70 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



on December 31, 1942, by delegating to Moreland all the executive powers 

 and duties vested in him. 



One function which steadily increased in importance was the assignment 

 of Service projects to divisions for action. As established in June 1942, the 

 procedure called for routing all Service requests to the Chairman's Office 

 for determination as to which division (or divisions) should be asked to 

 consider the proposed work. To insure consistency in assignments, the re- 

 sponsibility for these decisions was vested in one person within the Office, 

 initially the Executive Officer and later a Deputy Executive Officer. 



In a memorandum on OSRD operations dated July 29, 1942, Bush stipu- 

 lated that the supervision of work under contracts entered into pursuant 

 to NDRC proposals should be the responsibility in the first instance of the 

 division with which the proposal had originated and that the ultimate re- 

 sponsibility for decision on any questions involved should lie with the Chair- 

 man of NDRC, except for such matters as the latter believed to require 

 final determination by the Director. The Chairman was made responsible 

 for the co-ordination of the activities of groups working within NDRC 

 on similar projects so as to achieve a minimum of duplication. It was thus 

 made specific, as previously it had been understood, that the Chairman's 

 Office should provide the link which would minimize the delays and 

 duplication resulting from the policy of compartmentalization of informa- 

 tion. This carried the responsibility both for acting upon any requests for 

 interdivision liaison and for keeping the whole program sufficiently well 

 in mind to give reasonable assurance that interdivisional discussions would 

 be authorized and stimulated whenever profitable. In fact, this latter func- 

 tion was so complex that it was never discharged to the satisfaction of 

 either the divisions or the Chairman's Office. Nevertheless, the Chairman's 

 Office did render a valuable service in arranging for joint action of two 

 or more divisions whenever such action was indicated as desirable. 



A memorandum of general instructions was issued on November 23, 

 1942, to clarify the relation of the various parts of the organization to 

 each other, as part of the reorganization then being effected. It stated that 

 the control of the technical and scientific work done under a contract was 

 the responsibility of the Chairman and Executive Officer of NDRC. In a 

 later paragraph it also stated that when a contract had been executed or a 

 letter of intent issued, the direction and control of the technical and scien- 

 tific work became a responsibility of the Division Chief. The two state- 

 ments can be reconciled on the theory that the Chairman received his au- 

 thority from the Director and that he re-delegated (with the consent of 

 the Director) to the Division Chief. When Conant reviewed the organiza- 

 tion and distribution of functions of OSRD as far as NDRC was concerned 

 in a memorandum of April 26, 1944, however, he considered the Division 

 Chiefs as agents of the Director rather than of the Chairman of NDRC. 



