No. 22

It seemed routine enough: the White House last week announced the appointment of Ambassador to Chile Robert F.Woodward, 52, as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. But behind that appointment lay five months of incredible confusion and frustration within the New Frontier. Before Woodward, no fewer than 21 persons had been sounded out for the Inter-American Affairs job. Such candidates as Ellsworth Bunker, retired Ambassador to India, and Carl Spaeth, dean of the Stanford University Law School, had politely but firmly rejected it. And Bob Woodward accepted only because, as a career diplomat, he had little choice.

There was plenty of cause for the massive aversion to the job. The Assistant Secretary is supposed to blueprint the State Department's Latin American policy for presentation to the Secretary of State and the President; he must also defend that policy on Capitol Hill. But under the Kennedy Administration, other New Frontiersmen have come to dabble deeply In Latin American affairs. They include U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, currently on a good-will tour in Latin America; Kennedy Aides Richard Goodwin, architect of the Alliance for Progress program, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and Mc-George Bundy; and Adolf Berle, chief of a "Latin America task force." And to add to Woodward's future problems, New Orleans' Mayor deLesseps Morrison, accepting a post as Ambassador to the Organization of American States, last week blandly let it be known that he considers his new job as outranking that of the Assistant Secretary.

During his 1960 campaign and since, John Kennedy repeatedly urged that the U.S. adopt new and progressive policies toward Latin America. In any such approach, the Assistant Secretary should be a key man. But in the maze of the New Frontier, the Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs can get lost--and never be missed.

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