Religion Mun kor

The DIA said Moon’s organization also delivered money to Kim Il Sung’s son and successor, Kim Jong Il.

“In 1993, the Unification Church sold a piece of property located in Pennsylvania,” the DIA reported on Sept. 9, 1994. “The profit on the sale, approximately $3 million was sent through a bank in China to the Hong Kong branch of the KS [South Korean] company ‘Samsung Group.’ The money was later presented to Kim Jung Il [Kim Jong Il] as a birthday present.”

After Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994 and his succession by his son, Kim Jong Il, Moon dispatched his longtime aide, Bo Hi Pak, to ensure that the business deals were still on track with Kim Jong Il “and his coterie,” the DIA reported.

“If necessary, Moon authorized Pak to deposit a second payment for Kim Jong Il,” the DIA wrote.

The DIA declined to elaborate on the documents that it released to me under a Freedom of Information Act request. “As for the documents you have, you have to draw your own conclusions,” said DIA spokesman, U.S. Navy Capt. Michael Stainbrook.

Moon’s Right-Hand Man

Contacted in Seoul, South Korea, Bo Hi Pak, a former publisher of The Washington Times, denied that payments were made to individual North Korean leaders and called “absolutely untrue” the DIA’s description of the $3 million land sale benefiting Kim Jong Il.

But Bo Hi Pak acknowledged that Moon met with North Korean officials and negotiated business deals with them in the early 1990s. Pak said the North Korean business investments were structured through South Korean entities.

“Rev. Moon is not doing this in his own name,” said Pak.

Pak said he went to North Korea in 1994, after Kim Il Sung’s death, only to express “condolences” to Kim Jong Il on behalf of Moon and his wife. Pak denied that another purpose of the trip was to pass money to Kim Jong Il or to his associates.

Asked about the seeming contradiction between Moon’s avowed anti-communism and his friendship with leaders of a communist state, Pak said, “This is time for reconciliation. We’re not looking at ideological differences. We are trying to help them out” with food and other humanitarian needs.

Samsung officials said they could find no information in their files about the alleged $3 million payment.

North Korean officials clearly valued their relationship with Moon. In February of this year [2000], on Moon’s 80th birthday, Kim Jong Il sent Moon a gift of rare wild ginseng, an aromatic root used medicinally, Reuters reported.

Because of the long-term U.S. embargo against North Korea – eased only within the past several months – Moon’s alleged payments to the communist leaders raise potential legal issues for Moon, a South Korean citizen who is a U.S. permanent resident alien.

“Nobody in the United States was supposed to be providing funding to anybody in North Korea, period, under the Treasury (Department’s) sanction regime,” said Jonathan Winer, former deputy assistant secretary of state handling international crime.

The U.S. embargo of North Korea dates back to the Korean War. With a few exceptions for humanitarian goods, the embargo barred trade and financial dealings between North Korea and “all U.S. citizens and permanent residents wherever they are located, … and all branches, subsidiaries and controlled affiliates of U.S. organizations throughout the world.”

Moon became a permanent resident of the United States in 1973, according to Justice Department records. Bo Hi Pak said Moon has kept his “green card” status. Though often in South Korea and South America, Moon maintains a residence near Tarrytown, north of New York City, and controls dozens of affiliated U.S. companies.

Direct payments to foreign leaders in connection with business deals also could prompt questions about possible violations of the U.S. Corrupt Practices Act, a prohibition against overseas bribery.

Alleged Brainwashing

Moon’s followers regard him as the second Messiah and grant him broad power over their lives, even letting him pick their spouses. Critics, including ex-Unification Church members, have accused Moon of brainwashing young recruits and living extravagantly while his followers have little.

Around the world, Moon’s business relationships long have been cloaked in secrecy. His sources of money have been mysteries, too, although witnesses – including his former daughter-in-law – have come forward in recent years and alleged widespread money-laundering within the organization.

Moon “demonstrated contempt for U.S. law every time he accepted a paper bag full of untraceable, undeclared cash collected from true believers” who carried the money in from overseas, wrote his ex-daughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, in her 1998 book, In the Shadows of the Moons.

Since Moon stepped onto the international stage in the 1970s, he has used his fortune to build political alliances and to finance media, academic and political institutions.

In 1978, Moon was identified by the congressional “Koreagate” investigation as an operative of the South Korean CIA and part of an influence-buying scheme aimed at the U.S. government. Moon denied the charges.

Though Moon later was convicted on federal tax evasion charges, his political influence continued to grow when he founded The Washington Times in 1982. The unabashedly conservative newspaper won favor with presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush by backing their policies and hammering their opponents.

In 1988, when Bush was trailing early in the presidential race, the Times spread a baseless rumor that the Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis had undergone psychiatric treatment. The Moon-affiliated American Freedom Coalition also distributed millions of pro-Bush flyers.

Bush personally expressed his gratitude. When Wesley Pruden was appointed The Washington Times’ editor-in-chief in 1991, Bush invited Pruden to a private White House lunch “just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day.” [Washington Times, May 17, 1992].

Moon’s Vatican

While Bush was hosting Pruden in the White House, Pruden’s boss was opening his financial and business channels to North Korea. According to the DIA, Moon’s North Korean deal was ambitious and expensive.

“There was an agreement regarding economic cooperation for the reconstruction of KN’s [North Korea's] economy which included establishment of a joint venture to develop tourism at Kimkangsan, KN [North Korea]; investment in the Tumangang River Development; and investment to construct the light industry base at Wonsan, KN. It is believed that during their meeting Mun [Moon] donated 450 billion yen to KN,” one DIA report said.

In late 1991, the Japanese yen traded at about 130 yen to the U.S. dollar, meaning Moon’s investment would have been about $3.5 billion, if the DIA information is correct.

Moon’s aide Pak denied that Moon’s investments ever approached that size. Though Pak did not give an overall figure, he said the initial phase of an automobile factory was in the range of $3 million to $6 million.

The DIA depicted Moon’s business plans in North Korea as much grander. The DIA valued the agreement for hotels in Pyongyang and the resort in Kumgang-san, alone, at $500 million. The plans also called for creation of a kind of Vatican City covering Moon’s birthplace.

“In consideration of Mun’s [Moon's] economic cooperation, Kim [Il Sung] granted Mun a 99-year lease on a 9 square kilometer parcel of land located in Chongchu, Pyonganpukto, KN. Chongchu is Mun’s birthplace and the property will be used as a center for the Unification Church. It is being referred to as the Holy Land by Unification Church believers and Mun [h]as been granted extraterritoriality during the life of the lease.”

North Korea granted Moon some smaller favors, too. Four months after Moon’s meeting with Kim Il Sung, editors from The Washington Times were allowed to interview the reclusive North Korean communist in what the Times called “the first interview he has granted to an American newspaper in many years.”

Later in 1992, the Times was again rallying to President George H.W. Bush’s defense. The newspaper stepped up attacks against Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh as his investigation homed in on Bush and his inner circle. Walsh considered the Times’ relentless criticism a distraction to the criminal investigation, according to his book, Firewall.

That fall, in the 1992 campaign, the Times turned its editorial guns on Bush’s new rival, Bill Clinton. Some of the anti-Clinton articles raised questions about Clinton’s patriotism, even suggesting that the Rhodes scholar might have been recruited as a KGB agent during a collegiate trip to Moscow.

A Bush Salute

Bush’s loss of the White House did not end his relationship with Moon’s organization. Out of office, Bush agreed to give paid speeches to Moon-supported groups in the United States, Asia and South America. In some cases, Barbara Bush joined in the events.

During this period, Moon grew increasingly hateful about the United States and many of its ideals.

In a speech to his followers on Aug. 4, 1996, Moon vowed to liquidate American individuality, declaring that his movement would “swallow entire America.” Moon said Americans who insisted on “their privacy and extreme individualism … will be digested.”

Nevertheless, former President Bush continued to work for Moon’s organization. In November 1996, the former U.S. president spoke at a dinner in Buenos Aires, Argentina, launching Moon’s South American newspaper, Tiempos del Mundo.

“I want to salute Reverend Moon,” Bush declared, according to a transcript of the speech published in The Unification News, an internal church newsletter.

“A lot of my friends in South America don’t know about The Washington Times, but it is an independent voice,” Bush said. “The editors of The Washington Times tell me that never once has the man with the vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that in my view brings sanity to Washington, D.C.”

Contrary to Bush’s claim, a number of senior editors and correspondents have resigned in protest of editorial interference from Moon’s operatives. Bush has refused to say how much he was paid for the speech in Buenos Aires or others in Asia and the United States.

Going After Gore

During the 2000 election cycle, Moon’s newspaper has taken up the cause of Bush’s son and mounted harsh attacks against his rival, Vice President Al Gore.

In 1999, the Times played a prominent role in promoting a bogus quote attributed to Gore about his work on the toxic waste issue. In a speech in Concord, New Hampshire, Gore had referred to a toxic waste case in Toone, Tennessee, and said, “that was the one that started it all.”

The New York Times and The Washington Post garbled the quote, claiming that Gore had said, “I was the one that started it all.”

The Washington Times took over from there, accusing Gore of being clinically “delusional.” The Times called the vice president “a politician who not only manufactures gross, obvious lies about himself and his achievements but appears to actually believe these confabulations.” [Washington Times, Dec. 7, 1999]

Even after other papers corrected the false quote, The Washington Times continued to use it. The notion of Gore as an exaggerator, often based on this and other mis-reported incidents, became a powerful Republican “theme” as Gov. Bush surged ahead of Gore in the presidential preference polls.

Republicans also have made the North Korean threat an issue against the Clinton-Gore administration. Last year, a report by a House Republican task force warned that during the 1990s, North Korea and its missile program emerged as a nuclear threat to Japan and possibly the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

“This threat has advanced considerably over the past five years, particularly with the enhancement of North Korea’s missile capabilities,” the Republican task force said. “Unlike five years ago, North Korea can now strike the United States with a missile that could deliver high explosive, chemical, biological, or possibly nuclear weapons.”

Moon’s newspaper has joined in excoriating the Clinton-Gore administration for postponing a U.S. missile defense system to counter missiles from North Korea and other “rogue states.” Gov. George W. Bush favors such a system.

“To its list of missed opportunities, the Clinton-Gore administration can now add the abdication of responsibility for national security,” a Times editorial said.

“By deciding not to begin construction of the Alaskan radar, Mr. Clinton has indisputably delayed eventual deployment beyond 2005, when North Korea is estimated to be capable of launching an intercontinental missile against the United States.” [Washington Times, Sept. 5, 2000]

The Washington Times did not note that its founder – who continues to subsidize the newspaper with tens of millions of dollars a year – had defied a U.S. trade embargo aimed at containing the military ambitions of North Korea.

By supplying money at a time when North Korea was desperate for hard currency, Moon helped deliver the means for the communist state to advance exactly the strategic threat that Moon’s newspaper now says will require billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to thwart.

That money bought Moon influence inside North Korea. It is less clear how much influence Moon and his associates will have inside a George W. Bush White House, given Moon’s longstanding – though little known – support for the Bush family.

To see two of the DIA documents, click here.

http://www.counterpunch.org

January 14, 2003

Moon Shadow: The Rev, Bush & North Korea

by WAYNE MADSEN

When President Bush added North Korea to his list of "Axis of Evil" nations, the influence of the self-declared reincarnation of Jesus Christ, the "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church, loomed largely over the White House decision-making process. The decision by Bush to throw into the trash heap of history eight years of a joint American-South Korean-Japanese dialogue with the reclusive Communist regime would ultimately result in Pyongyang returning to using the rhetoric of bygone years. Just as the Bush administration reintroduced to regular use the terms "segregation," "civil rights," and "ban on abortions," the terms "demilitarized zone," "Panmunjom," and "38th parallel" would also re-enter the American political lexicon.

Bush, a self-described "born again Christian" who has maintained close links to Moon, hired David Frum as one of his speechwriters. Frum apparently came up with the term "axis of evil" for Bush's 2002 State of the Union address but it seems likely that Bush, heavily influenced by the propagandists of the rabidly anti-Pyongyang Washington Times, decided North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il was Satan reincarnate. Years before North Korea announced it was restarting its nuclear enrichment facility at Yongbyon, The Washington Times splashed front page headlines about North Korea being a threat while other major newspapers and wire services treated the sensationalistic reports as a non-story or more probably, plain disinformation masked as "intelligence reports" and "leaked" by anti-Clinton Pentagon officials.

For twenty years, Moon's main policy laundering enterprise for his incessant influence-peddling has been The Washington Times, the money-losing newspaper he owns outright through New World Communications, Inc., the paper's parent publishing company. New World also owns Insight Magazine, The Middle East Times (based in Cairo), Zambezi Times (based in Lusaka, Zambia), newspapers in Uruguay and Canada, a textbook publishing company in Russia, and United Press International, the formerly well-respected wire service that fell on hard financial times and was bailed out by Moon's seemingly unlimited cash flows.

Next year, an Insight magazine reporter is poised to take over as President of the venerable National Press Club in Washington. Thus, in a presidential election year, a Moon employee will have influence on what politicians and candidates are selected for televised luncheon speeches carried by C-SPAN and other cable news networks. Democrats and Greens should be very wary. Some former Washington Times officials claim The Washington Times and its affiliates are so tied in with Moon's agenda, its reporters and staff should register with the Justice Department as foreign lobbyists under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Moon launched The Washington Times in 1982, just a few years after one of Moon's associates, Tongsun Park, was indicted for paying bribes to a number of U.S. politicians. The paper, which has a dearth of advertising revenue, has lost more than $1 billion dollars since its inception. Nevertheless, it has become a powerful conservative voice throughout Republican ranks in both the White House and Congress. In 1996, former President Bush, who has taken millions of dollars in speaking fees from Moon, spoke before a Moon audience in Argentina and declared Moon to be a "man of vision." Bush 41, who could never really grasp the "vision thing," decided Moon had it.

Moon's own background, which reportedly includes links to both the Korean CIA and its American counterpart, parallels that of other ethically-tainted individuals who have once again found sanctuary in a Bush administration: Elliott Abrams, John Poindexter, Otto Reich, and John Negroponte, all of Iran-contra infamy. The Washington Times was a leading supporter of the Nicaraguan contras and a chief apologist for the perpetrators of the arms-for-hostages scandal. Violating one of the main canons of journalism – that newspapers should not become part of or create their own stories – the Washington Times established the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to the contras circumventing the Boland Amendment that prohibited Federal money for the rightist guerrillas. Moon was also one of the few influential people who continued to defend Richard Nixon even as the President was resigning over the Watergate scandal.

In addition to his media empire, Moon also owns a Jonestown-type compound in Brazil called New Hope. He has also invested in the sparsely-populated and impoverished Marshall Islands. He has infiltrated one of the secessionist movements fighting for independence for the Angolan enclave of Cabinda. Moon's favorites in Africa included some of the CIA's most reliable clients: UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambique. Moon's fronts even maintained a dialogue with Pol Pot's murderous Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge murdered 3 million Cambodians. More surprisingly, Moon reportedly partly owns a hotel in Pyongyang and a North Korean Fiat automobile plant. His flirtation with mind control techniques is legendary. Parents have spent millions trying to deprogram their children from the effects of Moon's Pavlovian brain bending methods. Moon's mass marriages of unwitting American males to Korean wives, while humorous on the surface, nevertheless managed to trap Zambian Roman Catholic Bishop Emmanuel Milingo. At least one pre-eminent Washington Times reporter is said to have been enticed into one of his boss's mass marriage ceremonies.

At the 20th anniversary celebration of The Washington Times held last year in Washington, Moon seemingly endlessly spoke in Korean at the alcohol-free affair. He said The Washington Times would "spread the truth about God to the world." But in Moon's world, he is God. President Bush sent a message to the banquet stating, "Since 1982, people across America and throughout the world have relied on The Washington Times as a distinguished source of information and opinion."

Bush seems to value Moon's commitment to family values. Bush named David Caprara, the head of Moon's American Family Coalition, as the director of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America). Moon's commitment to family values was exemplified at his 20th anniversary celebration of The Washington Times. The keynote speaker was Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the holier-than-thou radio talk show host who is the psychiatric part of the daily ration of right wing AM radio venom that is complemented by the political indoctrination of Rush Limbaugh and his clones. Schlessinger's own commitment to family values was highlighted recently when she claimed the body of her 77-year-old mother from the Los Angeles County morgue after it had remained there for ten days after her unattended death in her condominium. Schlessinger, who lectures callers on how to keep their families together and wholesome, had not seen her own mother since 1984.

To Moon, however, disowning one's parents is a hallmark of his brainwashing techniques. In 1973, while a college student in Mississippi, I was once lured into a Moon recruiting function. I met a young Jewish girl from New Jersey who was traveling around the country in a van with her fellow Moon adherents. As a native of New Jersey myself, I asked the young woman what her parents thought about her roaming about the country. She replied, "Parents, I have no parents. Reverend Moon is my family." I wanted to call the nearest rabbi to help the poor girl get home to her parents who must have been worried sick. Nevertheless, Bush believes that Moon's family value system is credible enough to appoint one of his adherents to head VISTA.

But Moon is not only a danger to young people. While Bush accuses Kim Jong Il of all kinds of evil affronts he seems to ignore some of Moon's more bellicose and threatening comments. According to a 1978 House of Representatives investigation of Moon some of the more outrageous comments include:

– -Unification Church members are to regard Korea with great reverence and look forward to the day when the Korean language will be spoken throughout the world.

– -Members are to maintain a view to establishing a "unified civilization" of the whole world, to be centered in Korea and "corresponding to that of the Roman Empire."

– -God was helping Moon to set up a final battle involving the United States, Russia, China, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan.

– -Moon's plans are to manipulate seven nations at least, to get hold of the whole world: the United States, England, France, Germany, Russia, and maybe Korea and Japan. "On God's side, Korea, Japan, America, England, France, Germany, and Italy, are the nations I count on in order to gain the whole world," Moon stated.

The House of Representatives report on the activities of the Korean CIA in the United States found evidence that the Moon organization had violated a number of Federal and state laws. In 1984, Moon was convicted of income tax violations and spent 13 months in prison. But remember, in 1996, Bush pere referred to Moon as a "man of vision." It should be noted that while Bush was head of the CIA, Moon was organizing a number of pro-American and anti-communist rallies and front organizations around the world. Moon was a convenient agent of influence for the CIA and Mr. Bush.

According to intelligence insiders, North Korean intelligence has quite a dossier on Reverend Moon and his payments to politicians in the United States and abroad. Some of the intelligence may prove embarrassing for some politicians, including the Bush family. So, here we are again. Noriega of Panama had the goods on the Bushes. He is now in a U.S. Federal prison; Sadaam knows what the Reagan-Bush administration sold him in the way of components for weapons of mass destruction. We are about ready to go to war against him. And Kim Jong Il has the juicy bits on Moon's financial links to Bush pere and dauphin. Kim is now a member of the "axis of evil," a man who George W. Bush hates because he "starves his own people."

Congress investigated Moon's operations in the late 1970s. It was at a time when Moon was involved with smaller scale influence peddling and brainwashing young college students into joining his cultist Unification Church, popularly known as the "Moonies."