Three Good Friends

It was George III who coined the cynical phrase, "Every man is good enough for any place he can get." Two centuries later, the grumpy king's observation fits the theory of government often used in Harry Truman's Administration of George III's former real estate. A good recent example: the association of Donald Dawson, still the White House patronage dispenser, and his two good friends, William E. Willett and Francis P. Whitehair.

In June 1948, Dawson had the President name Willett as one of RFC's five directors. A regular luncheon companion of Dawson's and of E. Merl (Mink Coat) Young's, Willett was willing to do some favors in return. To give big loans to politically correct companies and individuals, he switched RFC examiners and overrode his own reviewers. After the Fulbright committee's investigation of the RFC, the Senate, in February 1951, refused to confirm his appointment.

While Willett was being chased out of public office, another friend of Donald Dawson's came scurrying in. Francis P. Whitehair is a bushy-haired, 51-year-old De Land, Fla. politician with a fat law practice in other states. Donald Dawson got him the job as chief counsel to the Economic Stabilization Agency.

At ESA, Whitehair gathered a staff of his old buddies around him. "I had to call on my friends," he explained. "I had to make doggone sure there were no Commies around the place." Entrenched there, he started looking for something better. When he went job hunting at ESA, Bill Foster turned him down flat. But by August, after some fancy footwork on the White House carpets, Whitehair was appointed Under Secretary of the Navy.

At the Pentagon, Whitehair has acted like a smalltime politician in an oversize job. During business hours, he regularly keeps admirals with high-priority business stacked waiting outside his plush-lined office, while he leisurely hashes over old times with political cronies. An expert fence mender, Whitehair recently had the Navy postpone a minor ship-recommissioning ceremony, at Green Cove Springs, Fla., until he could get down there last week to harangue the home folks.

One of Whitehair's most urgent tasks is to clear up the desperate housing shortage for sailors and their dependents at expanding Navy installations. Last week he named a special assistant to take care of this problem, which, the Pentagon professionals insisted, is "a topflight executive job." The appointee, classed as a "manpower" expert, was none other than Whitehair's--and Donald Dawson's--good friend William Willett, out of a job ever since the Senate kicked him out of RFC.

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