LIAISON WITH ALLIED GOVERNMENTS 17I 



Administrative Order No. i of August 20, 1941, created the Liaison 

 Office as one of the principal subdivisions of OSRD, designated its head as 

 Senior Liaison Officer and charged it with "the conduct of scientific Haison" 

 with the countries defined in Article 2(g) of the Executive Order (the so- 

 called "lend-lease" countries). Carroll L. Wilson was named as Senior 

 Liaison Officer, with Caryl P. Haskins and Franklin S. Cooper (both bio- 

 physicists and, respectively, Director and Assistant Director of Research, 

 Haskins Laboratories) as Assistant Liaison OfiEcers. Wilson continued as 

 Senior Liaison Officer until October 30, 1942, when he resigned to spend 

 his full time as Executive Assistant to Bush. Haskins was then made Senior 

 Liaison Officer, and when he resigned to become Deputy Executive Officer 

 of NDRC on September 15, 1943, Cooper succeeded him. William W. 

 Eaton served as Assistant Liaison Officer between January 20, 1944, and 

 March i, 1945, and Eugene W. Scott received a similar appointment on 

 February 26, 1945. 



The duties of the Liaison Office from the beginning included direction 

 of the London Mission, exchange of reports, arrangement for travel to Eng- 

 land, handling of cables between Great Britain and the United States, and 

 the clearance of visits of foreign scientists to OSRD projects. Proper distri- 

 bution of British reports required the Liaison Office to be conversant with 

 the details of all research being sponsored by the OSRD. The problem of 

 keeping the Liaison Ofl&ce fully acquainted with the nature and status of 

 the problems being studied within the various divisions of the NDRC and 

 CMR was one which proved quite difficult of solution. To meet it, the 

 Office maintained a current file of contracts and endeavored to arrange for 

 the attendance of its personnel at division and section meetings, although 

 some divisions objected to the presence of Liaison Ofl&ce personnel, particu- 

 larly at executive meetings. 



While some information could be obtained from reading the monthly or 

 bimonthly reports of divisions, these reports were often quite general in 

 nature, failed to give suflBcient details as to progress, and frequently were 

 several months late in publication. Dependence upon reports meant that 

 work might have been in progress on a problem for several months be- 

 fore information of its existence reached the Liaison Ofl&ce. In such cases 

 British reports dealing with similar problems might not be forwarded im- 

 mediately to the individuals most concerned. The difficulty was resolved 

 late in 1943 and early in 1944 by adding a number of Technical Aides to 

 the staff of the Liaison Ofl&ce and assigning to them particular areas of 

 research. While the manpower situation was such that there were a number 

 of serious delays and it was not possible to add a Technical Aide for each 

 division, it became apparent that those divisions which were served by a 

 Technical Aide in the Liaison Office and who had similar representatives 



