At quiet Swarthmore College one night last week, 0. (for Oet je) John Rogge, special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General and prosecutor of the hapless 1944 Washington sedition trials, raked over a few coals concerning Nazi wartime intrigue in U.S. politics.
Rogge traced out the oft-told tale of the late oilman William R. Davis, who, inspired by the German Government, had tried to mediate World War II back in 1940. He also mentioned John L. Lewis, Senator Burton K. Wheeler and other touchy names in the same breath with Nazi bigwigs.
To the familiar Davis story Rogge added the authority of months spent in Germany this year, poring over Nazi records. Upon his return Rogge had turned over a report to Attorney General Tom Clark with the expectation that it would be published. Instead, Clark had kept it in the files.
After Rogge's Swarthmore speech Pennsylvania Republicans gleefully recalled that pro-German Bill Davis once had connections with another prominent politico: Senator Joe Guffey, facing defeat Nov. 5.
Indignantly Tom Clark charged Rogge with willfully violating Justice Department rules by making a speech based on the quashed report. Then he fired him.
To Be Gods of the Lightning
Week after week Harry Truman has pondered one of the most important decisions he had to make: the appointments to the godlike Atomic Energy Commission —the five men who will control the entire field of research, production, engineering and application of atomic power in the U.S. (TIME, April 22). This week the President named them. One is a proved New Dealer, three are Republicans—but politics apparently played no part in the selection. All have previously performed public service:
David Eli Lilienthal, who will be chairman, is a six-foot, sharp-faced lawyer, Harvard protege of Felix Frankfurter, longtime antagonist of the utility monopolists, who after serving in the Wisconsin
Public Service Commission in 1933 became the guiding spirit and director of TVA. He was chairman of the committee which prepared the Lilienthal-Acheson plan for international atomic control.*
Robert Fox Bacher (rhymes with rocker), 41, head of nuclear research at Cornell University, one of the scientists who assembled the first atomic bomb. Cool, deliberate, diplomatic, Bacher is regarded by his colleagues as one of the country's half-dozen leading nuclear physicists.
William Wesley Waymack, 58-year-old editor and vice president of the Des Moines Register and Tribune, member of the Board of Directors of the Chicago
Federal Reserve Bank, vigorous, well-traveled, winner of several Pulitzer awards for his editorials, a Republican who traveled on the Willkie train.
Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss, 50, close friend of Judge Samuel Rosenman, who rose to the rank of rear admiral in the naval reserve; is now on the Navy's Civilian Research Advisory Committee; a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co., bankers; a Jewish philanthropist; a Republican.