THE PRESIDENCY: Time for Streamlining

All morning and all afternoon some of the biggest names of U.S. foreign policy slipped unobtrusively into the White House for top-secret meetings. Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr. was in and out of the President's office all day; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Arthur Radford hurried in through a side door, his aides carrying wooden easels and maps and charts covered with plastic blankets. On hand for two of the secret meetings was Central Intelligence Agency Director Allen Dulles, along with Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss. As the warm day's light began to fade across the trim White House lawns outside, the inner core of the National Security Council went into a deep huddle around the President's desk.

What was going on? What was the activity all about? White House correspondents badgered Presidential Press Secretary James Hagerty for the word. Hagerty checked inside, reported back that there was no new "crisis or emergency." Instead, said Hagerty, the U.S. officials were holding what he called "a review and discussion to see that there is a coordination of the various departments of the Government concerned with this situation in the Middle East."

Great Need. Behind Hagerty's reassurances there hovered a big story. All week the President had been measuring in army-staff fashion the pluses and minuses of the way the U.S. Government had conducted itself during the crisis, the personalities involved (who had done well, and who had not), above all, the lessons to be learned and applied to the future.

Ike was not pleased with the machinery for long-range U.S. policy planning. The Middle East crisis, he believed, proved a great need for "an increase in depth" in the U.S.'s foreign-policy planning staff. For almost four years Secretary of State Dulles has carried much of U.S. foreign policy around the world in his hat; when Dulles was stricken with cancer at the height of the crisis, the U.S. was also sorely stricken. And although Ike respects Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr., he respects him primarily as an administrator. At one point in the crisis the President wanted to bring in his old wartime chief of staff Walter Bedell Smith as a temporary foreign-policy adviser, but Hoover earnestly objected. The President, aware of the Cabinet officer's traditional fear of "advisers" inserted between the Cabinet and the presidency, heard Hoover out and dourly canceled Bedell Smith.

Old Hand. Since Dulles' illness, Ike has, in effect, been acting as his own Secretary of State (even to the point of dictating some of the more important diplomatic cables). Indications are that he will continue to keep this dominant role. But some shoring up is necessary in the Department of long-range policymaking. One day last week the President recalled to Washington Robert Cutler, 61, a heads-up Boston fiduciary who, before going back to private business (Old Colony Trust), did a first-rate job (1953-55) of streamlining coordination between the National Security Council and Cabinet departments. Cutler's new assignment: presidential assistant in charge of long-range approaches to long-range problems, particularly in the Middle East (see box).