100 HISTORY OF THF. COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



committee hinted or came right out to say he was treading on forbidden 

 jurisdictional grounds. Miller ran the committee in a far more orderly 

 fashion, politely declining to get involved in jurisdictional squabbles, 

 and shunning a stance thai grabbing for power was the mark of a 

 successful committee chairman. He was a team player. 



At the first organizational meeting of the committee in January 

 1962, Chairman Miller was asked whether he would press for author- 

 izing power for the committee in the case of the Weather Bureau and 

 the Bureau of Standards. Chairman Miller answered in the negative, 

 explaining: 



It isn't something you can go out to do with a bludgeon. It takes a lot of per- 

 suasion and we have to remove a lot of resistance that may come. * * * 



It was Chairman Miller's view that the committee had plenty 

 to do without reaching out for vastly expanded jurisdiction. He 

 preferred the orderliness of good management to the frenetic, frantic 

 efforts of his predecessor to flail out in all directions. 



STAFF OPERATION 



Morale under Chairman Miller rose immediately and sharply. 

 Staff Director Charles Ducander had a bad case of the flu when Chair- 

 man Brooks died, and could not even attend the funeral. But Miller 

 called and asked if he could come over to Ducander's house. There he 

 asked Ducander to stay on in his capacity as staff director. On the 

 rest of the staff, he asked: "What do you think? Should we keep 

 everybody?" Ducander replied affirmatively. 



Ducander described his relationship with Miller in the follow- 

 ing way: 



I was in Mr. Miller's office no less than three or four times a day, every single 

 day. * * * I was down in his office starting about 9 in the morning, and I always 

 had a list of things: "George, tomorrow, this, this, this, this * * *. " This came 

 from my interrogation of staff members: "What did you all do yesterday? You had 

 some hearings. What did you talk about? What did you do? Who said what? Did 

 anything happen of importance?" * * * Well, now all these things were never 

 written down and Phil Yeager would come in and tell me what he and Daddario 

 were doing and this sort of thing, just in a conversational way, and I would take a 

 few notes. And the next morning in my briefing with the chairman, it was like 

 somebody comes in and briefs the President every morning. I thought this was my 

 duty to keep him informed, and he liked this. 



That's the way it operated. No written memos. That's why you can't find any 

 of this in the tiles, because it seems to me it's ridiculous that if Mr. Miller wanted 

 to hear it, he didn't want to read it in a memo. 



Chairman Mi-ller's philosophy on staff was that a staff which was 

 lean and hard-working was more efficient. He wanted good people who 

 were paid good salaries and then expected to get the job done without 



