Amy Ridenour

Both the Marianas and the Economic Council were clients of Jack Abramoff at the time. The Marianas paid Abramoff’s firm Preston Gates $1.9 million in 1999 and 2000 and his second firm, Greenberg Traurig, $1.1 million in 2001. The Western Pacific Economic Council paid Preston Gates $2.3 million in 1999 and 2000.

Ridenour has come under fire for allegedly using the NCPPR as a clearinghouse for clients of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff to pay for a luxurious golf trip to St. Andrew's in Scotland, attended by congressman Tom Delay and others. Ridenour was called to testify on this matter before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on June 22, 2005.

In August 2001, Ridenour wrote an editorial in the Washington Times, "The U.S. Must Tread Carefully to Avoid Creating More Fundamentalist Islamic Governments,"[9] warning of the dangerous possibility that Malaysia could become a third Iran or Afghanistan, with what she called "ferocious and fanatical hatred aimed against the West generally and the United States in particular" and in the case of Afghanistan sheltering "the world's most notorious - and dangerous - international terrorist, Osama bin Laden." She warned about Islamic fundamentalist support for Anwar Ibrahim, the main political rival of Abramoff’s then-client, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamed. Of Malaysia, she wrote, "in recent years Malaysia has made extraordinary strides in its development as a prosperous, stable and democratic state" but "its levels of economic freedom, regulations on trade and limits on private property rights led the Heritage Foundation to conclude in 2001 that its economy is 'mostly unfree.'" Abramoff was paid $1.2 million to arrange a meeting between the Prime Minister and President Bush.[10]

In a series of editorials between 1999 and 2001, Ridenour attacked efforts to expand federal immigration laws to the Commonwealth of the Marianas Islands,[6] defended the islands' meager wages,[7] and attacked Clinton Administration attempts to tighten labor laws.[8] Ridenour also lent her support to the Western Pacific Economic Council, a trade group composed of Marianas garment manufacturers. Her group’s name appeared in a Saipan newspaper backing the Council in 1999.

Ridenour also attended the 1997 DeLay-Abramoff trip to Russia funded through NCPPR by the Russian energy giant Naftasib.

Environmentalists also claimed articles by Ridenour skeptical of the global warming theory were written only because NCPPR received support from ExxonMobil. Ridenour, writing on her blog, countered that her writing on the issue began in 1992, predating by many years her institution's receipt of any funding from fossil fuel industries. She also claimed that total fossil fuel funding of NCPPR in 2004 amounted to six-tenths of one percent of her organization's total funding. An examination of ExxonMobil grant reports in 2011 on the ExxonMobil website showed NCPPR had not received any grants from ExxonMobil for at least several years.

Ridenour was a founding chief executive officer of the NCPPR in 1982. The NCPPR claims to promote "the conservative and free market perspective on US domestic, foreign and defense policy issues." Ridenour's husband David A. Ridenour is vice president of the organization.

According to Nina Easton's Gang of Five, Amy Moritz was a veteran organizer of the College Republican National Committee. She was a candidate in 1981 for election as national chairman of the organization, opposed by Jack Abramoff.

Amy Moritz Ridenour (November 9, 1959 – March 31, 2017), was president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a Washington, DC conservative think tank. Ridenour held this post since the organization's founding in 1982 until her death. She wrote a syndicated op-ed column from 1997 and was a frequent radio and television guest.