Round Trip

When Dwight Eisenhower asked Robert Chapman Sprague to serve as Under Secretary of the Air Force, the choice seemed a good one. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (1920) and a Navy construction expert before he entered private business in 1926, Sprague had served on many a Government- industry committee, knew his way around a bureau. He bustled down to Washington a week before inauguration, spent more time learning his job than any other Defense Department nominee.

Then he ran head-on into the blowup over stock holdings. In an effort to comply with the conflict-of-interests law, he resigned as president of the Sprague Electric Company (electrical and electronic parts) of North Adams, Mass., and got the board of directors to pledge that the firm would do no business with the Air Force while he was Under Secretary. But he refused to sell his $5,000,000 interest (13.4% of the total stock) in the North Adams firm because he did not want out-of-town interests to get control. "Certain members" of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said, told him this plan would pass inspection.

But the White House gave no such ready assurance. Week after week went by with no sign that the President was going to send Sprague's name to the Senate for confirmation. After nearly four weeks, an embarrassed Sprague wrote the President: "Unless I hear from you, I will proceed on the assumption that my name will not be sent . . ." He would stay around two more days, he wrote, then pack up and go home. Two days later, toward evening, Presidential Assistant Sherman Adams telephoned. The President and G.O.P. leaders in the Senate had discussed the problem at breakfast that morning. Their decision: under the circumstances, it would be "imprudent" to ask the Senate Armed Services Committee to confirm Stockholder Sprague.

Last week Robert Sprague snapped shut his bags and quietly headed back to Massachusetts. This week Chicago Lawyer James Henderson Douglas Jr., 53, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in 1932-33 and (as an Air Force colonel) chief of staff of the Air Transport Command during World War II, agreed to take the job.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.