Fishing Trip

What with Watergate and economic woes, TV news coverage of the Federal Government rarely ventures into whimsy. On Sunday evening, however, CBS will devote a prime-time hour to a documentary about an innocent's tour of the bureaucracy during which the tourist learns little but the viewer gleans much.

In Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington, Veteran TV Writer-Producer Andrew A. Rooney is allowed to poke into agency offices, asking impertinent questions and sizing up the federal establishment. The winner of an Emmy and other awards, Rooney has written TV essays on such subjects as doors, chairs and bridges. His beat is not politics, and at first his meanderings through the capital seem almost pointless. Yet he is a master at extricating the revealing from the commonplace, and he soon accumulates enough eccentric encounters to indicate that Franz Kafka would feel at home in Washington today.

No Replies. Rooney visits the General Services Administration to ask for a list of Government-owned buildings in Washington; GSA demands $150 for the index. He attends a ceremony honoring Government workers for cutting down on paper but begins to realize that the occasion has generated reams of memorandums and press releases.

Repeatedly, Rooney tries to phone one private contractor who is presumably performing the innocent task of rewriting all Navy technical manuals on a 9th-grade reading level; no one will talk to Rooney. He stops by to chat with Admiral Frederick Palmer, who is directing the textbook project for the Navy. The Admiral admits that he is not familiar with the name of the company or the contents of the study. Rooney drops in on a congressional committee session to hear a New Hampshire Congressman defend disaster relief for people in ski areas where there is no snow. The reporter asks wanly, "Is not snowing a natural disaster?" Though Rooney never finds out anything very substantive, his excursion is worthwhile. Gratuitous secrecy, he reminds his audience, flows through Washington as naturally as the Potomac. It would be useful if TV, and print journalism as well, waded into the shallows more often to see what the little fish are doing.

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