THE OVERTON BROOKS YEARS, 1959-61 47 



NASA AUTHORIZATION IN 1959 



When NASA sent up its budget, Brooks again went into full 

 committee hearings. Then he very quickly divided up the NASA au- 

 thorization into four parts, assigning construction of facilities to the 

 Miller subcommittee, splitting research and development down the 

 middle for the Teague and Sisk subcommittees, and giving salaries 

 and expenses to the Anfuso subcommittee. With a grand rush, he gave 

 the four subcommittees a week from April 24 to comb over the NASA 

 budget and make their recommendations to the full committee. It was 

 murderous work, but it certainly kept Chairman Brooks insulated 

 from criticism from the senior members, temporarily at least. 



The Miller subcommittee was the only one which acted to change 

 an item during the race to analyze the authorization in 1959. The Miller 

 subcommittee knocked out a $4,750,000 NASA-requested item for a 

 research facility for high energy solid and liquid rocket propellants. 

 The subcommittee quite correctly argued that NASA didn't have the 

 foggiest notion where the site was to be located. "It doesn't hurt to 

 serve notice that we are going to be very vigilant in watching what 

 they are doing," Miller reported to the full committee in executive 

 session. The committee approved the cut, the cut was sustained by the 

 House, but NASA subsequently made a special appeal to the Senate 

 and got the cut restored in conference. 



Teague's role in the early subcommittee hearings was to pound 

 some clarity and simplicity into NASA's high-blown, abstruse lan- 

 guage. At the very first meeting of his subcommittee on April 24, 1959, 

 Teague opened an executive session with NASA officials by pointing 

 out that he had spent until 1 a.m. the night before poring over the 

 backup books, and he just wished NASA would try to present their 

 program in everyday language: 



You know a lot of people come before Congress and if they can word things in a 

 way that nobody can understand, they think maybe it will be better. In \ T ASA's 

 case the simpler the language and the more explanatory it can be, instead of using 

 words that 99 percent of the Members won't know — I think you will be a lot better 

 off. 



Dr. Hugh Dryden, the veteran and brilliant Deputy Administrator 

 of NASA, who had graduated from college as a boy genius at the age 

 of 17, protested: "This is a difficulty with any highly technical 

 subject, to state it in terms that the ordinary person understands." 

 Teague shot back: 



But I do think, Dr. Dryden, that the language could be simplified a whole lot, 

 so that somebody who takes this and reads it will know more about it than I knew 

 when I got through reading it. There are just so many technical terms. * * * Many of 

 them aren't in the dictionary. 



