Candidate in Orbit

No sooner had Minnesota's Democratic Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. returned to his Capitol Hill office last week than an emissary from the Central Intelligence Agency's Director Allen Dulles arrived on the scene. CIA's Dulles wanted to see Humphrey immediately about his 8 1/2-hour Kremlin visit with Nikita Khrushchev. A little later Atomic Energy Commission Chairman John McCone called with an urgent request for an appointment. Humphrey settled by arranging to meet everyone in the office of Under Secretary of State Christian Herter right after his special midafternoon news conference. And that event, as the tumult mounted, was moved from Humphrey's office to the Senate Armed Services Committee room to accommodate the 100 newsmen who were on hand to hear much the same material that Humphrey had already disclosed to reporters in Europe (TIME, Dec. 15).

Manner & Tone. Dulles, McCone, Herter, et al. were so impressed that they urged Hubert Humphrey to arrange another session to brief State Department, CIA and AEC second-stringers not only on his conversations with Khrushchev but on the techniques of "informal diplomacy" while abroad. Next morning Humphrey went to the White House, spent more than an hour with Dwight Eisenhower, reported that Khrushchev had told him that the Soviet Union has a five-megaton nuclear weapon that employs only one-tenth as much "dirty" fissionable triggering material as old bombs, although U.S. intelligence has picked up no evidence that any such "clean" weapon has ever been tested.*

Khrushchev's other highly touted "secret," relayed via Humphrey, was that Russia has built an ICBM with a 14,000-km. (8,700 miles) range, but has yet to test it. Ike was not surprised at the range, since such a distance is within theoretical reach of the rocket engines that powered Sputnik. The President was more interested in Humphrey's report on Khrushchev's general manner, physical appearance, tone of voice. Democrat Humphrey left the President's office to savor the experience of occupying the center of the world's biggest Republican news stage as White House correspondents crowded around him, five-deep. Later, rounding out the acclaim, State Secretary John Foster Dulles called with a well-done message from Walter Reed Hospital.

Bugs & Jimmy. Columnists' comments were heady indeed. Humphrey, said New York Timesman Arthur Krock, had pulled off "the launching of the first American presidential campaign from the steps of the Kremlin." Headlined David Lawrence's column: KHRUSHCHEV-HUMPHREY TALK TOUCHED ON RELIGION, MORALS. Glowed Doris Fleeson: "It's a very merry Christmas for Hubert Humphrey." The New York Times's Washington Bureau Chief James Reston, noting that Washington had long been skeptical of Humphrey, wrote of a reappraisal: "He has been suffering for years from the original impression he created here as a gabby, to-hell-with-the-consequences liberal . . . Hubert Humphrey is still a pretty glib and cocky fellow, who looks like a cross between Bugs Bunny and Jimmy Cagney, but the Senate has amended its opinion of him upward in the last six years." Democratic Elder Stateswoman Eleanor Roosevelt said that Humphrey comes closest of all top Democratic presidential possibilities to having that "spark of greatness" that the next U.S. President will need.* And from California's Congressman James Roosevelt came word that Mother knows best.

As for Hubert Humphrey, he could only enjoy it all--without being actually carried away. "Last year at this time," crowed a Humphrey aide, "it was Sputnik was in orbit. This year it is Humphrey in orbit." Said shrewd Presidential Hopeful Humphrey, overhearing the remark: "It will be O.K. if I stay in orbit longer than Sputnik."

* The U.S. has exploded a 20-megaton bomb, has succeeded in reducing fallout from H-bombs by at least 95%.

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