In 1971, a corporate lawyer by the name of Lewis Powell was working as a partner at the corporate criminal defense firm of Hunton & Williams in Richmond, Virginia, representing corporate clients such as the Tobacco Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The Chamber asked Powell to write a memo addressing the populist attack on big business in America. The resulting 34-page memo was a blueprint for the corporate consolidation of power in Washington, D.C.
The memo opened with an attack on the growing citizen movement, including on a then rising young civic star Ralph Nader.
“Perhaps the single most effective antagonist of American business is Ralph Nader, who – thanks largely to the media – has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans,” Powell wrote.
Powell then quoted an article from a recent Fortune magazine article: “The passion that rules in him – and he is a passionate man – is aimed at smashing utterly the target of his hatred, which is corporate power. He thinks, and says quite bluntly, that a great many corporate executives belong in prison – for defrauding the consumer with shoddy merchandise, poisoning the food supply with chemical additives, and willfully manufacturing unsafe products that will maim or kill the buyer. He emphasizes that he is not talking just about ‘fly-by-night hucksters’ but the ‘top management of blue chip business.’”
Powell then lays out a plan to counterattack.
“Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations,” Powell wrote.
Powell said what was needed was corporate-funded institutions staffed with scholars and speakers. It would be “a long road . . . and not for the fainthearted,” Powell wrote.
Corporate America followed Powell’s roadmap, consolidated power in Washington with think tanks, lobbyists and corporate campaign cash.
Nader’s burgeoning citizen groups were pushed to the fringes by increasingly corporate controlled media outlets and members of Congress.
The secret Powell memo was dated August 23, 1971.
Two months later, on October 22, Nixon nominated Powell to the Supreme Court. Lewis Powell was sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on January 7, 1972, less than six months after his secret report was delivered to the Chamber.
And now, 54 years after the Powell memo was written, Ralph Nader is responding with his own memo, titled simply – Ralph Nader’s Response to the Powell Memo.
That’s according to a report in the August/September 2025 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper.
Nader writes that the Powell memo was an attack on American civic values.
“Was Powell freaked out by the radical rhetoric in the streets, or the large weekend demonstrations by civil rights and anti-war advocates, or the occasional appearance of corporate reformers on popular commercial network television shows anchored by Phil Donahue, Mike Douglas, and Merv Griffin?” Nader asks. “The Richmond, Virginia utility industry lawyer did not specify, attaching his jeremiads to baseless detaildeprived generalities. Perhaps he had to be abstract since there was no alien ideology behind these laws, no foreign ism that he could attribute to an ogre.”
“The Powell Memorandum struck the right chords by trade associations like the Chamber, which grew its budgets and staff by echoing Powell’s warnings and adopting his recommendations. The Chamber started becoming a more powerful lobby on Congress and the state legislatures, and later initiated judicial interventions against cases brought by aggrieved parties suing corporate defendants,” Nader writes.
“In 1972, the Business Roundtable was formed, consisting only of major CEOs of large companies to further the activities urged by Powell. In the late 60s and early 70s, several national public interest groups were also formed, including Public Citizen, Greenpeace,
Natural Resources Defense Council, Common Cause, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Environmental Defense Fund, the Center for Auto Safety, the Consumer Federation of America, the National Organization for Women, and various labor reform groups and civil rights groups also emerged in this period.”
“Their total budgets did not remotely match that of the Chamber or its allied business lobbies. These new progressive organizations, their proposed reforms, and their exposés received national news coverage, which provided a receptive climate for Congressional action.”
“Long-overdue air and water pollution control laws, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Freedom of Information Act were passed with support from both parties. Sometimes judicial decisions bolstered these enactments. However, little did we anticipate that the more aggressive business lobby would block similar gains, including defeating the proposed
Consumer Protection Agency, during the Ford and Carter Administrations. The growing influence continued, breaking into a veritable rout of both civic and governmental checks and balances with the arrival of Ronald Reagan’s eight year presidency of, by and for giant corporatism.”
“The ensuing dismantling and wreckage of the frail regulatory state, and the populating of the federal courts up to the Supreme Court with corporatist judges, have continued with increased momentum. The legislative achievements of the late 60s and early 70s have not been matched since. Further degradations at the state level, driven by GOP gerrymandering and furious business lobbying formations (such as the American Legislative Exchange Council),
enabled by vast sums of monies from the likes of the energetic Koch brothers and their network, have far outpaced the liberal/progressive efforts and funds from wealthy progressive donors.”