Changing the Guard

Almost as often as they wonder when Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson will retire, Washington pundits speculate on who will succeed him. Last week a logical candidate moved closer to the job. Into the second-in-command post of Deputy Secretary went slight (5 ft. 9 in., 140 Ibs.), mild-mannered Donald A. Quarles, 62. In 1955 Industrial Scientist Quarles (Western Electric, Bell Labs) succeeded the late Harold Talbott as Air Force Secretary, impressed Wilson and Washington by quietly, capably directing a crack Air Force. At Defense, Quarles succeeds Reuben Robertson Jr., who is leaving after two years to return to private industry (Champion Paper & Fibre Co.).

A sound thinker who takes balanced viewpoints, Engineer-Scientist Quarles as Air Force Secretary maintained deep interest and close touch with his first love--research--but never favored it unreasonably. Nor has he overfavored the Air Force itself.* Preparing a 1958 budget, Quarles helped trim preliminary requests totaling $23 billion down to $17.7 billion. Then he went up Capitol Hill to assure Congress calmly that, rather than ask for more, he felt $17.7 billion was sufficient to buy the kind of airpower the U.S. needs.

Quarles's promotion was one in a sweeping series of Pentagon shifts. Items:

R Named Air Force Secretary: James Henderson Douglas Jr., 58, longtime Chicago corporation lawyer who has been Under Secretary since 1953, served as President Hoover's youthful Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. A subpar golfer during student days at Princeton, Cambridge and Harvard Law, he advanced in 1921 to the British Amateur quarterfinals, still shoots in the mid-1970s, though he plays only occasionally.

P: Nominated to succeed Admiral Arthur W. Radford as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in August: Air Force Chief Nathan Farragut Twining, 59, first airman to hold the nation's top military job.

Sounded out informally, Nate Twining refused, looked instead toward retirement. Asked by President Eisenhower to become chairman. Soldier Twining accepted.

P: Picked as Air Force Chief of Staff: General Thomas Dresser White, 55, Twining's vice chief since 1953. Graduated from West Point at 18 (in the accelerated class of '20), White spent much of his early career as a military attache (Russia, Italy, Greece, Brazil), studied Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Italian. Though he commanded the Marianas-based Seventh Air Force in World War II and the postwar Fifth in Japan, he has made his Air Force mark as a staff officer, has held the Air Force's key staff job: deputy chief for operations.

P: Selected as Army Vice Chief of Staff: General Lyman Lemnitzer, 57, replacing General Williston Palmer, who will go to Europe to be deputy U.S. commander in chief under NATO Commander Lauris J. Norstad. Paratrooper Lemnitzer succeeded General Maxwell Taylor as Far East Ground Commander and chief of the U.S. Far East Command, is an odds-on favorite to follow him as Chief of Staff.

In the whole appointment pattern there was further indication that Old Soldier Dwight Eisenhower is spreading the staff idea through Government, has shaped "deputy" into a potent word.

* Leading Washington punsters to dub him "Interservice Quarles."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.