THE ADMINISTRATION: Exit Adams

Privately, bitterly. Dwight Eisenhower described it as “the most hurtful, the hardest, the most heartbreaking decision” of his 5½ years in office. The decision: to ask for the resignation of hard-bitten little Sherman Adams, Assistant to the President, next to Ike the most powerful man in the Administration, and the only person of whom Dwight Eisenhower had ever said, “I need him.”

The Sherman Adams verdict was one of the most dramatic behind-the-scenes stories in recent U.S. political history. In a sense, as TIME’S Washington Bureau Chief John Steele reported this week, it had been inevitable ever since last June, when a House investigating subcommittee revealed that Adams had accepted a vicuna coat, $2,000 in hotel bills and other gifts from Boston Textile Wheeler-Dealer Bernard Goldfine. In turn, Adams had interceded for Goldfine with federal regulatory agencies. President Eisenhower’s original decision to stand behind Adams imposed an intolerable double standard on Administration ethics. But in the final result, it was beleaguered Republican political candidates who brought Adams down.

Painful Facts. Last Aug. 20. Vice President Richard Nixon called on President Eisenhower with a painful message: nearly all G.O.P. Senate and House nominees insisted that Adams’ continued presence in the White House was ruining them politically. A day or so later, Republican National Chairman Meade Alcorn added something to the Nixon message; major Republican financial contributors were snapping shut their wallets until after “the Adams mess” was cleaned up.

Shaken by Nixon and Alcorn, the President ordered Alcorn to make a top-secret survey of Republican sentiment at a forthcoming national committee meeting in Chicago. Alcorn’s finding: a near-unanimous opinion that Adams must go.

At the same time, such White House aides as Deputy Presidential Assistant Wilton B. Persons and Presidential Counsel Gerald Morgan were fighting hard to save Adams. But the pressures were too great; e.g., it took all of Alcorn’s powers of persuasion to stop Pennsylvania’s Richard Simpson, chairman of the House Republican Campaign Committee, from publicly demanding Adams’ ouster. When Meade Alcorn returned from Chicago on Aug. 28 with his report to the President, Adams had had it.

Pain in Maine. With agonizing reluctance, Dwight Eisenhower agreed to let Adams go. But he could not bring himself to ask for the resignation himself. To Meade Alcorn, longtime Adams friend and a fellow Dartmouth graduate, went the unenviable assignment of telling Adams. “You’ve got to handle it,” said Ike. “It’s your job, the dirtiest I can give you.” Alcorn was delayed only by a frantic last-minute call from Maine’s Republican Senator Frederick Payne, who insisted that, because both he and Adams had accepted Goldfine gifts, to impute dishonesty by firing Adams would surely beat him in his race for re-election against Democrat Edmund Muskie.

It was much too late for Fred Payne. He got swamped in Maine, and so did most of the Republican ticket. Next morning, fire-Adams long-distance calls poured in on Alcorn as soon as he sat down at his desk (TIME, Sept. 22).

First Caller. Sorrowfully, Alcorn got word to Adams, then off fishing in Canada, that he was wanted back in Washington. Adams knew that there was only one possible reason for his required return. He was back at his White House desk by 8 o’clock the following Monday.

The first caller was Meade Alcorn, who talked for an hour while Adams sat impassively, head thrown back, looking at the ceiling, nibbling on a stem of his glasses. When Alcorn finally finished, Sherman Adams agreed to leave.