Return of the Expert

If a little learning is a dangerous thing, a lot of it can also get a man into trouble. Specimen: handsome, polished Career Diplomat Charles Eustis Bohlen, 55, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines. Tabbed back in 1929 to become a Russian expert, "Chip" Bohlen got to be so fluent in Russian that he was picked to be Franklin Roosevelt's interpreter at the wartime meetings with Stalin. As a result, Bohlen had to carry around the never-quite-erasable mark of Yalta, and grievances about Yalta stirred strenuous Republican opposition on Capitol Hill in 1953 when President Eisenhower named Bohlen Ambassador to the U.S.S.R.

In Moscow, Bohlen now and then felt it was his expert's prerogative to differ sharply with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who once complained that there were two State Departments--his own and Bohlen's. As soon as Bohlen's standard four-year tour was up in 1957, Dulles took him out of Moscow and sent him to Manila. After Dulles' death, top State Department careermen urged Secretary of State Christian A. Herter to bring Chip Bohlen back into his special field of U.S.-Soviet relations. This week the State Department announced that Expert Bohlen had been named to head a new policy-planning staff that will advise Herter on cold-war diplomatic strategy.

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