CAPITAL NOTES

Singing

Confided the voice on the phone to Attorney General Robert Kennedy: Bernard Goldfine has some things he wants to talk about. On that word from a go-between for Goldfine, Kennedy sent an aide flying to Boston to hear out the ailing, aged (70) industrialist. Since then, Goldfine has made at least one trip to the Justice Department. The word in Washington: facing tax-evasion charges, Goldfine hopes to sing his way out of a stiff sentence, is telling of previously undisclosed gifts to high Government officials.

"Don't Ask . . ."

To the many Democratic local bosses who grumble that the Kennedys have bypassed them in handing out patronage. New Frontiersmen now have a stock reply that parodies the most famous line in John Kennedy's inaugural address: "Ask not what the President can do for you, but ask what you can do for the President."

The Hero

President Kennedy has signaled full speed ahead for a book on his wartime heroism. With White House approval, the Navy has opened up classified records for the author, Robert J. Donovan, Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Herald Tribune, who also wrote Eisenhower: The Inside Story. Though Lieutenant Kennedy is best remembered for having saved his crew from famed PT Boat 109 after it was sliced in two by a Japanese destroyer in the hostile Solomons. Reporter Donovan says he has rummaged up evidence of earlier, even greater Kennedy exploits on another PT boat. The new biography will get the full treatment: serialization in the Herald Tribune, excerpts in magazines, and, of course, a movie.

In the Doghouse

Newest tenant of the Administration doghouse: General Arthur Trudeau, the Army's chief of research. . Last month Trudeau popped off about civilians who make military policy, was obliged to issue a public apology. Trudeau then circulated a memo, author undisclosed, which damned the U.S.'s "politically sterile" policies in the cold war, called for "developing a guerrilla warfare capability under U.S. sponsorship from refugees from Communist-dominated countries, including Cuba." The Pentagon's civilian chiefs have ordered Trudeau to keep quiet.

Gore & Goldwater

Capitol Hill reporters eagerly stand in line to snatch a few minutes with Senator Barry Goldwater, the most sought-after Republican in Washington, and Goldwater has a tough time fitting in all of the would-be interviewers. Among the disappointed was Playwright Gore (The Best Man) Vidal. assigned by a magazine to examine Conservative Goldwater with a liberal eye. Vidal protested to a Goldwater aide, who, obviously fearing the sharp edge of Vidal's prose, hustled up to Goldwater and warned: "Look, Barry, this is a guy we can't fool around with." Vidal promptly got his appointments.

Nixon's Return

Richard Nixon, who originally planned to stay in the background until June, has switched strategy, and will start swinging next month with speeches in Manhattan, Chicago, Detroit, Columbus and the South. But he will not be the main speaker at the G.O.P.'s big fund-raising dinner in Washington June 1. That honor goes to Dwight Eisenhower, while Nixon will hold forth at a similar dinner in Los Angeles the same evening.

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