THE CABINET: Whispers in the White House

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The inside struggle for power in the White House is a struggle as thick with political intrigue as the palace politics of a French court.

The men around the President—Tommy Corcoran, Harry Hopkins, Ben Cohen, Adolf Berle Jr., William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, William Bullitt, Robert H. Jackson, Samuel I. Rosenman, and the other "brain guys"—pass unrecognized on any streets but Washington's. The views of each of these Presidential advisers differ radically in practically every respect except devotion to the Boss. Berle and The Cork enthusiastically dislike each other; Hopkins has "stabbed" Corcoran so often that the Janizariat often wonders if there is a fresh spot left for the knife. What they all now think of Associate Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy could not be printed, although not many months ago they spread rumors that Murphy was a saint in a sack suit.

As the President turned again to business, finance and industry for help in the defense crisis, as the defense program became not just one new bureau but the whole Washington operation, the mutually distrustful Janizariat found a new unity, began to scheme how to regain their lost control.

Some of the truth about the incredibly tangled situation leaked out from Washington last week in little whiffs of rumor, in planted "true stories" circulated by each interested faction. The whole truth would have to wait for historians. In general outline, the plan appeared to be like this: On or about April 1 the President is to appoint Corcoran as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in charge of air. Perhaps sooner, Robert Lovett* will be made Assistant Secretary of War in charge of air. Robert Lovett, 45, a World War I Navy ace, publicly an unknown, is an able, coolheaded New York investment banker (a partner in Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.), sympathetic to the New Deal, came to Washington through his partner, W. Averell Harriman, the 49-year-old financier soon to go on London duty with Ambassador John Winant. Corcoran & Lovett, according to the plan, are to work as a team of New Deal Beaverbrooks on the major defense problem: airplanes.

The PDQ. OPM is scheduled to be replaced by a new super-super defense agency, when 1) the Lend-Lease Bill is passed, 2) the "tooling-up" period of defense is well along (TIME, Feb. 24). The superagency, known to wisecrackers as the PDQ, is to consist of four Cabinet members: State, War, Navy, Treasury. This setup would keep the defense and aid-to-Britain programs directly under the President, would permit straight-line production by the single-order system: Britain to the Treasury to Army and/or Navy to Britain, under State Department counsel, with Winant, Cohen & Harriman as London receivers and order placers.

The chairman of this supergroup, corresponding to Bernard Baruch in the World War I effort of the U. S., should, by rank and weight, be the Secretary of State. But sainted Mr. Hull, full of years and ill health—and no New Dealer—is not to be it. The New Dealers, who admire Mr. Hull but not his views, will just have to await his retirement.