Ernest Warren Lefever (November 12, 1919 – July 29, 2009) was an American political theorist and foreign affairs expert who founded the Ethics and Public Policy Center in 1976 and was nominated for a State Department post by President Ronald Reagan.
Professionally, Lefever served as a foreign affairs consultant to Hubert H. Humphrey when he was in the United States Senate, in a similar role with the National Council of Churches and as a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution.
[1] The 1981 nomination was cited by The Washington Post as an effort to appeal to "ultraconservatives" upset that Secretary of State Alexander Haig had failed to appoint conservative "hardliners" to his policy team.
[4] Critics drew attention to his involvement with the Ethics and Public Policy Center and criticized remarks that contrasted regimes that supported the United States that he deemed "authoritarian" that should be the targets of "quiet diplomacy," stating that "[o]ur friends deserve quiet support and public encouragement in their quest for a more humane society" and that the US should be "a steadfast ally" without "moral posturing," and those that opposed the U.S. were deemed "totalitarian" and could not be the targets of change achieved through diplomatic means.
[1] A resident of Chevy Chase, Maryland at the time of his death, Lefever died at age 89 on July 29, 2009, due to Lewy body dementia at a nursing home in New Oxford, Pennsylvania.