In the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Foreign Economic Administration (FEA) was formed on September 25, 1943 to relieve friction between US agencies operating abroad.
Establishment
The FEA was organized and run by Leo Crowley who was described by his biographer Stuart L. Weiss as "The Nation's #1 Pinch-hitter". Weiss summed up Crowley's management style this way: "Based on his own success in Washington, he had concluded that sound administration meant clearly demarcating lines of authority between agencies and, within each, finding the right staff and giving it only the most basic guidance and coordination".
In 2007 Martin Lorenz-Meyer published a book that investigated one of FEA's public programs. Naturally the author sketches the career of administrator Leo Crowley (p. 22,25,26) and his organization of the FEA:
:Crowley quickly got to work streamlining his new realm of 4,009 employees at home and abroad. He merged fourteen agencies combined into FEA into four and created two bureaus, the Bureau of Areas and the Bureau of Supplies. In general the Bureau of Areas was in charge of determining the needs of the various regions of the world, while the supply side was then responsible for fulfilling those requirements …
:… the FEA was in charge of a dazzling array of functions…
:The global dimension of the FEA is demonstrated by the fact that in 1944 it had forty-three offices total, with some on every continent except Antarctica.