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THE MAN ...Sherman Adams
THE NEWS ...Acting President 

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~USN&WR Photo

If It's O.K. With Adams,
It's O.K. With Eisenhower

They're calling Mr. Adams "acting President" now. He shuttles between Denver and Washington, making decisions, overseeing the entire Government operation, while Ike convalesces.


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Reported from 
DENVER and WASHINGTON

FOR THE DURATION of President Eisenhower's illness, Sherman Adams, a taciturn and sometimes brusque New Englander, has become, for all practical purposes, the "acting President" of the United States.

Mr. Eisenhower's heart attack brought Mr. Adams hurrying home from a European holiday. He paused briefly in Washington to get lines of authority clear, then sped on to Denver, brushed reporters aside with a typical "I don't hold press conferences" and set up shop as operating head of the Government.

The President wants it that way. He is accustomed to leaning heavily upon Mr. Adams. Word of the latter's arrival obviously cheered him, gave him a new feeling of reassurance and confidence. It meant that things would work much as they had in Washington, that the White House staff, now seasoned and smoothly meshed, was in operation as usual.

Arrival of Mr. Adams was a relief, too, to the very small group of White House people in Denver. James C. Hagerty, Press Secretary and ranking official at the summer White House in the first days of Mr. Eisenhower's illness, gladly packed up all the official business he had been handling and placed it on Mr. Adam's desk.

This desk, of an unornate, work aday variety, is in a small office on the second floor of the Lowry Air Force Base administrative building, across the hall from the room that was Mr. Eisenhower's working headquarters before his illness. Mr. Adams, arriving with no personal staff or office help, borrowed a secretary and went into action. 

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Mr. Adam's powers. In Washington, Mr. Adams, whose title is Assistant to the President, has great powers. He screens documents, problems and issues, gets conflicts of opinion settled at lower levels, sees that only the most important questions go to the President. When a document bears Mr. Adams's "O.K.-S.A.," Mr. 
Eisenhower signs without hesitation.

It has been working the same way in Denver. When Mr. Adams arrived, the President was being prepared for sleep. A routine but necessary document dealing with State Department personnel awaited presidential initialing. It was thought best that the President's physician, Maj. Gen. Howard McC. Snyder, take the paper to him. Dr. Snyder did so, told Mr. Eisenhower that Mr. Adams had arrived and

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-United Press
THE WHITE HOUSE
...the chain of command leads to Denver



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approved the document. The President smiled and signed his full name. 

As Mr. Eisenhower's strength increases, Mr. Adams sees him from day to day. He brings in noncontroversial papers to be signed, but, for the present at least, only those on subjects that would not be taxing to the Chief Executive. One of them was a letter asking Vice President Richard M. Nixon to continue presiding at meetings of the Cabinet and the National Security Council. 

Mr. Adams also plans to attend those meetings, flying to Washington for two days each week. For the time being, there is no expectation that he will be carrying presidential ideas and comments to these sessions. As Mr. Eisenhower improves, however, that probably is to be the case.

Decisions. Numerous questions must be settled in the weeks ahead without troubling the President. To that extent, Mr. Adams's powers are considered to have been increased. And, if some great crisis should arise that could not be taken to Mr. Eisenhower, the expectation is that Mr. Adams would make the decision. Throughout the Government, his word has come to be accepted as a command from the President.

But Mr. Adams's power is exercised largely through the White House staff. He has only to lift his telephone to be connected with the White House switchboard, and through it with the staff, or any agency of Government. The staff, itself, is largely his creation and he is its boss.

Top staff man in Washington is Maj. Gen. Wilton B. Persons, the Deputy Assistant to the President. He is an old Army friend of the Chief Executive, a man with a gift for pithy comment, and one who knows Washington and politics.

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, Oct. 14, 1955