The Administration: The Hawk-Eyed Optimist

For nearly a year, while Lyndon Johnson, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara agonized over whether to step up the U.S. air raids on North Viet Nam, one presidential adviser consistently argued that the bombing of the petroleum depots around Hanoi and Haiphong was vital to the U.S. war effort. Now that the President has accepted that approach—also urged on him by the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the insistent adviser's influence in the Ad ministration's inner circle has increased considerably. The man: Walt Whitman Rostow, 49, the garrulous, determined special assistant who three...