At the end of the World War II, the United States had spent over two billion
dollars to develop an enormous atomic industry operated by the U.S. Army.
The Manhattan Engineer District had nurtured a new science and produced
a weapon that won the war and stunned the world. Yet, in 1945, scientists
associated with the Manhattan Project also saw a potential for the peaceful
atom.

The military and scientific establishments fought for control of atomic
energy after the war. The military proposed an Atomic Energy Commission
within the Department of Defense that would take charge of nuclear energy.
The May-Johnson Bill introduced in Congress in 1946 represented the mil-
itary view that weapons were of the highest importance and that the secret
of the bomb could be preserved only through military control.

Most scientists disagreed. The Federation of Atomic Scientists, made up
of many of those who had worked on the bomb, lobbied in Washington for
civilian control. Working privately in small groups, prominent scientists
visited individual congressmen. During the war, military control had re-
stricted exchange of information and actually hindered progress on the bomb,
they said. More importantly, the scientists persuasively argued that civilian
decision makers, not the military, should control nuclear weapons. As a
safety measure, they wanted the agency in charge of atomic weapons to be
independent of the armed forces.

The scientists won the legislative battle. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946,
sponsored by Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut, established an inde-
pendent, civilian-controlled Atomic Energy Commission. A Military Liaison
Committee did oversee the military activities of the Atomic Energy Com-
mission, but the five civilian commissioners retained complete responsibility

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