Change & Chatter

The announcement of Henry Cabot Lodge's appointment was made by a White House press secretary who had himself been appointed only five hours before. He is Bill D. Moyers, 31, who will take on the press secretary's job in addition to his duties as President Johnson's top administrative assistant and occasional speechwriter. Moyers will fill in for George Reedy, 47, who took a leave of absence that seemed likely to be permanent.

The Taylor-Lodge, Reedy-Moyers switches were only two in a whole series of Administration changes. Among the others:

>Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert, 53, resigned, giving way to Harold Brown, 37, the Defense Department's director of research and engineering, a Ph.D. in physics and one of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's original Pentagon whiz kids.

>U.S. Information Agency Director Carl T. Rowan, 39, one of the highest ranking Negroes in the Federal Government, stepped out. A John Kennedy protege, Rowan has been increasingly restive under Johnson. No replacement was named.

>Major General Chester V. (Ted) Clifton, military aide to President Johnson as he was to President Kennedy, is retiring from the Army even though he is only 51. Succeeding him will be Air Force Major James U. Cross, 40, pilot of the President's JetStar since February 1964.

>Defense Department Comptroller Charles J. Hitch, 55, resigned, effective Aug. 31; his place will be taken by Robert N. Anthony, 48, a Harvard professor of business administration.

>Dr. Leona Baumgartner, 62, an assistant administrator of the Agency for International Development, resigned, even while praising President Johnson for having "given women an opportunity to serve on a broader scale and in more varied fields of activity than any other President in our history." Dr. Baumgartner's resignation followed by less than a week that of Dr. Mary I. Bunting, 54, who retired as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission to return to her position as president of Radcliffe College.

>John C. Bullitt, 39, the U.S.'s executive director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, resigned to become head of New Jersey's anti-poverty program; he will be succeeded by former Under Secretary of State Livingston T. Merchant, 61.

All these changes added some flame to the smoldering speculation around Washington that the Johnson Administration is in for a wholesale reshuffling. Involved at the top of most rumors is Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who is said to be wearying of his job and to be out of favor with President Johnson. Leading the rumor list of possible successors: White House Foreign Policy Adviser McGeorge Bundy; Defense Secretary McNamara, who once made the observation that no man ought to stay more than five years on the same job and who, by that standard, has about served his time in the Pentagon; and former Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, a Republican who has had a lot of State Department experience.

While the who-will-succeed-Rusk game went on, there was also plenty of speculation about the reason behind Reedy's departure. By any accounting, President Johnson's recent press relations have not been good, and it was all too easy to assume that he was trying to improve them by dumping George Reedy. The fact was that Reedy took leave for physical, not vocational reasons. He has long suffered from a painful hereditary condition known, rather unpleasantly, as hammertoes, in which shrinking tendons curl the toes downward and lock them into permanent cramp. He wears corrective steel-plated shoes that weigh three pounds each, but to remedy the ailment will probably require a series of operations involving severing the tendons and bone fusion.

President Johnson would never have fired his old friend Reedy, but he did take the occasion of Reedy's departure to upgrade the office of press secretary by appointing Moyers, perhaps his brightest, most trusted young aide, a fellow Texan, an ordained Baptist teacher (not preacher) and, unlike Reedy, a member of the Johnson hierarchy who ranks high enough to participate in top-level policy discussions. As the President obviously figures it, these credentials are more than enough to make up for the fact that Moyers' press experience has been limited, and that he has had almost none as a working reporter.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.