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DAVID: Let’s imagine for a minute. It’s January 1973.
You’re in your car driving home after a long day. Let’s say it’s a wood-paneled Buick.
You’re stressed about work. You’re scanning through radio stations, but all of the news coming out of Washington is bad. Nixon, days away from his second inauguration, is trying everything he can to distance himself from a growing scandal.
ARCHIVAL NEWS CLIP: Senate Democrats have chosen North Carolina’s Sam Ervin to investigate the Watergate bugging case.
The committee would have full subpoena power and a half-million-dollar budget.
DAVID: There are new protests every day…
ARCHIVAL NEWS CLIP: …Free our sisters, free ourselves… what do we want? Equal pay…
DAVID: It’s exhausting. So you flip the radio over to the AM dial. You find WARM 590, a station that serves northern Pennsylvania and parts of New York.
ARCHIVAL NEWS CLIP: Mister businessman, have you read the Powell Memorandum?
DAVID: You’re thinking, The Powell Memorandum? What the hell is that?
ARCHIVAL NEWS CLIP: It just might be the most important document about the free enterprise system ever written…
DAVID: And who is this guy they’re talking about, Lewis Powell?
ARCHIVAL NEWS CLIP: …the same Lewis F. Powell who is now a member justice of the Supreme Court of the United States prepared an in-depth study entitled “Attack On American Free Enterprise System.”
DAVID: Okay, so this is a recreation, but we based it on the actual word-for-word transcripts of a series of radio “editorials” that WARM 590 presented on the topic of…
ARCHIVAL NEWS CLIP: …a growing menace in this country which threatens to choke to death our system of free enterprise.
DAVID: You rev the Buick engine and squeeze the steering wheel. The speaker describes how this new threat is not from your typical commies and radicals. No, no, no — this new enemy is even more dangerous.
ARCHIVAL NEWS CLIP: ...people in college classrooms, people who reach the public through radio and television and magazines, people in our own community. Their numbers aren’t all that big yet but their weapons are powerful — an ability to talk, to write and to influence public opinion. They match this with an almost religious devotion to one goal: Destroy free enterprise in America.
DAVID: You in your Buick are the Mr. Businessman this editorial is talking to. You work hard, pay your taxes. You think the American system is pretty great. This Powell memo they’re talking about is stirring something in you. You realize it’s time to get off the sidelines and join the fight.
In the last episode, we told you about how Lewis Powell came to write his manifesto and we ended with the question: Did it actually mean anything? Was it just Lewis Powell’s early version of an angry Reddit thread that went into the ether? Or, as some claim, was it much more? Did oligarchs and activists use it as their step-by-step blueprint for the takeover of major American institutions?
Well, after two years of research and the discovery of some documents that have never seen the light of day, we finally have the answer.
We all know the history of the many social movements in the ‘60s and ‘70s —- civil rights, the environment, women’s lib — but in this episode, we’re going to tell you about the movement you’ve probably never heard of: The Powell memo movement that began the process of legalizing corruption in America.
I’m David Sirota, and this is Master Plan.
When we left off in the previous episode, Lewis Powell’s memo had been leaked to the media and it stirred a minor controversy because the FBI did not include it in its report to the senators voting on Powell’s Supreme Court nomination.
I’m here with our producer, Jared Jacang Maher. So Jared, fill us in on what happened to Powell after the memo became public.
JARED: That was in the fall of 1972. Powell had only been on the Supreme Court for less than a year. And in his personal papers, I found letters from business executives and other high-profile friends offering their support and some of them asking, “Hey can I get a copy of this memo?”
But Powell was always careful about maintaining the appearance of impartiality — he called it part of his “sterilization as a judge.” He would always refer inquires to his buddy Gene Sydnor at the Chamber of Commerce, and say “go get copies from them.”
DAVID: And as we’ve said before, Powell never addressed the publicly, right?
JARED: No, he didn’t need to. The controversy only stayed in the news for a couple weeks and then basically went away. Powell never talked about it –– and it doesn’t seem like he was ever even asked about the memo for the rest of his life.
DAVID: Like it almost never, ever happened.
JARED: Yeah, and it was frustrating because, when I was at the Powell Archives digging through his papers, I could see these little snippets, these references where you could tell something more was going on…with meetings and campaigns that had been set up around the memo.
DAVID: At the Chamber of Commerce?
JARED: Yeah, and I looked there at a public archive for the U.S. Chamber, and it goes back more than 100 years, but I couldn’t find much. I had to start looking further afield, at other archives and libraries around the country. Just connecting the dots between people who might have been involved at the time. And eventually, I came up with a pretty clear picture of what transpired in the years after the Powell memo was leaked.
DAVID: You mean the vast, shadowy conspiracy?
JARED: Yeah, well, it does involve the names of powerful people that you would probably recognize. To be fair, many of the figures were already part of a conservative movement that was emerging in the 1970s. But it seems like the memo came at the exact right moment in time to steer many of these folks in the same direction… the Business Roundtable, the head of Procter & Gamble, Charles Koch, Roger Ailes…
DAVID: Dude, dude, dude are you about to say Pepe Sylvia, because this feels like that scene in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where Charlie covered the office walls with sheets of paper connected with red lines.
TELEVISION CLIP: Pepe Sylvia, this name keeps coming up over and over again. Every day Pepe’s mail’s getting sent back to me! Pepe Sylvia! Pepe Sylvia! Look at the mail — this whole’s box is Pepe Sylvia!
JARED: David, have you been spying in my basement?! Okay, but, you’re right. This is all very expansive and interconnected, and a lot of names keep showing up. So for the purpose of this episode, I want to hone in on three previously unknown gatherings that were specifically focused on the Powell memo.
We’re gonna go from Florida to Dallas and then D.C.
DAVID: OK, so let’s start in a place where everything seems to breaks bad: Florida.
ARCHIVAL COMMERCIAL CLIP: Disney World is more than just a place. It is a complete vacation destination where guests may stay as long as they like.
At the Polynesian village, there is a leisurely atmosphere of the South Seas and trade winds.
JARED: In Orlando, March 1973, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Public Affairs Committee organized a three-day conference at Disney World’s Polynesian hotel — that was the first big meeting of a group called The Task Force on the Powell Memorandum.
DAVID: Come on man… there was actually a Powell Memo Task Force, and they met at the Polynesian resort in Disney World? Like for real? For real, for real?
JARED: For real.
ARCHIVAL COMMERCIAL CLIP: The great ceremonial house dominates the scene in a setting that is lushly tropical. And for each guest, there is a feeling of coming to a tiny island in the South Pacific to stay and play.
DAVID: I’m imagining newly planted palm trees and white sand beaches… the tiki torches are burning… the Cinderella castle is off in the distance... the super-futuristic Monorail is gliding along an elevated track… and in the middle of all this magic and joy — you’re telling me there are a bunch of stuffy white dudes in wide-lapel ‘70s suits, wandering around the lobby of this new hotel?
JARED: And imagine that everyone is clutching copies of the Powell memo.
DAVID: So how did this happen?
JARED: Well, the main coordinator behind this gathering was a guy named William G. Whyte. He was the top lobbyist in Washington for United States Steel, one of the biggest steel producers in the world.
He was also picked to serve as Chairman of this newly-created Powell Memo Task Force. We’ll talk more about Whyte in a minute, but first I want you to check out this — it’s a roster of other Task Force Members
DAVID: Let’s see, there’s…Richard Jencks, president of CBS… Jay Van Andel, who co-founded Amway with the notorious Richard DeVos… let’s see, there’s top brass from Phillips Petroleum… I also see a bunch of executives from JC Penney, 3M, the American Medical Association, General Motors… deans from a couple universities.
This is a meeting of the chamber of commerce but not like your local chamber of commerce. This isn’t a gathering of mom-and-pop shops from Main Street America — this is like the elite of the elite, the masters of the corporate and political world, hanging out at Disney World.
JARED: It really is a small world, David. And you’ve got to read this too. Here’s a copy of the actual agenda.
DAVID: So it looks like attendees were first greeted at a reception aboard the “Eastern Winds,” an authentic Chinese junk ship that apparently doubled as a floating cocktail lounge.
As their spouses and families took in a hula performance or hit the water slides, the corporate guys got down to business in the Micronesian conference room.
One session was called: “INTERPRETING BUSINESS”, a “think-tank” session on how to “enhance the image of business.” They also exchanged ideas for how to sway public opinion through “economic education.”
JARED: Which was a big theme of the Powell memo.
DAVID: OK, so then there’s a 9:00 a.m. to noon session on “POLITICAL ACTION.” It was a workshop focused on the Powell memo’s recommendations to increase political effectiveness and “what more the Chamber and business community can do to develop more political clout.”
JARED: Political clout — another core message of the Powell Memo. And it was the most pressing topic of this meeting.
Now, let’s go back to the organizer of this event: U.S. Steel lobbyist William Whyte. This wasn’t some everyday hack. One observer described him as the “the Dean of the Corporate Washington Establishment.” Whyte was not just a fixture on K Street —- he was the ringleader among a new breed of “corporate Public Affairs specialists.”
These were guys that brought together lobbying, legislative know-how, legal pressure and media skills — all in service to growing a client’s political influence.
DAVID: And the lobbyists know the truth – the easiest way to pull strings in Washington is to control politicians with campaign money.
JARED: So, here’s where it gets really interesting. Midway through the conference, Whyte left the Polynesian Hotel and jumped in his car…
DAVID: I bet it was something like…a wood-paneled Buick.
JARED: And jumped in his proverbial wood-paneled Buick… and headed to the Orlando airport for an important pickup.
DAVID: He wasn’t picking up bags of dirty cash like in Episode 2. Whyte was there to give a lift to his longtime friends, Jerry and Betty. Jerry was once an obscure Republican Congressman from Michigan, but at this point he was on a glide path to something much bigger.
ARCHIVAL INAUGURATION TAPE: I, Gerald R. Ford, do solemnly swear...that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States...
DAVID: Yes, that Jerry — Gerald Ford, who is still in Congress, but later that year would become vice president and soon after that, president.
Officially, Congressman Jerry came to Florida to take part in another work-related junket on the invitation of William Whyte –– a junket paid for by U.S. Steel, of course. But, instead of heading to a golf course, Gerald Ford was going to the Happiest Place on Earth to schmooze and collaborate with the Powell Memo Task Force.
According to the conference schedule, the Honorable Gerald R. Ford was the official speaker at the luncheon on Friday.
But there may have been an ulterior motive for his participation in that day’s session — strategizing about the upcoming congressional elections and about how to deal with legislation that was problematic for the master plan — the “Federal Election Campaign Act.”
JARED: FECA!
So, remember, back in episode 2, we told you that Ford signed the amendments seeming to make FECA even stronger when he became president. So this is right before that, when they are discussing those amendments.
DAVID: When Ford did sign those amendments, it was seen as a big win for the reformers, not the master planners there at Disney World.
JARED: For the most part, it was a win for Common Cause and the reformers. But the master planners were desperate to get around FECA’s restrictions on corporate-funded political action committees that funnel money to politicians and political parties.
This Powell Memo meeting at Disney World was where they perfected their plan.
I got a letter for you to read, David. This was written by one of the attendees, a week before he went to Disney World on behalf of his boss John Merrill Olin.
DAVID: Olin, the wealthy industrialist. We’ll talk more about him later.
JARED: In this letter, the executive writes about the Powell Memo Task Force in intimate detail, especially their lobbying effort to amend the regulations around corporate campaign donations
He wrote,
“We should be able to get many companies to follow our own pattern of political fundraising…”
DAVID: He’s talking about political action committees, PACs. And without getting too far into the weeds, the corporate guys at this Orlando meeting wanted an exemption to an older law that was standing in the way of huge multinationals, like the Olin Corp, from dumping money into corporate PACs.
The effort was being opposed by Common Cause and a senator from Wisconsin named William Proxmire, who was threatening to filibuster.
JARED: Check out this line:
“I have suggested to some of my corporate associates that we might contribute to a special fund to have Senator Proxmire get a few more hair transplants… provided the operator drills a little deeper this time.”
DAVID: Okay, so they’re like joking about murdering Senator Proxmire, basically, or at least lobotomizing him.
JARED: Yeah, and remember: We know that Ford was there. We know that amending FECA was a major item of discussion at the meeting. And we know the meeting took place right before Ford’s keynote speech to the Powell Memo Task Force.
DAVID: So, let’s review: while drinking mai-tais at Disney World’s Polynesian Hotel, the master planners are specifically scheming to end restrictions on corporate PACs, and they’re schmoozing directly with Gerald Ford — the then-House minority leader on his way to becoming president.
JARED And then, guess what? A provision killing those restrictions ended up in the FECA reform bill that Gerald Ford first dealt with in Congress… and then later signed into law as president!
DAVID: Wow! What a shocking coincidence! Remember what Ford said in episode 2, when he signed the bill into law?
GERALD R. FORD: …all the compromises that were necessary in the process…
DAVID: I guess now we know where some of those compromises came from.
So, under the guise of post-Watergate campaign finance reform legislation, the master planners from this Powell memo meeting ended up creating their first corruption loophole.
And as soon as that law took effect, there was an immediate explosion in campaign spending by corporate America… no more secret bags of dirty cash smuggled through airports, a la Nixon.
The Chamber wanted all of its members to write checks for millions of dollars to totally official, totally legal, and extremely powerful business PACs.
But back to Disney World. The master planners honed their plan to keep the money flowing into politics, but what else did they decide?
JARED: Well, the vision laid out in the Powell memo was so multifaceted and expansive that they realized that executing it would be really hard. It needed to be more sophisticated and broad-based than any effort previously undertaken by the business community.
DAVID: It probably seemed super daunting.
JARED: Yeah, well, if you’re going to wish upon a star, you know, this is a place to do it. But either way, they got down to work.
The documents we unearthed show that the Task Force members — there were about 50 of them — were divided up into subcommittees for each of the core tenets of the Powell memo: Communications, Education, Political Action and Judicial Action.
They were instructed to spend the next several months intensively analyzing and considering Powell’s words. They were told “to reach beyond, to ‘blue sky’ their thinking,” and not limit themselves to just the Powell memo as they developed their ideas for the Chamber.
DAVID: Remember that key line in the Powell Memo?
LEWIS F. POWELL: Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort.
DAVID: In other words, to borrow a phrase from the civil rights movements of the previous decade, they needed to do some “coalition-building” — and spread the gospel.
The mid-20th century was fertile ground for political manifestos. It seemed like you couldn’t walk ten feet without tripping over some pivotal work inspiring a new social and political movement.
There was The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan for the feminist movement… Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring for the environmental movement. There was Sal Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. There was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which became a galvanizing text for the civil rights movement.
JARED: And don’t forget the granddaddy of them all, the Little Red Book by Mao Zedong.
ARCHIVAL NEWS CLIP: They always carry all of Chairman Mao’s works with them and study them everywhere and anytime…
DAVID: But this was the challenge for corporate conservatives in this era. They didn’t have anything like the Little Red Book —- and this was a problem for them.
JARED: Although, I do like the idea of the Conservative Mystique…
DAVID: Hahaha, well, they did have books like Barry Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative and figures like William F. Buckley on TV and radio.
But if they were going to create a movement to counter the Left, they needed something that would not only inspire the insiders, and powerbrokers, and elites — but also something that would motivate the masses.
JARED: And this is why I’m skeptical about whether the Powell memo was leaked to the Washington Post without the knowledge of the top leadership at the Chamber of Commerce.
Because right after the memo went public in 1972, you see that the Chamber is immediately publishing it and distributing it far and wide. They mailed thousands of copies to members. They printed it in their official magazine with an elaborate design treatment like it was some mysterious quasi-religious text that must be read.
DAVID: It really was kind of like the conservative movement’s version of the “Anarchist’s Cookbook” — it was kinda like contraband, a publication everyone had heard about but wasn’t on the newsstand.
JARED: And even though the Powell memo was never an officially published book, according to the Chamber’s estimates, hundreds of thousands of copies of it were circulated, reaching millions of Americans and sparking numerous discussions, speeches, and articles. It was an underground bestseller.
DAVID: And by early 1973, activity around the memo was intense.
JARED: So intense, in fact, that at the same time Gerald Ford was at Disney World delivering his keynote address to the Powell Memo conference… it turns out there was another event –– a rival event –– about the Powell memo that was happening at the Marriott hotel in Dallas, Texas.
DAVID: At the same time?
JARED: The same exact day, March 30th, 1973. I want to show you this.
These are notes taken by a man named John A. Howard. Howard came from the world of academia and was the President of Rockford College in Illinois. He was an influential figure in the emerging conservative movement during this time.
DAVID: This Dallas meeting looks like it was organized by members of something called the YPO.
JARED: The Young Presidents Organization. It was a social club for executives and owners of smaller businesses — and it’s still around today. In early 1973, the YPO orchestrated a series of gatherings –– Powell memo parties, if you will — for members who wanted to fight the fight.
DAVID: Ha, that sounds like a hippie love-in for angry middle managers…
JARED: Ha, yeah, pretty much. Howard was one of the attendees at the Dallas meeting. He saw the Powell memo as a way to build a new ideologically-driven movement. At the YPO meeting, there was a focus on the part of the Powell memo that talked about the seeming paradox of how…
LEWIS F. POWELL: …Most of the media, including the national TV systems, are owned and theoretically controlled by corporations, which depend upon profits, and the enterprise system to survive.
DAVID: So at this Dallas meeting, the assembled businessmen start asking: why couldn’t corporations leverage their power as advertisers to shape the news coverage from media outlets they sponsor?
JARED: On this topic, Howard was impressed by a young TV producer who had helped Richard Nixon get elected. He noted: “This man appears to be a potential secret weapon, and the Chamber would be wise to enlist him as a consultant.”
And, that young man’s name was…
DAVID: Hang on, hang on… Can we get some more ominous music? There we go. OK.
JARED: ..That young man’s name was… Roger Ailes.
ROGER AILES: I don’t believe anyone will ever be elected to a major public office again without the skillful use of television.
NEWS CLIPS:
…Roger Ailes…
…Roger Ailes…
…Roger Ailes…
DAVID: Wait, wait, like THE Roger Ailes?
JARED: Yep, Roger Ailes, the founder and former CEO of Fox News.
Here’s what John Howard wrote about Ailes’ presentation. David, you should read this:
DAVID:
“Roger Ailes outlined the power which advertisers would be able to exert upon TV programming if they were moved to do so… the Chamber members not only need to understand the problem, but be informed about where and how they can apply leverage and be given the tools to exert the leverage.”
DAVID: In my time working in politics and media, I have been eye-rolled and depicted as some sort of deranged conspiracy theorist whenever I’ve suggested that corporate advertisers at times try to, and have the power to, influence the news with their advertising dollars. But here at this meeting, it looks like the future founder of Fox News spelled that out as an explicit political strategy?
JARED: Yeah, and John Howard loved this idea. At the time, Ailes was a young up-and-coming TV producer turned political consultant. His ideas about shaping public perceptions through media, they found a receptive audience at this Dallas meeting, as well as other meetings that he attended about the Powell memo.
DAVID: Listener, if you’ve ever looked at the Republican Party of today and wondered — how did country club Republicans and the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln, wind up in bed with hard-right libertarians? And how did Fox News become the obnoxious bullhorn of the conservative movement? This is the moment when those coalitions started to form. The Powell memo served as the connective tissue.
JARED: And to be clear, the hard-right libertarian faction was different from the Chamber of Commerce crowd at Disney World.
DAVID: The libertarians had previously felt marginalized in the Republican Party. While the pro-business Republicans at Disney World wanted favors from the government, the libertarians were anti-government idealogues who wanted to tear it all down.
JARED: We’re talking about some of America’s wealthiest and most influential families — direct descendants of the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age, who were committed to the destruction of the federal government bureaucracy expanded under the New Deal.
But in 1973 and 1974, you had these convergences — some bigger and more formal, some smaller and more intimate — where the Powell memo served as a unifying document. Its promise of freedom and enterprise went viral among both groups and brought them together.
DAVID: How did something go viral before the internet? It’s not like this was at the airport bookstore.
JARED: It wasn’t. The Chamber of Commerce sent the memo to its members, and then it spread organically, from person to person, probably using snail mail and lots of Xerox copies.
DAVID: Imagine some vice president of a company opens up his mailbox and finds a copy of the memo. He loves it so much that he makes a copy.
JARED: Then the memo arrives at the mansion of wealthy industrialist John Olin, who inherited his fortune from his family’s chemical and munitions empire in the 1930s.
DAVID: So Olin is like, “Oh my God, this guy Lewis Powell, this guy is saying what I’ve been thinking!”
JARED: Olin would go on to dump hundreds of millions of dollars into conservative think tanks, media organizations and become a main backer of a conservative legal group called the Federalist Society.
DAVID: We’ll talk about the Federalist Society in depth later in the series.
JARED: Then… the Powell memo shows up in Wichita, Kansas at the estate of Charles and David Koch.
DAVID The Koch brothers.
JARED: I don’t even think we need to explain the impact of the Kochs, but the Koch Brothers are recognized as some of the biggest financiers of conservative politics.Their father built an empire in oil and gas and they inherited his businesses along with his hard-core libertarian ideology.
And Charles, we know, found inspiration in the Powell memo. In 1974, he read an excerpt of the Powell Memo to a group of like-minded conservatives, and said he didn’t think it went far enough actually. So he co-founded the Cato Institute, another think tank dedicated to stuff like deregulating campaign finance.
DAVID: These guys really took to heart Powell’s urging to play the long game, to invest money in creating alternative institutions to shift the country in a new direction at every level.
JARED: Another copy gets made…now imagine the memo arriving at the estate of Richard Mellon Scaife, the mogul who inherited his family’s oil and banking fortune.
DAVID: Wait, Scaife’s name came up in Episode 2. He was one of Nixon’s secret donors who got exposed by the Common Cause lawsuit
ARCHIVAL NEWS CLIP: $800,000 from Richard Scaife of the wealthy Mellon family.
JARED: Yeah. And after reading the Powell memo, Scaife began a decades-long mission to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into conservative causes and organizations.
DAVID: This includes the Heritage Foundation.
JARED: Yes, exactly, this brings us to our last figure.
A copy of the memo arrives in Golden, Colorado at the headquarters of Coors Brewing Company. Joseph Coors, a grandson of the company’s founder, told a historian that the Powell memorandum “stirred” him and made him realize American business was “ignoring a crisis.” So he tapped his family’s brewing fortune for a venture led by Roger Ailes, which laid the groundwork for what would evolve into Fox News.
But his biggest investments were put toward making radical changes to the intellectual and policy landscape of Washington, D.C. He became one of the first and biggest funders of the Heritage Foundation, which was founded in February 1973.
DAVID: For listeners who vaguely recognize the name of the Heritage Foundation, it’s because the organization and its policy agenda have been touted by Republican presidents for the last four decades.
You don’t have to trust me on that. The 2024 Republican Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance explicitly said that, writing “the Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”
And Vance wasn’t exaggerating when he wrote that. Here’s Ronald Reagan in the 1980s:
RONALD REAGAN: I mentioned the things that were on the minds of conservatives at the moment, the importance of the Heritage Foundation, the remarkable work of Joe and Holly Coors, and so many of you in this room in bringing to Washington the political revolution.
DAVID: And here’s what you’ve been hearing in the news about Donald Trump:
NEWS CLIP: The conservative Heritage Foundation leading this draconian and at times extreme policy plan, Project 2025, a 900-page sort of wish list or proposal for the second term
DONALD TRUMP: Heritage does such an incredible job and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.
DAVID: So there it is, another direct line from Lewis Powell’s manifesto to the present era - in this case from the Powell Memo in 1971 to Project 2025 today. The Powell Memo inspired oligarchs to fund the Heritage Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation then became the author of the agenda of the entire conservative movement all the way into this current moment we’re now living through.
JARED: But back here in 1973, this was all still underground — just a bunch of ideologues, eggheads, activists and oligarchs cross-pollinating with one another.
DAVID: So, the question for the master planners at this early moment in the 1970s was: How do they take the Powell memo’s ideas and start implementing them? How do they begin infiltrating the courts and infiltrating American culture? That’s where we’re going next.
Let me set the scene: It’s November 12, 1974, 19 months after the meeting at Disney World with Gerald Ford and the meeting in Dallas with Roger Aisles.
The last leaves are dropping off the trees, and Richard “I am not a crook” Nixon is gone.
RICHARD NIXON: I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
DAVID: Congressman Jerry from the Disney World meeting is now President Gerald Ford, and has given Nixon a get-out-of-jail free card.
GERALD FORD: …a full free and absolute pardon on to Richard Nixon. For all offenses against the United States…
DAVID: Lewis Powell has settled into his job on the Supreme Court, developing a reputation as a reasonable moderate, and the general public has forgotten about the leak of his memo.
The Powell Memo Task Force, however, has been busy implementing the recommendations of the memo.
And here at this meeting in 1974, there was likely a deep sense of urgency — just days before the gathering, the master planners’ Republican allies in Congress saw historic midterm losses in the post-Watergate election, sweeping in a new wave of liberal reformers.
JARED: Earlier, I said I wanted to talk about three important meetings. This is the third and final one. It doesn’t have tiki torches or Mai Tais, unfortunately. This gathering is being held at the Chamber of Commerce’s headquarters in DC, located right near the White House.
I found the actual seating chart. Check out the names around the table…
DAVID: Let’s take a look here: Ah, there’s William Baroody, president of the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.
JARED: And he’s sitting next to Barton Cummings, the bowtie-wearing head of one of the nation’s biggest advertising agencies and chair of the Ad Council.
DAVID: I see Gene Sydnor, the Richmond, Virginia businessman who first got Lewis Powell to draft his infamous Memo to the Chamber of Commerce.
JARED: And two seats away from him is John Howard, the president of Rockford College, who attended the meeting in Dallas.
DAVID: Of course, there’s a representative for Jay Van Andel, who co-founded Amway with Richard DeVos.
JARED: And all around the table you can see top brass from pro-industry lobbying groups.
DAVID: The Council of Better Business Bureaus, the National Association of Manufacturers and the newly-formed Business Roundtable, that — along with the Chamber of Commerce –– would define a new power structure on Capitol Hill for decades to come.
Jared, did you find audio from the meeting?
JARED: Sadly, no. But I did find the typed-out speaker’s notes from the presentation. So how about we do another re-enactment?
DAVID: Alright, through the magic of podcasting, let’s go now into the room where this secret meeting took place.
THE SIMPSONS CLIP:
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do, we do
JARED: Haha, no, it wasn’t quite like the Stonecutters on The Simpsons. No purple robes or weird symbols. These VIPs were probably all wearing suits and ties.
DAVID: As the men settle into their seats, everyone turns to the head of the table to listen to the convener of the meeting: William Whyte, the U.S. Steel lobbyist who had coordinated that previous meeting at the Polynesian Hotel and who’d just finished assisting with his friend President Ford’s transition into the White House.
WILLIAM WHYTE: Alright, gentlemen, let’s get started, please have a seat…
DAVID: White begins by explaining how, after a year of closely studying the Powell memo, the chamber’s board officially approved a plan of action around the conclusion that there were…
WILLIAM WHYTE: Four mandatory areas in which business must concentrate its efforts if it is to achieve acceptance with the general public…
DAVID: Yeah, you heard that right, America’s corporate titans are sitting at a giant table in a Roman-columned fortress just one block from the Oval Office where their pal Jerry is now literally the leader of the free world, and somehow they perceive themselves as victims struggling for acceptance. Imagine Darth Vader and the Emperor at the control panel of the Death Star, lamenting that they are unpopular and have no power.
Anyway… Whyte addresses the big question: How are things progressing with the master plan? Quite well, it seems.
The room goes dark and a beam of light from a slide projector shines onto a screen.
Whyte explains how the task force’s lobbying helped convince Congress to amend the new election laws to allow for corporate PAC spending, just as they had planned back at Disney World.
WILLIAM WHYTE: Congress has enacted most of the reforms we sought and, notably, we helped to stave off that drive for public financing of Congressional races…
DAVID: Now, Whyte moves on to the next issue: Judicial action.
You may recall that the Powell memo recommended mimicking Ralph Nader’s focus on the courts — filing lawsuits designed to get specific policy outcomes and amicus briefs pressuring judges to deliver specific rulings.
WILLIAM WHYTE: …since expanding the program, the Chamber has participated, or is in the process of doing so, in 13 cases… nine of these are in the labor area…
DAVID: Whyte brags that the Chamber has participated in cases over things like whether unemployment benefits should be paid to striking workers or changing the guidelines for how chemicals can be discharged into waterways.
WILLIAM WHYTE: We have been successful in gaining our point of view in important instances, and we expect these judicial actions to be one of the most far-reaching and productive elements resulting from Task Force recommendations.
DAVID: Whyte says the Chamber has educational programs, symposiums and conferences going on nationwide.
WILLIAM WHYTE: … to create rapport and a better understanding of our private enterprise system among youth and educators.
DAVID: They’re giving lesson plans to teachers…
WILLIAM WHYTE: …a new package of audio-visual materials to increase economic understanding that includes slide presentations about Profits and Productivity. Our Profits Kit is a best seller...
DAVID: Whyte mentions a pilot television program with the Texas Council on Economic Education.
WILLIAM WHYTE: …entitled “Everybody Knows What Profit Is.” The entire series may run to 30 films, with a budget of five million dollars…
DAVID: Sounds like must-see TV!Their media outreach effort is massive, now including…
WILLIAM WHYTE:…a weekly column to more than 500 press and 300 radio and television outlets… public-service spots to over 750 radio stations… a monthly cable television feature used by more than 200 stations with a viewing audience of more than 4 million… and monthly editorials used by 70 television stations, 225 radio stations, and 300 newspapers...
DAVID: Just like the one on AM radio that we heard at the top of this episode. Whyte concludes:
WILLIAM WHYTE: A lot has happened since last November — but, of course, much more needs to be done.
DAVID: OK…so here’s the question: What then was done after this meeting? What specifically?
JARED: Well, on the media front, they launched an operation to change the hearts and minds of normie Americans. One guy in that room, the advertising executive named Barton Cummings, spearheaded a massive PSA campaign through the Ad Council.
DAVID: Wait, I thought Ad Council ads weren’t political. I remember them being really Mom and apple pie kind of stuff. Like, Smokey the Bear.
JARED: Right, but in the 1970s, Cummings and Jerry Ford’s administration partnered with the Ad Council to do a comically ideological ad series about validating capitalism, basically — a campaign funded by corporate giants like Procter & Gamble, Mobil Oil, Exxon, William Whyte’s own U.S. Steel, all in partnership with the U.S. government!
ARCHIVAL TELEVISION AD:
Architect Dolores Gould. What’s your IQ?
138.
And your EQ?
EQ?
Your economics quotient.
Oh, I don’t know much about economics.
JARED: The ads seem ripped right out of the Powell memo itself, touting the “American Economic System.”
ARCHIVAL TELEVISION AD:
Who makes the American Economic System work?
Well, uh-uh ...I don’t know.
Right. And that’s a problem.
DAVID: Yeah, and the ad sponsors had a solution to this problem: more Powell Memo-inspired propaganda. They put up billboards, ran magazine ads, and aired radio spots. Cummings and the Ad Council highlighted it as one of their best PSA campaigns ever for how effective it was in building the American public’s support for free market capitalism.
JARED: Remember the film projects that the Chamber of Commerce said it was putting into production as part of the Powell Memo Task Force? Well, this is one that the Chamber released in 1976 for the 200th anniversary of America’s founding.
ARCHIVAL FILM FOOTAGE: Happy Birthday USA!
JARED: …narrated by Jimmy Stewart.
JIMMY STEWART: What do you get for a country that has everything? Well, almost everything… government bureaucracy is becoming a paternalistic monopoly that is burying us in paperwork and red tape. It stifles initiative, and it erodes the basic self reliance, which is our American legacy…
DAVID: So Jimmy Stewart — the guy who in 1939 played an earnest government-reforming outsider in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington — was working with Washington insiders in 1976 to convince the public that the government is the problem?
JIMMY STEWART: …if allowed to continue, it could bring an end to freedom and enterprise.
DAVID: Okay, so in less than five years, a secret manifesto has mushroomed into a nationwide, celebrity-studded multimedia propaganda machine that’s literally reshaping how Americans think about capitalism. But what about the plan to legalize corruption? How’s that going?
JARED: Well, they’re definitely working on it. You heard that they helped weaken FECA. But they weren’t stopping there. Remember this part of the Powell memo?
LEWIS F. POWELL: Neglected Opportunity in the Courts…
DAVID: The master planners knew that they had to solidify their agenda in the courts. Right around this time, the Chamber of Commerce began building the foundation of what would become the National Chamber Litigation Center and other groups that now routinely secure favorable court rulings on stuff like campaign finance.
JARED: An example of one of those new Powell Memo-inspired groups is the Pacific Legal Foundation, which becomes a litigation powerhouse thanks to an early boost from this guy
RONALD REAGAN: Some time ago, I talked about an organization called the Pacific Legal Foundation. It’s a nonprofit public interest law firm which dedicates itself to upholding the Constitution and protecting the public interest against such special interest as the so-called welfare rights groups, government bureaus, and those ultra-environmentalist organizations which would deny you and me the right to swat a mosquito. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.
DAVID: By the end of 1974, after all these secret meetings, the master plan’s key pieces are in place. The Supreme Court now includes the author of the Powell memo. The president is a guy who attended the meeting to organize the memo’s implementation. The public is being immersed in the memo’s ideology. And now outside organizations like the Pacific Legal Foundation have been built — and they are ready to begin moving the justice system towards legalizing corruption.
Now it’s just a matter of finding the right opportunity — and here in the mid-1970s, that opportunity is about to present itself.
ARCHIVAL COURT RECORDINGS: We will hear arguments today in Buckley against Valeo and the others. Counsel, you may proceed whenever you are ready.
DAVID: That’s next time on Master Plan.