Command Decisions

Into the No. 2 job in the nation's No. 1, public business stepped an alumnus of the solidly schooled fraternity of bankers and lawyers that produced such topflight governmental figures as Dulles, McCloy and Dillon, Forrestal and Lovett. To succeed the late Donald Quarles as Deputy Secretary of Defense, President Eisenhower last week named Navy Secretary Thomas Sovereign Gates Jr., 53, longtime Philadelphia investment banker (see box). In a rare (at least this year) burst of nonpartisan confidence, the Senate Armed Services Committee waived its usual lengthy questioning, unanimously approved him. Gates, said Democratic Chairman Richard Russell, was "admirably qualified." What made Russell's words even more meaningful was the fact that Tom Gates was clearly slated to succeed Defense Secretary Neil McElroy.

With a sense of urgency and an eye on Geneva and Berlin, the Pentagon moved rapidly last week to repair other links in its administrative chain:

Defense Secretary McElroy, 54, who has long yearned to float back to Procter & Gamble (his last salary there: $285,000) to pick up the Cheerful chairmanship and rescue his bobbing stock options, re-evaluated his stand in the light of Quarles's death, said: "I will certainly be here in December." In fact, he will probably stay on the job until around February 1960, help present the defense budget to Congress.

Arthur Radford, 63, four-star admiral (ret.), former chairman (1953-57) of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and one of the finest U.S. military minds, was recalled temporarily as a special Pentagon consultant to help pinch-hit for J.C.S. Chairman Nate Twining, who will be out at least another five weeks while recovering from lung-cancer surgery.

William Birrell Franlce, 65, top-rung accountant and retired New York businessman (onetime chairman of General Shale Products Corp. and plumbing-making John Simmons Co.), moved up from Navy Under Secretary to Secretary.

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