Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Why So Secretive C Street?

The Family has long been a secretive organization.[22][23] It maintains no public website and conducts no public fundraising activities.

Prominent political figures have insisted that secrecy and/or privacy are essential to the Family's operation. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan said about the Family, "I wish I could say more about it, but it's working precisely because it is private."[24]

At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, President George H.W. Bush praised Doug Coe for what he described as “quiet diplomacy, I wouldn’t say secret diplomacy.”[4]

In 2009, Chris Halverson, son of Fellowship co-founder Richard C. Halverson, said that a culture of secrecy is essential to their mission: "If you talked about it, you would destroy that fellowship."[1]

From the 1930s to the 1960s it was organized as a more traditional religious association. In 1966, Fellowship founder Abraham Vereide became concerned about his organization's growing publicity and declared in a letter that it was time to “submerge the institutional image of [the Family].”[25] Author Jeff Sharlet describes this shift in operation:

Thereafter, the Fellowship would avoid at all costs any appearance of an organization... Business would be conducted on the letterhead of public men, who would testify that Fellowship initiatives were their own. Finances would be more ‘man-to-man,’ which is to say, off the books.[26]

In 1975, a member of the Family's inner circle wrote to the group's chief South African member, that their political initiatives

...have always been misunderstood by 'outsiders.' As a result of very bitter experiences, therefore, we have learned never to commit to paper any discussions or negotiations that are taking place. There is no such thing as a 'confidential' memorandum, and leakage always seems to occur. Thus, I would urge you not to put on paper anything relating to any of the work that you are doing...[unless] you know the recipient well enough to put at the top of the page 'PLEASE DESTROY AFTER READING.'

The recipient made copies of this memo for other Family members in Africa, one of which survives.[27][28]

In 1974, after several Watergate conspirators had joined the Family, an LA Times columnist discouraged further inquiries into Washington's "underground prayer movement", i.e. the Fellowship: “They genuinely avoid publicity...they shun it.”[29]

In 2002, Doug Coe denied that the Fellowship sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast, and a Fellowship employeed said, "there is no such thing as the Fellowship."[14]

Former Republican Senator William Armstrong said the group has “made a fetish of being invisible.”[30]

In the 1960s, when the organization first went "underground," the Fellowship began distributing, to involved members of Congress, confidential memos which stressed that “the group, as such, never takes any formal action, but individuals who participate in the group through their initiative have made possible the activities mentioned.”[31]

Family Member and Senator Sam Brownback describes Family members' method of operation: “Typically, one person grows desirous of pursuing an action”—-a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy—-“and the others pull in behind.” [32] Indeed, Brownback has often joined with fellow Family members in pursuing legislation. For example, in 1999 he joined together with fellow Family members, Senators Strom Thurmond and Don Nickles to demand a criminal investigation of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and in 2005 Brownback joined with Family member Sen. Tom Coburn to promote the Houses of Worship Act.[33]

5 comments:

Randal Graves said...

I've got a comment, but it's secret.

MRMacrum said...

I think God is involved. And secret decoder rings.

Seriously - They are secret because as they say, their mission would fail if it wasn't. Whatever that mission is, it must be a humdinger. And given the people I know are part of it, I would guess I probably would not be pleased if I knew what they were up to.

But do you think the slack jawed of America will even care?

Jack Jodell said...

They are so secretive because they are a group of elitists who want to keep the status quo intact, or even increase the power and wealth of the socially conservative and ultra-wealthy. THEY are the reason this country is so screwed up and tilted against workers and the poor. Like most cults (and that's what they are) they are wholly self-serving and should be disbanded.

Ghost Dansing said...

"They are the Family—fundamentalism’s avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen, congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a “leadership led by God,” to be won not by force but through “quiet diplomacy.” Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have written from inside its walls."

http://jeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-post.html

it is a peculiar type of fundamentalism focused on the powerful as the chosen of God.... evangelical fundamentalism (dominionist) that is a little different than the populist version popularized by the televangelists; focused instead on political and economic power.

it is perversely theocratic; essentially anti-Liberal (certainly do not believe all are created equal in the eyes of god) and anti-Democratic (God through Jesus is the only authority who chooses the chosen).

darkblack said...

Ah, a zealot terrorist cell. Alert Homeland Security.

;>)