POLITICIANS MAY NOT UNDERSTAND SCIENCE BUT ON THE OTHER HAND. . .

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AUTHOR SALLY DENTON send us the following: "Just came upon this precious
exchange, Arthur Goldschmidt in an oral history interview in the '70s at
UC Berkeley, talking about Oppenheimer et al who were trying to figure
out a way to influence policy and make sure the military didn't end up
controlling the bomb."

ARTHUR GOLDSCHMIDT - They probably all had made more money than they'd
ever had in their lives, and they couldn't spend it out there in Los
Alamos or wherever they were hiding out, so they probably had nice fat
nest eggs. I think they did raise a little money. I remember a group
when I went to see my friend Carolyn Agger Fortas, who's a great tax
lawyer. [Spells name] Her husband [Abe] was later on the Supreme Court.
They were great friends of ours. Carol told a funny story about several
of these people, who wanted to set up an organization, coming to her.
They needed to get a lawyer to help them draft up the charter and rules
and to tell them what they could and couldn't do.

She said, "What do you want to do? Do you want to raise money? What is
the purpose of the organization? Are you going to do lobbying?"

One of them said, "What's lobbying?"

Carol said, "Lobbying is getting Congress to do something, going up and
appearing before Congress." She explained to them what lobbying was.

And they said, "Yes, that's what we want to do." . . . As they were
leaving, one of them turned to Carol and said, "Miss Agger, could you
give us a reference to a good textbook on lobbying?" [Laughter] It was
that type of folks that was there, you see. They didn't even know the
word, much less how to go about it.

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