Crucially, he managed to secure the support of Carl T. Durham, the chairman of the JCAE. Eisenhower met with congressional leaders on 3 December 1957 and pressed for more discretion to co-operate with all America's NATO allies, not just Britain. Indeed, the administration negotiated agreements with Australia, Canada and NATO. Eisenhower did not yet have wholehearted support for the proposal, but outright opposition from US Senator Clinton Anderson failed to attract much support. On 27 January 1958, Strauss sent Durham the administration's proposed legislative changes, and the JCAE Subcommittee on Agreements for Cooperation, chaired by Senator John Pastore, held hearings from 29 to 31 January. Quarles and Major General Herbert Loper, the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy Affairs, were forced to deal with pointed questions about nuclear proliferation. British information security, or the lack thereof no longer seemed so important now that the Soviet Union was apparently ahead and the UK had independently developed the hydrogen bomb, but the JCAE objected to the terms of the proposed deal to trade British uranium-235 for US plutonium under which the US would pay USD$30 per gram for plutonium that cost $12 per gram to produce in the UK.