Military and intelligence think-tanks and academic programs like the National Strategy Information Center have been particularly favored by Scaife; a catalogue of Scaife recipients over the past few years would contain virtually every significant conservative defense-oriented program in existence in the U.S.

 Groups devoted to free-marker economics - like the Law and Economics Center at Emory University, which has provided all-expenses-paid economics courses for 137 federal judges - have been the second- largest beneficiary since 1973.

Because they have been able to attract big names - people like former Navy Secretary Paul Nitze, now chairman of policy studies of the Committee on the Present Danger, and economist Milton Friedman, a frequent lecturer at the judges' seminars - many Scaife-funded defense and economics organizations command media attention. This attention has increased with the movement of a number of people from New Right groups into the Reagan administration - among them Interior Secretary Watt, from the Mountain States Legal Foundation, and presidential counselor Edwin Nicest, one of the founders of the Institute for Contemporary Studies. Both groups describe Scaife as their largest donor, and the institute says Scaife provided its seed money of $75,000 in 1973.

Not just names but numbers count. With so many conservative groups active in defense and economic matters, vast quantities of facts are constantly being generated and large numbers of seminars and briefings are constantly under way. "You can't underestimate the effect of a simple paper avalanche,'' says Leon Reed, the Proxmire aide. ''One of the most important things groups like this can do is to give information to the people in Congress who support you. Groups can also provide people to speak at press conferences, testify before committees, things like that.''

One example of the kind of "paper avalanche" to which Reed refers is the number of facts and figures generated by conservative groups at the time of the start of the 1979 congressional debate on the SALT II treaty. A quick check reveals at least eight studies of the issue, all critical, by groups that receive substantial Scaife backing. In addition, the Scaife-assisted Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies held a two-day briefing for twenty key European journalists on the issue, and The Heritage Foundation held an all-day session for members of the U.S. press. According to Herb Berkowitz, Heritage director of public relations, that press briefing "really kicked off the debate." The arms limitation treaty was not ratified.

Other examples of the potential impact of names and numbers abound.

* In its September 17, 1979, issue, Time devoted two pages to a report on a Brussels conference on NATO sponsored by the Georgetown Center and chaired by Henry Kissinger, a counselor in residence at the center. The article gloomily asserted; "The North Atlantic Treaty Organization received a thorough physical and psychological checkup last week and was found to be less than robust at age 30. The general diagnosis.. flabby nuclear muscle and a creeping inferiority complex."

 *In August 1980, a United Features Syndicate column by Virginia Payette reported that ''Terrorism has become a fact of American life." The article went on to explain, "It doesn't have to be that way, according to Dr. Samuel T. Francis, an expert on international terrorism of The Heritage Foundation. . . . Not if we give the FBI and the CIA a chance to stop it. . . . The way things are now, he warns, the FBI and the police are not only hamstrung by red tape, they are themselves being hauled into court for violating the civil liberties" of known terrorists.

* On December 15, 1980, The New York Times carried a full-column report, datelined San Francisco, which began: "A group of conservative black businessmen and educators, meeting here over the weekend with representatives of President-elect Ronald Reagan, advocated a reduction in the minimum wage, the elimination of rent control laws and a thorough reorganization of many social programs." In the seventh paragraph, the article reported that the sponsor of the conference was the Institute for Contemporary Studies (to which Scaife is the largest donor).

* Among a plethora of news articles last year on weakened U.S. military capabilities which appeared at the same time as Scaife-backed organizations were turning out at least a dozen studies on the subject - probably the most breathless was an October27 Newsweek cover story entitled "Is America Strong Enough?" The article, which quoted few people by name, depended heavily on such sources as "defense experts" and "a respected American military analyst." It reported in apocalyptic Pentagonese that "experts say Soviet advances in missile guidance now threaten the security of Minuteman ICBM's that constitute the land- based leg of America's nuclear triad - opening a 'window of vulnerability' that threatens to subject the United States to nuclear blackmail, if not a Soviet first strike, by as early as 1982." The only expert named in a two-page spread entitled "Sizing up the Soviets' Might," was Jeffrey Record from the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. In the old days, Record explained, "Our nuclear superiority gave the Russians pause because they knew we could blow them out of the water. Now our trump card has been canceled.'' Scaife provided the largest single portion of the institute's seed money ($325,000) in 1976, and continues to be the institute's single largt donor, providing about one-third of its current $l-million budget.

Such examples suggest how layer upon layer of seminars, studies, conferences, and interviews can do much to push along, if not create, the issues which then become the national agenda of debate.

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