Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1947-08-24
Modern Version Of The Thinker
His Mental Operations
Are Protected by
Tight Secrecy


Of the Undersecretary of State. It
was instructed to develop long
range policies which would guide
the departments decisions and
operations. Mr.. KEENAN, was desig-
mated as director. For executive
secretary was chosen Carlton Saw
age, former assistant to the Sec
rotary Of State, who was once a
high school principal in Oregon.
There is at present a corps of
four deputy thinkers, who may be
increased to five or six. They are
John Patton Davies. jr., who was
born in China and is the staf1's
expert on the Far East; Jacques
Joseph Reinstein, a career man
whose speciality is economies; Ware
Adams, whose field service has been
mostly in Germany and Austria,
and Joseph Esrey johnson, for
mer professor of history who joined
the State Department in 1912 and
is an authority on Latin America.
'Boyish' Diplomat
The staff members meet in a
room next door to Secretary Mar
shall's private Office. No corridor
or anteroom separates them. There
is a connecting door There are
no telephones in the room, no in
dividual desks and no outgoing and
incoming baskets of paper work.
There is nothing in the room, in
fact, but a long table with eight
leather chairs.
Mr.. KEENAN,, the chief, was born
in Milwaukee February is, 1904,
and has therefore, attained the dip
lomatically boyish age of 43. His
primary schooling was in Germany,
where I. he learned the language.
Princeton gave him a bachelors
degree in 1925. He entered the
foreign service the following year,
and has held posts in Geneva, Ham,
burg, Berlin, Tallinn, Riga, Kovno,
Vienna, Prague, Stockholm, Lisbon
and London.
Like Bohlen, he chose Russian as
his language speciality, and became
a master of that difficult tongue.
Altogether he has served three tours
of duty, aggregating four years, in
Moscow, under Ambassadors Will
liam c. Bullitt, w. Averell Harri-
man and Bedell Smith. His dis
patches were particularly valuable
during the Iranian, crisis of 1916.
He has been a profound student
not only of Marxist, but OF Rus
sian literature, and he has been
heard to express a wish that he
might find time to write life of
Chekhov. His favorite books are
Platos Republic" and Gibbons
Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire" in which he finds COM
ments applicable to government to-
day. He is learnedly read in Shake
speare, Tolstoi and Dostoevsky.
A Secret Farm
Mr.. KEENAN, is nearly 6 feet tail
and spare of figure. His complexion
is fair and his piercing eyes are blue.
The face, intense, sensitive and in
telligent, is surmounted by a fore
mead the altitude of which is en-
phasized by slight badness. His wife
was a Norwegian girl, Annalise Soc
renson, and they have two very
active young daughters. His exercise
consists of physical labor over week
ends on his farm somewhere in
Pennsylvania" It's precise location
also appears to be "a diplomatic
secret"
His new post requires eminent gifts
for both thought and imagination.
Luckily the two faculties in Mr..
KEENAN, are powerful and evenly
balanced His spare moments are
divided between Plato and the piano
or guitar. He is a passionate musi-
clan as we'll as an ardent reader.
The public may boast of him as a
servant Who at one and the same
time is philosopher and artist.
fpv s,ecieI .rronoennent with the AZ
Louis-Post Dispatch.)