You are all members of an international pressure group that investigates strange phenomenon and tries to persuade governments to come clean about their secret research projects, especially the ones into alien technology and UFOs.
Your part of the group is currently working on several projects, which although separate are linked by the fact that they all involve some work in international waters off the coast of Scotland. In particular you are on the trail of a German born scientist who has retired to the North of Scotland who was employed by the US Government in the 1950s & 60s.
There are three main projects:
this is the investigation of a joint British/US research project based on a research establishment in the Outer Hebrides. The official story is that the researchers were working on submarine acoustic coatings, however you believe that they were in fact working on a project to graft gills into humans to allow them to work underwater without the need for scuba gear.
This is a wholly British project from start to finish. It was initiated in 1940 and finally terminated in 1962 as far as you can tell from the paperwork you have found on it. You found out about it from the GRU records as one of the wartime scientists was in the employ of the soviets and reported back to them. British records show it to be an investigation of how to improve the survival of people in the sea. The Soviet records show something entirely different. They make it out to be the investigation of a Nazi wonder weapon which allowed contact with alien civilisations.
This was originally a Nazi project and was taken over by the US Government at the end of the war. Most of the early work was done at Peenemunde and in Sachsenhausen. Later it moved to Jacksonville, Florida with some field research carried out in the North Atlantic. This sometimes involved the support vessels calling at a research station off the coast of Scotland. Details of the exact nature are very sketchy at best, the security was sufficiently tight that the GRU never managed to get anyone involved on the project, probably due to it originating with the nazis. You have however found that one of the major players in the project was one Dr Johan Krauss (known as Joe Cross). He was taken to the US after the war and naturalised as a US citizen in the mid-1960s. He worked for the US government for his entire career on a variety of defence research projects and when he retired in 1985 he moved to the UK.