Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer

The DeVoses were also deeply involved in the secretive Council for National Policy, described by The New York Times as “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country,” which it said “met behind closed doors in undisclosed locations for a confidential conference” three times a year. Membership lists were secret, but among the names tied to the organization were Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Robertson, and Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association (NRA). There was overlap with a number of other participants in the Koch seminars, too, including Foster Friess, the multimillionaire founder of a Wyoming mutual fund, Friess Associates, who had collaborated politically with the Kochs at least since the 1996 election, when they both channeled money into Triad Management to surreptitiously fund attack ads. Charles Koch accepted an award from the Council for National Policy but was not a member of the group. It was, in Richard DeVos’s phrase, a place that brought together “the doers with the donors.”