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Show 84 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER from the attorney-general, and I have been assured of a prompt decision." Sheppard59 declared that the combined forces of the worst drouth in history and the controversy over the Colorado River had placed California in a precarious economic condition. California must know without any question of doubt how much water it possesses, but "we are asking for no behind-the-scenes settlement. We are fighting in the open, and we are asking the highest court in the land to say whether we are right or wrong." On March 24, 1948, Poulson attacked the Recla- mation Bureau for illegal lobbying and propagandizing, telling Congress that Secretary of the Interior Krug and Reclamation Commissioner Straus had been personally circularizing the members of Congress in favor of the Central Arizona Project, and taking sides in a bitter inter-state controversy. 60 Because of the drouth in California, Governor Warren had declared a state of emergency existed, and Gearhart told his colleagues that "this menacing shadow is the result of the controversy between Arizona and California. It is imperative that this be settled. Nothing could be more reasonable than to have Congress in- struct the attorney-general to take the matter before the Supreme Court." 61 "This is a fight for self-preservation," Poulson told Congress in an address in which he reviewed the contro- versy.62 Congressman Richard M. Nixon63 wrote to Com- missioner Straus on April 5, 1948, requesting that the Bureau furnish him with the names of landowners who would benefit from the Central Arizona Project. It was his purpose to determine whether speculators had con- |