page_title: David E. Lilienthal
section_title: Atomic energy
hierarchical_section_title: David E. Lilienthal / Atomic energy
caption_attribution_description: English: General Leslie R. Groves (left), Director of the Manhattan Project, and David E. Lilienthal, President Harry S. Truman's nominee to chair the United States Atomic Energy Commission, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on October 1, 1946. Department of Energy photo.
context_page_description: David Eli Lilienthal was an American attorney and public administrator, best known for his Presidential Appointment to head Tennessee Valley Authority and later the Atomic Energy Commission. He had practiced public utility law and led the Wisconsin Public Utilities Commission.
  Later he was co-author with Dean Acheson of the 1946 Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, which outlined possible methods for international control of nuclear weapons. As chair of the AEC, he was one of the pioneers in civilian management of nuclear power resources.
context_section_description: Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II and victory by the Allies, Lilienthal was fascinated and appalled by the information he soon absorbed about the power of the new weapon. 
  In January 1946, U.S. Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson asked Lilienthal to chair a five-member panel of consultants to a committee including him and four others, who were to advise President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes about the position of the United States at the United Nations on the new menace of nuclear weapons. At the time, the US held a monopoly on these weapons.
  Lilienthal described the purpose of Acheson's request:
  Those charged with foreign policy -- the Secretary of State (Byrnes) and the President -- did not have either the facts nor an understanding of what was involved in the atomic energy issue, the most serious cloud hanging over the world.  Comments...have been made and are being made...without a knowledge of what the hell it is all about -- literally! 
  Lilienthal quickly found out even more about the atomic weapon, and wrote in his journal:
  No fairy tale that I read in utter rapture and enchantment as a child, no spy mystery, no "horror" story, can remotely compare with the scientific recital I listened to for six or seven hours today.
  ...I feel that I have been admitted, through the strangest accident of fate, behind the scenes in the most awful and inspiring drama since some primitive man looked for the very first time upon fire.
  The result of the panel was a 60-page Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, better known as the Acheson-Lilienthal Report. Released in March 1946, it proposed that the United States offer to turn over its monopoly on nuclear weapons to an international agency, in return for a system of strict inspections and control of fissile materials. It was a bold attempt to formulate a workable idea for international control (and implicitly assumed that the United States was far ahead of the Soviet Union in atomic weapons development and could remain in that position even if the Soviets violated the agreement). However Truman then decided to appoint Bernard Baruch to present the plan to the United Nations; Baruch changed some provisions of it, ending up with a proposal that the Soviets could not accept and that was vetoed by them.  (As it happened, the Soviets were determined to proceed with their own atomic bomb program and were unlikely to accept either plan.)
  Subsequently, the United States established the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to provide civilian control of this resource. Lilienthal was appointed as chair of the AEC on October 28, 1946 and served until February 15, 1950, one of the pioneers of civilian control of the American atomic energy program. He intended to administer a program that would "harness the atom" for peaceful purposes, principally atomic power.   Lilienthal gave high priority to peaceful uses, especially nuclear power plants.  However coal was cheap and the power industry was not interested. The first plant was begun under Eisenhower in 1954.
  As chairman of the AEC in the late 1940s, during the early years of the Cold War, Lilienthal played an important role in managing relations between the scientific community and the U.S. Government. The AEC was responsible for managing atomic energy development for the military as well as for civilian use. Lilienthal was responsible for ensuring that the Commander-in-Chief would have the use of a number of working atomic bombs. Lilienthal did not have as much enthusiasm for this task as some in Washington, and in particular he received steady criticism from Senators Brien McMahon and Bourke B. Hickenlooper, the chairman and ranking member of the United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, for not pursuing the task with sufficient vigor.  Indeed, in 1949 Hickenlooper raised charges that Lilienthal had engaged in "incredible mismanagement" and tried to have him removed as chairman; Lilienthal was cleared of wrongdoing but was left political
caption: David E. Lilienthal (right) met with General Leslie R. Groves (left), Director of the Manhattan Project, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on October 1, 1946, to discuss the transfer of responsibility for atomic energy to the new Atomic Energy Commission, which President Harry S. Truman nominated Lilienthal to chair.
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