Victor A. Fediay, 79, a former Library of Congress researcher on Russian and East European affairs who became a consultant and lobbyist in the field of foreign affairs, died of a heart attack July 20 at Sibley Memorial Hospital.

Mr. Fediay, who was stricken at his home in Washington, was born in Mileov, Russia. In 1919, he and his family moved to Warsaw. He graduated from the University of Warsaw, where he received degrees in law and economics.

In 1948, he moved to Washington and went to work for the Library of Congress as a researcher. He remained there until 1969, when he joined the staff of Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.).

In 1975, Mr. Fediay co-founded the Institute of American Relations, an educational and research organization that organized conferences in this country and abroad and published newsletters. In 1979, he founded the Foreign Affairs Council, a lobbying organization. He was president of both groups until about 1984.

Since then, Mr. Fediay had been a lobbyist and consulant, with clients ranging from various committees of Congress and government agencies to the Christian Crusade.

Mr. Fediay was a member of St. John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Washington.

Billy James Hargis (August 3, 1925 – November 27, 2004) was an American Christian evangelist. At the height of his popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, his Christian Crusade ministry was broadcast on over 500 radio stations and 250 television stations. He promoted an anti-Communist, segregationist message as well as evangelizing, and founded a radio station, monthly newspaper, and a college in Tulsa, Oklahoma to support his ministries.

In 1950, Hargis founded the Christian Crusade, an interdenominational movement. In 1964, the Internal Revenue Service alleged that Hargis' involvement in political matters violated the terms of the Internal Revenue Code for religious institutions and withdrew the tax-exempt status of the Christian Crusade. Richard Viguerie, a pioneer in using direct mail in the 1970s and 1980s to support conservative movements and their causes, began his career working for Hargis. Viguerie developed direct mail databases to solicit small donations in an average of 2000 mailings a day from a wide field of ideological supporters. At the time, Hargis had reported that the average contribution to his movement was $4, from a constituency of 250,000 donors, and it was receiving $1 million annually.[3]

In association with his Christian Crusade Hargis published the monthly Christian Crusade Newspaper, with a circulation of 55,000, and Weekly Crusade.

His son, Billy James Hargis II, continued his ministry until his own death. Hargis' organization and college also established and operated Tulsa radio station KBJH (FM 98.5) in the early 1970s. After the college's closing and the demise of his ministry, the station was sold to Epperson Broadcasting.

Hargis, alongside Dan Smoot, Carl McIntire, and H.L. Hunt, has been described as among "four of the era’s most prominent extremist broadcasters".[18] Hargis and his church owned and operated a small AM radio station in Port Neches, Texas, from 1980 to the early 1990s. KDLF radio (so named after the David Livingston Foundation) played Southern Gospel Music and religious programming until it was sold around 1993. In the latter days of Hargis' ownership, the radio station had a local marketing agreement to others but was required to play Hargis' hour-long program daily.[citation needed] It has been said that along with Carl McIntire and others, Hargis "paved the way" for conservative talk radio in subsequent decades.[19]

Hargis' papers, described as "a goldmine for students of American politics," are held at the special collections department of the University of Arkansas Libraries in Fayetteville.[20]