THE HERITAGE MODEL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100560001-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 20, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 20, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Besides finding a Democratic national chairman with
the organizational skills of Republican chairman Bill"
Brock, besides raising lots of money and training new-
candidates atthe grassroots level, arid besides thinking
-about a new agenda,. the liberal movement-in America
needs its own counterpart to the conservative Heri-
tage Foundation-a fast-moving, well-financed, high-
ly visible research and propaganda organization capa-
ble of analyzing issues from a liberal perspective and
getting its product quickly into the hands of members
of Congress and the press. The liberal establishment
has its think tanks, notably the Brookings Institution
and the .Carnegie Endowment, which traditionally
provide refuge for people who have been or aspire to
be top Cabinet and subcabinet officers in Democratic
administrations. The- Republican establishment has
the American Enterprise Institute, Stanford's Hoover
Institution, and Georgetown's Center for Strategic
and International Studies. Such organizations can be
depended upon to produce, besides high officials, high
policy-lengthy, learned, and often definitive studies
on large public policy issues_ --
But nobody else is quite like the Heritage Founda-
tion-organizationally, functionally, or ideologically.
Instead of serving up grand concepts fvr the executive
branch and academia, Heritage has concentrated on
short (5,000 to 10,000 word) issue analyses primarily
for legislators and their assistants. The subject matter
and implicit conclusions of Heritage Issue Bulletins
(studies ? of: specific legislation) _ and Backgrounders
(broader issues studies) have a distinct right-wing tilt.
Heritage is against the windfall profits tax, fair hous-
ing amendments, and hospital cost containment; for
higher defense spending, a constitutional amendment
on .abortion, and energy .deregulation. But the re-
. search is solid and detailed, the arguments ?are clear,
and the. impact on congressional debate and press
commentary -is impressive:: There are a number of
liberal organizations that publish newsletters on spe-
cific issues-arms control, domestic surveillance, civil
rights, and labor-but none cover the entire spectrum
of public policy, as Heritage does; and consistently turn
out dependable research. Liberals probably didn't need
a Heritage. Foundation when the Democrats con-
trolled the fact-marshaling machinery of both houses
of Congress and..the executive. But they do now.
THE NEW REPUBLIC
20 December 1980
Instead of~being staffed with graybeards who ad-
dress each other as Mr. Secretary, Heritage has 20 or
so professionals, all under 40. Most are recen t or soon-
. to-be PhDs earning between $15,000 and $25,000 a
year who look forward to advancing to congressional
staff jobs rather than walnut-lined slots in the upper
bureaucracy. With so many liberals forced out of
Senate and administration jobs in the November land-
- slide, it ought to be easy to find comparable or superior
brainpower to populate a liberal Heritage. The prob-
lem may be in finding people as energetic. -
Heritage isalso ideologically distinct from the estab-
?~ lishment think tanks of the right and left. It is a com-
mitted rightist organization, although the Reagan vic-
tory, the rightward drift of American public opinion,
and the rise offarther-out organizations make it seem
far less incendiary and extremist than it might have
looked five or even three years ago. One official of a
major traditional think tank says that"anything to the
right of the Heritage is the fringe:'But Heritage'sown
administrators regard it as "mainstream conserva-
tive;' representing all the principal strains of US
conservatism-the traditional right (William F. Buck-
ley's variety, and also John Ashbrook's and Phil
Crane's), economic libertarians (Milton Friedman's
kind), the anti-communist and hardline pro-defense
right (Ronald Reagan's traditional base), the new right
(Phyllis SchlaEly, Jerry Falwell, Richard Viguerie and
company), and, increasingly, neoconservatives (Irving
Kristol's crowd, Pat Moynihan's, and Midge Decter's).
Presumably it would be difficult to form a similar
alliance of disparate liberal interest groups, since cope-
sion among them does not exist. But all strains of ~
liberalism wouldn't have to be represented in a liberal i
Heritage. For one thing, the IeEt-liberal or radical strain
already has its own think tank, the Institute for Policy ~
Studies. What's needed is a research factory for
Kennedy-Mondale-Jackson-McGovern moderate lib-
erals, where they can fight for consensus and produce
critiques of what the conservatives are doing in Con-
gress, within the administration, and at the Heritage
Such an enterprise requires an entrepreneur such as
Heritage has in Edward J. Feulner Jr., a 39-year-old
former Chicagoan who became a conservative in col-
lege reading Russell Kirk's Tke Conseroatiae Mind, Buck-
ley's God and Man of Yale, and Barry Goldwater's Con-
science of a Conseroatice. Feulner went on to do graduate
work at the London School of Economics and came to
Washington as a congressional aide. He served briefly
as personal assistant to Defense Secretary Melvin
Laird, then returned to the Hill, first as an aide to
Representative Phil Crane, then as director of the
Republican Study Committee, a consortium of right-
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wing legislators. In 1973 he and Paul Weyrich, then an
aide to Senator Gordon Allott, agreed on the need for a
quick-study research organization for Congress. They
contacted right-wing beer brewer Joseph Coors, who
provided the group's original seed money of $250,000.
Weyrich ran the organization until late 1975, when he
left tabecome a new right political organizer. At that
time, Heritage's budget was $743,000. For the next
year, the organization was managed by Frank Walton,
a California businessman who introduced direct-mail
fundraising and ran the budget up to more than one
million dollars. Feulner took over in April 1977. Partly
owing to his efforts, and partly to Walton's, the 1977
budget was two million dollars. By 1979 it was $4.1
,million, including $600,000 to purchase a new building
on Capitol Hill and $3.5 million for research and other
-operations. This year the operations budget will be five
million dollars_ Next year's will be $5.3 million.
Heritage's biggest contributor is the Scaife Family
Trust. Second is Coors, who gives about $300,000
annually-about six percent of Heritage's- budget, as
opposed to 90 percent in the early years. Other big
donors include the NobleFoundation,established with
income from an Oklahoma oil and gas fortune, and the
John M. Olin Fund, whose president, former treasury
secretary William Simon,- is on.the Heritage board.
Heritage gets money from 87 corporations on the
Fortune 500, according to Feulner. "From the standpoint
of the business community, there's no reason why ~
that shouldn't be 487;' Feulner says, given Heritage's
pro-business, anti-government orientation. He says
there are exceptions to consistent alignment with cor-
porate interests, though. Heritage's massive 3,000-
pageset ofrecommendations to the incoming adminis-
tration included a call for elimination of federal sub-
sidles for synfuel development in spite of the fact that a
major recipient of subsidies is the Fluor Corporation,
whose president sits on Heritage's board and which
gives Heritage about $50,000 a year..
Besides corporate and fat cat contributions, Heri-
tage gets small donations of two dollars to $20 from
120,000 people by direct mail. "For the first time; 'says
Feulner, "you have a broadly supported think tank.
We're not just Joe Coorss mouthpiece in Wash- ~
_._
ington ? .... _ ._ .
Rather; Heritage is a mouthpiece for the whole con-
servative movement, and it speaks in many forms.
Besides the Issues Bulletins and Backgrounders, Her-
itagepublishes aquarterly, Polity Review, which increas-
ingly includes the work of neoconservatives. It also
puts out a defense and foreign policy newsletter, Na-
tional Security Record; Inkrnational Briefing, `a publication
that reports on foreign projects that might be useful
in the United States; Institution Analysis, which reports
on the funding and output ofleft-wing organizations;
Educations[ Update, a new rightish newsletter attacking i
sex education and other scholastic deviations from 1
traditional morality; and Critical Issues, a monograph
series on especially complex issues. In addition, Heri-
tage sponsors. lecture series, congressional seminars,
and briefing sessions for editors, any or all of which are
forums liberals might adapt.
One other Heritage feature surely is adaptable and
necessary for the revitalization of liberalism. That isits
resource bank, its lists of conservative academics, I
organizations, and experts that can be tapped for Her-
itage research or congressional testimony, brought ~'
together for conferences, and otherwise kept inter-
locked. It may have pleased liberals to think for years
that the conservative movement consisted merely of
small-minded businessmen, troglodyte congressmen,
hot-eyed ex-generals, and weird anti-feminists in ten-
nis shoes-plus a few antic intellectuals such as Wil-
liam Buckley, Friedrich Hayek, and Ernest van den
Haag. Such illusions are impossible now, in the wake
of Reagen's victory. Liberals are discovering to their '
amazement that a lively out-of-power intellectual I
right always has existed around such organizations as ~
the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Philadelphia i
Society, and the Mont PelerinSociety--not to mention ~
that serious, if misguided, journal, National Review.
In fact, the intellectual right has. grown quite large.
Heritage has 1,000 scholars- linked into its academic
network whom it contacts periodically to supply with
material and with requests for ideas. According to
resource bank director Willa Johnson, Heritage serves
as "a clearinghouse, a conduit, and a catalyst" for con-
servative intellectuals and activists. A liberal network i '
just as large could be Formed, but someone has to do it i
and begin stimulating new thinking on public policy
questions. ~
All Heritage's intellectuals really have not produced
an abundance of original ideas. The one cited most
often as a Heritage product is that of low-tax enter-
prise zones to encourage investment in high-unemploy- i
ment areas. Even that idea, as it happens, originated in
England-and with a Socialist, at that-and was
imported here by Heritage staff members. Heritage i.
~'
people claim they are about to produce another novel
idea-a scheme for limited energy exploration of wil-
derness areas. .
I
But Heritage is astoundingly good at packaging and
'.
trumpeting conservative proposals in the media. Hard- ~'
ly a week goes by without some major newspaper or"
magazine publishing astory or anop-ed piece based on
a Heritage report. One of the great publicity master- !.
strokes of the year was Heritage's Mandate for Lead-
ership project, the 3,000-page. report to the new
administration on what needed to be done-to impose I ~
conservative government on the country. Aforth- (!
coming conservative budget, calling fordomesticspend- ~' .~
. ~.
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ing cuts of $50 billion to $60 billion in fiscal 1982,
should create a new bonanza of stories. Heritage gets ~
at least as much press attention as AEI even though its
budget is half the size of AEI's and its staff includes no i
ex-presidents or Cabinet members: It remains to be
seen what the Reagan administration ~ will do with
Heritage's proposals, but they were received enthusi-
asticallyenough by Reagan'schief ofstaff, Ed Meese. It
should come as no surprise that 14 Heritage staff and
board members made it onto Reagan transition teams.
Feulner, in fact, is on the transition executive com- ~'
mittee. .. ..:
- What happens to a right-wing think tank when
right-wingers take control of the government? Feul-
ner hopes that Heritage will be both a source of new
proposals for the administration and its conservative
watchdog, setting a conservative policy standard to
which the administration could repair. The principles
Heritage espouses are beneficent enough-a .free
market economy, a strong US foreign policy, and less ,I
government regulation. But as its big Reagan advisory
project demonstrated, its specific agenda-and the
pressures it will place on Reagan-may be consider-
ably more dangerous. It wants revival of House and
Senate internal security committees and a cutback in
rules prohibiting unconstitutional behavior by the FBI
(see box on page 12). It wants reductions in US food ~,
programs and rural development, though not in agri-
cultural subsidies. It uncritically calls for building
nearly every weapon ever proposed at the Pentagon. ~i
Its education program focuses on looser civil rights '',
enforcement and on measures (tuition vouchers and ~
tax credits) likely to undermine the public schools. It I
wants to stop public interest law firms from suing the ~
government - - - ~
? On the liberal side somebody is going to have to
'challenge these proposals and question whether they
and the rest of the right-wing agenda will produce a
`-good and effective society. The unions, civil rights
`groups, teachers, civil liberties organizations, arms ',
:controllers, and others will do their bit, but they will
"not represent the concerted brainpower of the liberal ~~
Fmovement, nor the focused publicity-getting power. It
?dcesn't cost a tot of money to have afirst-rate liberal
resea"rch group.; It will take a good deal of enterprise
-and energy, however.
Morton Kondracke
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