the TVA itself is a technical enterprise and encompasses, in its staff, technicians and scientists of many different kinds.

So the problem of harmonizing and getting things accomplished through technicians was an important part of that job. These technicians range all the way from foresters and soil experts to civil and mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, construction men, and so

on.

Since the TVA was a technical enterprise, I had a good deal to do with technical people.

The CHAIRMAN. And was it a part of your responsibilities, in your job there, to at least generally supervise the employment of key personnel in that activity?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. Yes. I was in part responsible, as the Chairman of the TVA, for the selection of key personnel, although the actual staff work was done by personnel directors, general managers, and otherwise. But I did have a good deal of experience in judging the qualifications of key personnel, both administrative and technical. The CHAIRMAN. Could you give us the names of the persons in TVA, under your chairmanship or direction, who were responsible for the employment of key personnel and the setting up of policies in the various departments? If you would prefer to give us a list of those, if you can't recall all of them at the present time, that would be all right; half a dozen or so.

Mr. LILIENTHAL. Yes; it would be better if I supplied a list. In more recent years, in fact the last 5 or 6 years, the general manager was Mr. Gordon R. Clapp, but the department heads, the chief engineer, the chief chemical engineer, and so on, had a great deal to do with the selection of their own key personnel, subject to approval by the General Manager and the Board.

I will supply the names of those department heads.

(The following information concerning Tennessee Valley Authority personnel was supplied in response to the committee chairman's request made at the close of the hearings of January 27.)

The CHAIRMAN. The matter of atomic energy is, I think, pretty generally agreed to be a quite mysterious field, rather generally unknown, and its potentials and possibilities are at least speculative at the present time.

But personally, I have the feeling that a member of the Commission appointed by the President undoubtedly has a rather long-range perspective on this matter, some ideas as to general over-all policy and, at least, our objectives in the foreseeable future.

I would like very much to have you give us some of your general ideas as to what atomic energy may mean to this country, and how we should go about making it as available as possible, considering all of the contingencies that may exist.

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I would be very glad to have an opportunity to do so, Mr. Chairman. I think it ought to be recognized at the outset without any attempt to pull punches, that atomic energy at the present time, and from the point of view of what seems to me to be the work of the Commission, is essentially a weapon of war; that it is the greatest weapon that has ever been devised and the most potent.

And, as the statute says, the exercise of the Commission's functions should be--I quote from section 1 (a)—

subject at all times to the paramount objective of assuring the common defense and security.

In the present state of international affairs, in any way to disregard this direction of policy of the Congress, that common defense and security should be paramount, would be foolhardy. And there has been no such tendency in the deliberations of the Commission; quite the contrary.

The CHAIRMAN. May I ask if that is your personal view as well as your view under the mandate of Congress?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. It is my personal view and deep conviction. I think the statute is admirably adapted to that purpose.

However, the statute also has as its objective the development of the peaceful opportunities that are available in respect to this magnificient discovery.

And by setting up a Military Liaison Committee and by providing for a division of military application, headed by an active officer of the armed forces, and by this direction that the common defense and security of the country come first, and still directing the Commission to pursue vigorously a program for the development of the beneficent uses of atomic energy, we have as nearly a solution of this two-phased discovery as is possible.

The important fact to me, and the one that underlies all policy and administration, is this fact: that atomic energy, through most of its course, can be used either for peaceful purposes or for destruction. That is the single fact that is of greatest importance.

So that it is not possible to say, "We will now proceed to develop its peaceful uses," without bearing in mind that in developing the energy within the nucleus and controlling it we are 80 percent of the way or possibly even a greater percent, but let us say 80 percenttoward its use within a weapon.

It is my feeling that there is a great deal of loose thinking possible, if one seeks to divide these peaceful and destructive aspects as if in the nature of things, or in the physical constitution of the development of atomic energy, that were possible.

I also feel, however, that there are very great opportunities for the development of the beneficient uses of atomic energy.

After all, energy, other than human energy, is what makes civilization possible. It doesn't insure that there shall be civilization, but it is what makes it possible. Here is the discovery of a great new source of energy under control, a fantastically great source. And that it might be used for human welfare, it seems to me, is just as clear as that it may be used for destruction. This requires a great research program, and it is that to which we have directed a great deal of our attention.

The CHAIRMAN. I am quite sure, Mr. Lilienthal, that we fully appreciate the tremendous and the unusual extent of the powers that the law has placed upon the Commission, and the corresponding magnitude of the responsibility that goes with it. Would you care to say anything about your general attitude on that score?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. It is a little difficult to describe one's feeling about the responsibility that this statute vests in the members of the Commission without sounding a little stuffy.

But it is really a terrible responsibility; not only because of the great scope of powers vested, but because errors of judgment, serious errors of judgment, can mean missed opportunity for the people of this country and even worse.

I think there is this fortunate circumstance in respect to the problem of the amount of power as well as responsibility placed upon the Commission: that in a number of ways the Congress has, in the course of long hearings, chiefly before the Senate Committee headed by Senator McMahon, explored how this physical invention can be followed by a political invention, which can permit of its development without unlimited and unaccountable exercise of power by the agents of the Congress.

I refer particularly to the fact that the Congress has spelled out policies here in some respects in great detail.

So the Commission is not simply launched with a blank check. On every page there is the expression of congressional policy on many matters; and those, of course, become part of the texture of the Commission's work.

Furthermore, the establishment of the joint committee, a continuing joint committee, is in itself a great reassurance to the Commission, and I think a security against the exercise of arbitrary power.

The CHAIRMAN. At that point, may I suggest that you are no doubt familiar with the provision of the law that requires the joint committee of the Congress to maintain continuing studies of this whole field, and also that the law recognizes that we can't see too far into the future, and that changes of attitude and even changes of legislative policy may be necessary in the future.

May I ask what your personal attitude would be, in the administration of this Commission as Chairman, toward full and complete cooperation with this joint committee in the more or less pioneering days of the near future?

Mr. LILIENTHAL. I, and I think almost any normal person vested with this kind of a quite terrible responsibility, would be very disappointed if the joint committee function became perfunctory or the function was not exercised regularly. I have been through some years of experience in Federal administration, and it is actually a