Strauss was “a man with an active mind, definitely conservative, apparently not too bad.” Both assessments underestimated Strauss. He was pathologically ambitious, tenacious and extraordinarily prickly, a combination that made him a particularly dangerous opponent in bureaucratic warfare. One of his fellow AEC commissioners said of him, “If you disagree with Lewis about anything, he assumes you’re just a fool at first. But if you go on disagreeing with him, he concludes you must be a traitor.”
