Center for Defense of Free Enterprise

12500 NE 10th Place.Liberty Park.Bellevue, WA 98005 Phone: 425-455-5038 Fax: 425-451-3959

Since the late 1980's, CDFE has been at the center of the "wise use" movement.

Alan Gottlieb, a former tax felon, founded CDFE in 1974 along with two gun groups: Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the Second Amendment Foundation. Other Gottlieb ventures include the Free Enterprise Press (book publisher), American Press Syndicate, and American Broadcasting Network. CDFE's Free Enterprise Press has published several books by CDFE executive vice president Ron Arnold, including Ecology Wars (1987) which includes a chapter "Defeating Environmentalism" and Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, the World of the Unabomber (1997). Ron Arnold is considered originator of the term "Wise Use," and Arnold has credited himself with starting the back-lash campaign against environmentalists. In 1991 Arnold told the New York Times, "We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along." Arnold, a former Dow Chemical consultant, was also head of Washington State chapter of the American Freedom Coalition, the political arm of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church from 1989-91 (Western States Center fact sheet). CDFE organized the first Multiple Use Strategy Conference (now Wise Use Leadership Conference) in Reno, NV in 1988 which led to the twenty-five point "Wise Use Agenda." Included in the agenda was "Immediate wise development of the petroleum resources of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge" and "Passage of the Global Warming Prevention Act to convert in a systematic manner all decaying and oxygen using forest growth on the National Forests into young stands of oxygen producing, carbon dioxide-absorbing trees to help ameliorate the rate of global warming." CDFE executive veep Ron Arnold has since been quoted saying "There isn't any such thing" as global warming (CLEAR fact sheet). The CDFE website features categories such as "EPA-probe" and "co-imperialism" and the latest headlines from the bastion of right-wing journalism, Fox News. CDFE runs two other websites: Undue Influence - "racking the environmental movement, money, power, and harm" (http://www.undueinfluence.com/), and the anti-Rainforest Action Network site "RANamuck" where they talk about Rainforest Action Network's ties to other radical groups and "their anti-capitalist ideology, and their lawless and dangerous activities." Among other things, the site features a link to send email to the Turner Foundation asking it to stop funding RAN. Known funders have included the Coors Foundation, Georgia Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, MacMillan Bloedel, Pacific Lumber, ExxonMobil Education Foundation, DuPont, Agricultural Products Division, Boise Cascade, Seneca Sawmills, Sun Studs, Burkland Lumber and the F.M. Kirby Foundation. (From http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Center_for_the_Defense_of_Free_Enterprise)

KEY QUOTES

"We are sick to death of environmentalism and so we will destroy it. We will not allow our right to own property and use nature's resources for the benefit of mankind to be stripped from us by a bunch of eco-facists."--Ron Arnold Source: "New, militant antienvironmentalists fight to return nature to a back seat." Boston Globe, January 13, 1992

"Facts don't really matter. In politics, perception is reality." -- Ron Arnold Source: Outside Magazine, December 1991

QUOTES

19 December, 1991 "We want to destroy environmentalists by taking away their money and their members." --Ron Arnold Source: "Fund Raisers Tap Anti- Environmentalism." The New York Times, December 19, 1991.

KEY DEEDS

7 June, 2002 Senior Fellow Paul Driessen signed a letter to President Bush, asking him to withdraw the "Climate Action Report 2002" and demand that it be rewritten based on "sound science". The letter also recommends that Bush "dismiss or re-assign all administration employees who are not pursuing your agenda, just as you have done in several similar instances." Source: Joint Letter To President Bush On The EPA's Climate Action Report 6/7/02

DEEDS

4 February, 2004 Paul Driessen, CDFE Senior Fellow, testified before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Natural Resources, along with representatives of the Congress of Racial Equality. Driessen argued that environmentalists' opposition to fossil fuels were contributing to poverty in third world countries. Source: Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise website 4/04

9 June, 1998 Ron Arnold, who has being trying to make coterrorist and environmentalist synonymous since the mid1990s, testified before a congressional committee in 1998 on the subject of "eco-terrorism." He defined "eco-terror" explicitly to include civil disobedience. In his testimony, Arnold argued: "For the past five years, our members have routinely contacted our headquarters to report crimes committed against them of a type we've come to call eco-terrorism, that is a crime committed to save nature. These crimes generally take the form of equipment vandalism, but may include package bombs, blockades using physical force to obstruct workers from going where they have a right to go, and invasions of private or government offices to commit the crime of civil disobedience" Source: House Crime Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, June 9, 1998

FUNDING

Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise has received $230,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

2003 $40,000 ExxonMobil Foundation Global Climate Change Issues Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Corporate Giving Report

2004 $130000 ExxonMobil Foundation Global Climate Change Issues Source: Exxon Giving Report 2004

2005 $60,000 ExxonMobil Foundation Source: ExxonMobil 2005 DIMENSIONS Report (Corporate Giving)

late 80s, early 90s? $unknown Exxon Corporation Source: Greenpeace Guide