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you can imagine.

This is one category that suffers first.

Yes. Mahon and Mills -- Wilbur Mills has gotten to be very powerful because he's head of the Ways and Means Committee in the House -- both are critical of research, think it's grown too fast, equate it with some degree of waste, which of course there always is in research, and Mahon always disliked John Fogarty for having been able to carry the Appropriations Committee with him, when he recommended larger research appropriations, and he made sure this time he'd get a committee that was supine, which is really what it amounts to.

Now, somehow or other my friends and I are going to have to make friends with George Mahon. This is very difficult, because he's extremely couteous and agreeable, but his mind is set against any additional funds over what the President has appropriated, and he's even willing to cut some of them.

Is he close to the President?

Lasker Well, he's friendly with the President and he gets along moderately with the President, but he doesn't just do what the President says, unless it suits his convenience. He really is like a great -- well, duke, let's say, in a kingdom,