The newest job in Washington is also the hottest; in addition to being responsible for new U.S. space weapons and weapons defenses, the director of the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency must also be able to defend himself against sharpshooting from Congress and from the three armed services. Picked for the post last week by Defense Secretary McElroy: squarejawed, cool-eyed Roy W. (for William) Johnson, 52, vice president of the General Electric Corp. Johnson will resign from G.E. (but keep "substantial" G.E. stock), take over ARPA April i after two weeks of briefings for an assignment that has no precedent.
A stranger to Eisenhower Washington, Johnson is an old soapsuds acquaintance of his new boss, met Procter & Gamble's McElroy when McElroy approached G.E. to learn about possible markets for his new detergent products. Like McElroy, Johnson has a special flair for organization. He was an architect of the 1951 decentralization plan under which G.E.'s 280,000 employees and 95 separate divisions were spread under 49 managers. He also planned the corporation's biggest venture into consolidation, a 942-acre appliance-making center at Louisville.
Born Sept. 5, 1905, in Michigan City, Ind., handsome Roy Johnson worked his way through the University of Michigan, pushing a hot-dog cart around fraternity row every night. He graduated ('27) with a business administration degree, wrote advertising copy for three years before joining General Electric. In 1939 Johnson left G.E., went to Schick, Inc. under Cordiner. He returned to G.E. in 1944 after a two-year stint with the War Production Board, became a vice president in 1948. Today, with his wife Ellen and daughter Kristine, 11, Johnson lives in suburban Stamford, Conn., commutes to a 41st-floor office in Manhattan, spends spare moments painting oils and watercolors.
Johnson, who gives up a fat salary ($61,000 after taxes in 1956) to go to work for the government (at $18,000 a year), expects to spend two years as ARPA director, hopes by then to have an organization at work that will overlook nothing in the way of a possible U.S. space weapon. His work will parallel Guided Missile Director William Holaday's; unlike Holaday, he will have authority to let contracts and scrub them when experiments do not pan out. With Holaday, he will report directly and frequently to the man who continues to hold a remarkably firm hand on all U.S. defense activities, Neil Hosler McElroy.