Who is the 'Bureau of Economic Research'

On Monday, the Bureau of Economic Research annouced the U.S. has been in a recession since December of 2007. Who is the Bureau of Economic Research... excellent question...:

"The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met by conference call on Friday, November 28. The committee maintains a chronology of the beginning and ending dates (months and quarters) of U.S. recessions. The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months. "

"The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is a private, nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying the science and empirics of economics, especially the American economy. "

"The NBER was founded in 1920. Its first staff economist and Director of Research was Wesley Mitchell. Simon Kuznets was working at the NBER when the U.S. government asked him to help organize a system of national accounts in 1930, which was the beginning of the official measurement of GDP and other related indices of economic activity. Due to its work on national accounts and business cycles, the NBER is well-known for providing start and end dates for recessions in the United States."
>http://wwwdev.nber.org/cycles/dec2008.html