Situations Wanted

> After four years as Assistant Interior Secretary, Jack Horton is back on his 10,000-acre ranch in the foothills of Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains. He rises as early as 4 a.m. to tend his 400 Herefords, but also hopes to use his Washington experience as an environmental consultant. Says he: "You owe the world much more than to just go back and lock yourself up on a ranch."

> Having spent four years as the Defense Department's $42,000-a-year director of defense research, Malcolm Currie got six-figure job offers from three aerospace companies. He decided to go to Culver City, Calif., as a $180,000-a-year vice president in charge of Hughes Aircraft's guided-missiles projects. They include a $150 million contract to adapt the French-West German Roland antiaircraft missile for use by U.S. forces, that was awarded while Currie was in the Pentagon.

> As Solicitor General for four years, Robert Bork may be remembered best for sacking Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973 on Richard Nixon's orders. Now Bork has job offers from seven gilt-edged law firms "and invitations to teach law at Chicago, Michigan, Princeton and Yale. Says he of the Saturday Night Massacre: "The people who have jobs to offer aren't troubled by it."

For most of the 2,200 former top officials of the Ford Administration who lost their jobs when Jimmy Carter became President, unemployment has not been a terribly traumatic experience. Many are going back to old jobs. Others are parlaying Government service into new careers, or better jobs than they had before. A few seem to be in no hurry to decide which jobs to take.

Carla Hills, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, will do some teaching at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and has also signed on as a director of both IBM and Southern California Edison. But her husband, Roderick, is hanging on as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission until April 1, so the Hillses are putting off a decision on whether to return to the Los Angeles law firm that they founded 15 years ago. Says Stanley Pottinger, who is remaining at the Justice Department for a few months to wind up his investigation of past abuses by the FBI: "This is the first time since law school that I've been at a point where anything is possible again, and I'm finding it exciting."

Bitten by Potomac fever, many are trying to stay in Washington. John Marsh, Ford's White House Counsellor, and ex-Transportation Secretary William Coleman will practice law in the capital. Ending a 25-year career in the Foreign Service, Kremlinologist Helmut Sonnenfeldt will teach at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

Many went back to their old careers: former HEW Secretary David Mathews as president of the University of Alabama; former Deputy Pentagon Chief William Clements as chairman of Sedco Inc., an oil well-drilling firm in Dallas; and former Federal Energy Administrator Frank Zarb as head of Shearson Hayden Stone's investment banking department in New York City. Says Zarb: "You always miss people, old friends, old places. But it took me about ten minutes to get adjusted."

As dean emeritus of Purdue's school of agriculture, ex-Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz has already adjusted quite nicely. Says Butz, who spends most of his time talking to farm groups for up to $2,000 a speech: "I've discovered that what I'd been giving away, I could make money on. Gosh, I've got seven more talks lined up now, in Illinois, Ohio and Iowa." Former Treasury Secretary William Simon, who has political ambitions, is a client of the same Los Angeles public relations firm that handles Ronald Reagan. Soon he will be airing his views on politics in radio commentaries, speeches and a syndicated newspaper column titled "Simon Says."

God's Country. In his new job as director of the University of Tulsa's National Energy Law and Policy Institute, Kent Frizzell will earn only $2,000 a year more than the $42,000 he made as Under Secretary of the Interior. But he has found other compensations. "I'm back to God's country and sanity, and frankly, it's cheaper to live out here."

Many former Republican officials will make up their minds about the future after long vacations. Former Environmental Protection Administrator Russell Train went sailing in the Bahamas and left word that he wanted no ship-to-shore communications.

Former Interior Secretary Thomas Kleppe is mulling over job opportunities from his home. Says Kleppe: "For 40 years I've awakened each morning wondering what the next crisis would be. Now I don't have any."

For several dozen middle-level officeholders, however, a crisis is emphatically at hand. These are the lesser-known appointees who were given office space for a month by the Carter Administration to use as a base of operations for their job hunting. When the month was up, almost all the occupants of the various "Dearth Rows," as they were promptly dubbed, had to clear out. How come the Democrats were so generous in the first place? No mystery. They might be needing the same kind of favor four or eight years hence.

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