The Men Lyndon Likes

The new President of the U.S. received his Washington rearing under the New and Fair Deals, not the New Frontier--and he counts among his most valued advisers some who have been considered rather old-hat during the past three years.

Among these are such elder statesmen as Dean Acheson, 70, to whose acerbic tongue Kennedy liked to listen --but whose advice he did not often accept. Then there are Benjamin Cohen, 69, Thomas ("Tommy the Cork") Corcoran, 62, legal-eagle wheeler-dealers of the early New Deal days, and James H. Rowe, 54, now a Washington law partner of Corcoran's and a longtime Johnson political adviser. Spanning the Truman and Kennedy administrations is Washington Lawyer Clark Clifford, 56, a peerless behind-the-scenes political troubleshooter who is as close to Johnson as he was to Truman and a bit closer than he was to Kennedy. And then there is Lawyer Abe Fortas, 53, a New Deal brain-truster who served as F.D.R.'s Under Secretary of the Interior, and more recently has been retained as an attorney for a Johnson protege, ousted Senate Majority Secretary Bobby Gene Baker.

President Johnson can certainly be expected to consult with these old associates--although not necessarily to appoint any of them to high office. Who are the men Lyndon may reasonably be expected to bring into his official family, at whatever level?

Close to the Top. Johnson has always been a Texan of Texas loyalties. And his closest political associate in Texas was certainly Governor John Connally, 46 (see following story).

Another Texan whom Johnson vastly admires is Robert Anderson, 53, who was one of the first men he saw after taking over (see U.S. BUSINESS). Still another high-caliber Johnson favorite is Army Secretary Cyrus Vance, 46, a West Virginian who worked between 1957 and 1960 as special counsel for up-and-coming Lyndon Johnson's Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee. Vance is the odds-on choice to succeed Manhattan Lawyer Roswell Gilpatric as Deputy Secretary of Defense. Likely to follow Vance as Army Secretary is Assistant Navy Secretary Kenneth BeLieu, 49, a former staff director for that same subcommittee.

Top Staffer. Then there are the men, as yet little known to the public, who are likely to become known as members of the President's personal staff. As Congressman, as Senator, and as Vice President, Johnson always worked his staffers to the limit, often cussed them in front of outsiders. Yet in the demands he made on them, many found rewards that kept them at their jobs.

Foremost among these is Bill Moyers, only 29 but an on-again, off-again Johnson aide for nearly a decade. After two years at North Texas State College in Denton--where he was twice elected class president--Moyers joined Johnson's Washington staff as a vacation-time helper in 1954, turned in an impressive performance. At summer's end he went home, acquired a journalism degree at the University of Texas while working part time for Lady Bird's television station in Austin.

To Johnson's disappointment, Moyers at first bypassed a Washington career, spent a year as a Rotary fellow at Scotland's University of Edinburgh. Then he announced that he had been called by God, returned to Fort Worth's Baptist seminary, and in 1959 was ordained. Only a few months later, at Johnson's urging, Moyers finally went to Washington, where the Senator began to lean heavily on him as a speechwriter and all-round political handyman.

Moyers was named executive assistant for Johnson's 1960 vice-presidential campaign, but became restless again and left to take a job with Sargent Shriver's Peace Corps. There, he told Johnson, he could best satisfy his urge to serve mankind. Within two years he was Shriver's deputy. Last week Moyers appeared once again as a top untitled aide to the President.

Special Chat. Another longtime Johnson aide is a rumpled bear of a man (6 ft. 2 in., 250 lbs.) named George Reedy, 46, who was a Capitol Hill reporter for United Press when he joined Johnson's staff in 1951. When Johnson became senate majority leader, Reedy served as staff director of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

Fellow Texan and onetime Accountant Walter W. Jenkins, 45, has been closer to Johnson longer than anyone else on his personal staff. Jenkins joined Johnson in 1939, only two years after he was elected to Congress, and quickly became his top administrative aide. He performed as political watchdog and personnel manager, answered Johnson's mail and mined assiduously for information to keep Johnson briefed. A Johnson friend remarked in the campaign days of 1960, "He is the one man who can hold L.B.J. together. The Senator talks with him an hour a day no matter where he is."

Finally, within hours of President Kennedy's assassination, Johnson called in U.S. Ambassador to Finland Carl Rowan, 38, for a chat. Since Johnson's problems of the moment hardly included the diplomatic climate in Helsinki, it seemed certain that Rowan was getting a job offer. A Negro and a onetime reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune, where he won awards for his reportage of U.S. racial tensions, Rowan was named Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs in 1961, was a Johnson adviser on the Vice President's travels abroad. Speculation had it that Press Secretary Pierre Salinger might be one of the first New Frontiersmen to leave, with Rowan taking over.

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