Council for National Policy (CNP)

CNP: What It Is

Many Evangelical, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Catholic, Mormon and other ecumenically-minded leaders are members of the Council for National Policy, the 500+ (varies per year) member organization which some suggest plans the strategy of the Religious Right and conservatives in the United States.

The CNP, according to their 1996 Telephone Directory, was founded in 1981. While those involved are from the United States, their organizations and influence cover the globe, both religiously and politically. Members include corporate executives, television evangelists, legislators, former military or high ranking government officers, leaders of 'think tanks' dedicated to molding society and those who many view as Christian leadership. Members in many cases are owners or leaders from industry such as lumber, oil, mining, commodities, real estate, the media, including owners of radio, television and print, with all aspects of life covered. Many are involved in education, determining to influence society's direction by direct input with children and youth. Many advocate from the arena of right wing politics, conservatives, family friendly, reconstructionists, dominionists, and so on.

CNP members are found in Christian organizations encompassing James Dobson's Focus on the Family, Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ and it's many branches, Robert Weiner's Maranatha shepherding group, Gideons, Youth for Christ, World Vision, Wycliffe Bible Translators, Billy Graham Evangelical Assoc., Intercessors for America, International Charismatic Bible Ministries, National Evangelical Assoc., National Religious Broadcasters Assoc., Promise Keepers and many more. The potential spiritual impact of this organization, which claims educational status, could be unparalleled.

While many involved in the CNP have denied political activity in their respective organizations, the role of the CNP appears to be that of a policy and funding conduit for the Religious Right projects, both political and religious. Others would suggest they are merely a conservative group of individuals who get together to share ideas, network and hear "exciting speakers." Many non-Christians and deceived Christians would view many involved as representative of born-again Christians. However, one of the intents of the CNP seems to be that of appearing to be a mouthpiece of true Believers, which cannot be. Many are simply not Christian and others would make a claim, rather, to being conservative, holding 'traditional values' and family orientated. Many would also propagate the idea of transforming the United States back to it's 'godly' heritage, to which there is no supporting Scripture.

While the majority of the research for this website topic was assembled in the beginning of 2001, although information was being archived since 1998, it is obvious by the dating on the various biographies, that much has become historical in nature---allow me to reiterate--the dates noted on each biography show known dates of involvement, based on documented research. This is really no different than entering a library with books published one, ten or more years ago. The information becomes historical, but that does not invalidate its accuracy or significance for that time period. That does not mean that historical members have continued in membership unless there is further documentation supplied showing that information. Therefore, if a biography shows the person being a member from 1982 until 1996---then we can assume they were a member for those years and may have discontinued after that, and especially, if shown they are NOT listed in the 1998 membership directory, we can conclude they are no longer members, for whatever reason. Some members have chosen to list their membership on their own websites and in biographical data. That helps to validate membership dates outside the following lists. Some prefer to remain silent as to when they were members and if and why they discontinued membership.

Membership lists for can be viewed at the links below

CNP:

Selected Organizations/Media/Project Index

Accuracy In Media

Accuracy in Media (AIM) has grown from a one-person crusade to a million-dollar-a-year operation by attacking the mainstream media for allegedly abandoning the principles of "fairness, balance and accuracy" in its reporting according to AIM. New Right philanthropies, think tanks and media support its work, and many members of its advisory board are former diplomats, intelligence agents and corporate directors.

AIM was founded by Reed Irvine in 1969, when Irvine called for sedition charges to be brought against Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers and the Progressive Labor Party, arguing, "If you're going to halt treason, you've got to do it while it's small." [Village Voice, January 21, 1986]

In the 1970s, Irvine endeared himself to the New Right by alleging that the corporate media were a propaganda tool for the Soviet

KGB and Fidel Castro. In 1982, AIM attacked New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner for his reports (later proven accurate--see Extra!, January/February 1993) about the El Mozote massacre. Along with the Wall Street Journal editorial page, AIM succeeded in pressing the Times to pull Bonner from his Salvadoran beat.

Irvine later called for napalm to be used against FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador. (AIM Report, March 1990). During the Gulf War, he encouraged a nuclear strike against Iraq. [Seattle Times, January 16, 1991]

With the end of the Cold War, AIM now assails environmentalists as the "infiltrators" of the media establishment. Critical reports about industries that fund AIM--such as chemical and oil interests--ara a frequent target of AIM critiques.

During the Clinton era, alleged conspiracies related to the Democratic president were a frequent topic in AIM's work--particularly the notion that Vince Foster was not a suicide but a victim of foul play. AIM charged that Republicans, including independent counsel Kenneth Starr, were somehow complicit in covering up Clinton's plots; discussing Hillary Rodham Clinton's notion of a "vast right-wing conspiracy," Irvine retorted that "the only conspiracy I knew of was the conspiracy of the Republican leadership to protect Bill Clinton." [AIM Report, February 1998]

AIM has been criticized as a censorious group eager to silence voices it disagrees with and disdainful of the First Amendment. The group for a time offered as a donation premium Target America, written by AIM board member James L. Tyson, a book advocating that government "ombudsmen" police major-network newscasts for "accuracy" and "fairness".

Reed Irvine suffered a stroke in 2003 and died in November 2004. His son, Don Irvine, succeeded him as AIM chairman.

In October 2008, AIM launched a website promoting a boycott of the New York Times, edited by Don Feder.

AIM operates Accuracy in Academia, founded in 1985 as an outgrowth of AIM. AIM also operates the American Journalism Center, which it describes as "an intense internship training program for aspiring journalists and students seeking careers in the public relations and/or marketing fields. Most of our interns will work in the offices of Accuracy In Media and Accuracy In Academia for the duration of their internship."

Acton Institute

The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is an American research and educational institution, or think tank, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, (with an office in Rome) whose stated mission is "to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles". Its work supports free market economic policy framed within Judeo-Christian morality. It has been alternately described as conservative and libertarian. Acton Institute also organizes seminars "to educate religious leaders of all denominations, business executives, entrepreneurs, university professors, and academic researchers in economics principles."

The Acton Institute was founded in 1990 in Grand Rapids, Michigan by Robert A. Sirico and Kris Alan Mauren. It is named after the English historian, politician and writer Lord Acton, who is popularly associated with the dictum "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". The institute is a member of the Atlas Network.

Sirico and Mauren were concerned that many religious people were ignorant of economic realities, and that many economists and businessmen were insufficiently grounded in religious principles. Sirico explains the essential link between economics and religion with reference to the institute's namesake:

Acton realized that economic freedom is essential to creating an environment in which religious freedom can flourish. But he also knew that the market can function only when people behave morally. So, faith and freedom must go hand in hand. As he put it, "Liberty is the condition which makes it easy for conscience to govern".

Agape

Key CNP link is Larry W Poland - founder, Chairman and CEO, Mastermedia International, Inc, 29 "a ministry to the top leadership of film and television in Hollywood and New York, and one which seeks to keep Christian believers informed of the spiritual dynamics inside media" ; which has 'Key Man Groups'; past director of the Agape Movement, an international volunteer service organization under Campus Crusade for Christ, Intl.; founded WMCU-FM, the first Christian radio station in Miami, Florida, and was executive producer of the world's largest traveling mixed media production, World Thrust; an ordained minister, lecturer, conference speaker, consultant, and writer. He has authored numerous articles in national periodicals and six books, Spirit Power, Rise to Conquer, The Last Temptation of Hollywood, The Coming Persecution, Master Key, and a novel, 2084; founded Associates in Media, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ International to leaders in film and television. He hosts a short radio feature, The Mediator, which is aired daily.

American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ)

The ACLJ was founded in 1990 by law school graduate and evangelical minister Pat Robertson with the stated "mandate to protect religious and constitutional freedoms". ACLJ generally pursues constitutional issues and conservative Christian ideals in courts of law.

ACLJ Chief Counsel and CNP member Jay Sekulow's role as former US President Donald Trump's defense attorney and corruption is covered in the first half of the video below.

American Civil Rights Union/

American Constitutional Rights Union

The American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU), formerly the American Civil Rights Union, was founded by Robert B. Carleson, who served as Ronald Reagan's Chief Deputy Director of the California State Department of Public Works starting in in 1968. According to his biography, on the site, he founded the organization to serve as a "'constructive alternative' to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). His goal was to provide a vehicle to protect the civil rights of all Americans - rights that continue to be undermined by the left-wing and anti-family agenda of organizations like the ACLU."

ACRU's President is Lori Roman.

ACRU's president Lori Roman; policy board members J. Kenneth Blackwell and Hans von Spakovsky; and Board directors Edwin Meese III and Morton C. Blackwell are all members of the Council for National Policy.

ACRU has received $385,000 in contributions from the Bradley Foundation.

The American Constitutional Rights Union is not required to disclose its funders. Its major foundation funders, however, can be found through a search of the IRS filings. Here are the know major funders of ACRU:

Aqua Foundation: $1,000 (2016)
Bailey Family Foundation: $2,100 (2014-2017)
Betty K. Wolfe Foundation: $50,000 (2013)
Bradley Foundation: $385,000 (2002-2018)
Eric Javits Family Foundation: $4,750 (2010-2017)
Esperanza Foundation: $1,000 (2017)
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund: $25,187 (2016-2017)
Floyd Foundation: $1,000 (2014)
Jacobs Family Foundation: $2,150 (2012-2017)
Jim Hicks Family Foundation: $22,000 (2014-2017)
John P and Katherine G Evans Foundation: $1,000 (2014-2017)
Kirchner Family Foundation: $1,500 (2017-2018)
National Christian Charitable Foundation: $1,550 (2014-2018)
Oxford Area Foundation: $1,000 (2013)
Roger and Susan Stone Family Foundation: $2,000 (2017-2018)
Ron and Susan Krump Foundation: $7,000 (2011-2015)
Rothschild Art Foundation: $1,000 (2011)
Sarah Scaife Foundation: $150,000 (2016-2018)
Scott Family Foundation: $2,000 (2013)
Thomas A and Joan M Holmes Foundation: $1,000 (2016)
William H and Ella W McMahan Foundation: $8,000 (2017-2018)
Wilson Family Foundation: $3,000 (2013)

For more information click here

American Conservative Union

The American Conservative Union (ACU) describes itself as, "America’s premier conservative voice, ACU is the leading entity in providing conservative positions on issues to Congress, the Executive Branch, State Legislatures, the media, political candidates, and the public". ACU's purpose is to effectively communicate and advance the goals and principles of conservatism through one multi-issue, umbrella organization. ACU's support of capitalism, belief in the doctrine of original intent of the framers of the Constitution, confidence in traditional values, and commitment to a strong national defense, its website states.

According to archived ACU pages, "Over the years, ACU has been on the cutting edge of major public policy battles. Among ACU's significant efforts, past and present, are fighting to keep OSHA off the back of small businesses, opposing the Panama Canal giveaway, opposing the SALT treaties, supporting aid to freedom fighters in Marxist countries, promoting the confirmation of conservative Justices to the Supreme Court, battling against higher taxes, and advocating the need for near-term deployment of strategic defenses," The ACU is an associate member of the right-wing State Policy Network (SPN).

The ACU is closely affiliated with the American Conservative Union Foundation (ACUF), which is "a 501(c)(3) educational foundation that influences, converts and educates those who may not know they are conservatives as well as informing, inspiring and motivating those who know they are conservatives." The ACUF is an associate member of the right-wing State Policy Network (SPN) In July/August 2017, SPN featured the ACUF's Family Prosperity Initiative (FPI), which aims to show "the link between economic policy, social policy, and family prosperity variables at the state level." The ACUF is scheduled to present their FPI study findings at the 25th SPN Annual Meeting on August 31, 2017

According to ACU, "Every year since 1973, ACU proudly hosts CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, the nation’s largest gathering of conservatives. Taking place in Washington, D.C., each year, CPAC educates, brings together and energizes thousands of attendees, leading conservative organizations and speakers who impact conservative thought in the nation. From Presidents of the United States to college students, CPAC is the place to find our nation’s current and future leaders and set the conservative agenda each year."

ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp's Homosexual Sex Offenses Controversy

In early 2023 a longtime Republican male campaign aide, Carlton Hoffman accused American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp of sexual battery. The situation escalated when the accuser filed a defamation lawsuit on top of the sexual battery suit. It was later revealed that Schlapp tried to settle the multimillion-dollar sexual battery and defamation lawsuit against him, but his offer was denied.

The yet unresolved episode (as of Feb 2024) exposed the hypocrisy of Schlapp who railed against same sex marriage. and previously left a senior lobbying job at Koch Industries after the company received a complaint that he’d made an “anti-gay remark,” according to a report. Citing three people familiar with the incident, The Washington Post reports that the investigation contributed to his departure.

In response to the initial story, social media users took to Twitter to criticize Schlapp, the lead organizer of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), for anti-gay views that he's helped promote and spotlight over the years at the world's largest and most influential gathering of conservatives.

"This story is rock solid," journalist Michelangelo Signorile tweeted on Thursday. "Schlapp has allowed the most horrific anti-LGBTQ bile at CPAC. Another GOP hypocrite."

"Think of all the anti-LGBTQ speakers and hatred Matt Schlapp has promoted and profited off of at CPAC for years. Meanwhile he is crotch grabbing male staffers?..." filmmaker Jeremy Newberger wrote.

In late 2023 new reports emerged via court documents obtained by The Washington Post, stating Schlapp was also accused of sexual misconduct twice before – first in 2017 and then in early 2022. The updated court filing alleges the incidents were reported to staffers of the American Conservative Union, but “no action was taken against Schlapp,” according to The Post.

Koch Ties

In 2014, Koch Industries denied having a working relationship with ACU chairman Matt Schlapp, however financial records indicate that Koch Industries continue to financially support the ACU. Matt Schlapp is a former Koch Industries Executive Director of Federal Affairs.

In 2014, Koch Industries helped sponsor the ACU at two of their CPAC events, including ACU's“Top 10 Conservatives Under 40” event, and the ACU's Executive Director's opening remarks for CPAC 2014.

The American Conservative Union Foundation (ACUF)

According to the Charles Koch Institute website, in 2016, Pat Nolan, director of the American Conservative Union Foundation’s Center for Criminal Justice Reform collaborated with Vikrant Reddy, a senior research fellow at the Charles Koch Institute on a criminal justice reform initiative. Other members of the team included former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. According to the Koch Institute website, Vikrant Reddy is a "senior research fellow at the Charles Koch Institute and former manager of Right on Crime—a project of TPPF, the American Conservative Union Foundation, and Prison Fellowship."

Ties to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation website features work done by the ACU & ACUF in several of their monthly newsletters.

American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is an influential right-wing think tank that advocates for lower taxes, fewer protections for consumers and the environment, and cuts to the social safety net. AEI describes itself as "committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise."

In 2014 The Washington Post wrote that under CEO Arthur Brooks, AEI had emerged as "the dominant conservative think tank," becoming more influential than the Heritage Foundation.

During the George W. Bush administration, AEI was regarded "as the intellectual command post of the neoconservative campaign for regime change in Iraq," Vanity Fair noted.

AEI had approximately 225 staff and an annual budget of more than $50 million in 2015.

As of 2016, AEI claims that it was founded in 1938, and that it "arrived in Washington" DC in 1943 as the "American Enterprise Association."^[24] Around that time, the AEA shared an address with the Transportation Association of America.^[25]

Jane Mayer writes of AEI's early history in Dark Money,

"In 1950, Congress investigated the group that became AEI, denouncing it as a "'big business' pressure organization" that should register as a lobbying shop and get barred from offering its donors tax deductions....The Internal Revenue Service nonetheless threatened the think tank's tax-exempt status. It was this searing experience that prompted AEI and other conservative groups of this period to avoid the appearance of being too partisan or of acting as corporate shills."^[26]

The predecessor organization AEA had failed to register as a lobby, despite spending "considerable sums wining and dining members of congress," reported the Evening Independent in 1949.

Originally set up to speak for big business, the AEI came to major national prominence in the 1970s under the leadership of William Baroody, Sr., during which time it grew from a group of twelve resident "thinkers" to a well-funded organization with 145 resident scholars, 80 adjunct scholars, and a large supporting staff. This period of growth was largely funded by the Howard Pew Freedom Trust.

Irving Kristol left the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the late 1960s to work at the AEI after the CIA's funding of CCF was widely revealed in the media following initial reports in Ramparts magazine.

President Ronald Reagan said of AEI in 1988: "The American Enterprise Institute stands at the center of a revolution in ideas of which I, too, have been a part. AEI's remarkably distinguished body of work is testimony to the triumph of the think tank. For today the most important American scholarship comes out of our think tanks--and none has been more influential than the American Enterprise Institute."

In 1986, the Olin and Smith Richardson foundations withdrew their support from AEI because of substantive disagreement with certain of its policies, causing William Baroody, Jr. to resign in the ensuing financial crisis. Following criticism by conservatives that AEI was too centrist, it moved its program further to the right and became more aggressive in pursuing its public policy goals.

AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies

American Legislative Exchange Council

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own ideas and important public policy proposals—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. We agree. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door.

Key figures of corporations and foundations that are carrying out their agendas via the CNP are the same people behind ALEC. Prominent donors include the Koch, Coors, Olin, Mellon-Scaife and Bradley families. More details on donors are available here.

American Family Association

American Freedom Coalition

[Moon/Unification Church front]

The American Freedom Coalition, or AFC, is a political education and lobbying group which was founded in April 1987. Calling itself a "supra-coalition," the group claimed some 300,000 members in all 50 states by February 1988.

The AFC represents an attempt to unite political conservatives and conservative religious groups and individuals behind a common campaign to preserve and promote what it describes as "traditional values." Among the values promoted by the AFC are a strong defense, opposition to abortion and pornography, anticommunism, religious freedom but with an emphasis on including "moral and religious standards" in government and other social institutions, the right to own property, and minimal governmental interference in the marketplace. Its promotional literature says that the AFC acts as a "catalyst to unite a vast array of groups, activists, churches, and community organizations in cooperative and effective action. According to AFC president Robert Grant, the AFC was formed because of the "inability of the `Christian Right’ to achieve its agenda" because of its "fragmentation and its failure to build coalitions with its philosophical allies from other communities…"

AFC President and CNP member Robert Grant has said that he hoped to "recruit a broad base" from his contacts with CAUSA, a political arm of the Unification Church. Grant has said that he solicited Phillip Sanchez, president of CAUSA USA, and Bo Hi Pak, president of CAUSA Intl, for support for AFC. Sanchez and Pak agreed to help AFC by leaving time on CAUSA program agendas for AFC board members to describe the organization and seek new members. They also allowed AFC access to the names of participants in previous CAUSA conferences, and granted the services of one CAUSA staff member per state to do outreach to CAUSA "graduates" and encourage them to join AFC. The two CAUSA leaders also granted the services of several CAUSA members to help in the Washington DC office of the AFC.

American Institute for Free Labor Development

The American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) was an AFL-CIO organization whose purpose was to undermine foreign unions. It received funding from the US government, mostly through USAID, and starting in the 1980s it began receiving funds from the National Endowment for Democracy. The AIFLD also had close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency.

The AIFLD most often concentrated on union officials in foreign unions, both paying them off as well as "training" them.

The AIFLD was created in 1962. A US Comptroller General's report says "In May 1961 the AFL-CIO approached private foundations, business men, and government agencies to seek financing for the planned Institute". One of the foundations it applied to was the Michigan Fund, identified by Congressional sources as a conduit for CIA money. AIFLD found welcome open pockets in the business group. George Meany, President of the AFL-CIO and also of AIFLD, boasted support from the "largest corporations in the United States . . . Rockefeller, ITT, Kennecott, Standard Oil, Shell Petroleum . . . Anaconda, even Readers Digest. . . and although some of these companies have no connection whatsoever to US trade unions, they are all agreed that it was really in the US interest to help develop free trade unions in Latin America, and that's why they contributed so much money".

J. Peter Grace, Chairman of the Board of AIFLD and also Chairman of the Board of the W.R. Grace Corporation, one of the ninety five transnational companies that back the Institute, applies the doctrine in tactical terms. Grace says AIFLD urges "cooperation between labor and management and an end to class struggle" and "teaches workers to increase their company's business". He says the goal of AIFLD is to "prevent communist infiltration, and where it exists . . . get rid of it".

In October of 1995, John Sweeney replaced Lane Kirkland as head of the AFL-CIO. A few months later, the AFL-CIO asked the AIFLD executive director, William C. Doherty, Jr., to resign, and he did so. In 1997, the AIFLD was reorganized into the American Center for International Labor Solidarity.

"A less optimistic but more realistic appraisal of AIFLD's role is given by Philip Agee in his book, Inside the Company. Speaking of its creation in 1962, he states that AIFLD is "Washington's answer to the limitations of current labor programs undertaken through AID as well as through ORIT and CIA stations." The problem, says Agee, was "how to accelerate expansion of labor organizing activities in Latin America in order to deny workers to labor unions dominated by the extreme left and to reverse communist and Castroite penetration."

American Security Council (ASC)

The American Security Council has been a leading anti-communist group since the 1950s. The ASC was once described as the “heart and soul of the military-industrial complex” because of its strong backing from and support for top defense contractors in the post-World War II era. By the 1970s,, the ASC had become closely associated with anti-détente forces and other political factions advocating militarist U.S. defense policies.

The ASC is covered in part five of Jon Swinn's documentary series The Unauthorized History of The American Century featured below.

ASC Page on ISGP

Extensive ASC Membership List

ASC Page on Militarist Monitor

ASC Page on Spartacus

ASC Page on SourceWatch

.

There are key links between the CNP and ASC; some of them include Jewish Hungarian-American theoretical physicist Edward Teller, who worked on the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb. Teller would go on to be on the board of Western Goals Foundation, the intelligence arm of the John Birch Society.

American Sovereignty Action Project

The American Sovereignty Action Project (ASAP), also referred to as the American Sovereignty Project (ASP), was founded by CNP member Cliff Kincaid.

ASAP is the "lobbying arm of Citizens United that works to protect American sovereignty and security. ASP's major objectives include complete U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations, defeat of the treaty to establish a permanent U.N.-controlled International Criminal Court, and rejection of one-world government," according to the Citizens United website.^.

In March 1997, ASAP joined the Coalition to End the United Nations Entitlement. Other members were the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Americans for Tax Reform.

ASAP is listed as a Free Congress Foundation Coalition member.

Americans United for Life

AmeriCares

AmeriCares has been used by a handful of extremely wealthy corporate rulers to combat those fighting for basic union rights and national self-determination.

AmeriCares, with the help of Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America (Prodemca), conducted an advertising campaign in the U.S. on behalf of La Prensa. The ads for La Prensa solicited funds from the public to pay for the shipment of newsprint to Nicaragua. Prodemca was a neoconservative group that provided U.S. government grants to La Prensa and sponsored pro-contra aid ads in U.S. newspapers using funds from Oliver North's secret aid network.

Key CNP Member J. Peter Grace Jr. was the Chairman of AmeriCares' Advisory Committee.

Ankerberg Theological Research Institute

Apologetics TV Ministry Loses Financial Accreditation Over Fundraising

Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations

In May 1988, Robert Grant was invited as the keynote speaker for the annual conference of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), which included many of the same Eastern European emigre groups recruited by David Balsiger's RAMBO Coalition. With headquarters in Munich and chapters throughout Europe and the United States, the ABN is nostalgic for the days when the Nazis occupied Eastern Europe.

Scott Anderson and John Lee Anderson, authors of Inside the League, describe the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) as: 'the largest and most important umbrella for Nazi collaborators in the world...A prime criterion for membership appears to be fealty to the cause of National Socialism; ABN officers constitute a virtual Who's Who of those responsible for the massacre of millions of civilians in the bloodiest war in history.'...July 13, 1982, [ABN's] Yaroslov Stetsko, a man who went to prison for participating in the murder of Polish officials, who once proclaimed his devotion to the Nazis, whose followers assisted in the slaughter of Jews in the Ukraine, sat in the center of the front row of a reception hall to hear Reagan announce, "Your dream is our dream. Your hope is our hope."...Roman Zwaryz, an ABN official, told a reporter in 1984, "the Captive Nations Week ceremonies...have been... an indicator of a basic, fundamental shift in American foreign policy...we are being consulted as to the content of [Radio Liberty] broadcasts being sent into the Ukraine...The effect of those consultations could be seen in 1985; at the beginning of Reagan's second term in office, congressional investigators found that Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe were broadcasting "unacceptable material...characterized as ant-Semitic, anti-Catholic or even anti-Western" into the Soviet bloc. Among the offending broadcasts was "a positive description of the Nazi unit Galizien [Galician SS], which was responsible for allowing Ukrainians to murder thousands of Jews in Lvov."

Key link to the CNP - Dr. David Balsiger - CNP Member 1988, 1996. Costa Mesa advertising and public relations executive. He was a trained private investigator; TV field producer-director, international rights manager, advertising executive, and the author of 39 literary works. Researcher for Sun International Pictures. Vice-president and co-partner in Grizzly Adams Productions, Inc. Balsiger produced specials and video series, including Secrets of the Bible Code Revealed, How to Prepare Your Family for Y2K, Bible Code: The Future and Beyond, The Quest for Noah’s Ark, The Bible’s Greatest Secrets Revealed, The Bible’s Greatest Miracles.

His best-selling books In Search of Noah’s Ark and The Lincoln Conspiracy were made into major films. "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark," was a hoax.

Robert Grant - CNP 1984-85; 1988; 1994, 1998, 1999.

Concerned about what he saw as moral decay in America, Grant founded American Christian Cause in Southern California in 1974 to fight against pornography and homosexual rights were he served as President of the organization.

In 1978, having relocated to Washington D.C, he founded Christian Voice - the first major Christian Right organization in the USA. This included national conservative leaders composed of largely Pentecostals. Christian Voice operates out of the Heritage Foundation.

In 1987 he was the founding president of the American Freedom Coalition with Ralph David Abernathy.

He is the founder of the United Community Church of Glendale and the Graduate School of Theology (1968), both in California.

He is the publisher of American Freedom Journal and co-publisher of Presidential Biblical Scoreboard and the Candidates Biblical Scoreboard.
He has worked in various ministerial positions as the religion editor of the Washington Times.

He has led over 125 pilgrimages to Israel.

He is the former chairman of the Coalition for Religious Freedom

He was a Member of Ed McAteer 's Religious Roundtable Council of 56. See: Religious Roundtable

Arlington Group

The Arlington Group, established in 2002, is a coalition of more than twenty pro-family organizations whose leaders are members of the Religious Right. Many of the members of the coalition are listed here.

Key CNP links are Donald Ellis Wildmon. and Paul Weyrich.

Aspen Institute

Key links to the CNP include Jack Kemp and Dick DeVos.

Associates in Media / Mastermedia International

Longtime CNP member Larry W Poland founded Mastermedia International.

Mastermedia’s teams in Hollywood and New York build longstanding relationships with influential media leaders.

On their website they boast of bringing 'the next generation of Christian media influencers insight on the integration of their faith within a career and life in media. It remains a growing focus of Mastermedia to invest into the lives of emerging media makers at the seminal stages of their professional pursuits.'

Bohemian Club

Bott Radio Network

Brigham Young University/ Mormon/ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Brookings Institute

Campaign for Working Families

Key CNP link is Gary Bauer who heads the campaign. Bauer was Under Secretary of Education during the Reagan Administration and ran for the 2000 Republican presidential candidate.

Campaign for Working Families, "a non-partisan political action committee (PAC) dedicated to electing pro-family, pro-life and pro-free enterprise candidates to federal and state offices," formed by Bauer in 1996. "In the first two years of operation, CWF raised over $7 million to become the 5th largest PAC in the country for the 1998 election cycle and the leading pro-family, pro-life political action committee in America." Bauer is an Advocate for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, is on the Advisory Board for The Center for Jewish and Christian Values, "a special project of the Fellowship, works to improve the moral climate in our country by bringing together Jews and Christians in support of a common set of principles and programs on which to build a more moral society in America."

Bauer was featured as a speaker at Sun Myung Moon's Women's Federation For World Peace Conference in Washington DC in 1996 and had a full page ad in the Moon-owned Washington Times in August, 1997.

Bauer ran as a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the U.S. In February, 2000, he withdrew his candidacy and endorsed pro-abortion candidate, John McCain. Prior to joining FRC, Bauer served in President Ronald Reagan's administration for eight years, during the last two years as President Reagan's Chief Domestic Policy Advisor. Previously, Bauer was under Secretary of Education beginning in July 1985, when he was confirmed by unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate. While serving at the Education Department, Bauer was named Chairman of President Reagan's Special Working Group on the Family.

From 1988-1999 Bauer was the President of the Family Research Council, (FRC), a political lobbying organization which merged with Focus on the Family from 1988-1992, then reorganized as a separate 501C-3 in October 1992. In 1997, a new headquarters for FRC, a six-story building stands at 801 G Street N.W. in Washington, D.C. was built and decorated with funds through resources provided by FRC benefactors, the families of Edgar Prince and Elsa Prince (CNP) and Richard DeVos (CNP Rich DeVos)

Campus Crusade for Christ / Cru

Christian Leadership Ministries

Cato Institute

The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank founded by Charles G. Koch and funded by the Koch brothers. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Cato Institute is an "associate" member of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing “think tanks” in every state across the United States. They are also part of the international Atlas Group network with links to the Institute for Humane Studies. The Independent Institute seems to operate as a Cato subsidiary.

Where ideology and science part company, Cato favors ideology, as shown by an advertisement published in newspapers in 2009 disputing the state of the science on climate change

Other than the Kochs, other key CNP members associated with Cato include Jack Kemp, Richard Mellon Scaife, Mark Skousen, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, John Holt.

CAUSA International (Confederation of Associations for the Unification of the Societies of the Americas

Rev Moon's multinational anti-communist and political organization. CAUSA served as the vehicle for Rev. Moon's funding of the New Right and is closely linked to Moon's International Security Council, the main U.S. agency of the Moon system in the field of terrorism propaganda. CAUSA International was embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal and linked to key figureheads leading militant regimes in South America including Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Aparicio Mendez and Gregorio Alvarez in Uruguay, Luis García Meza in Bolivia (Cocaine Coup)

Key links to the CNP include Alan Gottlieb, Lynn Francis Bouchey, Lt. General Daniel O. Graham , Arnaud de Borchgrave, John T. (Terry) Dolan, Robert Grant, Dr. W. Cleon Skousen, Lt. General Gordon Sumner Jr., Richard Viguerie

AFC President Robert Grant has said that he hoped to "recruit a broad base" from his contacts with CAUSA, a political arm of the Unification Church. Grant has said that he solicited Phillip Sanchez, president of CAUSA USA, and Bo Hi Pak, president of CAUSA Intl, for support for AFC. Sanchez and Pak agreed to help AFC by leaving time on CAUSA program agendas for AFC board members to describe the organization and seek new members. They also allowed AFC access to the names of participants in previous CAUSA conferences, and granted the services of one CAUSA staff member per state to do outreach to CAUSA "graduates" and encourage them to join AFC. The two CAUSA leaders also granted the services of several CAUSA members to help in the Washington DC office of the AFC.

Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN)

Key figures involved in the CBN operation linked to the CNP are Pat Robertson and Nelson Bunker Hunt.

CBN has been used as a conduit to finance CIA/AmeriCares/Knights of Malta operations in Central America as depicted in the video animation below.

Center for Individual Rights

The Center for Individual Rights (CIR) is a right-wing legal organization originally known for its opposition to affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act, and other equity policies that favor those who have traditionally been discriminated against.

It was established in 1989 by lawyers, Michael Greve (Executive Director) and Michael P McDonald (President and General Council) It managed to get itself listed as a 510(c)(3) tax free charitable organisation.

In lobbying the tobacco company RJ Reynolds for a donation, it specifies that it

engages exclusively in original and appellate direct litigation and in the active representation of clients in agency proceedings.

Deciphered from legalese, this means that it doesn't do normal legal work but attacks the regulatory agencies (EPA, FDA, FCC, Consumer Produce Safety Commission, etc) by challenging their rights to regulate.
What makes CIR unique is that it is the only organization that targets its reform efforts at the courts rather than at the legislative process.

It had an operating budget of $300,000 -- yet it depends on pro bono help from the large US law firms -- because it engages in "major precedent-setting court cases".

In effect, it was specializing in blocking regulatory agency actions dealing with health, safety and the environmental. It challenged them in court when they were doing their job in watching over the large companies who were clients of these pro-bono law firms -- promoted the attack on "junk science in the court-room" and the "economic regulation and Freedom of Speech" (code for the "right to advertise"). Of course it would always have some show-piece actions which were directed at individuals despite the disclaimer sent to the tobacco companies.

One of the key figures linked to the CNP is Dr. Larry P. Arnn who serves on CIR's National Advisory Board.

Capital Research Center

The Capital Research Center (CRC) is a right-wing "investigative think tank" established in 1984 to examine the influence of money in politics. CRC focuses on "unions, environmentalist groups, and a wide variety of nonprofit and activist organizations." CRC says, "We do have a specific point of view. We believe in free markets, Constitutional government, and individual liberty. But facts are facts, and our journalists and researchers go where the facts lead them." CRC produces a podcast, political commentary, and a print magazine called Capital Research.

CRC is an associate member of the State Policy Network.

Key ties to the CNP include CRC's President Scott Walter who is a CNP member. Other historic ties between the two organizations include Richard V. Allen, Terence Scanlon, Hon. Edwin Meese III, Dr. Larry P. Arnn, T. Kenneth Cribb Jr., Samuel A. Brunelli, Beverly Danielson, and Willa A. Johnson

Dangerous Documentaries

CRC produces "Dangerous Documentaries", which include feature-length documentaries as well as shorter films and web-series.

"Architects of Woke", a 2019 series of short videos, "takes aim at far-left post-modernist and Marxist thinkers and activists responsible for the spread of identity politics from college campuses to society at large." The series investigates figures such as Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, Stokely Carmichael, Howard Zinn, the Chapo Trap House podcast, and the 1619 Project.

Longer films include "The Jack Kemp Playbook", "America Under Siege: Antifa", "America Under Siege: Soviet Islam", and "America Under Siege: Civil War 2017".

In October 2019, Dangerous Documentaries released a feature-length documentary entitled "No Safe Spaces", which features Prager University founder Dennis Prager and libertarian comedian Adam Carolla, who visit "college campuses across the country, interviewing students and professors, comedians and commentators on the left and right, and those who have been impacted by the silencing of different voices on campus, analyzing the value of so-called safe-spaces." Other individuals featured in the documentary include Ben Shapiro, Tim Allen, Alan Dershowitz, Sharyl Attkisson, Van Jones, Dave Rubin, Candace Owens (formerly of Turning Point USA), Cornel West, Ann Coulter, and Jordan Peterson.

"Defund the Left" Campaign

As part of the conservative campaign to 'Defund the left', Capital Research Center produces a range of publications targeting foundations, unions, and left-wing activist groups. The organization's website includes news devoted to "Foundation Watch", "Green Watch", "Labor Watch", and "Organization Trends".

CRC Hosts State Labor Reform Conference

Mary Bottari reports in "Bradley Foundation Bankrolls Attacks on Unions" as part of the Bradley Files investigation,

"The “State Labor Reform Conference” on October 4, 2013, was hosted by the Capital Research Center (CRC), bringing together “75 state policymakers, policy researchers and analysts, and activists from 15 states” (Meeting of the Bradley IRA Committee, 11/12/13). The president of CRC is Scott Walter, a former employee of Berman and Company.

The list of participants is a “who’s who” of anti-union activists and organizations funded by Bradley (Meeting of the Bradley IRA Committee, 11/12/13).

[Grover] Norquist was there again and so was Kersey. On a panel called “Coalition and Communication,” PR spin doctor Richard Berman of Berman and Co. was there “representing” his front group Center for Union Facts, discussed further below. Jonathan Williams was there representing the corporate bill mill, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Jennifer Butler, VP of External Relations of the State Policy Network (SPN), was there. SPN groups operate as the policy, communications, and litigation arm of ALEC, giving its cookie-cutter bills a sheen of academic legitimacy and state-based support.

In a panel called “Lessons from Wisconsin,” “Wisconsin Secretary of Administration Mike Huebsch, delivered lessons that Wisconsin has learned on labor-policy and public-pension reform and talked about how Wisconsin can be a good model for other states and localities” (Meeting of the Bradley IRA Committee, 11/12/13). Also presenting, Brett Healy of the Bradley-funded MacIver Institute and Jennifer Toftness from Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ office.

In a panel called “Lessons from Michigan,” F. Vincent Vernuccio, Director of Labor Policy for the Mackinac Center, was featured along with Terry Bowman, from a group called Union Conservatives, and Patrick Colbeck, Republican State Senator from Michigan.

There was also a panel on “Preventing and Responding to Legal Challenges” with Raymond LaJeunesse, VP and Legal Director for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

The final panel, “Beyond Right to Work,” featured newcomer James Sherk from the Heritage Foundation. Sherk has worked on a new strategy to defund unions at the local level, with ALEC-style “right to work” ordinances. He was in Wisconsin in 2015 testifying on behalf of ALEC’s private-sector verbatim “right to work bill” and candidly testified that it would “drive down labor costs,” also known as wages. Sherk recently got a job in the Trump White House as a labor advisor. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and Earl Taylor of the Goldwater Institute also presented."

Lobbying Efforts

CRC lobbied members of Congress against supporting measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions in 2003. Then-president Scanlon joined 32 other conservative groups warning against "alarmist statements about climate change and science contained in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's State Department authorization bill". It warned House Committee members against accepting the Senate version of the bill, saying, "The Senate committee findings include exaggerations, misleading statements, out-of-context citations, and reliance on discredited sources."

In August 2002, Scanlon was a co-signatory to a letter from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity which complained that "we are particularly concerned that the tax code is making it very difficult for U.S based companies to compete in global markets. The corporate tax rate in the United States is much too high and we compound the damage by taxing income U.S. taxpayers earn in other countries"

Capitol Resource Institute

One of the biggest beneficiaries of CNP members Robert Hurtt’s and Howard Ahmanson’s largess is the Christian-based Capitol Resource Institute, which they founded in 1987 to organize against pro-abortion foes in Sacramento. Some of its other goals: pushing a measure to deny recognition of same-sex marriage and junking the state’s no-fault divorce law, making it harder to dissolve a marriage.

These policy institutes try to be at the fore of the hottest issues in state politics--attacking welfare, affirmative action, public schools, public employee unions, taxes, environmental law. Opposition to abortion and gay rights are recurrent themes.

The institute has been described as the California arm of The Family Research Council. CRI published a monthly newsletter called California Citizen. In one issue, the newsletter lauded the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, saying, "it is recognized by the proponents of abortion that Roe vs Wade will be overturned and individual states will have to battle over a woman's right to kill her own child. Clarence Thomas has been on the Supreme Court since 1991 and Roe vs Wade was overturned in 2022, this was a plan at least 31 years in the making.

California Policy Center

The California Policy Center (CPC) is a conservative and libertarian public policy think tank located in California. Based in Tustin, the organization specializes in union busting policy, pension reform, spending reform, and school choice. CPC was founded in 2010 by Marc Bucher and Edward Ring. It is a member of the State Policy Network, an association of state-based conservative and libertarian think tanks.

Key link to the CNP is Howard Ahmanson, Jr.- CNP Member 1984-85, 1988, Board of Governors 1996, 1998.

Howard played a significant role in financially and intellectually supporting a publication, “With Friends Like These”, that was organized by the California Policy Center and served California elected officials by displaying a grounded case against crony corporate welfare in the state of California.

President of Fieldstead and Co.; Fieldstead Foundation; chair of the California Independent Business PAC. Ahmanson is an Orange County financier who inherited Home Savings of America from his father, has spent millions promoting Religious Right candidates, first in California and then nationwide. Ahmanson has been a major contributor to the Capitol Resource Institute, the California political front of Focus on the Family; the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom, the Reason Foundation, (an offshoot of Reason Public Policy Institute (RPPI). and the California Prolife Council. Inc.

Ahmanson helped found The Rutherford Institute and is a major donor to Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation; The Ahmanson Foundation was a contributor to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)(1990-1993).

Ahmanson is a long time board member for the Claremont Institute, along with his wife, Roberta Green, also a member of Claremont Institute board. Ahmanson also served 23 years (retired 1995) on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation in Vallecito, California, the think tank of the Christian Reconstructionists . The Chalcedon Foundation, to which Ahmanson has contributed over a million dollars, was founded in 1965, perpetuates the Dominionist/Reconstructionist/Kingdom Now beliefs of founder Rev. Rousas John Rushdoony who was also a member of the CNP. Rushdoony, who died February 8, 2001, is known as the "father of Christian Reconstructionism," which is the misguided belief that Christians should have dominion over all earthly affairs and nations and the law would be according to Old Testament laws, which includes the death penalty for many infractions.

Chalcedon Foundation

The Chalcedon Foundation is an American Christian Reconstructionist organization founded by Rousas John Rushdoony in 1965. Named for the Council of Chalcedon, it has also included theologians such as Gary North, who later founded his own organization, the Institute for Christian Economics.

The Chalcedon Foundation provides indoctrination material in the form of books, newsletter reports and various electronic media, toward advancing the theological views of Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionism movement. It is notable for its role in the influence of Christianity on politics in the U.S. and has been described as "a think tank of the Religious Right." Rushdoony's son Mark now heads the foundation.

The Chalcedon Foundation, which is named after a 451 A.D. council that proclaimed the state's subservience to God, was officially founded by Rousas John Rushdoony in summer 1965.

In the 1970s multimillionaire Howard Ahmanson became a Calvinist and joined Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionist movement. Ahmanson served as a board member of Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation for approximately 15 years before resigning in 1996.

Time magazine covered the Ahmansons in their 2005 profiles of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America, classifying them as "the financiers." Former American oil billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt also made heavy contributions to the Chalcedon Foundation.

Reconstructionism

The Chalcedon Foundation advocates the Christian Reconstructionism movement which "believes Christians must take control of society for 1,000 years before the Second Coming of Christ can be achieved." Rushdoony believed the Bible should be adopted as law, including Scriptures advocating the death penalty for homosexuality, striking or cursing a parent, adultery, and lying. Rushdoony developed and articulated Christian Reconstructionism in his book The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), which is promoted by the Chalcedon Foundation. The book is a commentary on the Ten Commandments, and provides an outline of a program for establishing a Christian theocracy.

According to American journalist Frederick Clarkson, reconstructionism has played an important role in shaping the contemporary Christian Right citing that Reconstructionists who have already moved into positions of significant power and influence are two directors of Chalcedon Foundation, philanthropist Howard Ahmanson and political consultant Wayne C. Johnson, epitomizing the political strategy of the new Christian Right.

Dominionism

Dominionism or Dominion Theology is a grouping of theological systems with the common belief that the law of God, as codified in the Bible, should exclusively govern society, to the exclusion of secular law, a view also known as theonomy. Reconstructionists themselves use the word dominionism to refer to their belief that Christians alone should control civil government, conducting it according to Biblical law.

The central biblical text for Dominionists is Genesis 1:26–28, in which God declares that man shall have dominion over all the earth. This is seen as a mandate for believers to create both a Christian government and a Christian culture. It has been primarily associated with Rushdoony's Reconstructionism movement, as espoused by the Chalcedon Foundation. Rushdoony himself supported the John Birch Society, while North wrote the epilogue to a conspiracist text by the John Birch Society author, Larry Abraham. North went as far as declaring that the enemies of the United States were “a conspiracy of super-rich and super-powerful insiders.

Key links to the CNP include the organizations founder Rousas John Rushdoony and key financiers Howard Ahmanson Jr and Nelson Bunker Hunt.

Claremont Institute

The Claremont Institute is a conservative think tank based in Upland, California. The institute was founded in 1979 by four students of Harry V. Jaffa. It produces the Claremont Review of Books, The American Mind, and other publications.

The institute was an early defender of Donald Trump. After Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election and Trump refused to concede, Claremont Institute senior fellow John Eastman aided Trump in his failed attempts to overturn the election results. The institute publications in recent years have frequently published alt-right and far-right opinion pieces.

The institute was founded in 1979 by four students of Straussian political theorist Harry V. Jaffa, a professor emeritus at Claremont McKenna College and the Claremont Graduate University, although the institute has no affiliation with any of the Claremont Colleges. Under Jaffa and Larry P. Arnn, the institute became a leading Straussian-influenced conservative think tank, publishing on topics such as statesmanship, Lincoln scholarship and modern conservative issues.

Arnn served as its president from 1985 until 2000, when he became the twelfth president of Hillsdale College. Thomas Klingenstein has been the chairman of the board of trustees since approximately 2010.^[ Michael Pack was president from 2015 to 2017. Ryan P. Williams was named president in 2017.

The Claremont Institute provides fellowships. Fellowships in the past have gone to prominent figures on the right such as Laura Ingraham, Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, Mary Kissel, and Charles C. Johnson. The institute caused controversy by granting a fellowship in 2019 to the Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. National Review columnist Mona Charen wrote that "Claremont stands out for beclowning itself with this embrace of the smarmy underside of American politics." In 2020 Mark Joseph Stern of Slate magazine called the institute "a racist fever swamp with deep connections to the conspiratorial alt-right", citing Posobiec's fellowship and the publication of a 2020 essay by senior fellow John Eastman that questioned Kamala Harris' eligibility for the vice presidency. In 2022 the American Mind published an editorial by Raw Egg Nationalist, an author affiliated with neo-Nazi publishing house Antelope Hill.

Trump advocacy and connections

The institute was an early defender of Donald Trump. The Daily Beast stated Claremont "arguably has done more than any other group to build a philosophical case for Trump’s brand of conservatism."

In September 2016 the institute's Claremont Review of Books published Michael Anton's "The Flight 93 Election" editorial. The editorial, written under a pseudonym, compared the prospect of conservatives letting Trump lose to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election with passengers not charging the cockpit of the United Airlines aircraft hijacked by Al-Qaeda. The article went viral and received widespread coverage across the political spectrum. Rush Limbaugh devoted a day of his radio series to reading the entire essay. Anton would go on to serve under President Trump as spokesman for the National Security Council, holding the position from 2017 to 2018.

The institute became a significant player in the Trump administration, adding a Washington office and contributing ideas and personnel to the administration. In 2019 Trump awarded the Claremont Institute with a National Humanities Medal.In June 2020 former Claremont Institute president Michael Pack became head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) under Trump.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the institute received between $350,000 and $1 million in federally backed small business loans from Chain Bridge Bank as part of the Paycheck Protection Program. The institute stated this would allow it to retain 29 jobs.

According to a 4 November 2021 Vice article, the actions of pro-Trump Claremont Institute leaders—senior fellows John Eastman, Brian Kennedy, Angelo Codevilla, and Michael Anton, as well as Ryan P. Williams (the institute's president), and Thomas D. Klingenstein (chairman of the board)—culminated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Williams has stated that the institute's mission "is to save western civilization." Vice asserts that Codevilla, who frequently denounced the "ruling class," coined the term "cold civil war" in 2017. On 5 January 2021 using the hashtag #HoldTheLine, Claremont president emeritus Brian Kennedy tweeted from Capitol Hill: "We are in a constitutional crisis and also in a revolutionary moment...We must embrace the spirit of the American Revolution to stop this communist revolution." In early January 2021, along with Trump and other advisors, Eastman unsuccessfully attempted to persuade then-vice president Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. He then spoke at Trump's rally on 6 January 2021, before the attack on the Capitol.

One of the key links to the CNP is Dr. Larry Arnn who is the vice-chairman and former Chairman of Claremont Insitute. Another link is to financier Howard Ahmanson Jr. who served on the board of the Claremont Institute.

Thomas L. Phillips, Chairman of Phillips International Inc., announced the launch of a $10 million Endowment Campaign for The Claremont Institute. Phillips, who also serves as Chairman of the campaign was a known member of the CNP at that time (10 Feb 2000).

Center For Education Reform

The Center for Education Reform (CER) is a right-wing 501(c)3 nonprofit and associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN). CER is a pro-education privatization group on the front lines of the "education reform" movement that seeks to expand charter schools and vouchers.

CER is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Task Force on Education and Workforce Development and plays a key role in supporting many of ALEC's public school privatization efforts. The organization has presented at ALEC meetings as recently as 2016.

Center for Strategic and International Studies

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a Washington, D.C. think tank. It was founded in 1962, by Admiral Arleigh Burke and David Abshire, "at the height of the Cold War, dedicated to the simple but urgent goal of finding ways for America to survive as a nation and prosper as a people." Today, "CSIS experts conduct research and analysis and develop policy initiatives" on issues related to U.S. defense policy and international security; "global challenges" such as "population, energy security, global health, technology, and the international financial and economic system"; and regional studies.

Originally CSIS sprung out from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, and many of principals were also faculty members at the university. For some time CSIS had an office on the Georgetown campus. Several of the principals were "Cold Warriors" and made a little industry out of finding "communist influence" around the world. During the war against Nicaragua, CSIS produced several documents "proving" a communist plot, etc. For many years, CSIS was also seen as a think tank where right-wing "officials-in-waiting" could wait until their next appointment in government. See Georgetown Set for the long standing intelligence ties in Georgetown.

Key links between CSIS include Dr. Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., Arnaud de Borchgrave, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, and William E. Simon

Center for the American Founding

The Center for the American Founding is the principal activity of the Potomac Foundation: The group advocate and practice discussion of national issues as they relate to America's founding principles. The group believes the nation (United States) needs to return to the Rule of Law, Individual Rights, Security of Property, and the same American Identity for all its citizens. The reference to 'founding' draws on the groups rhetoric of constitutional absolutism.

Key CNP links iclude T. Kenneth Cribb Jr., Beverly Danielson, Ann Drexel, Lorena Jaeb, John Lenczowski, Hon. Edwin Meese III, Balint Vazsonyi

Church League of America

The Church League of America (also known as the National Laymen's Council) was founded in Chicago in 1937 to oppose New Deal policies as well as left-wing and Social Gospel influences in Christian thought in organizations. The group's founders were Frank J. Loesch, a lawyer and head of the Chicago Crime Commission, Henry Parsons Crowell, chairman of the board of Quaker Oats, and George Washington Robnett, an advertising executive. The nonprofit organization became an influential anti-communist research and advocacy group in the 1950s, under the direction of former United States Air Force Intelligence Officer Major Edgar C. Bundy. It famously denounced the mainstream National Council of Churches for being dominated by communists. In 1961, the Church League moved its headquarters to Wheaton, Illinois, where it continued its research operations, and created an extensive library of materials on subversive activity. Selling reports and access to its information was a major source of revenue for the Church League, and they also sometimes provided it without charge to like-minded researchers, including members of government and law enforcement agencies.

The Church League of America was one of the oldest private spy networks in the United States. The Church League of America, like the American Security Council, provided its customers with computerized files on U.S. citizens. Among its financial supporters were the Curran Foundation, the Elizabeth Trust, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Hearst (William Randolph) Foundation, and the Coors Foundation. Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus and the late Clarence Manion were CLA sponsors, and Gen. Robert Wood (former chairman of the board of Sears, Roebuck & Co.) and Sewell Avery (formerly board chairman of Montgomery Ward and U.S. Gypsum Corp.) contributed to CLA's library fund. In one of its brochures, CLA said that staff members of U.S. Government committees, policemen, and FBI agents were among the users of its files...In addition to his leadership of the Church League of America, Dr. H. Edward Rowe has served as executive director of Coral Ridge Ministries (Dr. D. James Kennedy's national organization), executive director of the (Religious) Roundtable, administrative director of the American Security Council, executive director of Anita Bryant Ministries, and president of the Christian Freedom Foundation.

The Church League's weekly News and Views bulletin for clergy and lay persons focused not on the gospel but on what it called "radical and revolutionary activities in certain social fields like those of religion, education, labor, public service, and politics.

Wackenhut was founded by retiring FBI agents whose conservatism was immediately apparent. For years, Wackenhut relied upon the dossiers of the Church League of America, a right-wing think tank whose “intelligence files” on the Left.

The Church League of America dissolved in 1984.

In a Guardian article from the 11 Jan 1978 edition titled 'Guild exposes right wing spy unit' CLA's links to John Rees were publicized.

John Ress was a mysterious right wing figure who for over 10 years produced and distributed Information Digest, a sophisticated right wing newsletter which supplied police departments with derogatory information on the left.

In an investigation into police abuses in New York in 1976 it was reveal that NY State Police used ID as a “confidential informant.
”Information from Rees’ publication was used to develop dossiers on thousands of Americans who committed no crimes and were not suspected of committing any crime. In Dec 1977, Rees launched a McCarthyite style smear campaign against Guardian (UK) correspondent Wilfred Burchet in one of ID’s favorite above ground outlets, the John Birch Society’s Review of the News
.In 1969 Rees surfaced as the editor of the National Laymans Digest (Church League of America is also known as the National Laymen's Council) , a blacklisting publication of the ultra right Church League of America. Yet another intriguing aspect of the Rees’ operation is their corporate police forces. John Rees worked on and off for Wackenhut, one of the largest security and investigative services including “pre-employment screening, polygraph examinations, counter business espionage, internal intelligence and general criminal, fraud and arson investigations.” John Ammarell, the company’s vice president admitted before a congressional commission that Wackenhut maintained 300,000 files on suspected leftists.

Above is an image of a screenshot taken from AbeBooks' website displaying a pamphlet published by Church League of America that targets Martin Luther King Jr before his assassination.

One figure of note associated with the Church League of America was John Rees, a avid British anti-communist who delved into spying as an agent provocateur with his wife Louise for private and public intelligence networks.

Key CNP members who financed Church League of America are featured below.

Coalition for Religious Freedom

The Coalition for Religious Freedom is a religious right organization founded by CNP members Tim LaHaye and Robert Grant to lobby against government regulation of religion. In the 1980s the organization concentrated its efforts on defending the Unification Church.

Coalition on Revival

Many evangelical Christians of all types have embraced Christian Reconstructionism in part or in whole. Evangelical leaders who endorsed it explicitly or implicitly include Jay Grimstead, head of the Coalition on Revival. He summarized the position of many evangelical leaders: "'I don't call myself [a Reconstructionist],' but 'A lot of us are coming to realize that the Bible is God's standard of morality ... in all points of history ... and for all societies, Christian and non-Christian alike... It so happens that Rushdoony, Bahnsen, and North understood that sooner.' He added, 'There are a lot of us floating around in Christian leadership—James Kennedy is one of them—who don't go all the way with the theonomy thing, but who want to rebuild America based on the Bible.'"

COR's two major purposes, according to Sara Diamond, "was to unify politically active evangelical pastors who differed on important theological points, especially eschatology... Grimstead and many COR members were post-millennialist who believed that their mandate was to establish God's kingdom on earth now; only after believers' millennial reign would Christ return. COR's second purpose was to develop a series of working papers on how to apply dominion theology to Christian Right activism in more than a dozen spheres of social life... the idea was to encourage activists to try to "take dominion" over secular institutions." [Diamond, 'Roads', p. 247]

Jay Grimstead's COR drafted the “17 Worldview Documents,” which involved cell groups for ‘sheep’ and pastors.

"...Accordingly, in the spring of 1984 our theologians took a “helicopter view” of 2,000 years of the Church’s theology from every historic denomination and boiled it all down into the 42 Articles of the Essential of a Christian World View.

"After the 17 World View Documents were created, we wrote the Manifesto for the Christian Church which is a trumpet call to the Church to repent, unify, be holy and rebuild the civilization upon the Bible. It identifies the 20 points on which the Church must stand and the action it must take to fulfill its task in the world. At our final national conference in Washington, D.C., we had a solemn assembly at the Lincoln Memorial on July 4, 1986, and formally signed the Manifesto as a covenant with God and with each other to live and minister in obedience to the Bible and to spend our lives for the cause of advancing the Kingdom of God. We believe that no Christian leader who opposes the points set down in the Manifesto really understands the real battle in which we are now engaged or is properly qualified to lead others in Christian ministry. We see this Manifesto and the doctrinal basics set down in the 42 Articles as practical plumb lines by which to measure the Church’s activities and individual Christians at this critical point in history. The Manifesto was signed by a large percentage of the major, national, Christian leaders in America...

From 1987 to 1989 COR sponsored a series of discussions and debates between a wide range of theologians concerning the Kingdom of God. Out of these debates, COR developed the Articles of Affirmation and Denial on the Kingdom of God. These 25 articles describe how the Kingdom of God impacts society during this present age. The Kingdom of God is a central teaching of the New Testament and cannot be neglected without loss to the Church and the Church's influence upon society. The 25 articles define the Kingdom as both the universal rule of Christ over all things and His special rule over the redeemed, as well as the penetrating influence of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit in the world in areas such as law, government, economics, and ethics....COR has also sponsored a new consensus effort to deal with serious heresies that challenge the modern church: the International Church Council. The Church Council is patterned after the Ecumenical Church Councils of the First Millennium. The Church Council is developing a set of consensus documents (theological white papers and affirmations and denials) that set forth biblical orthodoxy in nearly two dozen areas of theology."

Christian Coalition of America

The Christian Coalition of America (CCA), a 501(c)(4) organization, is the successor to the original Christian Coalition created in 1987 by religious broadcaster and former presidential candidate Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson. This US Christian advocacy group includes members of various Christian denominations, including Baptists (50%), mainline Protestants (25%), Roman Catholics (16%), and Pentecostals (10% to 12%) among communicants of other churches.

Formation

On April 30, 1987, the Christian Coalition was incorporated in Richmond, Virginia. The following year, after a well-funded but unsuccessful campaign for President, Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster and political commentator, used the remainder of his campaign resources to jump-start the formation of the Christian Coalition's voter-mobilization effort. Americans for Robertson accumulated a mailing list of several million conservative Christians interested in politics. This mailing provided the basis of the new organization.

The coalition had four original directors: Robertson, his son Gordon Robertson, Dick Weinhold, head of the Texas organization, and, Billy McCormack, pastor of the University Worship Center in Shreveport, Louisiana. McCormack had headed the Louisiana division of Americans for Robertson in 1988^[7] and was also the vice president of the coalition.

Voter guides

In 1990, the national Christian Coalition, Inc., headquartered in Chesapeake, Virginia, began producing non-partisan voter guides which it distributed to conservative Christian churches. Complaints that the voter guides were partisan led to the denial by the IRS of the Christian Coalition, Inc.'s tax-exempt status in 1999. Later that same year, the coalition prevailed in its five-year defense of a lawsuit brought by the Federal Election Commission.

Ralph Reed, an Emory University Ph.D. candidate, whom Robertson had met when the younger man was working as a waiter at an inaugural dinner for George H. W. Bush in January 1989, took control of day-to-day operations of the coalition in 1989 as its founding executive director. He remained in the post until August 1997 when he left to enter partisan political consulting, founding his new firm Century Strategies, based near Atlanta, Georgia.

Political involvement

Robertson served as the organization's president from its founding until June 1997, when President Reagan's Cabinet Secretary Donald P. Hodel was named president of the CCA, and former U.S. Representative Randy Tate (R-WA) was named executive director. Upon announcement of Hodel becoming president of the CCA, Robertson expressed a desire to serve the grassroots activists that made up the coalition.

After a disagreement with Robertson, Hodel left in January 1999 and Tate soon followed. Robertson took over the presidency. Later in 2001 he turned it and the chairmanship over to Roberta Combs, the group's executive vice president and former state chairman of South Carolina, when he officially left the coalition.

Decline

Combs is the current president and CEO of the Christian Coalition of America. She is a founding state director and has been the only woman on the board of directors in the history of the Christian Coalition of America. Since moving to the capital, Combs installed members of her family as high-ranking officials in the group, including her daughter Michele Ammons and son-in-law Tracy Ammons. Michele and Tracy Ammons later divorced. Combs fired her former son-in-law Tracy Ammons after her daughter received a judgement against him for alimony and child support. Combs had filed an affidavit on her behalf on Coalition letterhead.

Combs canceled a direct-mail fund-raising campaign run by fund-raiser Bill Sidebottom of Interact Response Communications aimed at fighting child pornography after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The cancellation of the campaign in the middle of its run led to nearly a dozen lawsuits by creditors and the bankruptcy of its fund-raising company. Without a fund-raising company supporting it, the Christian Coalition went into sharp decline financially.

In March 2001, the Christian Coalition of America was sued by its African-American employees, who alleged racial discrimination. The District Court issued an injunction against the Christian Coalition. The case was settled and the African-American plaintiffs received a payment.

In November 2006, the president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America resigned his post, citing a difference in philosophy over which issues the organization should embrace. Reverend Joel Hunter, currently the senior pastor of the Northland Church in Longwood, Florida, was to assume the presidency in January. However, Hunter stated the coalition's leaders resisted his calls to expand their issue base, saying it would not expand the agenda beyond opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. Hunter also said he wanted to focus on rebuilding the coalition's once powerful grassroots, an appeal he says board members rejected. "After initial willingness to consider these changes, the board of the CCA decided, 'that is fine, but that is not who we are'", Hunter said. Combs continues as the coalition's president.

Key links to the CNP include Pat Robertson, Ralph E. Reed, Jr, Alan P. Dye, Benjamin Hart, Rev. E. V. Hill, Hon. Donald Paul Hodel, Dr. "M. G." Pat Robertson, Geraldine (Gerry) Snyder, John Stoos.

John Stoos- CNP 1996; Christian Reconstructionist; heads, Conservative Opportunity Society; former Western representative for English First, now regional director; former executive director of the Gun Owners of California; former adviser to the California chapter of the Christian Coalition; 1982, Assistant Administrator for Assemblyman Wally Herger; 1983, directed the California operations of a national Pro-life organization; 1995, Chief of Staff for Assemblyman Bob Margett and Senior Consultant for the Republican Caucus; former vice-president, California Republican Assembly ; host of Dialogue, a two hour-long (5-7 PM M-F) issues discussion program on, AM 710 "The Light".

The Council for Inter-American Security (CIS) is a rightist outfit that played a pivotal role formulating Washington's program for counter-revolutionary war and mass murder in Central America during the 1980s. Larry Pratt, was a central figure within the CIS hierarchy as was Patrick Buchanan; Pratt was secretary to the group while Buchanan functioned as an organizational director (see Appendix for complete list of board members and principle players). CNP"s Bouchey heads CIS and numerous CNP members are involved in the organization.

Under the auspices of CIS, Pratt helped found and was the president of a racist, anti-immigration outfit, English First, which address is the same address as Pratt's GOA.. Officers of Pratt's group are also leaders of the alarmist, United States Border Control (USBC). The Denver-based, North-South Institute (NSI) is a non-profit arm of the Council for Inter-American Security. NSI vice president and director, Lt. General Gordon Sumner, also a CIS director as we have seen, is an officer of USBC and NSI. Recommended links on the English First website include one to the English-Speaking Union of the United States -- a super-elite society which was formed by the Cecil Rhodes-Milner Round Table Group. John Stoos, the former Western representative for English First and the former executive director of the Gun Owners of California, has also been an adviser to the California chapter of the powerful Christian Coalition - which is headed by the Rev. Pat Robertson, managed by the charismatic Ralph Reed...English First is actually a subsidiary of another Pratt entity, the Family Foundation. Both are run from the same office suite in Virginia that GOA calls home. Pratt founded the Family Foundation as a Virginia nonprofit corporation in 1980 after he was already GOA's executive director. By 1987, the Family Foundation had a 13-member advisory board of state and federal legislators, including Armey. (Armey has been listed on GOA letterheads as an advisory board member.

"...What got Stoos into trouble was his statement that American society should be founded on Christ's kingship and Biblical law. Stoos also said that Jews and other non-Christians would be "tolerated." His comments were challenged by Marty Kassman of the ACLU, who is also a board member of the American Jewish Congress.

"I don't wish to be tolerated in this country," Kassman said. "I was born in this country. I don't think it is any more your country than mine. Or any more a Christian's country [than] a Jew's."

Stoos shot back that in the Christian society he envisions "you would not have total acceptance. You would feel more at home in Israel."...."

"...a California medical clinic sued activists Theresa Reali, Murray Lewis, John Stoos, Jay Baggett and Don Blythe, Operation Rescue and others. They had been physically and verbally harassing clinic patients and barring access to its entrance. They were found guilty by default at their initial trial, which they declined to show up for. A state appeals court upheld the conviction, the California Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal, and this week the land's highest court let the verdict stand. The five now owe nearly $100,000 -- the legal costs the clinic incurred...."

"...In an article for the Chalcedon Report, a journal of the radical Christian Reconstructionist movement, Stoos "goes so far as to call Christian politicians God's 'vice-regents'...those who believe in the Lordship of Christ and the dominion mandate..."

The Religious Right Revealed

In the first part of The Religious Right Revealed series, Pat Robertson's use of his Presidential campaign mailing list to continuing his fundraising efforts after the campaigns failure via the Christian Coalition of America is covered.

Council for Inter-American Security

Council for Inter-American Security, was an ardent supporter of the Nicaraguan contras with an apparent main goal, the defeat of communism in Latin America. It had close affiliations with the John Birch Society, the World Anti-Communist League, Alpha66/Brigade 2506 anti-Castro terrorist groups, The LaRouche Organization, the Unification Movement of South Korea (Moonies), various Christian fundamentalist and conservative Catholic groups. In 1980, it published a report known as the Santa Fe Document, which became a major part of the blue print and rationale for the Reagan Administration’s Latin American policy. In addition providing policy rational, the Council provided people to fill policy making positions of the Reagan Administration The Council worked to improve reputation of Salvadoran death squad leader Roberto D’Aubuisson and worked closely with the FBI on covert operations against "leftist" clergy and left-leaning organizations in the United States. It also worked closely with the Salvadoran police and military in tracking and monitoring Salvadorian refugees who had fled to the U.S.

The Sante Fe Document recommended various Proposals including, Proposal 3, "U.S. foreign policy must begin to counter (not react against) liberation theology as it is utilized in Latin America by the ‘liberation theology’ clergy." "The role of the church in Latin America is vital to the concept of political freedom. Unfortunately, Marxist-Leninist forces have utilized the church as a political weapon against private property and productive capitalism by infiltrating the religious community with ideas that are less Christian than Communist." Proposal 4: "The United States must reject the mistaken assumption that one can easily locate and impose U.S. style democratic alternatives to authoritarian governments…. This belief has induced the Carter Administration to participate actively in the toppling of non-Communist authoritarians while remaining passive in the face of Communist expansion" Proposal 5: "Human rights, which is a culturally and politically relative concept that the present [Carter] administration has used for intervention for political change in countries of this hemisphere, adversely affecting the peace, stability and security of the region, must be abandoned and replaced by a non-interventionist policy of political and ethical realism."

Members of the Council included: Lewis Tambs (Sante Fe’s principle editor), appointed as ambassador to Columbia and then Costa Rica (which was the launch point for Contra attacks into Nicaragua); Robert Fontaine, appointed NSC advisor on Latin Amer. Affairs, Editor for Washington Times (Mooney paper); retired Lt. Gen. Gordon Sumner, appointed special assistant to the Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs; Retired US Army Gen. John Singlaub, member of OSS and CIA, Implemented the CIA’s Phoenix Operation, responsible for the murder of ~40,000 Vietnamese and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of others, fired by Carter when he openly disagreed with Carter’s plan to withdraw troops from Korea; Anthony Bouscaren, Board member of American-Chilean Council, Board member of WACL, Worked for Wycliffe, Drapers Pioneer Fund.

In l988, the Committee of Santa Fe released a new document, Santa Fe II, with recommendations for the next administration. Although it is somewhat less ideological and more pragmatic than the original "Santa Fe Document," this second publication unlikely to have the impact of the first simply due to the changing political tenor of the country and the absence from the White House of a truly ideological president.

Citizens Against Government Waste

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is a right-wing 501(c)3 non-profit that has campaigned on behalf of the tobacco industry and in favor of Microsoft and against open source software. CAGW is an "associate" member of the State Policy Network (SPN). It functions as a "government watchdog" and advocacy group for fiscally conservative causes.

CAGW has an affiliated 501(c)4 nonprofit lobbying arm, The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), "to advocate the elimination of waste and inefficiency in government through lobbying and grassroots activities. Each year, CCAGW tabulates its Congressional Ratings, evaluating how each member of Congress measures up on key tax and spending votes."

According to its website, "CAGW is a private, non-partisan, non-profit organization representing more than one million members and supporters nationwide.

CAGW was founded by in 1984 by J. Peter Grace (1913-1995) and Jack Anderson.

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

CAGW has ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It has been a member of ALEC's Communications and Technology Task Force and Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force. According to an August 2013 ALEC board document obtained by The Guardian, it terminated its ALEC membership on April 12, 2013.

CAGW Critical of Open Source Software

Australian blogger Tim Lambert mentioned in June 2004 CAGW as one of several "think tanks" writing reports critical of open source software. CAGW's press release of July 12, 2004 is just another example. "People mistakenly refer to open source as 'free' software because it can be freely altered and distributed. Yet while the software itself is free, the cost to maintain and upgrade it can become very expensive," CAGW President Tom Schatz said. "Maintenance, training and support are far more expensive with open source than proprietary software."<ref. Citizens Against Government Waste, Government Reinforces Software Guidelines, press release, July 12, 2004.

In 1999 the New York Times had described CAGW as one of a number of "Microsoft-financed groups". Microsofts receives $billions from the US government annually.

Key links between CAGW and CNP include J.Peter Grace and Alan Keyes,

Citizens for America

Citizens for America (CFA) was a United States conservative grass-roots organization founded by President Ronald Reagan's "Kitchen Cabinet" (principally Jaquelin H. Hume, CEO of Basic American Foods of San Francisco, and including Southern California car dealer Holmes Tuttle and others) to support President Reagan's national defense and economic initiatives. CFA called itself "President Reagan's Lobby" and was led first by drugstore magnate Lewis E. Lehrman and later by Gerald P. Carmen, who had served as administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA) and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations mission in Geneva, Switzerland. CFA was organized as an IRS 501 (C) (3) and (4) non-profit. Among the early employees was Jack Abramoff, who was later terminated for cause.^[1

Citizens for America staged an unprecedented meeting of anti-Communist rebel leaders calling themselves "Armed Movements Fighting Against Soviet Expansionism", formed by Nicaraguan, Laotian, Angolan and Afghan (Mujahideen) rebels in June 1985 in Jamba, Angola, the UNITA headquarters of Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi.^[2] The guerrilla leaders were presented with a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, and a letter from President Reagan supporting CFA was read, although the Reagan administration refused to officially support all of the guerrilla groups.

Marc Holtzman (who later ran for governor of Colorado) served as CFA's first executive director. Under Holtzman's tenure, CFA focused on promoting the Reagan economic and national security agenda, including the strategic defense initiative. Holtzman resigned in early 1985 and was replaced by Abramoff, who had been director of College Republicans. Lehrman fired Abramoff after only nine months due to his mismanagement of the organization's $3 million budget and his hiring of friends.

Abramoff was replaced by CFA's legal counsel Frank Trotta, who served as interim executive director until Bill Wilson came on as executive director. Wilson served for a year, after which attorney and writer Jack R. Stevens became the executive director. Stevens served for two years and was the organization's executive director in its final days under President Reagan. Trotta, Wilson and Stevens (who had earlier served as CFA's western regional director) were credited with restoring CFA's finances and reputation after Abramoff's brief but damaging tenure.

CFA supported its grass-roots lobbying campaigns by hosting two fundraisers annually. The "Founder's Circle" required a contribution of $25,000 per year and included donors like Joseph and Holly Coors, Holmes Tuttle and Jack Hume. President Reagan hosted CFA donors and staff regularly at the White House. At one such session in 1987, he recognized CFA National Director Gerald P. Carmen and Executive Director Jack Stevens for their efforts in orchestrating the organization's successful campaign to secure $100 million in congressional aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. CFA staff met in the White House with Reagan Administration officials on a weekly basis to coordinate field activities.

Stevens hired Liam Weston, who later became Mayor Pro Tem of El Segundo, California as CFA's eastern regional director in 1987. Weston later served as a Republican staff member in the 104th U.S. Congress. He left Congress and moved to Central America to administer the U.S. aid to the Nicaraguan Resistance 1989–1991. In 1991–1993, he was posted to Africa, where he managed an aid program for the Angolan UNITA rebels.

President Reagan mentioned CFA 11 times in "The Reagan Diaries", including an entry in his final days in office that CFA is one of the few groups with which would consider staying involved upon leaving office.

President Reagan credited CFA's extensive field operations, and cited field leaders Weston; Gordon Bloyer;(now an Internet blogger and video commentator); Kelly Cardwell of Alabama; Cecil Martin “Bud” Starr, III (now a Kern County, California prosecutor); Robert Miltenberg; former California legislator Doug Carter (now deceased); and San Francisco activist Dorothy Vuksich (now deceased) with having helped secure congressional support for Afghan rebel aid, Contra aid, and tax reduction and simplification, among other issues. CFA organized volunteer committees and chairmen in each congressional district to conduct grass-roots campaigns in support of Reagan's strategic and economic agenda. The organization was able to unite all segments of the conservative movement, though it took no position on social issues.

Key links to the CNP include Jack Abramoff, Lewis E. "Lew" Lehrman, Nelson Bunker Hunt , Joseph Coors, Robert H. Krieble, Howard Phillips, Steven A. F. Trevino, Richard Viguerie

Concerned Women of America

Concerned Women for America (CWA) is a socially conservative, evangelical Christian non-profit women's legislative action committee in the United States. Headquartered in Washington D.C., the CWA is involved in social and political movements, through which it aims to incorporate Christian ideology. The group is primarily led by well-funded anti-feminist interests.

The group was founded in San Diego, California in 1978 by Beverly LaHaye, whose husband Timothy LaHaye was an evangelical Christian minister and author of The Battle for the Mind, as well as coauthor of the Left Behind series.

The CWA identifies itself as an amalgam of "policy experts and...activists[s]" with an anti-feminist approach to politics.

Concerned Women for America is part of a movement known as the New Christian Right. Organized in reaction to the establishment of its liberal counterpart, the National Organization for Women; the growing dispute over traditional gender roles; and the rising discussion of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the CWA set out to "fight policies that it believe[d] [to] disrupt traditional gender roles and norms." Fueling its formation, an interview between Barbara Walters and Betty Friedan, a prominent feminist activist, gained public attention in 1978 regarding women's issues. In the interview, Friedan claimed to speak for American women. Beverly LaHaye did not believe that Betty Friedan was speaking for the majority of women because feminist views were, according to LaHaye, anti-God and anti-family. In regards to the interview, LaHaye stated that she was convinced Friedan's goal was a "misguided attempt to dismantle the bedrock of American culture: the family," and that she believed Christian women were not included in discussions of women's rights. In this regard, the "concern" that the CWA had behind the name of the group was in response to the worries that feminism would "ruin" America.^[14] Such fears and opposition to much of the Democratic Party's ideology during this era led Beverly LaHaye to host a series of conventions and rallies in San Diego, resulting in Concerned Women for America's formation. As a result, the CWA became known as "the largest women's organization of the Christian Right during the 1980s and 1990s."

The CWA began with local prayer chapters mobilized around issues such as the ERA and legalized abortion. In 1987, the CWA relocated from San Diego, California to Washington, DC, at which time it formally established a national office and a national presence.

The CWA identifies itself as an organization in opposition to feminism that speaks for evangelical women who feel that the national feminist movement does not support their interests. The CWA has taken strong conservative stances on several highly debated matters. The CWA has publicly stated its opposition to issues such as abortion, sex education, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, needle exchange programs, pornography, cloning, drug abuse, secular education, gambling, or any other efforts which "intervene with natural human life." The organization's stance on contraception is not as clear, however, for members’ opinions on this topic vary widely. The only definite statement the CWA has put forth in regards to contraception is that its stance, as a whole, is ambiguous, but that "many Catholic women follow the church’s teaching on the use of contraceptives." The CWA focuses on promoting its conservative, Christian-based ideology through seven "core issues".

Abortion

A few years prior to the organization's founding, the Supreme Court released its decisions regarding Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, which granted women the right to attain an abortion, and disbanded all state laws restricting such action. Because many of the CWA's members were supporters of the Right to Life Movement and strongly opposed these rulings, Concerned Women for America is recognized as an anti-abortion organization. At the time of its founding, the CWA, along with similar organizations which spawned during this era, identified itself as part of the "pro-family movement,"^[11] arguing that abortion defied both Christian morality and traditional family values.

The CWA was a proponent of the welfare revisions set out by the 1994 "Contract with America", which aimed to reduce the frequency and acceptance of illegitimate (out of wedlock) births. These revisions suggested (1) incentivizing states to "reduce illegitimate births without...increas[ing] abortions" by way of block grants; (2) denying monetary assistance to "children born to unmarried minor mothers;" and (3) establishing a "family cap" in which unwed mothers could only be compensated for one child, all of which the CWA supported due to its strong opposition to abortion and its defense of the traditional family, as discussed below.

Currently, the CWA strives to inform the public of the harm it claims that abortion has on men, women and their families. The CWA began using the common anti-abortion movement's rhetoric of protecting women and their health in the mid-1990s, as a way to promote interest in the anti-abortion movement. The CWA lobbies for defunding domestic and international family planning programs, especially those that perform abortions or provide Norplant. The CWA supports crisis pregnancy centers and post-abortion counseling services.

The CWA opposes emergency contraception, such as Plan B, on the grounds that it "blurs the line" between contraception and abortion.

Support for Israel

On 8 May 2013 CWA's board of directors voted unanimously to include support for Israel as part of its core mission. CWA says it will support "laws and policies that strengthen the ties between Israel and the U.S." and "Policies enacted by our State Department, Department of Defense and others that encourage the development of our relationship with Israel.” Penny Nance said that support from CWA's founder, Beverly LaHaye, was the biggest driver behind the group formalizing its support for Israel. This relationship is backed by a long history of conservative Christians' support for Israel.

The Conservative Caucus

The Conservative Caucus, or TCC, is an American public policy organization and lobbying group emphasizing grassroots citizen activism and headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1974 by Howard Phillips, who led until 2012 when he retired due to his health. He was replaced by current chairman, Peter J. Thomas. Most of the organization's $3.8 million budget comes from the efforts of New Right fundraising gurus Richard Viguerie and Bruce Eberle. The organization produced a weekly conservative television program, Conservative Roundtable, which was hosted by Mr. Phillips until his retirement. Howard Phillips was also President of The Conservative Caucus Research, Analysis and Education Foundation (TCCF), a 501(c)3 tax-deductible organization.

TCC promotes an uncompromisingly conservative line on a wide range of issues. The following are a few it has emphasized:

TCC opposes illegal immigration and legislation characterized by TCC as an amnesty for illegal immigrants, such as S. 2611. The organization supports measures to secure the Mexican border, including a complete fence.

TCC favors abolishing the income tax and replacing it with a low revenue tariff. This would eliminate the need for the Internal Revenue Service.

TCC is strongly anti-abortion and opposes gay marriage. It favors school prayer and championed former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore for his stance favoring the display of the Ten Commandments.

TCC supports a U.S. withdrawal from the UN, perceiving the organization as having ambitions to be a world government hostile to US interests and sovereignty, and member states routinely vote against American interests.

Conservative Roundtable

Conservative Roundtable was a nationally broadcast weekly conservative television program produced by The Conservative Caucus beginning in 1991. Each episode featured Howard Phillips conducting "in-depth interviews of key news makers, including authors, members of Congress, candidates for office, policy experts, inventors and academics"

By 2004, over 400 episodes had aired on television across the country. The show continued until 2012, when Howard Phillips stepped down from the Conservative Caucus due to health reasons. The show's producer, Art Harman, commented that during the show's two decades in production it had reached "20 million households on 125 cable channels nationwide".

Key links between the TCC and CNP include Joseph Coors, Holly Coors, Richard DeVos, Richard Viguerie, Ed McAteer, Howard Phillips, William Ball Jr Richard Shoff, Don McAlvany and Larry McDonald.

Creation Research Society

The Creation Research Society (CRS) is a Christian fundamentalist group that requires of its members belief that the Bible is historically and scientifically true in the original autographs, belief that "original created kinds" of all living things were created during the Creation week described in Genesis, and belief in flood geology.

The organization has produced various publications describing what it calls creation science, including a journal and a creation-based biology textbook; use of the textbook in public schools was ruled unconstitutional in Hendren v. Campbell.

During the first few years of its existence, different beliefs about Creationism and disagreement over its statement of beliefs resulted in various members of the CRS board and voting members being forced out of the organization.

Formation

Walter E. Lammerts formed the organization in the 1950s after becoming concerned that the American Scientific Affiliation was falling under the influence of theistic evolution. It was originally named the Creation Research Advisory Committee in February 1963, and headed by Walter E. Lammerts and William J. Tinkle with assistance from Henry M. Morris. The committee originally consisted of ten creationists: Lammerts, Tinkle, Morris, John W. Klotz, Frank Lewis Marsh, Edwin Y. Monsma, Duane Gish, Wilbert H. Rusch, John J. Grebe, and R. Laird Harris. The CRS was later formed in June 1963, with the original advisory committee constituting the new society's 'steering committee', with Karl W. Linsenmann, David A. Warriner and John N. Moore joining it at that time. At about the same time, Morris recruited Harold Slusher, Thomas G. Barnes, Willis L. Webb and later Clifford L. Burdlick. Finally, Paul A. Zimmerman joined it. By the end of the year had expanded to approximately fifty members. Members with at least an M.Sc. or equivalent were eligible to be voting members.^[1]

Textbook project

In response to the Sputnik-inspired emphasis on science education, and the resultant Biological Sciences Curriculum Study textbooks (which emphasised evolution for the first time), creationists in the early 1960s were searching for an orthodox and up-to-date creationist biology textbook. The CRS responded with Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity, published in 1970 by Christian publisher Zondervan, which was a mixed success, selling out its first run of 10,000, and being approved by a number of state textbook committees but being adopted by few public schools. After an Indiana school attempted to make exclusive use of it, a state court ruled that its use in public schools was unconstitutional (in Hendren v. Campbell) stating:^[2]

The question is whether a text obviously designed to present only the view of Biblical Creationism in a favorable light is constitutionally acceptable in the public schools of Indiana. Two hundred years of constitutional government demands that the answer be no.

Beliefs and Stated Purpose

The statement of belief was an issue of discussion among the 10 founders during its formation, with typical wrangling over wording, and little consensus beyond keeping out anyone supportive of evolution. There was concern whether Flood Geology would be able to explain all geologic evidence, and whether the six literal-day creation included the creation of the universe.

The CRS adopted the following statement of belief, mandatory for all members:

The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is inspired throughout, all its assertions are historically and scientifically true in the original autographs. To the student of nature this means that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths.

All basic types of living things, including man, were made by direct creative acts of God during the Creation Week described in Genesis. Whatever biological changes have occurred since Creation Week have accomplished only changes within the original created kinds.

The great flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to as the Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its extent and effect.

We are an organization of Christian men and women of science who accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The account of the special creation of Adam and Eve as one man and one woman and their subsequent fall into sin is the basis for our belief in the necessity of a Savior for all mankind. Therefore, salvation can come only through accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior.

The society's stated purpose is "publication and research which impinge on creation as an alternate view of origins".

The CRS's statement of belief was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Edwards v. Aguillard. Its mandate that members affirm that the origin story described in Genesis was an established fact was cited by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. as evidence there was a fundamentalist sectarian objective in the field of creation science, and also a fundamentalist sectarian objective in Louisiana's 1981 Balanced Treatment Act, a law requiring creation science instruction in the state's public schools wherever scientific evolution was taught. The judge ruled, "the intent of the Louisiana Legislature was to promote a particular religious belief" and therefore the teaching of creationism was unconstitutional.

Key links between CRS and the CNP include Henry M. Morris and Duane Gish.

Discovery Institute

The Discovery Institute (DI) is a politically conservative think tank that advocates the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design (ID). It was founded in 1991 in Seattle as a non-profit offshoot of the Hudson Institute.

Its "Teach the Controversy" campaign aims to permit the teaching of anti-evolution, intelligent-design beliefs in United States public high school science courses in place of accepted scientific theories, positing that a scientific controversy exists over these subjects when in fact there is none.

The institute was co-founded in 1991 by Bruce Chapman and George Gilder as a non-profit educational foundation and think tank. It was started as a branch organization of the Hudson Institute, an Indianapolis-based conservative think tank. It is named after the Royal Navy ship HMS Discovery in which George Vancouver explored Puget Sound in 1792. The organization was incorporated in 1991.

Discovery Institute Press is the institute's publishing arm and has published intelligent design books by its fellows including David Berlinski's Deniable Darwin & Other Essays (2010), Jonathan Wells' The Myth of Junk DNA (2011) and an edited volume titled Signature Of Controversy, which contains apologetics in defense of the institute's Center for Science and Culture director Stephen C. Meyer.

Teach The Controversy

Teach the Controversy is a campaign conducted by the Discovery Institute to promote the pseudo-scientific principle of intelligent design, a variant of traditional creationism, while attempting to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses.

The scientific community and science education organizations have replied that there is no scientific controversy regarding the validity of evolution and that the controversy is a religious and political one. A federal court, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a "false perception" that evolution is "a theory in crisis" by falsely claiming it is the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community. In the December 2005 ruling of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, Judge John E. Jones III concluded that intelligent design is not science and "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents".

Wedge Strategy

The Wedge Strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the institute. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the "Wedge Document". Its goal is to change American culture by shaping public policy to reflect politically conservative fundamentalist evangelical Protestant values. The wedge metaphor is attributed to Phillip E. Johnson and depicts a metal wedge splitting a log. In Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails) the authors wrote "Although its religious orientation is explicit, the long-term plan outlined in the Wedge Document also displays the Discovery Institute's political agenda very clearly. In ten years, the Wedge strategy was to be extended to ethics, politics, theology; the humanities, and the arts. The ultimate goal of the Discovery Institute is to "overthrow" materialism and "renew" American culture to reflect right-wing Christian values."

^{2020 USA Presidential Election}

Scott S. Powell, a senior fellow of the Institute, has promoted the false claim that the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen

Key links between Discovery Institute and the CNP include George Gilder and Edwin Meese III.

Ethics and Public Policy Center

The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) is a conservative, Washington, D.C.–based think tank and advocacy group. Founded in 1976, the group describes itself as "dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy", and advocacy of founding principles such as the rule of law. The EPPC is active in a number of ways, including hosting lectures and conferences, publishing written work from the group’s scholars, and running programs, which are intended to explore areas of public concern and interest.

Since February 2021, EPPC's president is Ryan T. Anderson, who previously worked as the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He succeeded Edward Whelan, who serves as EPPC's vice president, and also holds the title of distinguished senior fellow and Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. Former president of EPPC from 1989 through June 1996, George Weigel, Catholic theologian and papal biographer, is also a distinguished senior fellow. EPPC is a qualified 501(c)(3) organization.

History

EPPC was founded in 1976 by Ernest W. Lefever, an American political theorist. He was nominated in 1981 for a US State Department position by US President Ronald Reagan before ultimately being rejected for the opportunity for his controversial background. He served as president of EPPC until 1989 and continued to write scholarly articles for EPPC until his death in 2009. Lefever said upon founding the institute that "a small ethically oriented center" should "respond directly to ideological critics who insist the corporation is fundamentally unjust."

EPPC's website states that the organization works "to apply the riches of the Judeo-Christian tradition to contemporary questions of law, culture, and politics, in pursuit of America’s continued civic and cultural renewal." From 2003 to 2018, EPPC published The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society. In January 2018, The New Atlantis became independent of EPPC and is now published by the Center for the Study of Technology and Society.

EPPC is a member of the advisory board of Project 2025, a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican nominee win the 2024 presidential election.

EPPC "is one of several [organizations] devoted to improving public appreciation of the role of business in what it terms a 'moral society.' CNP member and EPPC founder Ernest Lefever,, expressed his concern that 'U.S. domestic and multinational firms find themselves increasingly under siege at home and abroad. They are accused of producing shoddy and unsafe products, fouling the environment, robbing future generations, wielding enormous power, repressing peoples in the third world, and generally being insensitive to human needs. We as a small and ethnically oriented center are in a position to respond more directly to ideological critics who insist the corporation is fundamentally unjust.'"

Tom Barry has this to say about EPPC: Created in 1976, EPPC was the first neocon institute to break ground in the frontal attack on the secular humanists. For nearly three decades, EPPC has functioned as the cutting edge of the neoconservative-driven culture war against progressive theology and secularism, and the associated effort to ensure right-wing control of the Republican Party. It explicitly sought to unify the Christian right with the neoconservative religious right, which was mostly made up of agnostics back then. A central part of its political project was to "clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy." Directed by Elliott Abrams from 1996-2001, EPPC counts among its board members well connected figures in the neocon matrix including Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Neuhaus, and Mary Ann Glendon.

Funding

Between 1985 and 2001, the Center has received $9,190,704 in 114 separate grants from only eight foundations:

Castle Rock Foundation
Earhart Foundation
Koch Family Foundations (Claude R. Lambe Foundation)
John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Between 2001 and 2010, the Ethics and Public Policy Center received almost $3 million from the conservative Bradley Foundation.
Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife, Carthage)
Smith Richardson Foundation

EPPC has also received three grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts:

In December $925,000.00 over 3 yrs was granted to support "a seminar series for journalists on the role of religion in American public life."
in September 1999, $1,350,000.00 over 3 yrs was granted "to examine the role of Evangelicals in American public life."
in December 2001, $430,000.00 over 2 yrs was granted to "strengthen the national media's reporting on the impact of religious conviction and religiously grounded moral argument in American political and public life."