More important was the political furor that erupted during the late 1960s, when AT&T’s service crises in New York and elsewhere, together with the popular suspicions of the period about big corporations, led to an outcry in Congress that the FCC was not doing its job, that the commission was merely AT&T’s servant. Such accusations provoked strong reactions in liberal bureau lawyers like Strassburg, who of course believed that the FCC was a strong and independent agency. To prove he was right, Strassburg put an end to the informal negotiations with the phone company, and the bureau launched
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