There is no yeastier time in Washington than the start of a new Administration. Everything is suddenly different--faces, names, programs, style. So the members of our bureau found it last week as they reported for this week's cover story. The Ford White House had been relatively open (certainly compared with the fortress-like conditions of the Nixon era), but so far at least the Carter Administration is even more accessible.

Bruce Nelan, who last served in Washington in the late '60s and is now back covering the Pentagon, found that "officials' doors are literally open. It's surprising and refreshing." Chris Ogden was pleased to note that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's second official meal (after lunch with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin) was dinner with several State Department correspondents, including Ogden.

Phil Taubman was amazed when Bert Lance, the new director of the Office of Management and Budget, urged reporters to call him at home if they had questions. Phil took up his offer, found that Lance answered his own phone, and was invited to the Lances' home the next day. A few weeks earlier, Hays Gorey got Griffin Bell's number from the Atlanta directory and had a long, friendly telephone chat with the Attorney General-designate.

Bonnie Angelo, covering the White House, found the Carter people in their new quarters "as amiable and open as they were in Plains." She was also struck by "the overnight transformation of colleague into source." TIME's Jerrold Schecter has moved from his diplomatic beat to the newly created Administration post of Associate Press Secretary for the National Security Council.

Meanwhile, Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott, who succeeded Schecter, was already bulldogging Vice President Fritz Mondale on an Air Force Two tour of allied capitals. Talbott has served in Moscow and Eastern Europe, and also covered Henry Kissinger's visit to Peking in 1975. Mondale's on-the-record briefing took place in the same mid-fuselage lounge in which Kissinger used to dispense background information attributable only to "a senior U.S. official." Comparing the experienced diplomat's style with that of the new Vice President, Correspondent Talbott headed his file: "An Old Plane Under New Management."

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