The committee first met in 1950, it was founded by Tracy Vorhees to promote the plans proposed in NSC 68 by Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson. It lobbied both the government and through a publicity campaign, notably a weekly broadcast on NBC throughout 1951.
It lost influence throughout the 1960s, but it was revived in 1976 when a sub-group, Team B, was set up by Gerald Ford and headed by George H. W. Bush, working out of the offices of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. The sub-group produced the "National Intelligence Estimates" report in 1976, a report countering the existing CIA estimates of Soviet military capacities. It grew in influence following the election of Carter, with Nitze as chairman of policy studies.
The committee provided thirty-three officials of the Reagan administration, including William Casey, Richard Allen, Jeane Kirkpatrick, John Lehman, George Shultz and Richard Perle. Reagan himself was a member in 1979.