by Craig Unger
Jubilant that Franco was open to such objectives, Escrivá wrote to Franco in the fifties expressing his joy that “the Chief of State’s authoritative voice should proclaim that ‘The Spanish nation considers it a badge of honor to accept the law of God according to the one and true doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church, inseparable faith of the national conscience which will inspire its legislation.’”28
And so, under Franco, God’s law ultimately replaced the rule of secular law in Spain. Catholicism, Opus Dei–style, was the state religion. As Escrivá saw it, Opus Dei had won.
Now the challenge was to do the same thing in the United States.
The idea, according to Bucciarelli, was simple. “But the trick,” he said, “is how to do it.”29
CHAPTER NINE
THE NEW PRAETORIAN GUARD
Yes, how to do it.
How to insinuate a tiny, extreme-right-wing Catholic sect within, say, law enforcement and the judiciary, and to do it in plain sight, but quietly without attracting attention, like injecting a toxic virus that slowly poisons the entire body politic.
Opus Dei had done it in Spain, where taking over the courts and the judiciary had been a critical early step in its collaboration with fascism. The United States was different, but here, too, an elite coterie of right-wing Catholic jurists wanted to implement a surgical strike that would in effect take over the US Supreme Court and, at the same time, create an imperial presidency. And they would do it in plain sight without causing a stir from the American public, using a handful of high-powered attorneys tied to Opus Dei, the new Catholic right, and dozens of their fellow travelers. As Bill Barr and his allies often said, the secular left had won one cultural war after another in America—birth control, abortion, gay marriage, and others. So now they were going to rigorously vet prospective judges to roll back the secular tide.
This new Catholic right, in a very different way, was every bit as powerful as the Christian right of the eighties, but instead of relying on the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition, and around eighty million Christian evangelicals in the United States, it used a small cadre of savvy right-wing political operatives and sophisticated attorneys who minimized their ties to Opus Dei and buried them in legal theories about “the unitary executive.”
This was the new clerisy, an elite group of intellectuals and professionals—highly placed lawyers, politicians, and the like—rooted among the clergy who set out to change the world, whose commitment to theocratic authoritarianism was cloaked in the smoke and mirrors of Opus Dei and other right wing Catholic groups. They allied with the Federalist Society, the immensely powerful conservative and libertarian lobby, and set about stacking the courts with deeply partisan conservative judges who did double duty as economic royalists, ruling in favor of their plutocratic friends.
With about seventy thousand members—mostly law students, lawyers, and law faculty—the Federalist Society is far larger and more visible than Opus Dei, but its leadership in Washington has been dominated by highly partisan lawyers who have transformed the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp for right-wing partisans and taken over both the Justice Department and the judiciary.
In effect, as David Montgomery reported in the Washington Post, the Federalist Society now controls the US Supreme Court, boasting seven current or former associate justices: Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas,1 and Donald Trump’s most recent Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, who had clerked for the late associate justice Antonin Scalia, also a member of the Federalist Society.
Moreover, in addition to overseeing these appointments, Federalist Society executive vice president Leonard Leo, through his work on another right-wing activist group, the Judicial Crisis Network, can take some credit for blocking the appointment of Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee, to the high court.2 One of the Judicial Crisis Network’s top funders was the Wellspring Committee, led by Opus Dei member Ann Corkery and her husband, Neil Corkery, who has been the JCN’s treasurer.3
Together, with DC’s Opus Dei–affiliated Catholic Information Center, the Federalist Society and various other conservative judicial-activist groups sought out hundreds of deeply conservative candidates at the nation’s most prestigious colleges and law schools and cultivated them assiduously from matriculation to clerkship to partnerships, right up until their investitures as federal judges, or even as justices on the US Supreme Court or in the Justice Department—all in service of a right-wing activism that would return the nation’s judiciary to a time before contraception, legal abortion, gay rights, and other issues prized by Democrats.
All of which was very much in line with Opus Dei’s tenets. According to Michael Walsh’s The Secret World of Opus Dei, Father Escrivá placed an enormous emphasis on winning converts in Spain, on encouraging people to “whistle,” to use an Opus term of art.4 Each member was expected to have twelve to fifteen friends suitable for recruitment, of whom three or four were considered likely to join.5 Those targeted for recruitment were largely in the professional class—doctors, lawyers, professionals, merchants, and the like.
When it came to recruiting new disciples in the United States, Opus Dei sought students first at the University of Chicago and later at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, not to mention Georgetown, MIT, Cornell, and Columbia. Múzquiz met Robert Bucciarelli, then a Harvard student and a fellow Chicagoan—and later, his successor—in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
If the presence of such a deeply repressive, ultra-conservative, secretive sect as Opus Dei at a citadel of secularism as Harvard seems incongruous, well, that was precisely the point. In Franco’s Spain, the government ministers who were in Opus Dei came from the elite and had all been schooled at the finest universities in the country.
Bucciarelli explained why targeting Harvard was essential for Opus Dei. “Even if [Harvard] were not Godless, there would be a need for Opus Dei at Harvard,” he told the Harvard Crimson. “The intellectuals, you know, they have great influence. Like the snow-capped mountains, they’re going to irrigate the valleys.”6
All of which was very much in line with the strategies espoused by Escrivá and implemented—quite successfully, by the way—in Franco’s fascist government, where Opus Dei played such a powerful role. You go to those mountains knowing it will trickle down. Or as Escrivá himself put it, using another metaphor in The Way’s point number 831: “Among those around you—apostolic soul—you are the stone fallen into the lake. With your word and your example, you produce a first circle . . . and it another . . . and then another, and another . . . Wider each time.”
Similarly, the Opus Dei constitution asserts that Opus Dei “is to work with all its strength so that the class which is called intellectual—either by the precept that they are outstanding or by reason of gifts that it exercises . . . is the guide for civil society—adhering to the practice of the commandment of Christ the Lord.”7
That Opus Dei has such lofty intellectual aspirations is particularly odd in view of its penchant for banning books. Opus Dei denies that it bans books, of course, but that is really a question of semantics and degree. In The Way, Escrivá expresses his sentiments on the matter clearly: “Books. Don’t buy them without advice from a real Catholic who has knowledge and discernment. It’s so easy to buy something useless or harmful.”8
Moreover, according to John L. Allen Jr.’s Opus Dei, Father Guillaume Derville, spiritual director of the prelature of Opus Dei, said that Opus Dei “has a ‘database’ containing thousands of reactions to books by members over the years, which can be consulted when people want guidance on particular titles.” But, he added, it is not an “official list,” and the judgments expressed in it are “by definition perfectible.”9
According to the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN), a nonprofit organization that reviews the sect’s practices, Opus members “must ask permission of their spiritua
l directors before reading any book, even if it is required reading for a university course.”10 All of which allows Opus Dei effectively to say it is not in the business of banning books, but to achieve the same goal of forbidding readership anyway. More specifically, according to ODAN, the database, which, at the time, was called Guía Bibliográfica 2003 (Bibliographic guide 2003), consists of book reviews and recommendations by Opus Dei members as well as a list of some sixty thousand books that are rated in six categories: from category 1, “books that can be read by all, even children”; to category 5, “books that are not possible to be read, except with special permission from the advisory (in New York)”; and category 6, books that are “prohibited reading. In order to read them permission is needed by the Prelate of Opus Dei (in Rome).”*
Similarly, when it comes to politics, Opus Dei spokesmen told me that there’s nothing to see. “Opus Dei has no political positions other than simply affirming the teaching of the Catholic Church,” said Brian Finnerty, the chief spokesman for Opus Dei in the United States.11 “If someone were to come to Opus Dei with the idea of harnessing it as sort of some sort of instrument for political ends, then that would be immediately clear. And even if it were for good ends, then that would be an uncomfortable fit. It would be a good indication that the person doesn’t really understand that we’re all about.”
But surely Opus Dei must have some political opinions? After all, it’s Catholic. Surely, Opus Dei is against abortion? “If you were to ask me on any topic what is the position of Opus Dei,” Finnerty told me, “my answer would be whatever the Catholic Church teaches.” He then suggested the answers would be in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a publication promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1992 that sums up the beliefs of the Catholic faithful.
But Finnerty also says that Opus Dei “fully respects the right of our members to formulate their own opinions,” and therein lies the rub. Who are Opus Dei’s members? What are their political views? And how are they implementing those views?
Ask Finnerty whether various Trump administration officials are in Opus Dei, and likely as not you’ll get the same answer I did. “Opus Dei as a matter of policy respects the privacy of its members,” Finnerty said.
Then he told me, “I would suggest you talk to them.”
But of course they won’t say. And that’s because Opus Dei is a secret society, and as the secret Opus Dei constitution of 1950 puts it,12 “It is forbidden for members to reveal they are members without the permission of their Director (N191-50).” Consequently, even members of Opus Dei may not know who their fellow members are unless they have been so informed by higher-ups.
And so long as key details about the sect remain secret, like having as a member a wily lawyer who makes extravagant use of attorney-client privilege, Opus Dei could be insulated from possible disclosures that its members wielded vast amounts of unseen political power they were using to reshape the entire Justice Department and the courts by implementing an authoritarian theology dressed up as the theory of the unitary executive, extending unbridled power to the presidency and allowing Donald Trump to trample the rule of law.
The most important institution in initiating that process has been the Catholic Information Center, which moved to K Street, just two blocks from the White House in 1998, under the direction of Reverend C. John McCloskey, and in doing so became the closest tabernacle to the White House, as the official CIC seal proclaims.13
Before long, it became a lively gathering place for conservative academics, politicians, and journalists, thanks in part to a celebrity-studded noon Mass that boasted converts to Opus Dei whom McCloskey had recruited and in some cases baptized, including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Judge Robert H. Bork, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow, and Fox News host Laura Ingraham.14
In 2001, Kudlow told the Washington Times, “I’d like to unleash him on Capitol Hill. A few doses of Father McCloskey,*15 and we’ll turn this country around. He’s an old-fashioned evangelical pastor.” McCloskey converted Kudlow to Catholicism when Kudlow was recovering from addiction.16
In both his writings and his sermons, McCloskey puts forth a vision in which the great cultural battles dating back to the sixties, involving divorce, abortion, gay marriage, and the like, suggest that conservative Catholics and their evangelical allies should prepare for a bloody civil war and perhaps even secede from the United States.17
Perhaps because of McCloskey’s extreme political views, some Opus Dei members have made a point of distancing themselves from the Catholic Information Center. “I would imagine that there are lots of members of Opus Dei who never go there,” Father Wauck wrote to me. “As I say, I rarely went there and don’t even recall exactly where it was.”
And yet the CIC named its chapel, at which daily Masses are celebrated, after Opus’s founder: the Chapel of St. Josemaría Escrivá. The director of the CIC was Opus Dei; he was picked by the American vicar of Opus Dei. It was the go-to place for politically connected right-wing Catholics.
Within that context, no one was more central than Leonard Leo, who had ties to both the CIC and the Federalists. As per its usual policy, Opus Dei won’t discuss its relationship with Leo, if any, but it is a matter of public record that Leo is on the board of Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center, which, according to Opus Dei’s website, has been “entrusted to the priests of Opus Dei.”
Most notably, Leo went on to become executive vice president of the Federalist Society and has led the way for Opus Dei adherents and fellow travelers to ally with the Federalists in reshaping the nation’s judiciary. “Leonard Leo was a visionary,” Tom Carter, Leo’s media relations director when he was chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), told the Daily Beast.18 “He figured out twenty years ago that conservatives had lost the culture war. Abortion, gay rights, contraception—conservatives didn’t have a chance if public opinion prevailed. So they needed to stack the courts.”
To that end, Leonard Leo is widely credited with having a hand in the disposition of so many Supreme Court justices that he seemingly has had more influence determining the makeup of the Supreme Court than any single person in the entire country since Franklin D. Roosevelt.19
This was the birth of what later became Donald Trump’s new Praetorian Guard—the sentinels on the Supreme Court, the men running the Department of Justice—who would trample the rule of law in defense of the president, who would undermine prosecutions of President Trump’s cohorts, who would trivialize and undermine the Mueller probe, and who would support one measure after another via pro-Republican decisions on gerrymandering, voter suppression, the theory of the unitary executive, and the limits of presidential power, all of which became vital issues in terms of preserving democracy in the Trump era.
CHAPTER TEN
THE COVER-UP GENERAL
By 1990, as Opus Dei had begun to establish a presence in Washington, William Barr had already begun working his way up the ladder in George H. W. Bush’s Department of Justice. Then a thirty-nine-year-old attorney from New York, Barr had grown up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in a family that supported Republican Barry Goldwater for president at time when his neighborhood firmly supported Lyndon Johnson.1 According to the New Yorker, his mother taught at Columbia and was an editor at Redbook magazine, while his father was headmaster at Dalton, the elite co-ed private school on the Upper East Side, and made a name for himself as an autocratic authority figure railing against birth control, feminism, and the social positions of the liberal counterculture of the sixties.
Barr was cut from the same cloth as his father. As Marie Brenner reported in Vanity Fair, even in high school at Horace Mann, the venerable private school in the well-heeled Riverdale section of the Bronx, “Barr was the William F. Buckley Jr. of the class of 1967, a droll outlier who lived in a rambling Riverside Drive apartment with a framed ‘Goldwate
r for President’ poster in the foyer.”2
Barr’s counterpart, his liberal antagonist in high school, was a classmate named Garrick Beck, the son of Julian Beck and Judith Malina, who founded the Living Theatre, an experimental theater company heavily influenced by European intellectuals and American writers from the Beat generation. In the sixties, there were a number of great face-offs between left-wing and right-wing intellectuals—Gore Vidal versus William F. Buckley comes to mind.
Even as teenagers, Billy Barr, as he was known then, and Beck dove deeply into the issue that has come to define Barr’s role in facilitating the rule of Donald Trump—namely, how much authority does the president have as defined by the Constitution. “We argued about the Constitution as it was reflected in President Lyndon Johnson’s treatment of the war [in Vietnam]. I argued that Johnson did not have the constitutional authority to enact this war. Billy said, ‘All the president needs to declare war is an executive order. That is all!’ . . . I really believe that Billy saw the Constitution as concentrating power in the chairs of the committees, and in the cabinet secretaries, the Supreme Court—and the president,” Beck told Brenner.
Deeply held as such convictions may have been then, Barr has continued to hold them more dearly than ever—and to implement them even today.
Barr differed from his peers in more than ideology. His overly strict father wasn’t just repressive; there was also a religious component to his world view that was highly unusual. Born to a Jewish family, Donald Barr married an Irish Catholic woman, converted to Catholicism, and raised his children in the religion. Young Bill followed in lockstep and took to Catholicism zealously.