Coalition to Preserve American Sovereignty

The Coalition to Preserve American Sovereignty (CPAS) is an organization founded with the intent to derail U.S. ratification of The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. [1] CPAS prefers to call this Convention, "Law of the Sea Treaty", so they can give it the acronym, LOST.

A Front?

The CPAS website, rejectlost.org, offers little information about who its members are. A whois lookup on the domain name, rejectlost.org lists the domain owner as: DomainsByProxy.com, 15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, Scottsdale, Arizona; which is the preferred domain anonymizing business used by the largest ICANN-accredited Internet domain registrar, GoDaddy. The IP address for rejectlost.org is 208.109.181.9 and is a GoDaddy Server with over 6500 other domains served from it.

Resolving the CPAS Membership

Members of The Coalition to Preserve American Sovereignty are not identified directly on the website, but by checking the signatories on their published letters to The Senate, its composition can be inferred.

In an August 28, 2007 letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and in September 24, 2007 letters to the Armed Services, Energy and Natural Resources, Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Intelligence, Homeland Security, Finance, Environment and Public Works and Judiciary Committees, the following signatories were listed:

Listed As Signatory on all Letters

• Edwin Meese; Former Attorney General; Heritage Foundation
• Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.; Former Assistant Secretary of Defense (Acting); Center for Security Policy
• Lawrence Kogan; Institute for Trade, Standards and Sustainable Development
• Fred Smith; Competitive Enterprise Institute
• John Fonte; Hudson Institute
• Peter Leitner; Author, Reforming the Law of the Sea Treaty

Listed signatory on all but 1 letter

• Cliff Kincaid; America’s Survival (not listed on Commerce, Science and Transportation letter)
• John O’Sullivan; Hudson Institute (not listed on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs letter)
• David Keene; American Conservative Union (not listed on Intelligence letter)
• Doug Bandow; American Conservative Defense Alliance (not listed on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs)
• Jeremy Rabkin; George Mason University; Cornell University; American Enterprise Institute (not listed on Finance letter)
• Baker Spring; Heritage Foundation (not listed on Finance, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs)

Not listed as Signatories on 2 or more letters

• Phyllis Schlafly; Eagle Forum
• William Middendorf; Former Secretary of the Navy; Defense Forum Foundation
• Kevin Kearns; U.S. Business & Industry Council
• John F. Lehman, Jr.; Former Secretary of the Navy
• Thomas P. Kilgannon; Freedom Alliance
• Admiral James L. Lyons; USN (Ret.)
• Vice Admiral Robert M. Monroe; USN (Ret.); Energy and Natural Resources and intelligence
• Andrew McCarthy; Foundation for Defense of Democracy
• Jack Goldsmith; American Enterprise Institute, Harvard Law School

In an October 4, 2007 Letter to Senator Joseph Biden, the following former members of the Reagan Administration are also implied to be members:

Reagan Administration Members

• William P. Clark; National Security Advisor to the President; Secretary of the Interior; Deputy Secretary of State
• John Block; Secretary of Agriculture
• Gerald Carmen; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Geneva
• Henry Cooper; Ambassador for the Defense and Space Negotiations; Assistant Director, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
• Becky Norton Dunlop; Deputy Assistant to the President
• Ken de Graffenreid; Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs; National Security Council
• Joshua Gilder; White House Speech Writer
• James T. Hackett; Director, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Acting)
• Phyllis Kaminsky; Director of Public Liaison, U.S. Information Agency
• Charles M. Kupperman; Special Assistant to the President; Deputy Director, White House Administration
• Christopher D. Lay; Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Policy
• Lieutenant General Edward L. Rowny; Chief U.S. Negotiator, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
• Jose Sorzano; Special Assistant to the President, Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
• Curtin Winsor; U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. and CPAS

In the CPAS letters to The Senate, its address is listed as:
1901 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Suite 201 Washington, DC 20006
This is the address for The Center for Security Policy [2], and Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is its president.

Also of note are a few more organizations that list the same address as theirs:

• International Cotton Advisory Committee [3]
• National Center for Education Information [4]
• The National Center for Alternative Certification [5]
• Committee For National Security [6]
• Lawyers Alliance for World Security [7]

CPAS Members' Non-Disclosure

• Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., "LOST Runs Silent, Runs Deep", Town Hall, October 30, 2007. Cites and links to CPAS' Letters to the Senate, but does not mention his own integral association with it.
• Doug Bandow, "Make Way for a Second UN", The American Prospect, October 30, 2007. Does not mention CPAS, even in passing.
• John Fonte, "LOST at Sea: The Law of the Sea Treaty threatens American sovereignty.", National Review, October 29, 2007. Cited Jeremy Rabkin, and wrote "A phalanx of serious defenders of American sovereignty have risen to oppose LOST", yet did not disclose Rabkin's or his own affiliation with CPAS.

Articles and Resources

Statements given in Senate Committee On Foreign Relations hearings

September 27, 2007

• John D. Negroponte; Deputy Secretary, Department of State
• Gordon England; Deputy Secretary, Department of Defense
• Admiral Patrick M. Walsh; Vice Chief of Naval Operations Department of the Navy

October 4, 2007

• Senator Lugar's Opening Statement
• Admiral Vern Clark, USN (Ret.); Former Chief of Naval Operations
• Bernard H. Oxman; Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law, Miami, FL
• Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.; President, Center for Security Policy
• Fred L. Smith, Jr.; President, Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Paul C. Kelly; President, Gulf of Mexico Foundation
• Joseph J. Cox; President, Chamber of Shipping of America
• R. Burnett, Partner, Holland & Knight, LLP, New York, NY

Neutral

• CRS Report: The Law of the Sea Convention and U.S. Policy, September 29, 2003
• Analysis of The Convention published by The Center for Oceans Law and Policy, University of Virginia Law School
• "Intelligence Brief: Arctic Scramble Leads Washington to Reconsider Law of the Sea", The Power and The Interest News Report, October 26, 2007

Pro

• Ocean Law
• Bernard H. Oxman, "Reagan Supported Most of Law of the Sea Treaty", Letter to the Wall street Journal, October 22, 2007
• Don Kraus and Spencer P. Boyer, "Why America Should Care About the Law of the Sea Treaty", The Huffington Report, October 29, 2007
• Spencer P. Boyer, "Why the Senate Should Ratify the Law of the Sea Convention", Center for American Progress, October 29, 2007
• Cheryl Pellerin, "Law of Sea Convention Serves U.S. Interests, Bush Says", US State Department's USINFO, May 18, 2007
• Senator Richard G. Lugar, "The Law of the Sea Convention: The Case for Senate Action", Brookings Institution, May 4, 2004

Con

• Paul M. Weyrich, "Possibly the Final Push for the Law of the Sea Treaty", The National Ledger, October 29, 2007
• Kate Sheppard, "Yo, Ho, Ho, a Law for the Seas!", The American Prospect, October 23, 2007
• Edwin Meese III, Baker Spring and Brett D. Schaefer, "The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: The Risks Outweigh the Benefits", The Heritage Foundation, May 16, 2007