Capital Notes: Behind the Scenes

Pentagon Discipline. In drawing up President Eisenhower's 1961-62 defense budget, each service is throwing in a little bit of money for a little bit of everything, in hopes that the Kennedy Administration can be sold on as many pet projects as possible. But the exercise may well be futile. After long conversations with Defense Secretary-designate Robert McNamara, Pentagon Research Chief Herbert York (who will stay on for a while in the next Administration) tells friends that the Defense Department will soon come to feel a "new discipline" in the development of new strategic weapons systems (there are seven now in development and operation*). Says York: "The desperation is gone—the helter-skelter grabbing for new approaches and variations on new approaches which we have had in the past.'' In a way, the Kennedy Administration is coming in at an opportune time, he believes. "The duplication and false starts we had were kind of necessary. We learned a lot from it, including how not to do some things." Kennedy Hater. Massachusetts' outgoing Governor Foster Furcolo is boiling mad at his treatment at the hands of the Kennedys, and he doesn't care who knows it. Under Kennedy pressure he named Kennedy's Harvard roommate, Gloucester Businessman and Sports Fisherman Benjamin Smith II, to fill Jack Kennedy's Senate seat for two years (TIME, Jan. 2).

When Smith showed up last week at Furcolo's office at the Governor's request to pick up his qualification papers, he was kept waiting for 2½ hours. Then a secretary told him that the Governor was ill at home ("I understand perfectly," said Smith); whereupon two women commissioning officers administered the oath of office. Next day Furcolo was back at work.

Shifts in the Wind. With the State Department's Charles ("Chip") Bohlen talked about for a top ambassadorship (possibly Paris), Democrats in Washington were continuing with the fascinating game of musical State chairs. Under Secretary (Political Affairs) Livingston Merchant would like to go to the Court of St. James's, but probably will draw a post somewhat less prestigious. J. Graham ("Jeff") Parsons, Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs, is hoping for the big job in Tokyo. Ambassador Henry Byroade, who was exiled from Egypt, first to South Africa and then to Afghanistan, by John Foster Dulles (he was a casualty in the U.S. policy switch on Nasser's Aswan Dam project), is expected to do better under the new Administration. And State's top information job, now held by Assistant Secretary Andrew Berding, is in for fierce competition. Favorite candidate among State people is genial Roger Tubby, 50, who was a press officer there from 1945-49, later became Harry Truman's press secretary, and worked hard for Kennedy in the campaign.