Sean Hannity has called Obama's church a "cult," but that term applies far more aptly to Clinton's "Family," which is organized into "cells"--their term--and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia. In 2002, Sharlet joined The Family's home for young men, forswearing sex, drugs and alcohol, and participating in endless discussions of Jesus and power. He wasn't undercover; he used his own name and admitted to being a writer. But he wasn't completely out of danger either. When he went outdoors one night to make a cell phone call, he was followed. He still gets calls from Family associates asking him to meet them in diners--alone.

The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes--knitting together international networks of right-wing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs. As Sharlet reported in Harper's in 2003:

During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise.

At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum. They get to use The Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, The Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by The Family's young women's group. And, at The Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already powerful.

Clinton fell in with The Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the Senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's "most elite cell," the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, The Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

Furthermore, The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics.

What drew Clinton into the sinister heart of the international right? Maybe it was just a phase in her tormented search for identity, marked by ever-changing hairstyles and names: Hillary Rodham, Mrs. Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and now Hillary Clinton. She reached out to many potential spiritual mentors during her White House days, including New Age guru Marianne Williamson and the liberal rabbi Michael Lerner. But it was the Family association that stuck.

Sharlet generously attributes Clinton's involvement to the under-appreciated depth of her religiosity, but he himself struggles to define The Family's theological underpinnings. The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek." They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power--cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't."

Obama has given a beautiful speech on race and his affiliation with the Trinity United Church of Christ. Now it's up to Clinton to explain--or, better yet, renounce--her long-standing connection with the fascist-leaning Family.

Sharlet responds to Ehrenreich's article on Clinton, Coe & Co. "dangerous theology":

03/19/2008 @ 11:29pm

I'm grateful to Barbara Ehrenreich for reading my book and recommending it here in The Nation, but I'd jump in on this regardless. She's right to describe a group whose leader distorts Jesus like so--"You say, hey, you know Jesus said, 'You got to put Him before mother-father-brother-sister'? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that's what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn't murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom"--as "fascist-leaning."

Actions matter more than words, of course, which is why The Family's active support for the late and very murderous dictator Suharto, as reported in my book, based on The Family's documents; and its interventions during the 1980s on behalf of death squad leaders, as reported by the LA Times--presents even stronger evidence for describing the group as "fascist-leaning." One could go further--in the book, I dedicate a chapter to The Family's postwar efforts to bring together former Nazis with American Congressmembers.

Of course, that doesn't mean Hillary, who writes gushingly of the group in her memoir, is fascist-leaning any more, than Obama's friendship with Jeremiah Wright means that he, too, believes that perhaps white people invented AIDS. But Wright's, and Obama's, roots are in liberation theology, regardless of how far afield Wright may go on occasion; Hillary's are in a conservative interpretation of neo-orthodoxy that has allowed her to seek spiritual counsel from as authoritarian a thinker as Doug Coe. To me, that's a problem, not a conspiracy. There's no conspiracy here, just a mixture of bad theology and opaque politics that should be troubling to anyone, left or right, who believes in open democracy. But then, maybe I'm just a conservative--I believe ideas have consequences.

This is hardly tit-for-tat as part of the electoral cycle. Barbara Ehrenreich drew from a book I began back in 2003, with a Harper's story about a month I spent living with The Family. I spent the years in between then and now researching the group. Hillary emerged as part of the story as early as 2003. The piece certainly wasn't intended as a hatchet job--I actually voted for Hillary, months after Kathryn Joyce and I wrote the MoJo piece Ehrenreich refers to, on the strength of her health plan vs. Obama's. I've since been won over to Obama's camp, but that's beside the point--everything here is documented, and, for that matter, almost all public record. Put the electoral cycle aside and ask yourself: What do you think of public officials seeking spiritual solace in a group that repeatedly praises Hitler as a leadership model? They're not Nazis--they consider Hitler an evil man. The problem, they believe, is that he put himself where Jesus should be. Huh. Somehow, I don't imagine Jesus wanted to be a fhrer. There's no conspiracy here; just some very dangerous theology. And that's plenty bad enough.

Jeff Sharlet
Brooklyn, NY

Corky,

This isn't about "The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington." This is about "The Family's theological underpinnings. The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek." They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power--cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't."

I have to wonder if Katherine Harris is also a member of this group. It might account for some of the kooky things she said in 2006 about politicians in this country needing to be religious leaders. Bush has ties to this group I believe. Haven't we had enough of these folks pulling the levers of power? I think so. Now let's see if the MSM vets Hillary's religious affiliation with the same thoroughness that they have vetted Obama's. Maybe her visitor logs from the WH will shed some light on her meetings with Coe and/or other members of "The Family."

BTW, where are her tax returns?

P.S. Happy Easter!

Interesting articles Gal, people do the most awfull things when they think their social standing is predicated upon the economic and power popularity in which they live in society.

I would suspect hillary belongs to the religious club because of the power member who belong there.

Happy Easter to you too.

Moneywar,

Hillary has belonged to this group for 15 years, so this is not a casual association. I think Hillary joined the group because she figured if there was a rightwing conspiracy against Bill and herself and she couldn't beat them, she'd better join them. Keep your enemies close. That sort of thing. Or perhaps she actually believes, "It's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth." Again, I think the country has had enough of these folks running roughshod over the rest of the population--and all in the name of God.

RCade,

Thanks for the bump up. Happy Easter to you and your family. :-)

I don't know Gal, I wonder if the people were tire during the crusades?

Money,

Just the ones who had to fight and die and all their family and friends.

obama is a racist, hillary belngs to a rightwing roup.... I LOVE IT... Love those dems.

Pity you couldn't provide documentation. Just assertions, innuendos and the usual conspiracy bullshit. When Obama doesn't live up to your expectations (which he can't, no one can) you will be writing much the same crap about him.

It's all totally Creepy. That's all I can say.

OMG! He still gets calls, inviting him to dinner or lunch in diners, alone!!! How terrifying!!!

"The sinister heart of the international right!!!" "Fascist-leaning"--without giving a single reference as to how, exactly, any of their teachings are fascists.

Sound like home Bible studies to me, taking place millions of times a week all over the world. Warning to young readers: professional sports teams have these too.

But I digress. This board is populated by atheists who believe that nobody who even believes in God should be sitting in the White House. And the Democratic Party now offers you two choices: the candidate from the racist church, or the fascist one? Choose wisely.

This is very interesting to me. I am reading "Fall of the House of Bush" and this ties in VERY nicely to what I am currently reading in the book about how the neo-cons obtained their stranglehold on our government. Very interesting indeed.

I guess that one lesson Hillary learned from her bible readings is the part about people who live in glass houses and stones being tossed about....

There's nothing to this story, nice try at a deflection barack.....

I've always laugh at knuckledraggers who think Hillary Clinton is a liberal.
Tards.

Coe's organization is too secretive and too religious to be such a prominent part of the right (and Hillary's life).

This story has been out longer than you've known Barack Obama's name DAVETHEWAVE

Only because she's a presidential candidate is it getting closer scrutiny.

McCain's two winners - Parley and Hagee - are scary mothers too.

Book coming out in May - all about Coe, Hillary, and the 'Fellowship's' grip on our agenda.

I read your whole MotherJones link, and stand by what I said. There's much ado about nothing.....Coming from a republican which HATES hildabeast.

It's a nice distraction from the very important focus on barack's spiritual advisor for 20 years

I read your whole MotherJones link, and stand by what I said. There's much ado about nothing.....Coming from a republican which HATES hildabeast.

It's a nice distraction from the very important focus on barack's spiritual advisor for 20 years

~MindslaveDave

Woo-Hoo!

Dave's able to put his sexist hatred of Helldawg on the backburner in order to concentrate on his racist hatred of Obama.

Huzzah!

Wotta mensch!

Are you on the shortlist for a Medal of Freedumb from Dumbya hisself?

You must be so proud! ^_^

Be Well.

So I'm the bad guy here? The dr left morally bankrupt through and through......

Toot your own horn, I don't see the NYT running away with this one.

I don't see the NYT running away with this one.

Clinton mentioned Coe in an interview she did with the NY Times last summer:

I also was asked to visit with them by Doug Coe, who was and still is, the director of the National Prayer Breakfast and the National Prayer outreach and it was over at their headquarters in Virginia which is kind of a retreat center. And, they invited Tipper and I to come to lunch and I really did it mostly for Linda and Doug who asked me. . . .Doug Coe had asked me to come to speak to a dinner that was held the night before the prayer breakfast and most of the people in there were people who were very unsure of how I was or what I stood for but Doug was always very supportive of me. He had me speak at one of the national prayer lunches, he arranged for me to meet Mother Theresa after one of the national prayer breakfasts.

Like I said, Clinton's association with Coe's Fellowship is not a casual one:

But among the prayer groups, one holds special status: a tight-knit gathering of about a dozen senators which still meets every Wednesday morning for prayer and discussion, led by Douglas Coe himself. Each week, someone starts the meeting by giving personal testimony, secure in the support of the audience. Once, Senator Dan Coats stood before the group and sang "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know."

The roster of regular participants has included such notable conservative names as Brownback, Santorum, Nickles, Enzi, and Inhofe. Then, in 2001, just after the new class of senators was sworn in, another name was added to the list: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"people whom I knew who were literally praying for me in prayer chains, who were prayer warriors for me."

I don't even want to know what a "prayer chain" is.

"They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth."

Whats the issue, this "group" sounds like the Democratic party, and its SuperDelegates....

"prayer chain"

An infinite line of idiots.

FTFA: "people whom I knew who were literally praying for me in prayer chains, who were prayer warriors for me."

Sitdown: I don't even want to know what a "prayer chain" is.

Zat: An infinite line of idiots.

Aretha Franklin: "Chain chain chain... Chain of fools"

^_^

Be Well.

Back in high school principal poop complained about the "2%".

Try 0.000000000000000000000000001.
(That's a "yada" or the next order of magnitude above Avogadro's number.)

Or at most 2%.

We're the ones who didn't vote Yalie Frat Rat last chance.

We'll do fine.

Neutrino imaging is next.
One or an infinity of universes, under surveillance.

Stop that!
You'll go blind!

I found another interesting interview with Sharlet. Maybe these are some of the topics he'll be covering in greater detail in his upcoming book:

GNN: What are some this group's core ideas and what level of secrecy is involved here?

SHARLET: The goal is an "invisible" world organization led by Christ -- that's what they aspire to. They are very explicit about this if you look in their documents, and I spent a lot of time researching in their archives. Their goal is a worldwide invisible organization. That's their word, and that's important because it sounds so crazy.

What they mean when they say "a world organization led by Christ" is that literally you just sit there and let Christ tell you what to do. More often than not that leads them to a sort of paternalistic benign fascism. There are a lot of places that they've done good things, and that's important to acknowledge. But that also means they might be involved with General Suharto in Indonesia and if that means that God leads him to kill half a million of his own citizens then, well, it would prideful to question God leading them.

GNN: It sounds to me like some sort of extended Skull and Bones, an Old Boys Network crafted onto a religious context.

SHARLET: The religious context is real. The Old Boys Network is about business. This is about more than business. This is about maintaining a certain kind of power, a certain view of how power should be distributed. The Episcopalian Old Boys Network was a lot more easygoing than this. This is a lot more militaristic. Really at its fundamental core, almost monarchist. We would be told time and time again, "Christ's kingdom is not a democracy" This is their model for leadership. They would often say, "Everything you need to know about government is right there in the cross - it's vertical not horizontal."

Hey Spud I figured it out -

it's a "Jesus and Mary Chain" :-)

Oh, goody. These folks like to cite everyone from Hitler to Osama Bin Laden because they understand "the power of a political avant garde":

GNN: Define what they mean by Hitler Concept.

SHARLET: A loyal leadership cadre, which is interesting because guys like Hitler and Stalin were famous for purging, but they seem to focus on a couple of guys. "If two or three agree" is a phrase they use a lot. If you can get together and focus you can accomplish anything. You don't need to sway the electorate. You don't need to convert everyone to Christ. Everyone doesn't have to believe in Christ, and that's where they differ from other fundamentalists. Some fundamentalists really distrust them for that. [They say] "We need to convert everyone, the high and the low." The Family says, "No we don't need the high." All these guys Hitler, Lenin, Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden is another guy they cite a lot, are guys who understood the power of a political avant garde. That's what they mean by the Hitler Concept. Also keeping your message simple, and repeating it again and again because there is only one message and it is "Jesus Loves." You can express lots of different things with that term.

Maybe someone can dig up the old articles from the New Republic and Playboy and start to connect the dots:

SHARLET: Lisa Getter of The Los Angeles Times, a Pulitzer prize winning investigative reporter, did a piece on it, but there was no follow-up. I got a little press out of it when my article came out. There is a big reason there hasn't been a lot of press about it and that's the war. On the other hand, and this isn't a conspiracy theory, if they can't see it then it's not there. I mean if you read that your local congressman is sitting there saying Hitler is a leadership model, the local paper should at the very least call up and say, "Congressman Tiahrt do you believe Hitler is a good leadership model?" If he had said, "Noam Chomsky is a great philosopher" then there'd be an investigation in a minute.

Why they are not following up on it? I don't know. Partly because it's so crazy, and partly because there is this idea that religion and politics are separate and religion is a personal thing. The media has always been pretty dumb when it comes to religion. . . .It hasn't been that secret. The New Republic did an expose in the late 60's, early 70's, and no one really followed up. Robert Scheer did a piece on it in Playboy in the 1970's.

Hey Spud I figured it out -

it's a "Jesus and Mary Chain" :-)

FF fer Sitdown! ^_^

Note to Gal.

Good work on this thread!!

Be Well.

/Outtie agin
stage left.

Or maybe the MSM will just keep harping on Obama and Wright. Mission Accomplished!

Apparently, as the result of this article, Ehrenreich is being accused of either lying about Hillary, hating Hillary or both. Here's what she writes on her blog about why she wrote the piece:

This was not a premeditated hit on Hillary, nor is it gossip or a joke. I happened to have been reading a manuscript of Jeff Sharlet's book, The Family, because he sent it to me for a blurb. Late last week, when the business about Obama's pastor broke out, I had just gotten to Sharlet's section on Hillary's involvement with the Family. Already creeped out by Sharlet's account of the Family, I decided I had to blog about this.

Posted by: Barbara E | March 19, 2008 at 05:38 PM

The Family is a secretive organization that recruits elected officials into "cells" (The Family's own term) in order to influence their public policy formation. The Family is not a church. It is a covert network of influence; the purpose of the influence is to tilt public policies in a conservative direction.

Hillary Clinton has written about her long involvement with The Family, and she has praised its leader, Doug Coe, as her spiritual mentor.

Yet The Family is not Clinton's church. She is a United Methodist; that is her church. Yet in addition to her church, Clinton also participates in a covert network of influence that uses religion as a cover for shaping conservative policies.

Why has Clinton so far refused interview requests from respected journalists on her involvement with The Family and her praise for Doug Coe?

Those who care about separation of church and state should be asking questions about this, because The Family does not support separation of church and state.

This is not about Clinton's private religious beliefs. This is about her actions in support of The Family, and why she chooses to participate in a covert network of influence, and why she refuses to answer questions on the record about it.

The audio clips you can hear in this video I have produced are taken from sermons given by the man Senator Hillary Clinton has described as a "spiritual mentor": Doug Coe is the head of a secretive Washington religious organization, which hosts the yearly National Prayer Breakfast : The Family. The Family is not a conspiracy. It is a right-wing fundamentalist, elitist power cult and a global influence peddling ring with links to some of the most savage, bloodthirsty regimes of the 20th Century. The audio clips you can hear in the following video production are taken from sermons given by the man Hillary Clinton has described as a "spiritual mentor", Doug Coe. There is no evidence to prove Clinton is aware of these statements by Coe, but the agenda of The Family is far from secret.

Last time I checked United Methodist is a real Protestant religion unlike the AIDS churches in the ghettos

Last time I checked United Methodist is a real Protestant religion unlike the AIDS churches in the ghettos

Last time I checked United Methodist is a real Protestant religion unlike the AIDS churches in the ghettos

Last time I checked United Methodist is a real Protestant religion unlike the AIDS churches in the ghettos

Interestingly enough the founder of the Fellowship, Abraham Vereide, was himself a Methodist:

International diplomacy has been part of the Fellowship from the beginning. The group was begun by Abraham Vereide, a Methodist evangelist who feared that Socialists were corrupting municipal government in Seattle in the mid-1930s. He thought he could bring about change by organizing regular prayer groups with local business and government leaders.

He took his idea to Washington, D.C., in 1942. A small group of House members began praying together. A Senate group followed. Vereide believed that the small prayer groups could be used to help establish personal contacts with leaders throughout the world.

Pentagon officials secretly met at the group's Washington Fellowship House in 1955 to plan a worldwide anti-communism propaganda campaign endorsed by the CIA, documents from the Fellowship archives and the Eisenhower Presidential Library show. Then known as International Christian Leadership, the group financed a film called "Militant Liberty" that was used by the Pentagon abroad.

Intimate prayer groups begun by the Fellowship still meet regularly and privately, at the House of Representatives, Senate and throughout federal agencies in Washington. President Eisenhower, persuaded by his campaign manager, became the first U.S. president to attend a prayer breakfast in 1953--part of what the Senate chaplain at the time called a "Return-to-God Movement." Every president since has made an appearance at least once, turning the breakfast into a worldwide attraction for the prayerful and political alike.

Similar prayer breakfasts, begun by followers of the Fellowship and hosted by governors and mayors, are now popular throughout the U.S. The Fellowship lured Coe to Washington as Vereide's understudy in 1959. When Vereide died 10 years later, Coe essentially took over.

More on Vereide (bold mine)

The Family was founded in April 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant who made his living as a traveling preacher. One night, while lying in bed fretting about socialists, Wobblies, and a Swedish Communist who, he was sure, planned to bring Seattle under the control of Moscow, Vereide received a visitation: a voice, and a light in the dark, bright and blinding. . . .Prayer breakfast groups were formed in dozens of cities, from San Francisco to Philadelphia. There were already enough men ministering to the down-and-out, Vereide had decided; his mission field would be men with the means to seize the world for God. Vereide called his potential flock of the rich and powerful, those in need only of the "real" Jesus, the "up-and-out."

. . .

By the late sixties, Vereide's speeches to local prayer breakfast groups had become minor news events, and Family members' travels on behalf of Christ had attracted growing press attention. Vereide began to worry that the movement he had spent his life building might become just another political party. In 1966, a few years before he was "promoted" to heaven at age eighty-four, Vereide wrote a letter declaring it time to "submerge the institutional image of [the Family]." No longer would the Family recruit its powerful members in public, nor recruit so many. "There has always been one man," wrote Vereide, "or a small core who have caught the vision for their country and become aware of what a 'leadership led by God' could mean spiritually to the nation and to the world. . . . It is these men, banded together, who can accomplish the vision God gave me years ago."

Posted today on The Atlantic's blog:

Barack Obama isn't the only candidate with ties to a controversial religious group.

Since Hillary Clinton has launched a frontal attack on her opponent's church and pastor, it's worth noting that she has some odd religious ties of her own. When I was profiling her two years ago, I learned about her involvement with a secretive Christian organization called The Fellowship that has operated in the Washington shadows since the 1930s. I found the story of Clinton and The Fellowship so bizarre that I made it the lede to my piece. In light of recent events, it's worth revisiting.

If you've never heard of The Fellowship (also known as The Family), it will sound like some shadowy organization in a John Grisham novel. (Indeed, as a Google search will demonstrate, critics consider it a cult.) The group was formed in the 1930s to minister to political and business leaders throughout the world, modeling itself as a kind of Christian Trilateral Commission. Several members of Congress are affiliated with the group, mostly Republicans, but some Democrats, too. To the extent The Fellowship is known beyond its members it is probably for founding the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

Like Jeremiah Wright's Trinity Baptist Church, The Fellowship is run by its own mysterious and controversial figure, Douglas Coe, although temperamentally Coe is Wright's opposite. He eschews the spotlight and has never made a controversial public utterance that I'm aware of -- mainly because he rarely speaks publicly at all. (You won't find him on YouTube.) But like Wright, Coe has ministered to a Democratic frontrunner. He personally leads a private Senate prayer group that Clinton has been a part of.

In my piece, I chose to focus on the Senate prayer group, but others have written extensively about the strangeness and secrecy of The Fellowship. As this Los Angeles Times story and this exquisitely reported Harper's piece make clear, there is something deeply strange about the group. They certainly do not like press coverage, so in that regard Clinton's attraction might make sense. Reporters hoping to look into the group might want to think again. A few years ago, The Fellowship's archives, which are held at Wheaton College, the evangelical school in Illinos, were reclassified as "restricted" and placed under lock and key.

-- Joshua Green

A Newly Divinely Ordained President: The Hand of God or Silence the Press?

Imagine a presidential candidate who believed that God wanted him to run for president because American needed him. Picture a secretive group of Washington insiders who meet quietly to mix religion, class and politics and who believe in an elite group of people divinely ordained to run the country and the world. Now envision this group meeting in sex-segregated cells to discuss how God has chosen them to fulfill their roles in public life. And, at the helm of this group, picture a figure described by an admirer as a "guy in the smoky back room" who "sits in the corner, and you see the cigar, and you see the flame, and you hear his voice -- but you never see his face" whose followers have made "a fetish of being invisible." Now imagine that a few of the members of this group outside of the U.S. have included "General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators."

For those of you who think you're reading about George W. Bush and his administration, you'd be mistaken, though members of the Bush administration do belong to the sect described. The presidential candidate is Hillary Clinton, and the group is "The Foundation" also known as "The Family." Its leader is Doug Coe, a man described by Clinton as "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God." Yes, it's true, according to Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet who published an article in Mother Jones magazine in September 2007 about Hillary Clinton's deepening ties to the group.