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"Pete" Quesada's 34,000-men FAA makes and enforces the rules and sets the safety standards for everything dealing with civil air in the nation (and at 414 U.S.-controlled stations abroad). Its authority reaches from design and construction of aircraft and components—down to the seats, lap belts and ashtrays—to ground maintenance, straight through to pilot and crew competency, aircraft operation, and the whole interlocking circuitry of air-traffic control.
Fellow with a Fuse. No other federal agency chief wields as much power as Quesada (or causes as much furor). Every morning he barges out of his rented town house on California Street in northwest Washington carrying the last night's bundle of homework, hops into the rear seat of a chauffeured, telephone-equipped Government Lincoln and heads down the avenue. In his cherry-plywood-paneled office, he pulls off his jacket and goes to work standing up. Pacing the floor, he rattles his points over the phone (President Eisenhower is "Sir," everybody else "Fellow"), dictates a blistering letter, or officiates at a staff meeting.
When he lunches at his desk, his wife, Kate Davis Pulitzer Putnam (widow of a World War II flyer, sister of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Editor-Publisher Joseph Pulitzer Jr.), sends his food over by messenger. His easy smile, his compact, 183-Ib. frame and close-cropped, curly hair help him when he wants to be charming—and his short-fused temper is almost legendary. "Pete wants to hear a clear and specific answer, or 'Yes,' 'No,' or 'Maybe,' " says one staffer. "God help anybody who starts to answer Quesada with a speech in explanation for having goofed off. His bawlings-out are fierce. He's no brilliant guy, but what he does have is a helluva sense of duty and principle in public service." "