Someone to Talk Back to the Boss

The man who is leading Henry Kissinger's campaign to get back into the good graces of a skeptical and even hostile Congress made his reputation by skillfully handling an equally difficult group. From 1964 until 1973, Robert J. McCloskey, 52, had the unenviable task of serving as the spokesman for the State Department. Day after day, it was his job to meet the press and explain the U.S. position on Viet Nam.

McCloskey accomplished the task with such candor, clarity, diligence and wry humor that he became one of the truly rare Administration officials to emerge from the Viet Nam ordeal with his name not only intact but enhanced. When he left to become U.S. Ambassador to Cyprus in May 1973, McCloskey was given a dinner by the National Press Club. Peter Lisagor, the crusty Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Daily News, declared at the time: "It is just plain remarkable that a public affairs official could be so esteemed."

When the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war broke out, Kissinger recalled McCloskey to act as State's spokesman. Last week was McCloskey's first as Kissinger's ambassador to Capitol Hill, a job described by an aide to the Secretary as "one of the toughest in Washington right now." "He won't have much to tell us," says Democratic Senator Adlai Stevenson III. "But if he's tough and honest, he may have an opportunity to tell his boss a thing or two."

McCloskey's job will be to explain Congress to Kissinger and vice versa. He will be running an early warning system that will try to resolve potential conflicts before they explode into bitter confrontations.

With his lean good looks, impeccable tailoring and unflappable poise, McCloskey seems the very model of a Brahmin born to wear striped pants. But McCloskey has worked as a bartender and a newsman and fought as a Marine during World War II.

On occasion, McCloskey's hot Irish temper has proved a match for Kissinger's shouting, fist-slamming outbursts. That undiplomatic trait may stand McCloskey in good stead when he tries to tell his boss a thing or two about dealing with a Congress that is determined, as they say on the Hill, to be in on the takeoffs of U.S. foreign policy as well as the crash landings.

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