But in BUAERO, every typewriter began tapping out retaliatory releases for the admiral. In spite of urgings by the latter, the Secretary staunchly refused to comment on the Mitchell attack, even as the press clamored for a reply. It was not until several days had passed that the admiral finally succeeded in drawing a reluctant consent to his own response. Then permission was granted only with the express condition that the admiral should reply on his own account and own responsibility. Approval came at noon on a Saturday. By then the Bureau had closed for the day and, in addition to the admiral, only two of us remained aboard. One was the admiral’s faithful colored messenger, Brown, the other, myself. We were waiting for the admiral in the anteroom to his office when he steamed through the door under full power. On the desk lay a copy of a statement I had drawn up for him. Seizing this, the admiral scrawled across the bottom a blunt postscript, calling William Mitchell a liar and ascribing his recent charges either to hallucinations or delusions of grandeur. I cut the mimeograph stencil for him on his secretary’s typewriter. Brown ran off the copies on a machine across the hall. The admiral waited impatiently until they were done, and then, seizing me by the arm, hustled me out of the building and into my car. We drove uptown to the offices of the Associated and United Press, where the admiral himself handed his statement across the counter to astonished reporters. The statement hit the front pages of the New York papers. Its publication released all the ancient grudges and conflicts in aviation dating as far back as World War I. The old “airplane scandal” was dragged out and dusted off by crank inventors, claiming they had been robbed of their patents. The cry of “air trust” echoed through the halls of Congress and counsels of investigating committees, scenting headlines, began trying to get into the act. Up to that moment some twenty-odd inquiries had been held on what to do about aviation. With surprising agreement they had all supported certain concrete recommendations; without exception they had been promptly consigned to the ninth pigeonhole—the one next the wastebasket. In 1924, during the excitement over the controversy between the proponents of the airplane and the supporters of the battleship, a Congressional committee, under the chairmanship of Congressman Lampert, had found that aviation, instead of being stifled by a “trust” was dying of neglect. The United States lacked both a policy for aviation and the legislation necessary to implement it.