The Big Lie

There is no excuse for the way the Senate Commerce Committee is treating Lewis Strauss' nomination as Secretary of Commerce. There is no excuse for the Committee's not having presented a far longer, more detailed and more competently argued case against Strauss than its members have done so far. The prosecution of the nominee has been dangerously inept, and though Strauss' defense has been characteristically evasive, the case against his confirmation has been little stronger.

His role, as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, in undermining the 1957 disarmament talks has not yet been publicized, though there is every indication that he was the man most responsible for turning American policy into an unnegotiable sham. The frauds which he consistently practiced on the American public in the fields of fallout danger and of test detection capabilities have not yet been exposed. While the committee has concentrated on some of his more blatant failures in Executive-Legislative liason, it has left untouched his record as a creature of the Strategic Air Command in the Oppenheimer case.

Although many of Admiral Strauss' most controversial activities stemmed from honest and respectable convictions, his tactics in support of these convictions have been those of the shyster. The wide-spread opposition to Strauss among physicists stems not only from antagonism to his beliefs, but also--and in the main--from a fear of his methods. In a position to make decisions of the greatest importance to the United States and the world, Strauss constantly refused to make the public a party to any of the broad policy arguments which he arbitrated. His abhorrence for candor is his major fault as a public servant. He cannot be trusted to tell the truth.