Inside "The Family": Jeff Sharlet Speaks About His Unique Look at American Evangelicals

I'm surprised that I haven't heard of this group before. You think it be the kind of thing that would be publicized at some point.
They have been publicized at points. And there's this weird non-response on the part of the rest of the press back in the 1990s. Originally this group goes back to 1935. They weren't the self-described "invisible" group until 1966. Between 1935 and 1966 they were sort of coasting on a culture of elites in which beliefs didn't get challenged. You didn't report on these private matters of elites. In 1966 they decide to "submerge" — that's the word they use — "We're going to ?submerge' our public profile." [In]1974 Playboy has a long investigative piece that shows money moving around in fishy ways. Nothing happens. Dan Rather challenges Nixon's press secretary about why Chuck Colson, the Nixon dirty-trickster who'd been given the boot, was still showing up at the White House? Press secretary says, "He's there for prayer meetings." But then no follow-up. So this goes on every so many years. And in the '90s a Florida paper noted that Taiwan was forking over big chunks of change in order to get good seats at the National Prayer Practice because they understood this was a backdoor into American power. In 2002, The Los Angeles Times did a year-long investigation. Should have been a huge follow-up. Nothing.

So the weird thing is why haven't you heard about it? It's partly this media that is disposed to understand fundamentalism only when it's a sweaty Southern guy in a two-piece suit, pounding the pulpit, and along come these very sophisticated, very polished internationalist guys and they just don't register, even though they're more enduring and more powerful.

Tell me about the logistics of your time there.
I went for a visit and then I went another time for an interview, and then I moved in for a little bit under a month. I moved into this house where younger guys were being groomed for leadership. And you live in this house that's one amongst this cluster of about 20 houses all owned by family members and the centerpiece of which is this big mansion called "The Cedars," overlooking the Potomac River, where they host foreign heads of state [and] various important visitors.