There is the matter, too, of Theodore Sorensen, President Kennedy's former aide and Carter's choice as director of Central Intelligence. On January 13, the appointment, seemingly unexceptionable, runs into "unexpected difficulties," reports the Times. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been shown two Sorensen affidavits concerning the celebrated "Pentagon Papers"-the classified documentary record of U.S. involvement in Vietnamese affairs. The affidavits say what every member of the committee understands perfectly well: that the classification system is grotesquely overblown, that high-ranking officials, Sorensen included, routinely use "top secret" files in writing their memoirs; that the Pentagon Papers had posed no threat whatever to national security. Fury, nonetheless, sweeps through the Intelligence Committee. Pentagon Papers no threat? Liberals join hands with conservatives, with the John Birch Society, with every rabble-rouser of the Right they can muster, to block the appointment of Sorensen.

The President-elect in Plains, Georgia, knows nothing of this until January 15 when Senator Byrd, at his regular Saturday press conference, announces that Sorensen's confirmation faces "considerable difficulty." What is more, he tells the press, he doesn't think he will endorse Sorensen either. Heep's knife quivers in the director-designate's back. Carter says a few words in Sorensen's defense, but the President-elect has no stomach for this fight. On Monday, January 17, the first day of the confirmation hearings, Sorensen, "with trembling hands," reads to the committee a "strident" defense of his character against "scurrilous and personal attacks," against "outright lies and falsehoods." He defies those "who wish to strike at me, or through me at Governor Carter." Upon saying which he withdraws his name from consideration as

director of Central Intelligence.