Affairs Committee, which held hearings on October 9. Bush, Conant and Groves all testified before the committee. But in the Senate Military Affairs Committee, the bill was held up by Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg. There was a storm of criticism from scientists, particularly those at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago. Leó Szilárd and Harold Urey were particularly notable critics. The bill created a powerful administrator and deputy administrator, and specifically stated that they might be members of the armed forces. It was feared that they would dominate the part-time commissioners. The fact that the bill emphasized that the administrator had to keep the deputy fully informed further aroused suspicion that the administrator would be an Army officer and the deputy a Navy officer. The secrecy provisions also frightened many scientists; it contained severe penalties of up to ten years imprisonment and $10,000 in fines for security breaches. The Chicago Sun headline accused the War Department of attempting to railroad the legislation through Congress. Legislators found themselves in an unusual and uncomfortable situation. Nuclear weapons were terrifying, and the nature of nuclear energy was not widely understood. Because it was so new, there were no policies or precedents to guide legislators, and traditional party alignments were absent. The scientists who had developed the new technology had never been vocal before, but suddenly were now. The victorious conclusion of World War II gave the armed forces enormous prestige, but there still remained the long-standing American distrust of standing armies, and the tradition of civilian control of the military. McMahon Bill On December 20, 1945, Senator Brien McMahon introduced an alternative bill on atomic energy, drafted by the Senate Military affairs Committee, which quickly became known as the McMahon Bill. This was initially a very liberal bill regarding the control of scientific research, and was broadly supported by scientists. McMahon framed the controversy as a question of military versus civilian control of atomic energy, although the May-Johnson Bill also provided for civilian control. The McMahon Bill attempted to address the controversial aspects of the May-Johnson Bill. The number of commissioners was reduced to five, and they would serve full-time. No exemption was provided for serving military officers. An amendment specified that they have staggered terms of five years. While the bill was being debated, the news broke on February 16, 1946, of the defection of Igor Gouzenko in Canada, and the subsequent arrest