Pentagon, Anyone?

Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson, is ready and all but packed to leave Washington, but Dwight Eisenhower won't let him go. Reason: the White House is having an unbelievably hard time finding a replacement for "Engine Charlie."

The hunt'began as long ago as last fall, and the big possibility was General Alfred Maximilian Gruenther, the President's old Chief of Staff and president of the Red Cross. But feelers put out by the White House indicated that Congress was not too happy about having a retired general as Defense Secretary, and. anyway, Al Gruenther was not too anxious to get back into Government harness. Next man up was John Hannah, president of Michigan State University, who did a thorough job as Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower and Personnel) in 1953-54; he could not be persuaded to leave East Lansing again. Then the big name on Pentagon lips was Ralph J. Cordiner, president of General Electric and sponsor of the thoughtful Cordiner Committee plan to streamline the pay scales of the armed forces to provide incentives for bright younger men (TIME, May 20). The Administration rebutted the Cordiner Report at first reading because it was costly, but it wanted Cordiner as just the tough executive to handle the Pentagon's $38 billion-a-year defense budget. Ralph Cordiner preferred to stay with G.E.

One day last week, the New York Herald Tribune ferreted out the newest name on the growing list: Clarence Randall, 66, retired head of Inland Steel Co. and special assistant to the President on foreign economic policy. Randall was offered the Pentagon. He had turned it down cold.

That left three more possibilities: 1) Fred A. Seaton, Nebraska newspaper publisher, onetime Assistant Secretary of Defense (under Wilson), interim Senator, later White House staffer and now Secretary of the Interior; 2) Navy-minded Wilfred J. McNeil (a rear admiral in the Reserve), comptroller of the Defense Department in both the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, who says modestly that he thinks that a big industrialist' should get the job; 3) air-and missile-minded Donald A. Quarles, onetime Bell Laboratories executive, later Secretary of the Air Force, now Deputy Secretary of Defense, a scientist and methodical thinker who was considered a shoo-in until vague but potent word got around that the President had misgivings that Quarles had not yet developed a big-picture mind --not enough forest, too many trees.

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