{{Short description|Public/private US organization promoting European federalism}} The '''American Committee on United Europe''' ('''ACUE'''), founded in 1948, was a publicly funded “private” American organization that sought to counter communism in Europe by promoting European federalism. Its first chairman was former head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) William Joseph Donovan, who had formally left the government after the war and was in private law practice.<ref name=te>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1356047/Euro-federalists-financed-by-US-spy-chiefs.html |accessdate=15 October 2008 |title=Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs |work=Telegraph |date=19 September 2000 |last=Evans-Pritchard |first=Ambrose }}</ref> The vice-chairman was Allen Welsh Dulles, who also had left the government and was in private practice. He later joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1951.<ref name=te/> Other board members were Walter Bedell Smith,<ref name=te/> who would later become the CIA's first director and Tom Braden,<ref name=aldrich>[http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/aldrich/publications/oss_cia_united_europe_eec_eu.pdf Aldrich, Richard - OSS, CIA and European Unity: The American Committee on United Europe 1948-60]. ''Diplomacy & Statecraft''. 1 March 1997</ref> who was recruited by the OSS when the US entered the war.
The structure of the organization was outlined in early summer of 1948 by Donovan and Dulles in response to assistance requests by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, then Joseph Retinger and Winston Churchill,<ref>{{cite book|title=The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War: Calling the Tune? Studies in Intelligence|author= Wilford, Hugh|publisher=Routledge|date= 2013|pages=227–228|isbn=978-1135294779}}</ref> and resembled that of the Free Europe Committee.<ref name=aldrich/>
Declassified American government documents have shown that the ACUE received foundation money it used to help fund of both the European Movement and the European Youth Campaign. The ACUE itself received funding from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations.<ref name=te/>
American policy was to slowly pursue a United States of Europe. The committee was later used as a discreet way to funnel CIA funds (by the mid-1950s, ACUE was receiving roughly US$1,000,000 per year) to organizations supporting European federalism such as the Council of Europe, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the proposed European Defence Community.<ref>Giles Scott-Smith, Hans Krabbendam, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=41kheLSFTjcC&dq=%22%09+American+Committee+on+United+Europe%22&pg=PA46 The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945-1960]'' p.46, Roosevelt Study Center.</ref>
An article in ''The Daily Telegraph'' in September 2000 noted, "The State Department also played a role. A memo from the European section, dated June 11, 1965, advises the vice-president of the European Economic Community, Robert Marjolin, to pursue monetary union by stealth. It recommends suppressing debate until the point at which 'adoption of such proposals would become virtually inescapable'."<ref name=te/>
==See also== * History of the European Communities (1945-1957) * United States of Europe
==References== <references/>
==External links== * [http://archives.eui.eu/en/fonds/158645?item=ME Archival sources] on the American Committee for a United Europe can be consulted at the [http://www.eui.eu/Research/HistoricalArchivesOfEU/Index.aspx Historical Archives of the European Union] in Florence
{{Authority control}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2025}}
Category:Central Intelligence Agency operations Category:Central Intelligence Agency front organizations 1945 Category:Eurofederalism Category:Anti-communist organizations in the United States Category:American organizations established in 1948