In response to a congressional inquiry, the General Accounting Office reviewed the work of five state humanities councils: California, Florida, Idaho, Maryland, and Oregon. Out of about 700 projects funded by these state councils during fiscal years 1982 and 1983, ten were judged by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) or state council officials to have raised concerns about advocacy, i.e., the act or process of defending a particular point of view, which is prohibited in these projects. Five projects which were reviewed are discussed. These include two projects dealing with the Soviet Union, one from Oregon and the other from Idaho, and three other projects. These were: a project on the electoral process and money from California; a project which sought to combine a humanities perspective with the discussion of social issues in Florida; and a project dealing with the moral and political issues associated with nuclear deterrence in Maryland. This report also contains detailed information about how the NEH and the state councils review grant applications and attempt to ensure that a balanced perspective exists, how the membership of state councils is selected, how questions of advocacy arose in the five projects described, and how they were resolved. (IS)