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From: Rich Winkel <rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu>
To:   Multiple recipients of list ACTIV-L <ACTIV-L@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>

Powerful Group of Ultra-Conservatives Has Secret Plans for Your Future

SOURCE: IN THESE TIMES
Date: 8/8/94
Title: "Right-Wing Confidential"*

Author: Joel Bleifuss

SYNOPSIS: Observers of the nation's political scene, who wonder why the United
States took a sharp right turn in 1994, should know about the Council for
National Policy (CNP). In May 1981, under a tent in the backyard of political
strategist Richard Viguerie's suburban Virginia home, 160 new-right political
leaders celebrated their political fortunes and the election of President
Ronald Reagan the previous November.

This elite group of administration officials, congressmen, industrialists, and
conservative Christians -- including Interior Secretary James Watt, Office of
Management and Budget Director David Stockman, Phyllis Schlafly, Joseph Coors,
Sen. John East (R-NC), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Paul Weyrich, founding
president of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank -- launched a
political federation to coordinate their own political agenda.

Weyrich, reportedly the single most important person of CNP, once proposed that
the Republicans include a plank in their 1988 platform that AIDS be controlled
by "reintroducing and enforcing anti-sodomy laws." And CNP's R.J. Rushdoony, a
leader of the Christian Reconstruction movement, argues that right-thinking
Christians should take "dominion" over the United States and do away with the
"heresy" that is democracy.

After the public inauguration of the group, the CNP went underground. As
investigative journalist Joel Bleifuss notes, "we do not know much about the
CNP's actions or agenda," but we do know that the radical right is on the
ascendant within the Republican Party and has taken over state GOP
organizations in Texas, California, Minnesota, Hawaii, Iowa, Nevada, Arizona,
Idaho, and Virginia.

Russ Bellant, author of The Coors Connection, said the meetings of this
little-known organization are often a spring- board for radical-right campaigns
and long-term planning. "But these efforts will seldom be traced to the CNP."
The group meets quarterly behind closed doors and is so secretive that the
group's Washington office will neither confirm nor deny where, or even if, the
group meets.

While the roster of the 500 members of the organization is confidential, it is
known to include Jerry Falwell, of the Liberty Alliance; Oliver North, CNP
executive committee member; Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK); Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS);
Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC); Rep. Bob Dornan (R-CA); Brent Bozell III, of the Media
Research Center; Iran-contra figure Gen. John Singlaub; Richard Shoff, former
leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana; Republican pollster Richard Wirthlin;
Robert Weiner, head of Maranatha, a Christian cult; Howard Phillips of the
Conservative Caucus; Linda Bean Folkers of the L.L. Bean Co.; televangelist
John Ankerberg; Bob Jones III, president of the Bob Jones University; and
former attorney general Edwin Meese, CNP president in 1994.

To emphasize the secret nature of their meetings, CNP Executive Director Morton
C. Blackwell wrote a memorandum to members attending a meeting in St. Louis in
1993 instructing them that all remarks made at the conference were to be
strictly private. "The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes
part in our programs, before or after a meeting."

And, with the exception of the alternative press, the Council for National
Policy has managed to escape the attention of the media.

SSU Censored Researcher: Paul Giusto

This file and other Project Censored information are now available on the
Internet, via Gopher and WWW.

Email: project.censored@sonoma.edu
Gopher URL: gopher://censored.sonoma.edu:70/11/ProjectCensored
WWW URL: http://censored.sonoma.edu/ProjectCensored/

==================== End of Forward ====================

I know I'm concerned about such reckless exercises of the right to assemble and
the right to privacy;-)  Thank goodness the left never egages in such
surreptitious activity!

                                                        -- Kevin