ustxtxb_obs_1986_03_07_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

Calero of the FDN to speak to the group. The Council for National Policy does not take public stands on issues, and as one member put it, “does not encourage media participation.” A spokesman told the Wall Street Journal in September of 1984 that Calero did not attempt to raise funds at the meeting. But the network of contacts he made at that meeting and at subsequent meetings with other aid groups led by members of the Council surely has proved to be valuable, as Calero has emerged as the chief FDN fundraiser. Months later, Calero turned up in Lafayette, Louisiana, where Mayor Dud Lastrapes, a CNP member, introduced him to Republican leaders, gave him the keys to the city, and said “I can say safely that your cause is our cause.” The Council’s original bylaws restrict membership to 200. A Council document published in 1982 lists 38 Texans as members. Others on the roster have been prominent leaders of contra aid groups, such as Louisiana legislator Louis “Woody” Jenkins, who runs Friends of the Americas in Baton Rouge, Dr. Alton Ochsner of New Orleans, who runs the Caribbean Commission, and Andy Messing, who runs the National Defense Council in Alexandria, Virginia. Listed as members of the group’s Board of Governors are Joseph Coors, the Colorado brewer, Jerry Falwell, of the Moral Majority, and a host of other names familiar to those who watch the New Right. A less famous member of the Council for National Policy is Charles L. Irby, a Southern Methodist University graduate now running a family construction business in Jackson, Mississippi. Irby attended the WACL convention in Dallas where he told the New York Times that he had given about $25,000 to Singlaub’s group. The Council met February 15 and 16 in Phoenix, and the rebel movement in Nicaragua was still a “major topic of concern” there, according to Dr. Paige Patterson, of the Criswell Center for Biblical Studies in Dallas and a member of the CNP. Patterson said “the conservative community in Texas is very committed to stopping Marxism in Central America.” He said that representatives from Central America spoke, but he declined to name them. Another source said that General Singlaub was present. The Council staff in Washington refused to comment. One of the original incorporators of the Council for National Policy is Bob Perry, a wealthy Houston homebuilder and president of Perry-Houston Interests. His name is sometimes mentioned in connection with the “freedom fight ers,” but repeated calls to his office in Houston failed to elicit a comment. Perry is on the Policy Advisory Council of the National Conservative Political weeks ago launched a media campaign on “the Ortega 33” in the House of Representatives targeting 33 Congressmen with “pro-Sandinista, proMarxist tendencies,” as a NCPAC operative explained it to the Observer. \(Dallas Democrat John Bryant was the to Bert Hurlbut, Perry was at one time “probably giving a million to a millionand-a-half dollars a year” to various political causes, but may have slowed down since the slump in the Houston housing industry. James E. Lyon, another wealthy Houston businessman \(also a member a funder; he also refused to speak to the Observer. Lyon’s name appeared on the Dinner Committee of the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund, along with that of Ellen St. John Garwood and Nelson Bunker Hunt \(as well as former Dallas Cowboys Houston businessmen James Lyon and Harry Lucas, Jr., worked with the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund, which raised $219,525 and sent $3,000 to the refugees. The Fund put on a lavish banquet at which President Reagan commended their efforts on behalf of Nicaraguan refugees and said, “People like you are America at its best.” \(Associated Press reporter Robert Parry reported last September that the Fund had paid $116,938 in consultant fees, $71,163 for the dinner, and had sent $3,000 to the refugees. Alvaro Rizo CastellOn, a former diplomat for the Somoza Government of Nicaragua who was the Executive Vice President of the Fund, told the Observer recently that at a December meeting the Fund had been made “dormant.” “We paid too many James Lyon is Chief Executive Officer of River Oaks Bancshares, Inc. in Houston’s swankiest district. Another name that appeared on the guest list of the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund was that of Harry Lucas, Jr. Lucas \(whose Houston office is, like Lyon’s, in the River Oaks Bank Build letter-writing to Congress on such issues as aid to anti-communist rebels. Under the letterhead of Lucas Interests, Inc., he sent out a memo last August \(“From: ing that the House Appropriations Committee had approved a bill that had “prohibited any fiscal ’86 funding for the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters. He urged a letter-writing campaign to reverse that situation. But a call from the Observer in December failed to get a comment from Lucas. His associate George Pond refused to talk about the Nicaragua issue. Asked for an explanation of what Lucas Interests was, Pond said he wouldn’t be able to say. In fact, Lucas Interests is a 22-yearold oil company with offices in Houston and Dallas, of which Harry Lucas, Jr., is president. An aide to Democratic Representative Martin Frost of Dallas described Lucas as a “far-right-wing oilman” who occasionally sends letters in support of aid to the Nicaraguan rebels. Lucas has been active with Citizens for Reagan and HOUPAC, a ten-year-old Political Action Committee of independent oilmen. William Murray told the Observer, “I think one time he [Lucas] gave a gift to Singlaub’s organization.” A staff worker at the National Defense Council in Alexandria, Va., confirmed that Lucas has contributed to the NDC. is a contributor as well as a vocal supporter,” the staffer said, adding that “we just saw him last week” while he was in Washington. The National Defense Council is run by Andy Messing, an activist who got his start with Howard Phillips’s Conservative Caucus. The NDC is a member of General Singlaub’s new Coalition for World Freedom, an anti-communist network consisting of most of the major rebel aid groups. Messing is a 39-year-old Vietnam veteran who advocates meeting Soviet expansionism through -low-intensity conflict” supporting local resistance movements such as the ones in Angola and Nicaragua, rather than going in with clumsy and heavy-handed force. With his $250,000 yearly budget, Messing has organized a number of trips for members of Congress to visit the hotspots in Central America. \(Ellen Garwood says she gives to Messing Harry Lucas said through his secretary in February that he would not respond to any questions from the Observer without seeing an advance copy of this story “to see how the information is presented.” Another businessman who has con THE TEXAS OBSERVER 9