282 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



was reluctant to issue a clarifying opinion for OSRD for fear that such an 

 opinion would be more broadly applied by other Government agencies not 

 having OSRD's peculiar factual situation. It was indicated, however, that 

 the Department of Justice would support legislation to exempt OSRD in 

 appropriate cases from the operations of Sections 109 and 113. 



The opinion in the OPA case was given considerable newspaper publicity, 

 and woe appointees working with OSRD quite understandably became 

 somewhat concerned that their efforts to help the United States win the war 

 had the immediate consequence of making them criminals under Section 113. 

 This arose from the fact that nearly all of them were receiving compensation 

 which was "directly or indirectly" attributable in some degree to services 

 rendered by themselves "or another" for their educational institutions or 

 commercial organizations under one or more of the thousands of Govern- 

 ment war contracts that had been let within the past few years. In addition, 

 a few of them were on notice that they might also be violating Section 109 

 because of activities for their compensating organizations in connection with 

 the negotiation or performance of contracts between their regular employers 

 and Government agencies other than OSRD. The fact that their activities 

 for their regular employers were not related in any way to their duties as 

 OSRD appointees and the fact that there was no actual conflict of interests 

 had become quite immaterial. 



Fairness to the persons involved required that the situation be explained 

 frankly to them and this was done by a memorandum of February 9, 1944, 

 to all OSRD employees and appointees. In that memorandum Bush pointed 

 out that in view of the broad language of the Attorney General's opinion, 

 most woe and WAE (compensated when actually employed) appointees 

 and employees of OSRD were probably in technical violation of Section 113 

 and a few also in technical violation of Section 109. He stated that he 

 planned to ask Congress to amend the law to exempt OSRD WOC and 

 WAE appointees from its operations except in cases of actual conflict of 

 interest. Even though such an amendment to the statutes should be enacted, 

 obviously there would be a considerable delay in obtaining its passage and 

 during that period the appointees would continue to be in technical viola- 

 tion of the statute. This he could not request of them. The memorandum, 

 however, drew attention to the very serious consequences which would be 

 caused by any general or hasty withdrawal of key personnel from OSRD 

 and requested the appointees to give the matter careful consideration. Bush 

 stated that he intended to continue in his OSRD position for he was con- 

 vinced that the present technical situation was simply a passing phase that 

 would soon be remedied by Congressional action upholding OSRD's method 

 of conducting business through the use of voluntary and uncompensated 

 services. He expressed the opinion that if a complete remedy were not forth- 

 coming, any action of Congress requiring readjustments of some details of 



