IN THE BEGINNING, THE SELECT COMMITTEE 7 



When the House select committee was officially established on 

 March 5, Speaker Rayburn, Majority Leader (and future Speaker) 

 McCormack and Minority Leader (and former Speaker) Martin — who 

 always worked very closely together all agreed that membership of 

 the new group must include a "blue ribbon" selection of some of the 

 best and most conscientious members from both sides of the aisle. 



MEMBERSHIP OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE (1958) 



The 13-member committee included the following, in order of 

 seniority: 



Democrats Republicans 



John W. McCormack, Massachusetts, Joseph W. Martin, Jr , Massachusetts 



Chairman Leslie C. Arends, Illinois 



Overton Brooks, Louisiana Gordon L. McDonough, California 



Brooks Hays, Arkansas James G. Fulton, Pennsylvania 



Leo W. O'Brien, New York Kenneth B. Keating, New York 



Lee Metcalf, Montana Gerald R. Ford, Jr , Michigan 

 William H. Natcher, Kentucky 

 B. F. Sisk, California 



The personnel of the select committee reflected Speaker Rayburn's 

 decision that this was a top-caliber committee which should include 

 key representatives of major standing committees. Serving in addition 

 to the majority and minority leaders there were also the top-ranking 

 Democratic and Republican members of the Armed Services Committee 

 (Brooks and Arends), the top-ranking Republican member of the 

 Judiciary Committee (Keating), and key members of the Committee on 

 Appropriations (Natcher and Ford), Interstate and Foreign Commerce 

 (O'Brien), Foreign Affairs (Hays and Fulton), Education and Labor 

 (Metcalf), Interior and Insular Affairs (Metcalf, O'Brien, and Sisk), 

 and Banking and Currency and Joint Committee on Defense Production 

 (McDonough). 



Fulton, a free-wheeling millionaire lawyer from Pittsburgh, could 

 always be counted on to spark and spice the public hearings with his 

 offbeat manner of presenting startling ideas. Confronting Dr. Wernher 

 von Braun on the opening day of the committee's hearings, Fulton 

 blurted out: 



Why do we not try to ask the President to give you that power to take a crack 

 at the Moon even though you do not hit it? Would you like that? 



Or, to a witness describing the Navy's Vanguard satellite: 



If you took one light year, that would be six trillion miles, and if the nearest 

 star is 26 trillion miles away, the distance our satellite that you put up will go in 

 200 years is inconsequential, being only 31/2 billion miles 



Fulton also had the distinction of being the first Congressman to intro- 

 duce a resolution calling for a standing space committee. Fulton s 



