by Jeff Sharlet
25. Associated Press, “Eisenhower Joins in a Breakfast Prayer Meeting,” New York Times, February 5, 1954. Eisenhower didn’t speak at the second breakfast, but Vice President Nixon did, initiating a tradition Nixon maintained for the rest of the decade. Personally indifferent to Abram’s piety, he recognized the value of the Prayer Breakfast’s pulpit and made it his own. Guatemala: Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left (Verso, 1993), pp. 26–29.
26. Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia (Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 60–62. “Wiley Would End Attack on Dulles,” New York Times, July 25, 1954.
27. “McCarthy to be Asked to Aid Ike,” Washington Post, September 18, 1952. Ferdinand Kuhn, “McCarthy’s Charges in Speech Stir Angry Denials, Protests,” Washington Post, October 29, 1952.
28. I. F. Stone, “The First Welts on Joe McCarthy,” I. F. Stone’s Weekly, March 15, 1954, reproduced in The Best of I. F. Stone, ed. Peter Osnos (Public Affairs, 2006).
29. “For God and Country,” Vanguard University Magazine, the alumni journal of the former Southern California Bible College, Spring 2002.
30. Osgood, Total Cold War, p. 315.
31. Drew Pearson, “The New JCS—and the Old,” Washington Post, August 13, 1953.
32. John Broger, “Moral Doctrine for Free World Global Planning,” a presentation to Abram’s ICL, June 14, 1954, folder 1, box 505, collection 459, BGCA.
33. Marquis Childs, “A Strange Film Shown to Soldiers,” Washington Post, January 27, 1961.
34. “Militant Liberty Outline Plan,” November 5, 1954, Operations Coordinating Board Central Files, box 70, OCB 091, from the collection of Kenneth Osgood, Florida Atlantic University.
35. Wayne’s USC football teammate Ward Bond joined forces with Broger as well, but although Bond appeared in some of the best movies Hollywood ever made, including Gone With the Wind, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Ford’s brilliant John Wayne vehicle, The Searchers, it wouldn’t be fair to include him in the same category as those two tremendously talented reactionaries. Of course, Ford would have disagreed with me. Sort of: “Let’s face it,” he once said of Bond’s anticommunist snitching, “Ward Bond is a shit. But he’s our favorite shit.” Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New Press, 2000), pp. 284–87.
36. Broger, “Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense,” July 26, 1957, no box number, collection 459, BGCA.
8. VIETNAMIZATION
1. Clifton J. Robinson to Doug Coe, April 28, 1966, folder 2, box 372, collection 459, BGCA.
2. “Carter Appoints ‘Field Marshall’ Sullivan Ambassador to Shah,” MERIP Report, no. 59, August 1977, pp. 24–25. Sullivan went on to become the last American ambassador to Iran, an appointment of great controversy. Sullivan “is well-fitted to run secret presidential wars and lie to Congress about them,” editorialized The Nation, an assessment borne out in more admiring terms by a study conducted for the CIA: “The secret war in Laos, author Charles Stevenson has emphasized, was ‘William Sullivan’s war.’…Sullivan imposed two conditions upon his subordinates. First, the thin fiction of the Geneva accords had to be maintained…; military operations, therefore, had to be carried out in relative secrecy. Second, no regular US ground troops were to become involved.” Instead, Sullivan resorted to one of the most destructive bombing campaigns of the Vietnam War. William M. Leary, “CIA Air Operations in Laos, 1955–1974,” Studies in Intelligence (published by the CIA), Winter 1999–2000.
3. Abram, “Memorandum to the Board,” circa 1966, folder 2, box 563, collection 459, BGCA.
4. Bold Satanic forces: Ibid. Cyclone: Frank McLaughlin to Abram, December 15, 1966, folder 1, box 168, collection 459, BGCA. “Ten steps…”: Coe to Jim Anderson of Young Life, November 18, 1981, folder 5, box 168, collection 459, BGCA.
5. Robinson had won for the Fellowship’s muscular Christ the ostensibly Ghandian Hindu A. M. Thomas, responsible for India’s armed forces during some of the worst fighting with Pakistan. Robinson to Ford Mason, November 30, 1964, folder 2, box 232, collection 459, BGCA.
6. Robinson to Halverson, April 13, 1963, ibid.
7. Halverson to Robinson, May 22, 1963, ibid.
8. Cordle, Halverson: Robinson to Mason, November 30, 1964, ibid.
9. V. Raymond Edman, They Found the Secret: Twenty Lives That Reveal A Touch of Eternity (Zondervan, 1984), pp. 78–87.
10 Halverson’s responsibility to a pluralistic nation did not mellow his religious convictions. Upon his death in 1995, Senator Dan Coats (R., Indiana) would eulogize him by expressing his admiration for a man who would preach thusly on the Senate floor: “God of our fathers, if we separate morality from politics, we imperil our Nation and threaten self-destruction. Imperial Rome was not defeated by an enemy from without; it was destroyed by moral decay from within. Mighty God, over and over again you warned your people, Israel, that righteousness is essential to national health.” Halverson also preached in the Senate against investigative reporting. Cal Thomas, “The Most Powerful Man in Washington Retires,” York Daily Record, November 9, 1994.
11. Robert D. Foster, The Navigator (Challenge Books, 1983), p. 61.
12. Doug Coe, “The Person of Christ,” a videotaped address to the President’s Meeting, a gathering of evangelical leaders, January 15, 1989.
13. “Washington Welcomes Doug Coe,” in Christian Leadership, October 1959, collection 459, BGCA.
14. “a woman so uncomplaining”: Wallace Haines quoted in “A Key Man in Every Country,” July 1973, folder 20, box 383, collection 459, BGCA. Sharp-nack to Coe, December 28, 1959, folder 10, box 135, collection 459, BGCA.
15. Cal Ludeman to Coe, April 27, 1960, folder 11, box 135, collection 459, BGCA.
16. Kent Hotaling to Coe, January 18, 1960, folder 10, box 135, collection 459, BGCA.
17. One of Coe’s standard closings on letters written in 1960, folder 11, box 135, collection 459, BGCA.
18. Haines is quoted back to himself in a letter from Coe to Haines dated December 27, 1967, folder 4, box 204, collection 459, BGCA. Coe to parents, November 4, 1959, folder 11, box 368, collection 459, BGCA.
19. Frank Laubach, “A Pentagon of World Friendship,” October 19, 1955, folder 1, box 505, collection 459, BGCA. Chuck Hull to Coe, January 15, 1960, folder 10, box 135, collection 459, BGCA.
20. Traveling on Fellowship behalf: Christian Leadership, December 1959, collection 459, BGCA. “Capehart and Carlson Meet Duvalier; U.S. Senators Pledge Assistance to Haiti, New Pittsburgh Courier, December 5, 1959.
21. Doug Barram to Coe, June 12, 1962, folder 5, box 168, collection 459, BGCA.
22. “Finding the Better Way,” January 15, 1942, pamphlet, collection 459, BGCA.
23. March 1962 remarks to a prayer breakfast for the governor of Arizona, filed under “Thoughts on Prayer,” file 16, box 449, collection 459, BGCA.
24. “LBJ, Billy Graham Eloquent at Breakfast,” Washington Post, February 18, 1966.
25. March 8, 1962, folder 5, box 361, collection 459, BGCA.
26. Carlson to José Joaquín Trejos Fernández, November 27, 1967, folder 17, box 365, collection 459, BGCA. Dorn was of no relation to the first W. J. Bryan, for whom he was named not in deference to Bryan’s fundamentalism, ironically, but in honor of Bryan’s anti-imperialism.
27. Howard Siner, “Attorney Knows Carter as Smart, Kind Friend,” San Jose News, March 4, 1977.
28. Bill Green to Coe, August 4, 1960, folder 11, box 135, collection 459, BGCA.
29. Savimbi, a black African leader who enjoyed support from the apartheid state as well as American Christian conservatives, is harder to pin down than Barre, who gambled his whole relationship with the United States on the Family. Interviews with and correspondence of Clif Gosney, a former Family liaison to the South African Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, reveal that Savimbi was also within the Family’s circle, h
is spiritual well-being tended by Gosney, a sincere Christian, and Piet Koornhof, a cabinet minister in the South African government of F. W. de Klerk.
30. There are at least two nearly full boxes of documents at the Billy Graham Center Archives detailing the Family’s relationship with Brazilian regimes. Boxes 184–85, collection 459, BGCA.
31. Interview with Coe by Tore Gjerstad, October 29, 2007.
32. Notes on reorganization folders 1–2, box 563, collection 459, BGCA.
33. Abram to Admiral C. S. Freeman, November 23, 1949, folder 2, box 348, collection 459, BGCA. Abram never put an explicitly anti-Semitic word on record, and while Malik may have been holding out hope for a Christian Palestinian state to the south of Lebanon, he was likely motivated more by his understanding of scripture, which did not include anti-Semitism. Freeman, however, the point man on the project, was an old-fashioned Jew hater and a frequent collaborator with Merwin K. Hart, the American fascist organizer.
34. Quoted in the December 1959/January 1960 issue of Christian Leadership, a members-only newsletter of the International Christian Leadership—the Fellowship. Located in the periodicals section of collection 459 at the BGCA.
35. June 28, 1963, “Thoughts on Prayer,” folder 16, box 449, collection 459, BGCA.
36. Bell made clear to the students that they’d been selected not for their good standing as Christians—some were not religious—or good grades, but solely for their status as big men on campus. February 5, 1970, “Young Men’s Seminar,” tape 107, collection 459, BGCA. “During the seminar, when I voiced my objection to the assumption that we were all devoted Christians,” Joe Persico, the student body president of San Francisco State, had complained to Lyndon Johnson after a similar event in 1965, “we were told by Roger Staubach…from the U.S. Naval Academy, ‘I feel sorry for all of you who are not Christians, because you have no chance of an after-life.’ General Silverthorn”—one of Abram’s chief aides, an ancient officer who’d held a Kurtz-like post in the U.S. occupation of Haiti during the 1920s—“told us that, ‘of course, Christ said a few oddball things, too, like the Sermon on the Mount.’” Andrew Kopkind, “The Power of Prayer,” New Republic, March 6, 1965.
37. February 5, 1970, “Young Men’s Seminar,” tape 107, collection 459, BGCA.
38. Ibid.
39. For basic biographical details about Colson, I relied on his first two memoirs, Born Again (Spire, 1977) and Life Sentence (Chosen Books, 1979), and John Perry’s admiring biography, Charles Colson: A Story of Power, Corruption, and Redemption (Broadman and Holman, 2003). Colson’s output, augmented by numerous ghostwriters, is enormous. Texts I found particularly useful to understanding his thinking include Against the Night: Living in the New Dark Ages (Servant Publications, 1989); How Now Shall We Live? (Tyndale, 1999); and Kingdoms in Conflict (William Morrow, 1987).
40. Thimmesch, “Politicians and the Underground Prayer Movement,” Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1974.
41. Hefley and Plowman, Washington: Christians in the Corridors of Power, pp. 38–55.
42. Paul Apostolidis, Stations of the Cross: Adorno and Christian Right Radio (Duke University Press, 2000), p. 151.
43. Kandy Stroud, “Chuck Colson: Reflections Before Prison,” Women’s Wear Daily, July 1, 1974.
44. Collection 275, BGCA.
45. Apostolidis, Stations of the Cross, p. 151.
46. Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power, p. 59.
47. Colson to Coe, November 20, 1980, folder 8, box 368, collection 459, BGCA.
48. Apostolidis, Stations of the Cross, p. 150.
49. Howard Gillette, Jr., Between Beauty and Justice: Race, Planning and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 153.
50. No signature to Coe, April 1, 1960, folder 10, box 135, collection 459, BGCA.
51. Julia Rabig, “‘Black Buffers’: Evangelical Entrepreneurship Meets Black Power on the Streets of Washington, D.C.,” unpublished paper presented at the 2004 University of Pennsylvania Graduate Humanities Forum.
52. Ibid., p. 19.
53. Interview with John Staggers, “How to Eat an Elephant,” HIS, November 1981. HIS was a men’s magazine published by the Inter-Varsity Christian Leadership.
54. Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Changes (Stillpoint Press, 2005), p. 32.
9. JESUS + 0 = X
1. Abram to Frank McLaughlin, February 14, 1968, folder 1, box 168, collection 459, BGCA.
2. Kathy Kadane, “U.S. Officials’ Lists Aided Indonesian Bloodbath in ’60s,” Washington Post, May 21, 1990.
3. Wilkes, “Prayer,” New York Times, December 22, 1974.
4. Senator B. Everett Jordan, “Personal and Confidential Memo” to members of Congress on Family assets around the globe, April 1969, folder 2, box 363, collection 459, BGCA. Marpaung’s contribution to the murderous crackdown is even celebrated by some evangelicals. “The story of Indonesian revival is an illustration of God’s sovereignty,” reads the subheading over an account of Marpaung’s speech on an evangelical website, http://members.aol.com/thewaycm/revival/asia.html, accessed July 20, 2007.
5. Hatfield to Nixon, November 11, 1969, folder 5, box 584, collection 459, BGCA.
6. Shortly after that meeting, Moorer, convinced that Nixon was soft on communism, began an espionage operation against the president’s civilian advisers, “a hanging offense,” in the words of the Pentagon investigator who uncovered the plot. “Don’t tell Laird,” Nixon instructed his attorney general as he considered prosecuting Moorer. James Rosen, “Nixon and the Chiefs,” Atlantic, April 2002.
7. Coe to Korry, October 10, 1970, folder 36, box 194, collection 459, BGCA. Korry and the October 1970 Plot: Gregory Palast, “A Marxist Threat to Cola Sales? Pepsi Demands a U.S. Coup. Goodbye Allende. Hello Pinochet,” Observer (UK), November 8, 1998. Korry, to his very minor credit, opposed a military coup because he did not think it would work. The CIA-backed murder of Allende’s defense minister that month seemed to bear out his point. The Chilean people rallied round Allende. But in 1973, Kissinger and General Pinochet, to Chile’s lasting sorrow, proved him wrong. I could find no record of Fellowship contact with Pinochet. They had long been allied with a right-wing civilian faction called the “Officialists,” headed by Hector Valenzuela Valderrama, a conservative Catholic politician whom Coe and Korry shopped around in Washington in 1969 as an Allende alternative. “The Majority Leader of the Congress, with whom you visited, called me the other day,” Coe wrote Valderrama. “He again expressed an interest in the ideas that you and he discussed. I think in the months to come such ideas can be pursued in private discussions and someday perhaps come to pass.” Correspondence, Coe, Korry, and Valderrama, February–June 1969, folder 35, box 194, collection 459, BGCA. “The sun is just now beginning to shine again”: Valderrama to Coe, December 21, 1973, box 194, BGCA.
8. Tape 109, January 4, 1971, titled “Family Night at Fellowship House during which “Sam Cram,” Douglas Coe, and Clif Robinson gave reports on their recent trip to Japan, South Korea, South Vietnam, India, Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Turkey, and the Soviet Union to visit leaders in those countries,” collection 459, BGCA.
9. B. Everett Jordan to members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives involved with the Presidential and Congressional Prayer Breakfasts, October 1970. “Mr. Howard Hardesty, Executive Vice President of Continental Oil company, recently traveled to Indonesia where he met for a day with men in the leadership groups there. He also had dinner with President Suharto and Members of the Indonesian Cabinet. The sense of spiritual relationship which was formed caused Mr. Hardesty to comment, ‘This is one of the greatest days of my life.’” Folder 8, box 548, collection 459, BGCA.
10. McClure: Jordan to members of Congress involved with the Prayer Breakfasts, 1970, folder 2, box 362, collection 459, BGCA. “Confidential” prayer: Jordan to members of Congress, undated, in reference
to 1970 National Prayer Breakfast, folder 5, box 584, collection 459, BGCA.
11. Elgin Groseclose to Clifton J. Robinson, November 28, 1972, folder 6, box 383, collection 459, BGCA.
12. Clifton J. Robinson to Elgin Groseclose, December 1, 1972, ibid.
13. From a 2005 interview with the Reverend Rob Schenck, president of Faith and Action, a small, Coe-style ministry with headquarters across from the U.S. Supreme Court.
14. Locke’s remarks are found on p. 19 of “Trip to the [illegible] and Sermon by Doug Coe,” circa 1988, National Prayer Breakfast, no box number, collection 459, BGCA.
10. INTERESTING BLOOD
1. Max Blumenthal, “God’s Country,” Washington Monthly, October 2003. Eyal Press’s Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America (Henry Holt, 2006) is the definitive account of the Buffalo abortion wars and the murder of Barnett Slepian.
2. Hillary Clinton, Living History (Simon and Schuster, 2003), p. 168.
3. Interview with Tony Hall, August 30, 2006, by Meera Subramnian. Hall recently published a book (coauthored by Tom Price) with the evangelical publisher Thomas Nelson titled Changing the Face of Hunger: One Man’s Story of How Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, and People of Faith are Joining Forces to Help the Hungry, the Poor, the Oppressed (2006). In it, Hall repeatedly refers to a figure who connects him with Republican members of the Family as “our mutual friend.” Hall puts the connections to good effect, genuinely pursuing a foreign policy more oriented toward the problem of hunger. But his emphasis on religious freedom—and his disinterest in systemic economic critiques—persistently guides him toward worthy but sentimental projects of limited effect, or worse, actively depoliticizing local organizations.
4. As Marcos “disappeared” his opponents in the mid–1970s, the Family moved a full-time operative to Manila. In 1975, Marcos hosted his first Presidential Prayer Breakfast, with Coe and Senator Hughes as guests. The event’s organizer, Bruce Sundberg, was blunt about his interest in the worst elements of Filipino politics: “that is where the wealth is,” he wrote to his financial supporters in America. Sundberg didn’t want it for himself, but he believed in a trickle-down fundamentalism. Win a “top man” for the faith, and the lesser people—those without money, those without power—will fall into line. Sundberg, general letter, October 17, 1975. Sundberg’s salary was paid in part by such a top man, Filipino senator Gil Puyat, one of Marcos’s financiers, who put $14,285 in a trust for Sundberg, according to a letter to Sundberg from Coe dated June 10, 1975, ibid. Puyat’s financial support for the Marcos regime is documented in John T. Sidel’s Capital, Coercion and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 74. Another top man cultivated by Sundberg was Butch Aquino, the son of Benigno Aquino, the opposition hero murdered by Marcos. The younger Aquino, Sundberg wrote to Coe on September 25, 1976, was “moving more and more to the ‘left’” until Sundberg gave him a copy of Chuck Colson’s Born Again, which persuaded him not to join the anti-Marcos rebels. All Sundberg correspondence is located in folder 13, box 475, collection 459, BGCA.