Nation: Most Happy Dropouts

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A job in the White House may be short on pay and long on L.B.J. But for every presidential assistant who quits, a pot of gold is waiting just outside the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Indeed, the White House may be the only U.S. institution whose dropouts almost always make good.

Job offers start pouring in on a presidential assistant from the moment he begins looking restless. Larry O'Brien, who was openly eager to quit as Lyndon Johnson's Capitol Hill strategist before he was appointed Postmaster General, had any number of offers from private business at salaries up to $100,000 a year. Though U.S. publishers and big industrial companies have always looked kindly on job applicants who can produce references from the President, no graduating class has ever cashed in as handsomely as the New Frontiers' oldtimers.

Books & Beer. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Theodore Sorensen, who each earned $22,500 a year at the White House, expect to make $500,000 apiece on their memoirs of the Kennedy years. Speechwriter Richard Goodwin, who resigned last week, has been offered $250,000 for his J.F.K.-L.B.J. reminiscences—if he cares to write them. Lawyer Myer Feldman, who quit last March as counsel to the President, is making many times his $28,500 White House salary as a partner in a Washington law firm. And, of course, Feldman is writing his memoirs.

Yet another J.F.K.-and-I saga is forthcoming from former Frontiersman Kenneth O'Donnell, who vowed to keep silent after reading Eisenhower Speechwriter Emmet John Hughes's book about Ike. In O'Donnell's words: "You're in a man's office, and he trusts you, and then you do that—it's almost like a Peeping Tom." He was persuaded to write a book nonetheless. Meanwhile, says O'Donnell, he has turned down offers of corporation jobs paying up to $500,000 a year. Reason: he intends to run for Governor of Massachusetts next year.

Other Administration dropouts have found room at the top without writing a line about the Cuban crisis or J.F.K.'s opinion of Dean Rusk. Andrew Hatcher, a Negro who earned $18,000 as assistant White House press secretary, is now market-promotions manager for the Ballantine beer outfit. Another former press aide, Malcolm Kilduff, whose chief claim to fame is that he announced Kennedy's death to the press in Dallas, is in the $50,000-a-year bracket as a partner in a Washington public relations firm.

Lancer to Wayside. Many who join Government, of course, are already distinguished in their fields and serve at a financial sacrifice. But the long-term rewards are worth it. Before being tapped by Kennedy as Internal Revenue Commissioner at a salary of $21,500, Mortimer Caplin was earning $50,000 a year in his tax law practice; since returning to private life more than a year ago, he has built up an income that "runs into six figures." Last week Najeeb Halaby, a onetime Navy test pilot who resigned last July after four years as administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency ($30,000 a year), was elected a senior vice president and board member of Pan American World Airways at $60,000 a year, plus a $35,000 year-end bonus, plus substantial stock options.