January 19-21, 2007 -- "Christian Mafia" spokesperson tossed out of high-tech firm's leadership.
WMR has highlighted in the past the activities of the secretive "Fellowship," a group of wealthy "Christians" who are headquartered in Arlington, Virginia and whose tentacles reach into the White House (the Fellowship sponsors the annual National Prayer Breakfast in February), the Congress, the Pentagon, and foreign governments. The Fellowship is led by Douglas Coe, who Sen. and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton referred to as her "spiritual adviser" in her biography. Senator Sam Brownback, another presidential candidate, is a follower of the Fellowship. The Fellowship's anointed spokesman, former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Richard Carver has been effectively expelled, along with his colleagues, from the governance of Competitive Technologies, Inc. (AMEX: CTT) as the result of a stockholders' meeting held January 16, 2007. With enough proxy votes, former CTI corporate officials managed to vote out Carver's group and take back control of the company. After the vote, Carver and his associates reportedly snuck out of the building where the shareholder meeting was being conducted. An altercation between the outgoing corporate officials, the rebels led by ex-CEO John B. Nano, and Fairfield, Connecticut police took place on January 18 when the CTI officials voted out refused to concede control to the victorious insurgent stockholders. CTI incumbents claimed that a quorum was not present for the proxy fight while the insurgents said a quorum was, in fact, present. The scene in Connecticut is emblematic of the Fellowship, also known as the "Christian Mafia." The following is from our May 2005 report on the Fellowship: "Although secrecy was paramount to its operations, the Fellowship saw a need for a public relations point man. They selected Richard E. Carver, a former Republican mayor of Peoria, Illinois; a reserve Air Force colonel, and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management under Ronald Reagan. In 1982, Carver, a member of Reagan’s Commission on Housing, recommended cutting billions of dollars from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 8 housing program. That resulted in thousands of people, including families with children, going homeless across the nation. According to the Chicago Tribune, Carver caused waves in the Air Force when he insisted on purchasing custom made Air Force dinnerware and whiskey glasses from a West German manufacturer for the use of 65 Air Force attaches in capital around the world. It turned out that Carver wanted to impress the top management at Passau, West Germany-based ZF Industries with his abilities to expedite procurement through the vast Air Force bureaucracy. There was one problem for Carver – the Pentagon had a directive prohibiting such purposes except for a very few top flag rank officers. In 1986, Carver bypassed the Secretary of Defense and went straight to the Secretary of the Air Force for authorization to spend $100,000 on the West German dinnerware. When the cost of the dinnerware increased to $115,000, Air Force purchasing officers began to complain. Subsequently, the West German china manufacturer went through ZF Industries to complain that the cost did not cover shipping. Carver then requested additional money for shipping costs. When that posed a problem, carver suggested that the dinnerware order be increased to $1.1 million to cover the original order in addition to custom made china for 138 commanders, mostly colonels, of Air Force bases and stations around the world. Lt. Gen. Carl Smith, chief of the Air Staff, then put his foot down – telling Carver that his china deal was way out of line. Smith said if colonels received dinnerware, every general would want it also. The bill could top $6.3 million. Smith told Carver the money could be used to improve dilapidated housing for officers and enlisted men in some of the Air Force’s residential units. Carver told General Smith that he should reconsider, whereupon, Smith retorted with a firm 'No.' In other words, Smith was not about the follow such a ludicrous order from a civilian superior. Carver eventually left the Pentagon. He hooked up with the Fellowship as its major front man, became a consultant for Smith Barney (it was reported that Carver actually was retained by Smith Barney as a consultant while he still worked at the Pentagon at a fee of $920 a month), and joined ZF Industries as head of its U.S. subsidiary. The Chicago Tribune referred to Carver as an "Ed Meese of the Pentagon." The comparison was serendipitous. Meese, Reagan’s ethically-challenged Attorney General, was also a core member of the Fellowship. One of Carver’s deputies at the time was Ernie Fitzgerald, the whistleblower who, in 1968, identified a $2 billion overrun with the C5A cargo plane. As a result of his deputy's reputation as a dogged whistleblower on government waste and fraud with contractors, Carver quickly gave Fitzgerald an unfavorable performance report and transferred him out of his office, which prompted a complaint from Representative John Dingell (D-MI), a determined watchdog on contractor overruns. Carver told People magazine, 'Ernie has the capacity to really irritate people . . . He has a kind of antagonistic way of doing things.' Certainly, not the way of the Fellowship, where people smile, talk about their commitment to 'Jesus,' and engage in backroom shady deals." LATE NEWS: Richard Carver stepped down as Chairman of the Board of Competitive Technologies, Inc. (CTI) today along with President and CEO D. J. Freed. There is another shareholders' meeting scheduled for Feb. 2. The wresting control of CTI from a Fellowship core member is another sign that the tide is turning against the Christian Mafia and their supporters.
