Council for National Policy

Background

The Council for National Policy (CNP) is an umbrella organization and networking group for conservative and Republican activists in the United States. The CNP was launched in 1981 during the Reagan administration by Tim Francis LaHaye and other right-wing conservative Christians, to "bring more focus and force to conservative advocacy"

The CNP has been described by The New York Times as "a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country," who meet three times yearly behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference.

The Nation has called the CNP a secretive organization that "networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy". The organization has been described as a "pluto-theocracy".

Membership & Meetings

Marc J. Ambinder of ABC News said about the Council for National Policy: "The group [Council for National Policy] wants to be the conservative version of the Council on Foreign Relations." The CNP was founded in 1981. Among its founding members were: Tim Francis LaHaye  [then the head of the Moral Majority],  Nelson Bunker Hunt,  T. Cullen Davis,  William Cies,  Howard Phillips, and Paul Michael Weyrich.

Members of the CNP have included:

Membership in the Council for National Policy is by invitation only. The Council for National Policy's membership list is considered "strictly confidential." Guests may attend "only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee." Members are instructed not to refer to the Council for National Policy by name to protect against leaks. The New York Times political writer David D. Kirkpatrick suggested that the Council for National Policy's secrecy since its founding was intended to insulate the CNP "from what its members considered the liberal bias of the news media."

CNP's meetings are closed to the general public, reportedly to allow for a free-flowing exchange of ideas. The Council for National Policy meets three times per year. This policy is said to be similar to the long-held policy of the Council on Foreign Relations, to which the CNP has at times been compared. CNP's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status was revoked by the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 1992 on grounds that the CNP was not an organization run for the public benefit. The Council for National Policy successfully challenged this ruling in federal court. A quarterly journal aimed at educating the public, promised in the wake of this incident, has not substantially materialized. The Council for National Policy has a website that contains many policy speeches from past gatherings (covering the years from 2013 up to the present).

While those involved in the Council for National Policy are almost entirely from the United States, their organizations and influence cover the globe, both religiously and politically. Members include corporate executives, legislators former high ranking government officers, leaders of 'think tanks' dedicated to molding society and those whom many view as "Christian leadership."

In May 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a leaked (redacted) copy of the CNP Membership Directory for 2014,

[2016-05-17]  The Council for National Policy: Behind the Curtain  [local copy (html, captured 2020-09-17)]

... which among other revelations provided a redacted copy of the 2014 CNP Membership Directory (pdf, 194 pp)  [local copy (pdf)].

Note particularly the following subsections from that SPLC page [The Council for National Policy: Behind the Curtain].

CNP: Hardliners

The Council for National Policy (CNP) is a body that mixes large numbers of ostensibly mainstream conservatives with far-right and extremist ideologues, mostly from the far fringes of the religious right. What follows is a list of 18 of the hardest-line CNP members and links to information about them and their groups, when available, published in the past by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Groups designated by the SPLC as hate groups are marked with an asterisk (*).

CNP: Rules & Regulations

In order to allow "open, uninhibited remarks" from its speakers, CNP members must adhere to strict rules regarding their thrice-yearly meetings. A memorandum from former executive director and 2014 Executive Committee member Morton C. Blackwell lists the rules.

CNP members are asked to avoid organizing and attending formal meetings of other groups or organizations in the same city before, during or immediately after a Council meeting.

An undated (presumably older: likely <2003) CNP Membership list is available on the web; for example:

The membership content from the latter website -- which is free of redactions and includes detailed biographical notes on most of the included Members -- is available here (local copy).

Additional web searches reveal additional sites and discussion regarding the Council for National Policy and its members.

Conferences & Political Plans

Leading members of the CNP voted in a meeting at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, on September 29, 2007, to consider launching a third party candidate if the 2008 Republican nominee were pro-choice. (The candidacy of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who held liberal opinions on social issues such as abortion, gay rights and gun ownership, had disturbed the Christian right.) The CNP's statement read, "If the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate, we will consider running a third-party candidate." Attending the meeting were notable social conservatives, including James Dobson,  Richard Viguerie,  Tony Perkins, and Morton C. Blackwell.

The Council for National Policy (CNP) has membership links to the Committee for the Free World (CFW), whose many other members included, among others, some members of the Unification Church of the United States, some Republican leaders, and counter-revolutionaries in Latin America, particularly during the 1980s. Midge Decter served as Executive Director of its Committee.

Other CNP Members included Jeane Kirkpatrick,  Leszek Kołakowski,  Irving Kristol,  Melvin J. Lasky,  Seymour M. Lipset,  Donald Rumsfeld,  Tom Stoppard, and George Will.  Eugene V. Rostow, then serving as Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Ronald Reagan, was a speaker at a CFW event on Poland.

CNP's membership also overlaps significantly with that of the Arlington Group, a coalition of conservative Christian organizations which spearheaded ballot initiatives banning gay marriage in thirty-two states in the 2000s; and with the second, third and fourth iterations of the Committee on the Present Danger.

In his June 1997 speech at a CNP meeting in Montreal, Quebec, then President of the National Citizens' Coalition,  Stephen Harper - who later served as the Prime Minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015 - said that the American "conservative movement" was a light and an inspiration to Canada and across the world."

• In 1997, Stephen Harper delivered a controversial speech on Canadian identity to the Council for National Policy, a conservative American think tank. He made comments such as "Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it," "if you're like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians," and "the NDP [New Democratic Party] is kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men." These statements were made public and criticized during the 2006 election. Harper argued that the speech was intended as humour, and not as serious analysis.

In 1999, a speech given to the CNP by Republican candidate George W. Bush is credited with helping him gain the support of conservatives in his successful bid for the United States Presidency in 2000. The content of the speech has never been released by the CNP or by Bush.

In February 2007, the Council for National Policy planned to be involved in the 2008 presidential election campaign and actively sought candidate that would represent their views. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney spoke at a four-day conference that the Council for National Policy held in Salt Lake City, Utah during the last week of September 2007. The Council for National Policy scheduled a conference in late October 2007; other than Rudy Giuliani, most Republican presidential candidates pledged to appear.

On May 18, 2018 House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, gave a speech to the Council for National Policy in which he asserted that the American political climate was "increasingly belittling Christian conservatives for their beliefs" and forcing Christians "'out of the public square.'"

On August 21, 2020, President Trump attended a CNP meeting where he gave a speech.

In a October 14, 2020 Washington Post article, which described the CNP as a "little-known group that has served for decades as a hub for a nationwide network of conservative activists and the donors who support them", one of the attendees of the August 2020 meeting in Arlington, warned of plans by Democrats to "steal this election". He said that, "if they get away with that, what happens? Democracy is finished because they usher in totalitarianism."

Leadership

The Council for National Policy (CNP) was founded in 1981 by Southern Baptist pastor Tim Francis LaHaye, author of "The Battle for the Mind" (1980) and the "Left Behind" series of books. Other early participants have included the following individuals.

The Council for National Policy's first Executive Director was Woody Jenkins; later, Morton Blackwell and Bob Reccord served in this role.

Council for National Policy Presidents have included the following individuals.

Funding

Affiliations

Council for National Policy Action (CNP Action)

• "Must-read" recommendation, re: "Reopen" movements; billionaire dark money influence / think tank funding; ...

Mentions:

• the Council for National Policy (CNP):

• the Council for National Policy's anti-LGBT agenda;

• Steve Bannon;

• Kenneth Blackwell;

• Adam Brandon  (FreedomWorks);

• Kellyanne Conway;

• Richard DeVos;

• Foster Stephen Friess;

• Tony Perkins (President of the Family Research Council, a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)-designated anti-LGBTQ+ hate group);

• Tim Phillips (refer below);

• Jay Sekulow, a politically conservative media personality;

• Phyllis Schlafly (refer below);

• Bill Walton;

• Council for National Policy Action (CNP Action);

• the Eagle Forum (Phyllis Schlafly);

• Liberty Counsel (Mat Staver);

• Billionaire funding:

• Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation (Richard DeVos);

• Robert Mercer;

• Foster Stephen Friess (2012 wealth estimated at $530M);

• Charles Koch, Koch family funding, influence:

• Americans for Prosperity (Charles Koch; Koch family; Tim Phillips);

• Buckeye Institute (Charles Koch-funded; Robert Alt);

• Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation (Koch family: defunct);

• Conspiracy theorists:

• Jerome Robert Corsi;

• Joseph Francis Farah;

• John Birch Society;

• Paul Michael Weyrich -- co-founder of both

• The Heritage Foundation, and

• the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC);

• The Heritage Foundation:

• Edwin Meese III;

• Stephen Moore (also: Cato Institute);

• Al Regnery (cousin of prominent white nationalist William Regnery);

• William L. "Bill" Walton (Discovery Institute  |  Discovery Institute;  The Heritage Foundation);

• hate groups:

• Alliance Defending Freedom (Alan Sears), a SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ+ hate group;

• American Family Association (Tim Wildmon), a DeVos-funded anti-LGBTQ+ hate group;

• Family Research Council, a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)-designated anti-LGBTQ+ hate group (Kenneth Blackwell);

• Center for Security Policy (anti-Muslim);

• League of the South (neo-Confederate; Michael Peroutka);

• FreedomWorks  (Adam Brandon);

• ALEC: American Legislative Exchange Council:

• Arthur Betz "Art" Laffer;

• Lisa B. Nelson (CEO, ALEC);

• Stephen Moore (Cato Institute; The Heritage Foundation);

• Judicial Watch;

• National Christian Foundation;

• National Philanthropic Trust;

• State Policy Network (Tracie Sharp);

• Facebook "reopen movement" pages:

• ReOpenPA;

• ReOpenAmerica;

• ReOpen Church (Liberty Counsel's Mat Staver);

• Convention of States Action ("Open the States");

• TeaPartyPatriots.org  |  Tea Party Patriots Action;

• The Save Our Country Task Force:

• Stephen Moore;

• William L. "Bill" Walton (Discovery Institute  |  Discovery Institute;  The Heritage Foundation);

• Scott Rasmussen (Editor-at-Large at Ballotpedia, a project of the right-wing Lucy Burns Institute);

• American Conservative Union (Mercedes Schlapp, Matt Schlapp);

• Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation (Richard DeVos);

• Tim Phillips (Tea Party; Americans for Prosperity);

• ...

Associations With Hate, Intolerance

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pay-to-play organization that facilitates bill writing by state lawmakers and business interests, has created a secret task force on voting and redistricting, and is dragging its corporate members back into race-related issues around police reform and protection of monuments. In a preview of what may occur at its virtual annual meeting this week, ALEC has sided with President Trump's latest Executive Orders on those issues.

On July 02 2020, ALEC's Executive Director Lisa Nelson, along with largely conservative and right-wing groups and individuals, signed a letter supporting Trump's Executive Order that instructs the attorney general to prioritize criminal prosecutions for the destruction of monuments on federal property, with prison sentences of up to 10 years. The Executive Order also directs federal agencies to withhold federal funding from cities that do not protect monuments from demonstrators.

...

In addition to ALEC's Executive Director Lisa Nelson, other signers of the letter supporting Trump's order include anti-LGBTQ hate figures such as Tony Perkins (President of the Family Research Council), Rob Chambers (Vice President of the political arm of the American Family Association), and Frank Wright (CEO of D. James Kennedy Ministries).

Several leaders of the secretive Council for National Policy, which has had ties to multiple white supremacists, signed the letter, as did Koch operative   Sean Noble (President of American Encore).

Many of the same signers of the Conservative HQ letter also signed a June 12 2020 letter, including Al Regnery, Chairman of the Council for National Policy's Conservative Action Project. The letter, which called for "justice, not chaos" after the murder of George Floyd, "rejects the sweeping claim that all of law enforcement is racist."

Al Regnery's own cousin, William Regnery, is a white nationalist who has funded multiple white nationalist groups run by alt-right leader Richard Spencer.

...

Uncloaking the Secrecy Shrouding the Council for National Policy

It is difficult to find information regarding the Leadership and Membership of the Council for National Policy (CNP). The Internet Archive for the CNP, for example shows a multi-year gap (2003-2008 inclusive), with the meagre few 2001-2002 entries reporting "Directory Listing Denied: This Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed." errors, and more recent (2009-) entries merely presenting copies of the publicly available website, https://cfnp.org/.

Internet Archive: Council for National Policy- [screenshot 2020-09-17].
[Image source. Click image to open in new window.]

While sites like SourceWatch  [local copy (html, captured 2020-09-17)]  provide some degree of information on the CNP, note my red flag regarding SourceWatch.

More reliable sources of information on CNP include The Southern Poverty Law Center and their HateWatch blog, that monitors and exposes the activities of the American radical right. While HateWatch lacks a dedicated webpage for the secretive Council for National Policy, keyword searches reveal relevant material. While SPLC's in situ search is adequate, Google searches, e.g. site:splcenter.org "Council for National Policy" or site:splcenter.org hatewatch "Council for National Policy" arguably offers a superior interface to that content, as the SPLC-provided search results often do not mention "Council for National Policy." -- additionally ("Tools") allowing you to limit search results to specific date ranges, or a "verbatim" (explicitly matching) search.

Google search: Council for National Policy- [screenshot 2020-09-17].
[Image source. Click image to open in new window.]

Additional Reading

This Council for National Policy membership directory was provided to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) by investigative researcher Brent Allpress. The directory was used to inform this 2020-10-26 The Associated Press article, Barrett ads tied to interest groups funded by unnamed donors. Note: CMD redacted cell phone numbers, home addresses, home phone numbers, and personal email addresses.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pay-to-play network of conservative state lawmakers and business lobbyists that writes model legislation, claims that it no longer works on social policy. But videos of ALEC-led events, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), tell a very different story.

At the 40th anniversary meeting of the Council for National Policy (CNP) in May 2021, ALEC leaders boasted about their extensive efforts to advance state legislation to severely restrict access to abortion and limit the rights of trans students, as well as voter suppression bills.

CNP is a secretive network of far-right   Christian political figures and donors that works behind the scenes to influence Washington. "We've had a history of working on other issues like gun rights and social issues and things like that, which has not ended well for ALEC," said CEO Lisa Nelson at a "Saving American Through the States" action session at the group's meeting. "Because of our intersection of business and legislators we kind of stick to the fiscal issues."

However, right after saying that, Nelson explained how her organization is creating model "election reform" policies "through" the Honest Elections Project  [see also], a dark money voter suppression group tied to the influential Leonard Leo, CMD reported. Nelson states specifically that ALEC has "acted as a resource for legislators" and planned to develop a "model policy" with the Honest Elections Project at its July 2021 meeting.

[ ... snip ... ]

A cache of documents obtained and published by the investigative research organization Documented appears to show anti-Muslim hate group leaders such as Brigitte Gabriel, Frank Gaffney and others who have stoked Islamophobia are involved with the Council for National Policy, or CNP. The documents also reveal that the coalition has promoted policies championed by the broader anti-Muslim network.

Founded in 1981, CNP is a coalition of influential right-wing leaders, political operatives, conservative media figures, members of the religious right, free-market fundamentalists and donors. The coalition operates on multiple fronts and focuses on political strategy, media and grassroots organizing. The goal of the coalition is to advocate for right-wing and anti-rights policies that favor conservatives and the religious right.

CNP has a habit of cozying up to extreme figures, the coalition's rosters and associations appear to show. This includes figures known for engaging in anti-Muslim hate.

Journalist and author Anne Nelson researches CNP and is the author of "Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right," which provides an in-depth look into the coalition and its history.

"The Council for National Policy and its affiliates would be revealed to associate with unsavory characters, and they would be shocked that such nice folk could harbor such nasty ideology," Nelson writes in the book.

In 2016, Hatewatch published CNP's 2014 membership directory  [local copy], a 191-page compendium on its over 400 members, some of whom are deceased, and their interests. The directory shows CNP membership included extremists harboring anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ views. It also revealed so-called "Radical Islam" and "Islamic Fascism" to be among the interests identified by several CNP members. "Radical Islam," a problematic term as detailed later, continues to be a topic among the group.

While the coalition's existence and some of its officers are public knowledge, CNP works hard to keep its membership and activities shrouded in secrecy, including reportedly encouraging members to keep quiet about the group. The New York Times once described CNP as "a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country." CNP is invitation-only, with new members being nominated by current ones.

Reports and investigations over the years have sought to expose the coalition's tactics, membership and influence. The cache of materials obtained by Documented provides further insight into the right-wing coalition's inner workings in recent years, including its strategies, goals and talking points.

The documents also reveal CNP has only expanded the hate and far-right figures in its ranks. The inclusion of these figures puts Islamophobia among other problematic measures pushed by CNP that pose a threat to inclusive democracy.

[ ... snip ... ]

In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan's election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy (CNP). Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes behind the scenes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North,  Edwin Meese III, and Tim Francis LaHaye in the CNP's early days to Kellyanne Conway,  Ralph Eugene Reed, Jr.,  Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families today.

In Shadow Network, award-winning author and media analyst Anne Nelson chronicles this astonishing history and illuminates the coalition's key figures and their tactics. She traces how the collapse of American local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy's information war and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And she reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps and a shared pool of captured voter data - outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided.

In a time of stark and growing threats to our most valued institutions and democratic freedoms, Shadow Network is essential reading.

Shadow Network (2019), by Anne Nelson. Having grown up in Oklahoma and gone East for college, the author of this account of "the secret hub of the radical right" saw the dismay of friends back home at the gutting of environmental regulations and public education, and a marked deterioration in public health. Anne Nelson lays the blame with the Council for National Policy (CNP), a group that - though rooted in the oil-producing states of Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma - has national reach. Nelson describes the CNP, founded in 1981, as a "pluto-theocracy" - an alliance between evangelicals and wealthy funders, including the Koch brothers,  Mercer,  and DeVos families. Alarmed at declining numbers of white Protestants, the CNP has advocated privatizing public education and replacing it with schools that promote a "biblical worldview."

---

• [Amazon.com] Anne Nelson (2019), "Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right."

In 1981, emboldened by Ronald Reagan's election, a group of some fifty Republican operatives, evangelicals, oil barons, and gun lobbyists met in a Washington suburb to coordinate their attack on civil liberties and the social safety net. These men and women called their coalition the Council for National Policy. Over four decades, this elite club has become a strategic nerve center for channeling money and mobilizing votes behind the scenes. Its secretive membership rolls represent a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North,  Edwin Meese III, and Tim Francis LaHaye in the Council for National Policy's early days to Kellyanne Conway,  Ralph Eugene Reed, Jr.,  Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families today.

In "Shadow Network," award-winning author and media analyst Anne Nelson chronicles this astonishing history and illuminates the coalition [Council for National Policy]'s key figures and their tactics. Anne Nelson traces how the collapse of American local journalism laid the foundation for the Council for National Policy's information war, and listens in on the hardline broadcasting its members control. And Anne Nelson reveals how the group has collaborated with the Koch brothers to outfit Radical Right organizations with state-of-the-art apps  [Koch-funded Lincoln Network] and a shared pool of captured voter data - outmaneuvering the Democratic Party in a digital arms race whose result has yet to be decided.

In a time of stark and growing threats to our most valued institutions and democratic freedoms, "Shadow Network" is essential reading.

Return to Persagen.com