type: timeline_event By 1990, the Council for National Policy's membership roster had expanded to include prominent Reagan administration officials, with former Attorney General Edwin Meese and Colonel Oliver North representing the integration of government power into CNP's coordination network.
Edwin Meese, who served as Reagan's Attorney General from 1985-1988 and was a key architect of conservative legal theory, became one of CNP's most prominent members and would later serve as organization president. His membership connected CNP directly to Heritage Foundation (where he became a fellow) and to the development of conservative judicial philosophy.
Oliver North, who served on Reagan's National Security Council and became famous for the Iran-Contra scandal, went to CNP in the 1980s to build support for direct payments to anti-communist contra rebels in Nicaragua despite congressional bans. This demonstrated CNP's role as a venue where government officials could coordinate with donors to circumvent democratic oversight.
Donald Hodel, who served as Reagan's Secretary of Energy and later Secretary of the Interior, also became a CNP president, showing how cabinet-level officials transitioned seamlessly into leadership of the conservative coordination network.
The secretive membership rolls represented a high-powered roster of fundamentalists, oligarchs, and their allies, from Oliver North, Ed Meese, and Tim LaHaye in the Council's early days to what would later include Kellyanne Conway, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and the DeVos and Mercer families.
This period marked CNP's maturation from a startup coordination network to an established institution that could attract the highest levels of conservative political power. Reagan cabinet secretaries joining CNP demonstrated that the organization had become the acknowledged coordination hub for conservative movement infrastructure.
Meese's continued involvement with CNP spanned decades - he would participate in CNP Action's 2020 conference calls coordinating COVID-19 anti-lockdown protests, showing the continuity of CNP's leadership and coordination function from the Reagan era through the Trump presidency.
The integration of Reagan administration officials into CNP solidified the organization's role as the bridge between think tanks (Heritage), legal networks (Federalist Society), grassroots organizations (religious right), major donors, and government power.