Calling the Handyman

One of the strongest threads in the fabric of President Johnson's Administration winds back to the New and Fair Deal days of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Those years yielded in time a national unity on matters of foreign commitments and domestic crises that knit President and populace in almost runproof harmony. Though it is frayed today by dissent over Viet Nam, Johnson would like nothing better than to reknit the cloth of American purpose. Last week he seized an opportunity to do so. To succeed Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense, the President chose Clark McAdams Clifford, 61, a veteran Washington lawyer and presidential confidant who is both loyal to Lyndon and well liked by key Congressmen, a trusted figure in three Administrations and yet one who is completely his own man on any subject of contemporary relevance.

The choice was a Johnsonian sur prise in the best tradition. In the Washington rumor mill, Clifford's name was considered among the least likely of a short list headed by ex-Deputy Defense Secretary and Troubleshooter Cyrus Vance and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Nitze. His quietude and age militated against him for a job that--next to the presidency--is the crudest and most demanding job in Government.

Vantage Point. Political handyman for three Presidents, Clifford has liked it that way since he left the White House in 1950 after mapping Harry Truman's 1948 "Give 'em Hell" campaign. His only major official tie to Government is the unpaid chairmanship of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which oversees all espionage operations. Yet from this unobtrusive vantage point, Clifford is counted one of the five most powerful men in Washington next to the President. With McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare John Gardner, he formed part of the small, leakproof ring of Johnson's cronies, privy to the Government's most hermetic secrets and summoned to advise on questions of great moment.

It was the tall (6 ft. 2 in.) and ruddy-cheeked Clifford who was selected by John F. Kennedy to program the takeover of power from President Eisenhower in 1960. And it was Clif ford's cool, analytical arguments against extending the 1965 Christmas pause in bombing North Viet Nam that have lingered in the President's mind as right --even though Johnson bowed to other pressures and grounded the planes for 37 days. Clifford was called to the White House Situation Room when war flared in the Middle East last June and Mos cow activated the "hot line." And it is Clifford who gathers trusted friends for good food and barbershop harmonizing at his Kensington, Md., home when a lonely President telephones and asks: "Can I come to dinner?"

Clifford treads the corridors of power with sure feet, exuding cool aplomb and "command presence." He helped draft the 1947 and 1949 laws that unified the armed forces and has maintained a close liaison with both the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright admits that his close personal friend "certainly has great qualifications."

Energy & Hours. Clifford has a bonhomous delight in political and social intercourse that will rule him out as a recluse in the Pentagon's E Ring. Nor is he expected to keep McNamara's crushing twelve-hour work days, which of late have been devoted to next year's mammoth $77 billion defense budget and his telephone-book-sized annual review. Though almost completely restored after a debilitating bout of Asiatic hepatitis he brought back from a mission to Viet Nam in 1965, Clifford still has to pace his energies.

Politics and Clifford came together by accident. Leaving his successful law practice in St. Louis for a wartime naval staff job, he was abruptly summoned to the White House in July 1945 for a five-week stint filling in for

Presidential Naval Aide Jake Vardaman, an old St. Louis friend. Harry Truman's eye was soon caught by Clifford's precocious polish, and he asked him to stay. By early 1946, Clifford had become one of Truman's most intimate advisers.

Though rarely an innovator, Clifford realized early that Harry Truman was America's common man. As the President's popularity plummeted, Clifford's stubborn loyalty and combative instinct helped turn Truman's fortunes in 1948. Battling an ulcer, he went all the way with H.S.T. for 22,000 whistle-stopping miles and saw him snatch victory from odds-on Favorite Tom Dewey.

In 1950, Clifford resigned--in need of big money for his family. Today he heads one of Washington's most lucrative law offices, with a gilt-edged roster of corporate clients who prize his insider's knowledge of governmental processes as well as his legal acumen.

To avoid any conflict of interest, Clifford last week pledged to sever his ties with his firm and liquidate his holdings. "I will have but one client from now on," he declared. "And that client will be the United States."

Even so, his tenure in the Pentagon is likely to be brief. If President Johnson is re-elected in November, he is expected to seek younger men for his Cabinet. Meantime the Pentagon brass does not envisage radical changes. Clifford admires McNamara's administrative innovations, cost analysis and emphasis on flexible response to aggression. And on the crucial question of civilian rein on the generals, alterations are likely to be subtle, as McNamara's stern hand yields to Clifford's velvet-gloved persuasion. The new Secretary's reading of history--and the history he has lived--convinces him that civilian suzerainty is vital.

There is no doubt among those who know him that Clifford agrees wholly with Lyndon Johnson on the aims and conduct of the war. After his trip through Southeast Asia last summer with Maxwell Taylor, he enthusiastically reported that "the allies are on the right track." A man of rare experience in Federal Government, he has neither the temperament nor stamina to concern himself with minutiae, as McNamara did. On the other hand, he has a grasp of the military and congressional mechanisms that his predecessor, for all his innovative brilliance, could never quite master. Most important, he understands the mind--and has the complete confidence--of Lyndon Baines Johnson. However long Clark Clifford may serve as Secretary of Defense, he will run a taut shop.

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