They Just Couldn't Say Goodbye

By all the precepts of life in official Washington, Congress should have reacted to a bureaucrat named Herve L'Heureux like a fat man trying to get a burr out of his shirt. Not only does his name have a suspiciously foreign ring (actually he was born in New Hampshire), but the very fact that L'Heureux is a member of the State Department could have been enough to earn him the chill on the hill. Added to that, his job is one calculated to stir the suspicion of every politico who keeps an eye on the grand old flag--as chief of the visa division, he has been responsible for the delicate and controversial business of admitting foreigners to the U.S.

But last spring, when he prepared to give up the job--under the terms of a law which prohibits foreign-service officers from staying in the U.S. more than four years at a stretch--members of both houses suddenly discovered that they just couldn't say goodbye. There were reasons.

At 52, ruddy-faced, stocky; pipe-smoking Herve L'Heureux is a man who knows more about the habits, eccentricities and problems of Congressmen than most Congressmen themselves. In the 1920s, an ex-sergeant of the A.E.F., he got a job running an elevator in the Capitol, and not only transported Presidents Wilson, Harding and Coolidge in his car, but used it as a vantage point to absorb the lore and atmosphere of Capitol Hill.

He went to college classes at odd hours, was graduated, and finally got a job in the State Department. But during years abroad, as U.S. consul in Windsor, Ont., Stuttgart, Antwerp, Lisbon and Algiers, and as consul-general in Marseille, he did not forget his memories of Washington. When he came back to the capital as head of the visa division, he confined himself to rigid administration of the immigration laws, surrounded himself with experienced men, kept a policy of complete honesty and forthrightness with legislators. His policy worked out so well that even Nevada's crusty Pat McCarran, self-appointed watchdog of the gates to the U.S., once called the visa division "an American fifth column in the State Department."

Last month, as a result, Congress made its first exception to the Foreign Service Act of 1946. Both houses voted unanimously to keep L'Heureux in Washington for at least another year. Unknowingly, they also gave him a vacation. Last week, because Speaker Sam Rayburn had not signed the bill before the House's summer recess, L'Heureux was at home in Chevy Chase, improving his vacation hours by painting his ten-room house. This week, the ex-elevator boy will be back protecting what Congress described as "the best interests of national security."

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