Topside Rumor

Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal had made no bones about the fact that he wanted to resign, but beyond that he was keeping his plans strictly to himself. He was bitterly .opposed to the Army-Navy merger--many a Washington politico guessed that the President's advocacy of the plan would hasten his departure from office. But whether Forrestal returned to private life after the holidays, or stayed on until the merger fight was finished, sources close to the White House were confident that his successor had been picked.

Said Washington dopesters: the President, who had previously picked wavy-haired John L. Sullivan, the Navy's Assistant Secretary for Air, had now definitely settled on California's rich oilman, Edwin W. Pauley, who had raised millions for the Democratic Party as its treasurer from 1940 to 1945.

At first glance Ed Pauley seemed like a doubtful choice--there could not fail to be bitter debate over his heading a department which controls so much of the nation's oil reserves. He knew little about the Navy. But big, energetic Ed Pauley had a broad background of achievement in private life--he had founded an oil company, directed a bank, helped operate a big construction company. And he had done a shrewd, sound job for the President in sizing up the reparations picture in Germany and Japan. Harry Truman liked him and trusted him; but some of the President's advisers doubted that he could get him past the Senate.

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