the heck with the Masons, watch out for the CNP!

[Guest guest]

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/council_020501.html

 

Vast, Right-Wing Cabal?

Meet the Most Powerful Conservative Group You've Never Heard Of

By Marc J. Ambinder | ABC News

 

W A S H I N G T O N, May 2 - When Steve Baldwin, the executive director of an

organization with the stale-as-old-bread name of the Council for National

Policy, boasts that " we control everything in the world, " he is only

half-kidding.

 

Half-kidding, because the council doesn't really control the world. The staff of

about eight, working in a modern office building in Fairfax, Va., isn't even

enough for a real full-court basketball game. But also half-serious because the

council has deservedly attained the reputation for conceiving and promoting the

ideas of many who in fact do want to control everything in the world.

 

For many liberals, the 22-year-old council is very dangerous and dangerously

secretive, and has fueled conspiratorial antipathy. The group wants to be the

conservative version of the Council on Foreign Relations, but to some, CNP

members - among the brightest lights of the hard right - are up to no good. The

CNP meets this weekend at a Washington location known to fewer insiders than the

identity of the vice president's undisclosed chunk of bedrock.

 

Look for them if you're at a ritzy hotel in Tyson's Corner, Va. Supreme Court

Justice Clarence Thomas is the headliner. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales

will speak, as will Timothy Goeglein, deputy director of the White House Office

of Public Liaison. There have been no public announcements, and there won't be.

The 500 or so members will hear private, unvarnished presentations.

 

White House spokeswoman Anne Womack said Gonzales' remarks would not be

released. The CNP's bylaws keep out the press and prevent disclosure of the

transcribed proceedings - unless all the speakers give their assent. Few do.

 

In a 2000 filing with the Internal Revenue Service, the CNP says it holds

" educational conferences and seminars for national leaders in the field of

business, government, religion and academia. " It says it produces a weekly

newsletter keeping members abreast of developments, and a biyearly collection of

speeches. Executive Director Morton Blackwell was paid a little more than

$70,000. The organization took in more than $732,000.

 

Baldwin said he doesn't get many calls from the press. But he's happy to answer

some basic questions.

 

Of the group's reputation, he said, " There's a lot of stuff out there claiming

we're a lot more than we are. "

 

What they are - or rather, what sway they hold - is a source of some dispute.

 

In 1999, candidate George W. Bush spoke before a closed-press CNP session in San

Antonio. His speech, contemporaneously described as a typical mid-campaign

ministration to conservatives, was recorded on audio tape.

 

(Depending on whose account you believe, Bush promised to appoint only

anti-abortion-rights judges to the Supreme Court, or he stuck to his campaign

" strict constructionist " phrase. Or he took a tough stance against gays and

lesbians, or maybe he didn't).

 

The media and center-left activist groups urged the group and Bush's

presidential campaign to release the tape of his remarks. The CNP, citing its

bylaws that restrict access to speeches, declined. So did the Bush campaign,

citing the CNP.

 

Shortly thereafter, magisterial conservatives pronounced the allegedly moderate

younger Bush fit for the mantle of Republican leadership. The two events might

not be connected. But since none of the participants would say what Bush said,

the CNP's kingmaking role mushroomed in the mind's eye, at least to the

Democratic National Committee, which urged release of the tapes.

 

Partly because so little was known about CNP, the hubbub died down. The CNP

Against Liberalism

 

The CNP describes itself as a counterweight against liberal domination of the

American agenda.

 

That countering is heavy and silent, in part because few people, outside its

members, seem to know what the group is, what it does, how it raises money, and

how interlocked it has become in the matrix of conservative activism.

Conservative, it clearly is.

 

Unlike other groups that meet in darkened chambers, the CNP doesn't seem to

favor, as a matter of policy and choice of guests, one-worlders, secular

humanists, or multicultural multilateralists.

 

According to one of its most prominent members (who asked that his name not be

used), the CNP is simply and nothing but a self-selected, conservative

counterweight to the influential center-left establishment. Panel topics at this

year's convention hew to the CNP's world view, but Baldwin, who wouldn't give

specifics, said they reflected many different vantage points.

 

" We'll probably discuss some of the hot issues that are relevant today. The

Middle East; We'll have a number of speakers from different perspectives. We're

not of all one like mind when it comes to what's going on there. "

 

He continued: " Worldwide terrorism. Campaign finance reform. Generally, we kind

of mirror what's going on in society. We pride ourselves on being relevant and

timely, so that members want to come to our meetings. "

 

Still, the group's shadowy reputation deters some high-profile figures from

speaking before it - those who directly influence policy. For example: A

knowledgeable person lists former CIA Director James Woolsey as a Friday night

speaker and says that on Saturday, Reagan defense official Frank Gaffney will

debate former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan about Israel.

 

The cavalcade of " formers " resembles nothing more formidable than a Fox News

prime-time guest lineup.

 

In the 1990s, social issues tended to dominate the panels, and guests tended to

be talking heads who were plugged in to policy circles, rather than operating

from within them.

 

The concoction of federalism, economic growth, social traditionalism, religious

activism and anti-secularism goes down well among members because it is spiced

with disdain for a common enemy: the creeping influence of political and

philosophical liberalism.

 

Many current and former members politely said they would prefer not to speak on

the organization's behalf. Those who did respond to telephone and e-mail

messages declined to talk about their interest in the organization. More than a

dozen did not respond at all.

 

" Obviously, membership would imply that there is a commonality, so that goes

without saying, " said Alvin Williams, CEO of a political action committee that

promotes black conservatives. " I don't think it is anything threatening at all. "

He declined to elaborate.

 

Darla St. Martin, associate executive director of the National Right to Life,

would only say, " Since everyone else is so skeptical [about speaking], I don't

think I should. "

 

Even Judicial Watch's Larry Klayman, the watchdog and open government proponent,

would not comment, a spokesman said. His busy schedule - four depositions in two

days - precluded a short telephone interview. Gary Bauer, the former

presidential candidate and ubiquitous media presence, asked a spokesman to

decline a request for an interview about the CNP, citing the group's

long-standing policy against press publicity.

 

Judging by its 1998 membership roster, which was obtained by a secular watchdog

group called the Institute for First Amendment Studies and posted on its Web

site, the New Right's many colors are represented, but there are few, if any,

neo-conservatives, Republican moderates and libertarians.

 

Selective name dropping doesn't juice up a conspiracy. The evidence that the CNP

is an axis of nefarity is slim. Conservative groups are quick to point out that

liberal watchdogs like Common Cause have a great influence in public policy

debates, and, for instance, a direct hand in writing the campaign-finance

legislation. A New Force in the Age of Reagan

 

But even CNP backers claim that the liberal establishment has nothing comparable

- no central gathering of its powerful members. The idea for CNP gestated since

the late 1960s, when the American Right, aiming for more cake, desired a

vigorous voice to influence policy and elite opinion at the margins.

Intellectuals it had, but practical policy seminars were missing. The Moral

Majority flashed into being after Roe vs. Wade, but it was oriented toward

Middle America, not to not-liberal Washington power-brokers.

 

CNP was conceived in 1981 by at least five fathers, including the Rev. Tim

LaHaye, an evangelical preacher who was then the head of the Moral Majority.

(LaHaye is the co-author of the popular Left Behind series that predicts and

subsequently depicts the Apocalypse). Nelson Baker Hunt, billionaire son of

billionaire oilman H.L. Hunt (connected to both the John Birch Society and to

Ronald Reagan's political network), businessman and one-time murder suspect T.

Cullen Davis, and wealthy John Bircher William Cies provided the seed money.

 

Top Republicans were quickly recruited to fill in the gaps; hard-right thinkers

met up with sympathetic politicians. And suddenly, the right had a counterpart

to liberal policy groups. Christian activist Paul Weyrich took responsibility

for bringing together the best minds of conservatism, and his imprint on the

group's mission is unmistakable: It provided a forum for religiously engaged

conservative Christians to influence the geography of American political power.

 

At its first meeting in May of 1981, the CNP gave an award to Reagan budget guru

David Stockman, strategized about judicial appointments, and reveled in its

newness.

 

Since then, at thrice-yearly conventions, the CNP has functioned as a sausage

factory for conservative ideas of a particular goût: strong affirmations of

military power, Christian heritage, traditional values, and

leave-us-alone-get-off-our-backs legislation. That red meat is seasoned by

groups like David Keene's American Conservative Union, researched and vetted by

conservative policy groups, chewed on and tested at statewide activist meetings.

 

There's no denying their influence: Money is transferred from benefactor to

worthy cause. Aspirants meet benefactors.

 

The CNP helped Christian conservatives take control of the Republican state

party apparati in Southern and Midwestern states. It helped to spread word about

the infamous " Clinton Chronicles " videotapes that linked the president to a host

of crimes in Arkansas.

 

But the CNP is one factory among many. It stands out nowadays because it prefers

not to stand out.

 

Unlike, say, the Heritage Foundation, which has a media studio in its

headquarters, or the American Enterprise Institute, which publishes journals,

the CNP is content to operate in the alleyways of downtown Washington. Part of

what keeps it so healthy, according to current members, is the same penchant for

secrecy that drives outsiders crazy. As then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton

prepared to tell NBC News' Katie Couric that her husband was a victim of a

" vast, right-wing conspiracy, " a senior Clinton adviser asked Skipp Porteous,

then the head of a secular watchdog group, for information on the CNP. Porteous'

conclusions - " that this is a group that has the ideology, the money and the

political backing to cause social change in the United States " - became a part

of the White House litany.

 

Such talk is an apparition, members say. Much ado about nothing. CNP will

forever be nothing more than a " comfortable place " for like-minded folks to

brainstorm, one member said.

 

" What they decided at one point was that people will simply feel more at ease, "

said another member, Balint Vazsonyi, who joined the group in 1997. " It's

certainly not for a political reason. The views discussed here are among those

you see on the television or when you open a newspaper. "

 

Vazsonyi, a concert pianist who writes a column syndicated by Knight-Ridder,

said CNP gave him a chance to meet people who shared his views.

 

" I knew very, very few people in the political world. I knew lots of musicians,

but nobody in politics. Then someone said to me, 'There's a place for people who

are and have been interested in what you're interested in, and you might like to

be known by them.' " That, " he said, " was really the hook. " Quiet - Just the Way

They Like It

 

CNP may simply be press-shy because of traditional qualms about the

establishment media's secular, often politically liberal perspective, and

because " they attribute things that individual members may do to us, " Baldwin

says.

 

The London Guardian linked arch-conservative gun-rights activist Larry Pratt

with Attorney General John Aschroft by saying " the two men know each another

from a secretive but highly influential right-wing religious group called the

Council for National Policy. "

 

More recently, when California gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon disclosed his

campaign's contributors, The Associated Press made sure to note that four

members of CNP had donated to Simon's campaign - as if conservatives donating to

conservatives was worthy of a news story all its own. (Simon's father, the

former treasury secretary, was a CNP member).

 

Other CNP press leaks have been less the product of liberal media snooping than

of internal jockeying. When James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family, told

a CNP gathering in 1998 that he was thinking of withdrawing support for the

Republican Party, rival conservative leaders made sure the national media got

word of the speech.

 

The CNP remains obscure. Experienced Washingtonians often mistake them for

another organization, the liberal Center for National Policy. The Washington

Times reported Jan. 23 that Sen. John Kerry spoke to the Council for National

Policy about AWNR drilling, when, in fact, the Massachusetts Democrat spoke to

the Center for National Policy, a very different organization. Both the Council

and Center are not to be confused with the Center for Budget and Policy

Priorities. Or the National Center for Policy Analysis.

 

Porteous' group, The Institute for First Amendment Studies, posted the CNP's

roster on its Web site and managed to slip past security at several CNP meetings

throughout the 1990s and soon published details notes of the proceedings.

 

If their summaries are reliable - and the IFAS swears they are - the

from-the-fly-on-the-wall thrill and the occasional agitated quotation for

Democratic opposition research files do little to sustain the belief that the

CNP is ruling America behind those French doors of the Fairfax hotel conference

rooms.

 

" There's nothing wrong with what they are doing, " Porteous said. " It's just that

they're ultraconservative and a lot of people don't agree with that. "

 

" I don't think they are out there pounding their chests, " said Joel Kaplan, a

Syracuse University journalism professor who has studied CNP's ties to

conservative projects. " But I don't think that they're hiding either. "

 

Who's Who at the CNP

According to a membership roster obtained by Institute for First Amendment

Studies, notable former and current Council for National Politics members

include:

 

Attorney General John Ashcroft and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy

Thompson. (Both are no longer members).

 

Christian businessmen like Holland and Jeffrey Coors, of the brewing company,

and entrepreneur and Orlando Magic owner Rich DeVos.

 

Two of fundamentalist Christianity's most prominent end-of-the-world

theologists: John Ankerberg, who believes that biblical prophecies were literal

promises and are coming true; and Dave Breese, who hosts The King Is Coming, a

show devoted entirely to Christian eschatology. Also: Chuck Missler, an Idaho

radio host who has predicted an imminent invasion of Jerusalem by forces guided

by the Antichrist.

 

Former presidential candidate and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson;

former Texas GOP Rep. Steve Stockman, who stunned the political world in 1994 by

ousting House Judiciary Chairman Jack Brooks from his seat; the Rev. Don Wildmon

of the American Family Association.

 

Christian reconstructionists like Rousas J. Rushdoony.

 

Williams, the founder of BAMPAC, a political action committee that promotes

black conservatism.

 

Sam Moore, president of Thomas Nelson, the country's most successful Christian

book publishing company.

 

Prominent creationist Henry Morris; political scientist Dora Kingsley; Red Cross

board member Ann Drexel; Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead.

 

Center-right coalitionist Grover Norquist and values activist Phyllis Schlafly.

 

Oliver North, whose speeches to CNP members during the height of his involvement

in Iran-Contra stirred up debate.