John Maresca is a retired United States Ambassador closely associated with the “Helsinki” negotiating process. He was Chef de Cabinet for two Secretaries General of NATO and Deputy United States Ambassador for negotiation of the Helsinki Final Act, signed at the famous all-European Summit of 1975. Later he was the US Ambassador for negotiation of the Charter of Paris, which officially closed the Cold War in Europe. He was named as the special US Ambassador to open American relations with the newly-independent states after the break-up of the USSR. Upon retirement from diplomacy Maresca became Vice President of the energy giant Unocal, which later merged with Chevron. Maresca was Rector of the United Nations University for Peace, and a Visiting Fellow at ADA University in Baku, Azerbaijan. He has published two books on the Helsinki negotiations and its effects — “To Helsinki,” Duke University Press, 1985, and “Helsinki Revisited,” Ibidem Press, 2010. His first novel will be published this year.