Office of the Historian

501/4–1246

Memorandum of Conversation, by Howard C. Johnson, Jr., of the Division of International Security Affairs

[Washington,] April 12, 1946.

At Mr. Ross’ suggestion I discussed the establishment and work of the United Nations Liaison Committee with Mr. Peurifoy.44a I explained to him very briefly the objectives which we had in mind and the favorable reception of the Committee in the Department indicated by statements of Mr. George Allen and Mr. Hayden Raynor.45

Mr. Peurifoy said that Mr. Acheson had expressed some concern as to whether or not we were doing enough work on questions which are likely to come before the Security Council. I replied that a number of teams were working on these questions and that each week the Committee goes over the work of the teams and decides which issues should be given a priority, adding new items and deleting items which no-longer seem likely to come up.

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Mr. Peurifoy would like to receive notice of these meetings, agendas and minutes and expressed an interest in attending when possible.

Mr. Peurifoy stated that Mr. Acheson had indicated a need for a complete cross-indexing of Security Council Journals. Mr. Peurifoy had discussed this with Mr. Hiss and Mr. Ross and had asked Mr. Gange46 to work up such an index in collaboration with indexes received from Mr. Rothwell47 in New York. Mr. Peurifoy felt that such an index should not be part of the Under Secretary’s office but should be on a Departmental basis.

I indicated that IS had already started work on indexing Security Council proceedings as they relate to the interpretation of various articles of the Charter,48 and that IS is particularly interested in the type of index mentioned by Mr. Peurifoy.

It was left that IS would contact Mr. Gange or Mr. Rothwell on this question of indexing.

Howard Johnson
  1. John E. Peurifoy, Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State (Acheson).↩
  2. G. Hayden Raynor, Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of European Affairs.↩
  3. John F. Gange, Acting Executive Secretary of the Central Secretariat of the Department.↩
  4. Mr. Rothwell at this time was Secretary General of the Permanent Delegation in New York.↩
  5. The “binder” completed by IS on this subject may be found in the IO files.↩