Obituaries : Philleo Nash, 77; Former Head of Indian Affairs Unit

Philleo Nash, an adviser on minority affairs to President Harry S. Truman and the first member of that administration to be accused by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy of being a Communist, a charge Nash called “a contemptible lie,� has died of cancer at a hospice in Marshfield, Wis., it was learned this week.

The commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations was 77 and died Oct. 12.

On Jan. 29, 1952, McCarthy said he had seen 10 FBI reports that indicated that Nash had “constant contact with the communist underground in Washington.�

Nash denied the claim the next day, saying he had never been a member of the Communist Party “or have had anything to do with the communist movement. . . .� He claimed McCarthy’s charge was prompted by the fact that his sister had signed a newspaper advertisement criticizing the Republican senator from Wisconsin.

Truman supported Nash, denounced McCarthy as a “character assassin� and later promoted Nash to the rank of administrative assistant to the President.

Nash came to government after earning a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Chicago. His dissertation was based on the Klamath Indians whose Oregon reservation he had lived on for a year.

He later taught at the Universities of Wisconsin and Toronto before moving to Washington in 1942, where he became an assistant to Elmer Davis, the former broadcaster who was operating the Office of War Information.

After the election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nash returned to Wisconsin, was elected lieutenant governor and then returned to Washington at the behest of Kennedy, who named him commissioner of Indian Affairs. He resigned in 1966 and most recently had managed a family business in Wisconsin.