THE ADMINISTRATION: Through the Turnstile

¶ "Reluctantly and with genuine regret," Harry Truman last week announced the resignation of Dean Rusk, 42, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. In four years, Rusk jumped up the State Department ladder from an assistant division chief to a spot as a top policymaker. Rusk and Secretary of the Army Frank Pace alerted Truman in the critical hours of June 26, 1950, before the President decided to order MacArthur to meet Communist aggression in Korea. Rusk's new job: president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

¶ Two days after Rusk's resignation, George McGhee, 39, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs, exchanged one of the hottest and broadest portfolios in Washington for appointment as Ambassador to Turkey.

¶ Temporarily, the State Department is filling both McGhee's and Rusk's posts with career diplomats: Middle East Expert Burton Y. Berry and Far East Specialist John M. Allison. Probable permanent successor to McGhee: West Pointer Henry Byroade, 38, an Army colonel on detached service, who is now running State's German Affairs Bureau.

¶ Dean Acheson's right-hand man, Under Secretary of State James E. Webb, is seriously considering leaving the department himself. In three years, Businessman Webb, a 45-year-old North Carolinian, overhauled the State Department's administration, made sense out of the old welter of overlapping bureaus and responsibilities. Ailing since an attack of virus pneumonia several months ago, he wants a rest.