All but Indispensable

Threading the black Defense Department limousine through Washington's morning traffic, Chauffeur Clarence Mason wheeled smartly up to the Porter Street house in the capital's Cleveland Park section. Mason's assignment: to pick up Deputy Defense Secretary Donald A. Quarles and deliver him to a 7:45 a.m. television date on Dave Garroway's Today show at the NBC studios. Ordinarily, punctual Don Quarles was on hand when his car rolled up; this time Mason settled down to wait. Then he noticed the morning newspaper still lying on the doorstep. Walking uncertainly into the quiet house, he found Donald Aubrey Quarles, 64, dead in his bed of a heart attack.

Quarles's death shocked Washington. Day before, he had apparently been in the best of health. Like clockwork he had followed a normally busy schedule: a National Security Council meeting, lunch at his desk with Presidential Science Adviser James Killian, a conference with Defense Secretary Neil McElroy, a briefing on progress of the Air Force's nuclear powered airplane, a dinner party at the Metropolitan Club, and an Air Force concert at the Lisner Auditorium. But Quarles's death was more upsetting for its effect on the Pentagon. After two years as Defense Secretary, Neil McElroy planned to return to Cincinnati and Procter & Gamble in the fall (TIME, March 16). Topping the list of possible successors: Donald Quarles, eminently suited with his scientific and administrative background and his six years of Defense Department experience.

Desk Work at Night. Arkansan Quarles studied mathematics and theoretical physics at Yale ('16) and Columbia, once played guitar in the band of Bazooka Man Bob Burns, a Van Buren fellow townsman. Quarles spent 34 years with Bell Telephone Laboratories and the Western Electric Co., helped develop World War II's radar. Eventually, as president of Western Electric's subsidiary

Sandia Corp., he supervised Atomic Energy Commission special-weapons development. In 1953 Quarles was named Assistant Defense Secretary for Research and Development, took charge of U.S. missile and satellite planning, gained Pentagon renown for late-night desk work and a penchant for drinking cups of plain hot water. In 1955 he became Air Force Secretary. Two years later he moved up to Deputy Defense Secretary, became Charles E. Wilson's closest adviser.

As a man with the ear of Charlie Wilson and later of Neil McElroy, courteous, forceful Donald Quarles made enemies. He refused to favor old Air Force friends, chopped their budget as severely as the Army's and Navy's. From Quarles's office came the orders for cutbacks and stretch-outs in defense contracts, for a slowdown on wild-blue-yonder research, for an end to competitive missile programs--all to keep the Defense budget within bounds while the U.S. maintained a weapons "sufficiency."

Multiple Choice. McElroy at first said that his deputy's death would have no effect on his own departure, qualified the statement to indicate that he might stay on. Washington, meanwhile, buzzed about successors for either job. Mentioned: U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Defense Department Comptroller Wilfred McNeil, AEC Chairman John McCone, Dwight Eisenhower's SHAPE Chief of Staff, General Alfred M. Gruenther, president of the American Red Cross.

But in the talk of successors one fact came clear: in his quiet, effective day-today operations, Don Quarles would be sorely missed as the Pentagon's all-but-indispensable man.

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