WBC Committee

Following the submission of this report the WBC Committee disbanded. 

Two months before Pearl Harbor, the president of the National Academy and the chairman of the National Research Council asked Edwin B. Fred to help form and act as chairman of a committee to study and assess current potentialities of BW. A group of twelve scientists met on 18 November 1941, designated the WBC Committee (War Bureau of Consultants). Liaison members of the committe included Lt. Col. Maurice E. Barker, Lt. Col. James H. Defandorf, and 1st Lt. Luman F. Ney of the Chemical Warfare Service, as well as representatives of Ordnance, the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, The Surgeon General s Office, the Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Public Health Service. The committee report to the Secretary of War in February 1942 declared the BW was distinctly feasible, that it was a potential threat to national security, and that steps should be taken at once to formulate defensive and offensive measures. 

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