A Super Secretary to Shake Up State

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Kissinger's other domestic problem concerns his new subordinates—that vast empire of 12,000 diplomats, code clerks, economic analysts, secretaries and linguists known collectively as the State Department, or Foggy Bottom or, in Kissinger's own term, "the bureaucracy." Bill Rogers is genial and placid, a gentleman to the end, and he liked to keep banker's hours, with golf on weekends. Kissinger is intense, impatient and sometimes rude. He has never administered a large organization; his White House staff numbered a mere 120, all hand picked, closely watched, and driven mercilessly. "I don't know if Henry will be able to live with the bureaucracy," mused one official who knows both the incoming and outgoing Secretaries, "in a way that will satisfy him or the bureaucracy."

Many State Department officials, on the other hand, are prepared to welcome a brisk shake-up if it means that, after years of neglect at the hands of Kissinger's White House staff, the department will once again be thrust into the center of policymaking. "We're on the first team again," gloated a career officer in Paris. Others were biding their time, waiting to see whether Kissinger would genuinely attempt to reorganize and make proper use of the department's human resources—or ignore them and create his own elite, as John Foster Dulles did. In the meantime, Kissinger, well aware that many men at State were uneasy, went out of his way to reassure them last week—in his own way. He praised the department's staffers as "great professionals," but he also urged them to see as much of their wives as possible in the next few weeks, because after his confirmation, he promised, they will be too busy. Did he expect to take any of his White House aides along to State? "I would expect that some of my associates would join me at the State Department to ease the cultural shock," said Kissinger. "But we would keep the agency structure in place."

The question might well be asked why Kissinger would want to take on the State Department bureaucracy at all. As a presidential adviser, he has already become the nation's most important diplomat. Why (except, perhaps, for a salary increase from $42,500 to $60,000) would he want to occupy himself with the endless details of instructing ambassadors, receiving obscure Prime Ministers and princes and even Boy Scouts? Part of the answer is obviously personal: he aspires to the post once held by Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Webster, George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson—a post that, in terms of international prestige, is second only to the presidency. Part, too, is a desire to see his personal accomplishments made permanent.

"What we are going to try to do," he said last week, "is to solidify what has been started, to conclude the building of a structure that we can pass on to succeeding Administrations." But yet another part, and by no means the least important, is a desire to help heal the wounds that have torn his adopted nation. "We've had the legacy of a war that bitterly divided Americans," he said. "Therefore one of the prime objectives of the Administration will have to be to create a consensus [among] the American people and the American Congress."