Okay, let’s recap since it’s been a while since we talked about this. The Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGC), based in London with a bunch of member nations, was created after the Evian Conference of 1939 and reconstituted after the Bermuda Conference in 1943. Sir Herbert Emerson was the director (obviously a Brit) and Patrick Malin (an American) was the vice-director. The US rep to the IGC was Myron Taylor, the former head of US Steel and FDR’s personal representative to the Vatican. After the WRB was formed, Taylor was very upset, feeling that the WRB stepped on the toes of the IGC. Taylor and the British both had serious objections to the terms of licenses the WRB issued, particularly clause 3, which said that if all else failed, relief agency representatives could send currency into enemy territory.
After a long and contentious meeting at the State Department in March, Taylor argued that Pehle should proceed immediately to London to discuss the relationship between the IGC and the WRB. Pehle refused—there was too much work to do in Washington. So Emerson and Malin came to him. Emerson presented this memo after their meetings on April 17th. As you can see, there was really no problem between the IGC and WRB—Emerson and Pehle like each other, and for the rest of 1944, there are no real issues between the two agencies (though the British government continues to express objections to WRB activities).
Since the WRB insisted on keeping the clause in their licenses about foreign currency in enemy territories, Emerson laid out a separate plan for the IGC. The IGC would have a pot of money, half supplied by the British and half by the United States. They would open blocked accounts for relief agencies. For example, if the Joint needed money for France and could find someone in Switzerland who had French francs, they could give that person a guarantee that the French francs would be repaid after the war. This is actually pretty similar to the first two clauses of WRB licenses, but the difference is that instead of blocked accounts in the names of relief agencies, these were blocked accounts guaranteed and funded by the United States and British. For some currency sellers, this was a much safer bet. It also meant that the Joint could use US/British money in blocked accounts to fund that kind of currency exchange, but could use WRB license money for more underground activities. The two plans could work in conjunction.
