American Committee on East-West Accord

The American Committee on East-West Accord, based in Washington, D.C., was a tax-exempt "independent educational organization", stating that they "aimed at improving East/West relations, with special focus on U.S.-Soviet relations." The ACEWA and its leaders have consistently urged U.S. trade, foreign policy and arms control concessions to the USSR in order to promote peace.

About

ACEWA's newsletter, East-West Outlook, which was edited by Carl M. Marcy carried articles promoting extreme scare concepts such as that any use of nuclear weapons will bring total extinction of all life on earth and that it was therefore the responsibility of Americans to take the initiative in getting rid of nuclear weapons.

ACEWA's influence in the business and academic community is shown in a report on U.S. peace organizations prepared for potential donors in January 1982 by Anne Zill of the Stewart Mott Foundation.

Anne Zill wrote:

"In the late April to early May period, the Committee will have its annual meeting at some point when George F. Kennan, John Kenneth Galbraith, Don Kendall (Pepsi Cola) and Bob Schmidt (Control Data) can all attend. They will again discuss the... Kennan proposal and will hear from some high ranking government official, possibly off the record. The Committee does have to be careful about taking positions that would cause its conservative members to resign."

The Zill report noted that ACEWA had received two years of funding from the Ford Foundation for a series of meetings with all the former ambassadors to the Soviet Union, however curiously it was stated of the meetings, "these probably won't be publicized."

A project being run in 1982 was the production of 60-second radio spots for broadcast during morning and evening "drive-time" periods. Zill reported these would vary in approach "from a soft sell approach (we all have common interests, don't we) to hard sell (do you know the Soviets have two aircraft to [our] 14)." Mark Lewis, formerly with the U.S. Information Agency, Zill reported, was working on the radio spots and "monies have been received to date from the Rockefeller Brothers and the Ruth Mott Fund."

Personnel

• Seymour Melman, co-chairman
• George F. Kennan, co-chairman
• Jeanne Mattison, co-director
• Carl M. Marcy, co-director

Members

As at March 10, 1982, the following were members of the ACEWA. They were listed as ACEWA members who had endorsed the Kennedy-Hatfield Nuclear Freeze Resolution introduced in the Senate on March 10, 1982:

• George W. Ball, Senior Managing Director, Lehman Brothers and former Under Secretary of State
• Hodding Carter, Public Broadcasting System, and former Assistant Secretary of State
• Bernard Feld, chairman of the executive committee of the Pugwash Conferences, Professor of Physics, MIT, and editor, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
• Joseph Filner, Noblenet International
• Roger Fisher, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and former consultant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for National Security
• J. William Fulbright, former chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
• Marshall Goldman, associate director, Russian Research Center and Professor of Economics, Wellesley College
• Jerome Grossman, president, Council for a Livable World
• Averill Harriman, former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union
• Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, S.J., president, University of Notre Dame
• Stanley Hoffman, Professor of Government and chairman, Center for European Studies, Harvard University
• Townsend Hoopes, former Under Secretary of the Air Force
• George F. Kennan, professor emeritus, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia
• George Kistiakowsky, professor emeritus of chemistry, Harvard University, and former Science Advisor to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson
• Philip Klutznick, Former Secretary of Commerce
• Wassily W. Leontief, Professor of Economics, New York University and Nobel Laureate
• David Linebaugh, Foreign Service Officer (Ret.), and former Deputy Assistant Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
• Dr. Bernard Lown, Professor of Cardiology, Harvard School of Public Health and co-president, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
• Carl M. Marcy, co-director, ACEWA
• George McGovern, former U.S. Senator
• Donald McHenry, professor, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
• Dr. Avery Post, president, United Church of Christ
• George Rathjens, Professor of Political Science, MIT, and former director of Weapons Systems Evaluation Division, Institute for Defense Analyses
• Harrison Salisbury, Soviet Scholar and author
• Erwin Salk, attorney
• Herbert Scoville, former Deputy Director for Research and Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, and Assistant Director, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
• J. David Singer, Professor of National Security Studies, The Brookings Institution
• Jeremy Stone, director, Federation of American Scientists
• William P. Thompson, Stated Clerk, General Assembly, United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
• Jerome Wiesner, past president, M.I.T., and Science Adviser to President Kennedy
• Adam Yarmolinsky, former counselor to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
• Herbert York, former U.S. negotiator for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

Funders

The following organizations have funded the Committee:

• The Ford Foundation
• The Rockefeller Brothers
• The Ruth Mott Fund