The Daily Alaska empire. [volume] (Juneau, Alaska) 1926-1964, 1943-02-15
BY HERMAN ALLEN
AP Feature Writer

WASHINGTON The capitals
Mystery Men-those administrative
assistants President Roosevelt chose
because of their passion for anon
ymity"-are living up to their ad-
vance billing in varying degrees.
On the whole they've managed to
keep themselves fairly dark.
Although Congress authorized the
President to appoint six admins
trative assistants, he at present has
only four on his staff. They are
David K. Niles, William H. Mercy
nolds. Lauchlin CuITie and Lowell
Mellett. Ranking right alongside
with them, however, are Eugene
Casey, listed as an executive assist
ant: and Wayne Coy, liaison officer
between the President and the Of
flee of Emergency Management,
overall agency which h e DIS up
WPB. OCD, OPA and the rest of
the wartime establishments.
The one who has most consist
emily buried himself in anonymity
is David K Niles. This short, stocky
veteran of Massachusetts, politics,
a Harvard graduate, was assistant
to Harry Hopkins when Hopkins
was administrator of WPA and Sec
rotary of commerce. Later he be-
came an advisor on labor matters
in the OPM and WPB. He was APP
pointed an administrative assist
ant last August, the most recent
appointee.
He has kept himself out Of the
newspapers. off the radio, away
from lecture platforms He never
theless has an enormous first-name
mountaineering and can get al
NEST any job done for the Presi-
dent by simply picking up phone
and calling some big shot
William H. McReynolds, gov
eminent servant for 40 years, has
known F'DR since his New York
days. He's a smooth locker, grey
ing of hair, who will smoke sew
eral cigarets during half hour in
terview.
To McReynolds, a personnel ex-
pert. goes the credit for simplify
ing the civil service rules for the
duration of the war He also takes
proud credit for arranging for
many wartime agencies to use ex-
listing statistical and research out
fits rather than set up new ones.
Lauchlin Currie, unobtrusive,
sandy-haired, a native of Nova SEQ
tia, is the Presidents contact man
with China, where he travelled last
year on an economic assignment
from FDR, and Canada. Modestly
he will admit that Il believe l NAV
have been of some slight service to
the President from time to time"
Currie toys constantly with an
ivory cigaret holder while talking
but he actually smokes few cigarets.
There is a signed portrait of Chang
kai-shek on the mantlepiece of his
ornate State Department building
office. Cali the assistants are quar-
tered in row in that venerable
old monument)
Lowell Mellett-called by some
the most dangerous man in Wash
lngton" and by others lone of the
most important"-was editor of a
Washington chain newspaper for
Is years but quit his $2O,0OO-a-year
job in 1887 because he and his boss
couldn't agree about Presid en- t
Roosevelt. He soon became head of
the National Emergency Council,
then slow-pokey agency which did
such chores as looking up infor-
nation for congressman to use in
making speecles
Mellett organized a really eff
iicient CoIc-rment information SER
vice, branched out into doing spade
work fc- such things as the Wage
end Hour Law He took over, too,
the controversial study of economic
conditions in the South.