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Opinion of the Court
the President. Id., at 598; see also Leazes 22-23. The GCCA also ordered the dissolution or liquidation of all government corporations created under state law, except for those that Congress should act to reincorporate; and prohibited creation of new Government corporations without specific congressional authorization. 59 Stat. 602; cf. 31 U. S. C. § 9102.
Thus, in the years immediately following World War II,
many Government corporations were dissolved, and to our knowledge only one, the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, was created. See Leazes 25, 27. In the 1960's, however, the allure of the corporate form was felt again, and new entities proliferated. Many of them followed the traditional model, often explicitly designated as Government agencies and located within the existing Government structure. See, e. g., Foreign Assistance Act of 1969, § 105, 83 Stat. 809 (creating the Overseas Private Investment Corporation as "an agency of the United States under the policy guidance of the Secretary of State"), as amended, 22 U. S. C. § 2191 et seq. (1988 ed. and Supp. V). Beginning in 1962, however, the Government turned to sponsoring corporations that it specifically designated not to be agencies or establishments of the United States Government, and declined to subject to the control mechanisms of the GCCA. The first of these, the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat), was incorporated under the District of Columbia Business Corporation Act, D. C. Code Ann. § 29-301 et seq. (1981 and Supp. 1994), see 47 U. S. C. § 731 et seq., with the purpose of entering the private sector, but doing so with Government-conferred advantages, see Moe, supra, at 22. Comsat was capitalized entirely with private funds. See Seidman, Government-sponsored Enterprise in the United States, in The New Political Economy: The Public Use of the Private Sector 92 (B. Smith ed. 1975). In contrast to the corporations that had in the past been deemed part of the Government, Comsat's board was to be controlled by its private
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