General Service

The most controversial man in Washington last week was settling down to work in his freshly painted, light green office in the Executive Office Building. "I'm not an institution and I'm not an agency," Maxwell Davenport Taylor told friends, as he described his brand-new job as Military Representative of the President. "I'm an individual trying to be of service to the President."

Exactly how handsome Max Taylor, a onetime Army Chief of Staff and a longtime military rebel, would serve John F. Kennedy was the subject of nervous conversation all over the Pentagon. No one thought for a moment that Taylor would be a yes man, or that he would serve President Kennedy simply as a briefing officer. Suspicious of Kennedy's motives and Taylor's plans, the armed forces have called a truce in their internecine feuds about budgets and missions; they have closed ranks for a possible cold war with the White House. Cracked one Pentagon civilian: "They've stopped arguing about how the pie gets cut up; they're worried there won't be any pie."

The Pentagon has good cause to worry. President Kennedy, blaming the Joint Chiefs of Staff in part for his Cuban troubles, was determined to get fresh military advice. And, recently, he let it be known around Washington that he was gravely disappointed by the Joint Chiefs' performance on contingency planning for Laos, South Viet Nam and Berlin.

Pinched Pentagon. In April, Kennedy was even prepared to fire Army General Lyman ("Lena") Lemnitzer, the tradition-bound chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The President was ready to give the job to Taylor. But Politician Kennedy quickly foresaw the outcry that would surely roil both the Pentagon and Capitol Hill; he decided instead to put Taylor on his personal staff.

Since then, Kennedy has taken the trouble to assure Lemnitzer that his counsel will still be heard. Remembering how difficult it was for him to break through to Dwight Eisenhower, Taylor has told the Joint Chiefs that he will help, not hinder, their access to the President. Furthermore, Taylor has pledged himself to inform the Joint Chiefs about any advice he gives his boss. Whenever possible, Taylor has said, he will consult with the Joint Chiefs before he sees the President. But Pentagon brass is still convinced that in a pinch. President Kennedy will rely on the advice of Max Taylor rather than on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

inside Man. There already is an example on record. When Taylor heard that the Army was planning to scrap the mobile 13,700-man "pentomic" divisions he had devised in 1956, the former general complained so bitterly to the President about the trend back toward the 16,000-man divisions of World War II that the plan was promptly shelved. To the Pentagon, this sign of power was ominous enough, but what really worried the brass was the fact that Taylor could so strongly influence Kennedy last May--a long month before he got his new job on the White House staff.

To make matters worse last week, the Pentagon was also smarting because President Kennedy had sent the F.B.I, sniffing through its long corridors searching for the source of a news leak about Berlin. And to put the final, bleak touch on the whole situation, Washington military men noted well at week's end that the crisply pressed man with the military bearing who flew off to Hyannisport for top policy conferences about Berlin with President Kennedy was none other than General Maxwell Davenport Taylor.

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