Voice of conservative group grows louder

NEW YORK - Freedom's Watch, a deep-pocketed conservative group led by two former senior White House officials, made an audacious debut in late August when it began a $15 million advertising campaign designed to maintain congressional support for President Bush's troop increase in Iraq.

Founded this summer by a dozen wealthy conservatives, the nonprofit group is set apart from most advocacy groups by the immense wealth of its core group of benefactors, its intention to far outspend its rivals, and its ambition to pursue a wide-ranging agenda. Its next target: Iran policy.

In October, Freedom's Watch will sponsor a private forum with 20 specialists on radical Islam that is expected to make the case that Iran poses a direct threat to the security of the United States, according to several benefactors of the group.

Although the group declined to identify the specialists, several were invited from the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research group with close ties to the White House. Some institute scholars have advocated a more confrontational policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, including keeping military action as an option.

Last week, a Freedom's Watch newspaper advertisement called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran a terrorist. The group is considering a national advertising campaign focused on Iran, a senior benefactor said, though Matt S. David, a spokesman for the group, declined to comment on those plans.

"If Hitler's warnings were heeded when he wrote 'Mein Kampf,' he could have been stopped," said Bradley Blakeman, 49, president of Freedom's Watch and a former deputy assistant to Bush. "Ahmadinejad is giving all the same kind of warning signs to us, and the region - he wants the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel."

With a forceful message and a roster of wealthy benefactors, Freedom's Watch has quickly emerged from the crowded field of nonprofit advocacy groups as a conservative answer to the nine-year-old liberal MoveOn.org, which vehemently opposes the Iraq war.

The idea for Freedom's Watch was hatched in March at the winter meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Manalapan, Fla., where Vice President Dick Cheney was the keynote speaker, according to participants. Next week, the group will move into a 10,000-square-foot office in the Chinatown section of Washington, with plans to employ as many as 50 people by early next year.

One benefactor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the group was hoping to raise as much as $200 million by November 2008. Raising big money will be easy, the benefactor said, adding that several of the founders each wrote a check for $1 million. Blakeman would not confirm whether any donor gave $1 million, or more, to the organization.

Since the group is organized as a tax-exempt organization, it does not have to reveal its donors and cannot engage in certain types of partisan activities that support political candidates. It denies coordinating its activities with the White House. However, many of its donors and organizers, including Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary, are well connected to the administration.

"Ideologically, we are inspired by much of Ronald Reagan's thinking - peace through strength, protect and defend America, and prosperity through free enterprise," Fleischer said.

Among the group's founders are Sheldon G. Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., who ranks sixth on the Forbes Magazine list of the world's richest billionaires; Mel Sembler, a shopping center magnate based in St. Petersburg, Fla., who served as the ambassador to Italy and Australia; John M. Templeton Jr., a conservative philanthropist from Bryn Mawr, Pa.; and Anthony H. Gioia, a former ambassador to Malta who heads an investment group based in Buffalo. All four men are longtime prolific donors who have raised money on behalf of Republican and conservative causes.

For years, the group's founders lamented MoveOn's growing influence, derived in large part from its grass-roots efforts, especially on the debate about the Iraq war. "We decided we needed to do something about this, because the conservative side was not responding," said Sembler, who is on the board of directors of the American Enterprise Institute. The impetus for Freedom's Watch came from the institute last winter.

He said that at an institute event in December Sembler listened to retired General Jack Keane and Frederick W. Kagan, an American Enterprise Institute scholar, talk about the need for a troop increase in Iraq, a plan adopted by Bush in January. "I realized it was not only what we needed to do," Sembler said, "but we needed to articulate this message across the country."

Sembler also said he was frustrated that he heard reports at institute events earlier this year that the increase was working, but that the news media were not reflecting the progress.

"After the president announced the surge," Fleischer said, "Republicans started getting nervous, [and] there was a palpable fear among several of us that this fall Congress was going to cut off the funding and the Middle East would explode and America would likely get hit. It really wasn't much more complicated than that."

Blakeman and Fleischer intend to turn Freedom's Watch into a permanent fixture among Washington advocacy groups, waging a never-ending campaign They also hope to build an active, grass-roots support network.