THE ADMINISTRATION: Young Man in the Cabinet

Summoning newsmen for his first press conference in two years, Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., who has a passion for anonymity, announced his resignation from the job that he has held since Ike came into the White House. Reason: a desire to improve family fortunes by returning to private law practice. Successor: close friend and No. 1 aide, Deputy Attorney General William Pierce Rogers, who at 44 will be the youngest member of the Cabinet. It was the third major change in the Eisenhower Cabinet in three months (others: Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson for George Humphrey, Defense Secretary Neil McElroy for Charles Wilson) and brought the average Cabinet age down from 60, as of Jan. 1, to 56.

Shearing the Lamb. Breezy Bill Rogers, the son of an upstate New York paper-mill worker, washed dishes through Colgate, took his law at Cornell, became at 23 a member of New York District Attorney Tom Dewey’s clean-sweeping staff, sometimes presented as many as 40 minor cases a day. After a World War II stint in the Navy he got the job of chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Investigations Subcommittee, then headed by Michigan Republican Homer Ferguson. As a result of his committee work, Army General Benny Meyers was packed off to jail, and so was Five-Percenter John Maragon, in an investigation that unlocked the door to the Truman Administration scandals. He also opened the investigating book on the Commerce Department’s William Remington, who was sent to jail for lying about passing secret information to Soviet Spy Elizabeth Bentley. So scrupulously did Rogers keep politics out of his investigations that Democrats unanimously asked him to stay on as chief counsel when they took over the committee in 1949.

A Republican who had nonetheless voted for Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, Rogers went in 1952 to G.O.P. Behind-the-Scenes-Expert Herb Brownell, whom he knew only casually, and volunteered to work for Dwight Eisenhower in the pre-convention campaign. While in Chicago Rogers also caught the eye of Richard Nixon, went along with the vice-presidential candidate on a Western swing, was with him when the news broke that Nixon was the beneficiary of a trust fund put up for him by California admirers. Preparing for his “Checkers” television explanation to the nation, Nixon used Rogers as a sounding board. Said Nixon later: “In that talk, Bill was advising me on how to appear before a jury, the greatest jury. I liked to throw ideas around to get his judgment on what should be said to the jury.”

Big Dividends. On Attorney General Brownell’s first day in office in 1953, he named Rogers as his deputy.* At that post, Rogers’ greatest strength was in the area of Brownell’s greatest weakness: Rogers developed good friends in the press corps and in Congress, traveled three or four times a day to Capitol Hill on troubleshooting missions. He had a patient knack for satisfying both the Senators and himself; e.g., in one instance he talked a Senator out of six nominees for a federal judgeship until the Senator, as though it were his own idea, finally recommended the name Rogers had wanted all along. This ability to work with Congress paid historic dividends last summer, when it was Rogers who—while Brownell was attending the American Bar Association meeting in Europe—negotiated with House and Senate leaders to arrive at the civil rights bill finally passed into law.

* Rogers’ rising importance has never impressed his youngest child Doug, 11. One day Nixon called, and the boy answered the phone. In a little while the President himself called, and Doug again answered. Said Rogers later: “I want you to remember this occasion because it will mean a lot to you some day.” Asked Doug: “Did you ever meet Mickey Mantle?”