Until recently, despite knowing so much about the detailed role of Lewis Strauss (the third chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission) in the tumultuous early history of nuclear power in America, I hadn’t appreciated the blowback from his wily, relentless pursuit of American nuclear power prominence and private sector orientation. I went back and reread an academic biography of Strauss and was staggered at the animus the man generated.
Strauss’s trick worked, but he made new and dangerous enemies. Within the AEC, Commissioner Thomas Murray broke completely with him. … Now … they became irreconcilable. … The other enemy was Senator Estes Kefauver … [who wrote to Strauss:] ‘it will be a blight on your record of public service.’ … Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico, the new chairman of the Joint Committee, already disliked Strauss. A large, lumbering man of changeable temperament, Anderson could be quite cordial, only to turn nasty without warning. … they came to hate one another, and Anderson sought to destroy Strauss.
Pfau, Richard. 1984. No Sacrifice Too Great: The Life of Lewis L. Strauss. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, pp. 187-188.