Capital Research Center

Capital Research Center (CRC) was established in 1984 to “study non-profit organizations, with a special focus on reviving the American traditions of charity, philanthropy, and voluntarism”. Essentially its mission statement is to undertake “opposition research” on environmental groups, and progressive foundations. It has been described as “up and coming” although it remains small compared to some of the major right wing think tanks.

Funding

In contrast to its scrutiny of others, the CRC does not include any details of its funding on its web-site. Between 1985 and 2002, the CRC received $5,853,820 in 101 grants from the following 10 conservative foundations[1]:

• Claude R Lambe Foundation
• Earhart Foundation
• John M. Olin Foundation
• Sarah Scaife Foundation
• Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
• Carthage Foundation
• Philip M McKenna Foundation
• Scaife Family Foundation
• JM Foundation
• Charles G Koch Foundation

It has received some $90,000 from Exxon since 1998.[2] An insight is also given into its funding by a 1998 memo written by Roy Marden Manager of Industry Affairs at Philip Morris in New York City who is on the board of the Heartland Institute and on the Business Advisory Board of the Reason Foundation. He said that CRC was a “longterm friend of PM (and recipient of policy groups support)[3]

Links to Republicans

Office of Management and Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. was on the Board of the CRC and Hudson Institute[4]. Sally Pipes, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the right-wing Pacific Research Institute, who serves on the National Advisory Board of the CRC joined Arnold Schwarzenegger's Transition Team For Governor Of California.[5]

Edwin Meese, Former President Reagan's Attorney is currently the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, but also a Trustee at the CRC and a member of the Board of Visitors at The Federalist Society. He is described as one of Reagan’s closest confidants[6]. Current / past board members with close ties to the Republicans include: Linda Chavez, Kenneth Cribb, and Richard V. Allen.

Principals

• Terrence Scanlon - President. Was vice president for corporate relations at The Heritage Foundation. He served on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission under President Ronald Reagan
• John Carlisle - Editor of Organization Trends and Foundation Watch, used to work for the National Center for Public Policy Research
• Robert Huberty - Executive Vice President and Director of Research. Before joining CRC in 1993, he served in several positions at The Heritage Foundation, Earlier, he was a research assistant to former President Richard Nixon.
• Christopher Morris - Editor of Patterns of Corporate Philanthropy
• David Riggs - Executive Director of Green Watch; formerly the Director of Land and Natural Resource Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.[7]

Board Members and Advisors

The CRC no longer has its advisors or trustees on its website. The last time it did so was in late 2001. From this and other sources, the following are / were on the Advisory Board and Board of Trustees.[8]

Trustees

• Terrence Scanlon – Chairman. President, Capital Research Center Washington, D.C.
• Beverly Danielson - Institute of World Politics, Coral Gables, Florida
• Constance C. Larcher - President and Executive Director, Washington Legal Foundation
• Edwin Meese III - Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow, The Heritage Foundation
• Daniel J. Popeo - Chairman and General Counsel, Washington Legal Foundation
• Marion G. Wells - Secretary, Lillian Wells Foundation, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
• Dean Webster - Retired CEO, Blue Seal Feeds, Inc.

National Advisory Board

Richard V. Allen - President, Richard V. Allen Company, Washington, D.C. A member of the Council on National Policy since 1988 and former National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan (1980-1982). Allen is currently a senior (CSIS) first senior staff analyst and research principal from 1963 to 1966. He currently serves as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the CSIS Advisory Board as well as the Advisory board of the CRC.[9]

Dr. Larry Arnn - President, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan.

Dr. John Baden - Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, Seattle, Washington.

Linda Chavez - a former Reagan appointee president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity. Chavez was Bush’s first choice for Secretary of Labour. Described as a “right-wing pundit, anti-union demagogue, and foreign policy hawk” Signatory to the PNAC[10].

T. Kenneth Cribb - President, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Cribb “was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Reagan Administration, serving as President Reagan's top advisor on domestic matters”[11].

Midge Decter - Author, New York. Wife of Norman Podhoretz (one of the key forefathers of neoconservatism), She “continues to advocate hard-line policies from her perch at the neoconservative Institute on Religion and Public Life”. Signed Founding statement of Principles of the Project for the New American Century. Board of Trustees of Heritage Foundation. Board of Overseers of Hoover Institution[12].

Michael J. Horowitz - Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C.

Dr. Deal W. Hudson - Editor, Crisis, Adam Meyerson –President The Philanthropy Roundtable. Ex- Vice President for Educational Affairs, The Heritage Foundation.

Michael Novak - George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy, American Enterprise Institute.

Kate O’Bierne -Senior Editor, National Review, Washington, DC

P. J. O'Rourke - Author, Peterborough, New Hampshire

Marvin Olasky - Editor, World Magazine, Austin, TX

Sally Pipes – President, Pacific Research Institute, San Francisco (see above)

Menlo F. Smith - President, Sunmark Capital Corporation, St. Louis,

Dr. Walter Williams - Professor of Economics, George Mason University Fairfax, Virginia; serves on advisory boards of: Landmark Legal Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs (see below), Cato Institute (see below), Heritage Foundation and others[13].

Thomas S. Winter - Editor-in-Chief, Human Events, Washington, D.C.

Robert L. Woodson, Sr - President, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise Washington, D.C.

Others:

Barb Van Andel-Gaby - A Heritage Foundation Trustee Since 1996, and Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Alticore Corp. CEO, Peter Island Resort. On the Board of Directors of CRC[14].

Issues:

CRC runs a number of newsletter / websites including:

Organization Trends - “A monthly newsletter that reports on and analyzes the activities of advocacy organizations”. Labor Watch - “A monthly newsletter that tracks the increasing activism of labor unions that are trying to achieve through political coalition-building the goals they have failed to achieve at the bargaining table”. Foundation Watch - “A monthly newsletter that examines the grantmaking of private foundations”.

Greenwatch

Run by David Riggs, a veteran of the CEI. According to Riggs “environmentalism has nothing to do with bunnies and Bambis. It's about destroying free enterprise and private property”[15].

Greenwatch was started in June 2002. It runs the usual anti-Kyoto, anti-green articles, including reviewing the book “Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death” by Paul Driessen of the Center for Defense of Free Enterprise as well as Atlas Economic Research Foundation,[16] Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and Frontiers of Freedom Institute (see below)[17]. Other articles applaud a “world without Greenpeace? That's just another imaginary horrible for environmentalists. For people tired of Greenpeace's hijinks, it would be a Christmas wish come true.”[18]

The CRC and Greenwatch have issued papers on what they see as the growing threat of International NGOs and their lack of accountability. In July 2003 the CRC issued “NGO Accountability: What the U.S. Can Teach the U.N - Applying U.S. Nonprofit Disclosure Laws to International NGOs”[19], and in November 2003 “The International Green Agenda - U.S. Foundations Support Environmental Activists on the World Stage[20].” The later was written by Ivan G. Osorio from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

David Riggs was also at the AEI / IPA conference “We're Not from the Government, But We're Here to Help You - Nongovernmental Organizations: The Growing Power of an Unelected Few,” in June 2003

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1. http://www.mediatransparency.org/search_results/info_on_any_recipient.php?48
2. Source Greenpeace - data from company reports for 98, 00, 01, 02 – data not available for 99 and pre-98.
3. R. Marden (1998) “YSP Ally possibilities”, Bates No 2069615360, 22 October.
4. http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=6247; http://www.mediatransparency.org/movement_goes.htm
5. Contra Costa Times (California) (2003) “Schwarzenegger's Transition Team”, 10 October, p4
6. http://www.townhall.com/notables/meese.html; http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/meese/meese.php
7. http://www.capitalresearch.org/about/bios.asp
8. http://web.archive.org/web/20011216234434/http://www.capitalresearch.org/about/advisory.html; http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipients/capital_research_center.htm
9. http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Richard_Allen
10. http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/chavez/chavez_body.html
11. http://www.isi.org/about/our_history/t_kenneth_cribb.html
12. http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/decter/decter.php
13. http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/vita.html
14. http://www.heritage.org/About/Departments/trustees.cfm
15. M. Irvins (2003) “CPACers take on the Environmentalists”, Tulsa World (Oklahoma), 7 February, pA17
16. http://www.greenwatch.org/news/news.asp?ID=173
17. http://www.cdfe.org/staff.htm
18. http://www.greenwatch.org/news/news.asp?ID=169
19. R. Huberty & D. Riggs (2003) NGO Accountability: What the U.S. Can Teach the U.N, CRC, July;
20. I. G. Osorio (2003) The International Green Agenda, CRC, November.