Scope and Content Note
The papers of George Thomas Washington (1908-1971) span the years 1934-1949, with most of the material concentrated in the period 1942-1949, when Washington worked as an official in the United States Lend-lease operations in the Near East and was an attorney with the Justice Department. The bulk of the collection was generated as a result of these two aspects of his career.
The correspondence is almost entirely of a professional nature. Of particular significance are letters relating to the operations of the American economic missions in Iraq and Iran that Washington supervised during World War II. Letters from his work at the Justice Department discuss policy and other issues. Notable correspondents include Dean Acheson, Tom C. Clark, Livingston L. Short, Edward R. Stettinius, Robert S. Stevens, and Harry S. Truman.
Subject files on the economic mission to Iraq and Iran detail the fiscal operations of the mission. There are also a few memoranda and notes about other aspects of the mission. Files relating to the Justice Department consist almost entirely of departmental and legal memoranda. Included are miscellaneous materials dealing with the trial in 1942 of Nazi saboteurs, the activities of resident aliens and national security, price controls, the treatment of German war criminals, the duties of the solicitor general, coal miners and their labor conditions, the congressional investigation of subversives, and other matters handled by the Justice Department in the period 1944-1949. Also of note is a report on the foreign service that Washington helped to draft.
The writings deal primarily with the legal matter of the compensation of corporation executives, on which Washington was an authority, and on the administration of the law at the level of the federal government.