It was created by Secretary of State Cordell Hull at the suggestion of his assistant Leo Pasvolsky and Norman Davis of the Council on Foreign Relations.
[1] The committee appointed subcommittees on political problems, economic reconstruction, territorial matters, legal questions and the creation of an international organization, all under the direction of Pasvolsky.
The committee included Dean Acheson, Esther C. Brunauer, Lauchlin Currie, Laurence Duggan, Herbert Feis, Alger Hiss, Harry Hawkins, Philip Jessup, Archibald MacLeish, Charles W. Yost, George C. Marshall, Henry Wadleigh, Henry Agard Wallace, and Harry Dexter White.
Several experts were brought in from outside the State Department, mostly members of the Council on Foreign Relations such as Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Isaiah Bowman, Benjamin V. Cohen, Norman H. Davis, Anne O'Hare McCormick, James T. Shotwell and Myron Taylor.
[4] In early 1943, as the committee declined in importance, much of its work was taken over by the Informal Political Agenda Group composed of Hull, Welles, Taylor, Davis, Bowman and Pasvolsky.