Townes was attempted to make highly focused beams of sub-millimeter radiation, a much smaller distance than the centimeter wavelengths which were standard at the time, and was struggling with refining the method using photons.
I.I Rabi and Polykarp Kusch attempted to persuade him to give up the work, believing that it was a lost cause, and importantly, they were pulling research funding from the same source as Townes, but because he had tenure he could be neither fired for lack of results, or ordered around.
Going to be honest, this is- well, I want to be disgusted with the idea of shooting down someone else's dream in order to make room for yours to fly, but I am certain that the pressure of obtaining funding for cutting edge scientific research will bring the worst out of someone.
I suppose I will settle on: whatever is necessary to make sure scientists engage in as little of such pawn kicking as possible should be done, because this is above their station.
Nonetheless, humans will human but at least it will be done without the motivation of freeing up researching by snuffing other scientific projects.
Though he was under pressure from senior administration, Townes stood his ground and delivered the expected results of his research roughly two months after this encounter, the Maser, which was the prototype from which the Laser was advanced.