In 1942, American manufacturing expert Herbert Schimmel advised Kilgore to form a committee to centralize scientific research done for the war effort. The Kilgore Committee drafted legislation for an Office of Technological Mobilization, which would have power to fund research, share patents and trade secrets, and facilities that could help the war effort. Additionally, the organization would be able to draft scientists and facilities for the war effort. In 1943, government scientists, most notably Vannevar Bush, voiced agreement with the spirit of Kilgore's proposal, but opposed the bill's aim to involve government administration of science funding and patent sharing. As the war neared its end, many prominent scientists feared a peacetime Kilgore plan. The Kilgore Committee, in an effort to mollify scientists concerned with a government-run funding agency, proposed calling the proposed organization a Foundation, to give the superficial impression of a private, philanthropic funding body like the Rockefeller Foundation. The scientists running the war-time Office of Scientific Research and Development sought to bypass the Kilgore Committee in forming a postwar science policy. While ostensibly working with Kilgore to plan for a science administration, Vannevar Bush privately obtained an invitation from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to write his own plan for a government-funded science foundation. Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington introduced a proposal based on Bush's report, Science, the Endless Frontier, in July 1945. The report contradicted much of Kilgore's vision of a science-funding organization accountable to the government. Kilgore felt betrayed by Bush's failure to mention this alternate bill, and remained on hostile terms with Bush for years afterwards. After many months of negotiations with interest groups of scientists and manufacturers, Kilgore and Magnuson introduced a modified bill to fund the National Science Foundation in 1946, which did not pass. At the same time, Republican Senator Alexander Smith of New Jersey introduced a bill for an agency more similar to Bush's vision. The Smith bill passed both houses of United States Congress. Kilgore encouraged his former colleague, now President Harry S. Truman to veto the Smith bill, in large part because of the potential it made for the military to dominate scientific research. Truman followed Kilgore's advice and let the bill expire through a pocket veto. Kilgore also encouraged Truman to establish a Presidential Research Board to be led by John Steelman, former Director of the War Mobilization and Reconversion, which Truman then did in October 1946. By 1948, other agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the United States Department of Defense had been established to fund specific domains of scientific research. The National Science Foundation would now solely fund basic science. In early 1948, Truman, Steelman, and Senator Smith reached a compromise in administration of the foundation. Later that year, Kilgore and Smith cosponsored the bill that President Truman would finally sign on May 10, 1950 to establish the National Science Foundation.
