Folks,

This
is the best one yet about the fraud that brought us into the war on Iraq, by a
Tufts University professor who ties the facts together quite skillfully. From
the Niger uranium fraud (how many people have claimed responsibility for that
one now? Three? That is, anyone else other than our brave and honorable
Commander in Chief?), to the Office of Special Plans, to Dick Cheney influencing
the CIA behind the scenes, to the false allegations about supposed key players
of al-Qaeda, the attempt to link 9-11 to Iraq, and finally the neo-con agenda as
a whole, and their utter contempt for anyone who doesn’t see things their way.
It’s a fine read. I highly recommend it.

Meanwhile, the Administration has decided to risk enormous political
capital by blanking out 28 pages of the long-awaited 9-11 report, in order to
protect…whom? We assume it’s the Saudis, but we don’t really know,
do we? (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26391540.htm )

We know this administration thinks we’re all too dumb to understand the
real reasons behind our alliances and actions in the Mid East, so they feed us
this *censored*-and-bull about “liberating the oppressed” and making the world safe
from (anybody else’s) WMD. But do they really think we don’t need to
know–indeed, deserve to know–the truth about 9-11, or do they believe that we
can’t handle the truth? Do they really think that, finally, their dismissal of
world opinion and domestic dissent over the last two years wouldn’t come back to
haunt them? Do they really believe that their stream of deceptions and
manipulations will just be forgotten? Do they really think we’re so stupid that
we won’t care about the 28 pages? 33 years later, we’re still discovering the
truth about another reckless Republican cabal who cynically thought they could
get away with deceiving the public, picking fall guys, and doing what they damn
well liked…yet those 18 1/2 minutes are still very much of interest, and Nixon
is finally getting his due (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-07-27-watergate_x.htm).

–C

Folks,

This is almost too unbelieveable to be true. As the alert reader who sent it to me commented, “Truly the theater of the absurd.” Wow.

Terrorism Futures Market Plan Canceled

As a CNN article [no longer available online] summarized it,
“The little-publicized Pentagon plan envisioned a potential futures trading market in which speculators would wager on the Internet on the likelihood of a future terrorist attack or assassination attempt on a particular leader. A Web site promoting the plan already is available.”

And who was to be in charge of this lovely little plan? Why, John Poindexter of course, America’s favorite convicted enemy-of-the-state-turned-hero.

Gotta love those Defense Dept. guys. They really know how to keep life interesting.

–C

Folks,

This is a bit beyond the normal scope of my
list, but I decided it just
might be of interest to enough of you to
distribute. There is a fair bit of
repetition between these articles, and
it’s a long and at times tedious
read. Still, there is a great deal in here
that I didn’t know about the
connections between Bush Sr., the Rev. Sun Myung
Moon and his Unification
Church (aka The Moonies), The Washington Times (and
its smear campaigns
against Democratic presidential hopefuls), the UPI, and
both Koreas and
their leaders. Fascinating material if you have the patience
for it. And if
not, just delete this 191K sucker right now
(sorry!)

–C

—–Original
Message—–
——————————————————————-
Articles
to follow:
(1)
95th Congress, 2d Session: Committee Print
INVESTIGATION
OF KOREAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS
Report of the Subcommittee on International
Organizations of the
Committee on International Relations
U.S. House of
Representatives
October 31, 1978
Printed for the use of the Committee on
International Relations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON, 1978:
34-674-O
Stock Number 052-070-04729-1
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/Unif11.html
——————————————————————–
(2)
George
W. Bush and The Moonies
The National Examiner/January 9, 2001
By Tom
Kuncl
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif106.html
——————————————————————–
(3)
Rev.
Moon, North Korea & the Bushes
Consortium News.com/October 11, 2000
By
Robert Parry
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif91.html
——————————————————————–
(4)
The
Bush-Kim-Moon Triangle of Money
The Consortium/March 10, 2001
By Robert
Parry
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif115.html
——————————————————————–
(5)
Longtime
Moonie for Dubya’s team?
George W. Bush has raised some eyebrows by
nominating a former V.I.P.
from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church
to a top government
position.
MSNBC News/April 22, 2003
By Jeanette
Walls with Ashley Pearson
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif200.html
———————————————————————
(6)
Why
is TV news ignoring the relationship between Moon and the Bush
family?
Why
won’t Congress and the television news media investigate the
relationship
between the Bush family and Sun Myung Moon?
Online Journal/February 22,
2001
By Carla Binion
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif112.html
———————————————————————
(7)
Moonies
ordered to pay 29 mil. yen for mind control
Mainichi Shimbun/June 29,
2001
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif138.html
———————————————————————
(8)
Unification’s
Moon Offers Social Message: ‘Time for America to awaken,’
he tells SLC
crowd
The Salt Lake Tribune/March 11, 2001
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif116.html
———————————————————————
(9)
Washington
Times Owner Buys UPI
Washington Post, May 16, 2000
By Yuki Noguchi
http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif74.html
=====================================================================
(1)
95th
Congress, 2d Session: Committee Print
INVESTIGATION OF KOREAN-AMERICAN
RELATIONS
Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations of
the
Committee on International Relations
U.S. House of
Representatives
October 31, 1978
Printed for the use of the Committee on
International Relations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON, 1978:
34-674-O

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government
Printing
Office, Washington, D.C. 20402

Stock Number
052-070-04729-1

Page 387
Conclusions and Recommendations
The
subcommittee findings regarding the Moon Organization may be
summarized as
follows:

(1) The UC and numerous other religious and secular
organizations headed
by Sun Myung Moon constitute essentially one
international organization.
This organization depends heavily upon the
interchangeability of its
components and upon its ability to move personnel
and financial assets
freely across international boundaries and between
businesses and
nonprofit organizations.

(2) The Moon Organization
attempts to achieve goals outlined by Sun
Myung Moon, who has substantial
control over the economic, political,
and spiritual activities undertaken by
the organization in pursuit of
those goals.

(3) Among the goals of the
Moon Organization is the establishment of a
worldwide government in which the
separation of church and state would
be abolished and which would be governed
by Moon and his followers.

(4) In pursuit of this and other goals, the
Moon Organization has
attempted, with varying degrees of success, to gain
control over or
establish business and other secular institutions in the
United States
and elsewhere, and has engaged in political activities in the
United
States. Some of these activities were undertaken to benefit the
ROK
Government or otherwise to influence U.S. foreign policy.

(5)
While pursuing its own goals, the Moon Organization promoted the
interests of
the ROK Government, and at times did so in cooperation
with, or at the
direction of, ROK agencies and officials. The Moon
Organization maintained
mutually beneficial ties with a number of Korean
officials.

(6) The
Moon Organization established the KCFF ostensibly as a
non-profit foundation
to promote Korean-American relations, but used the
KCFF to promote its own
political and economic interests and those of
the ROK Government.

(7)
The Moon Organization extensively used the names of Senators,
Congressmen,
U.S. Presidents, and other prominent Americans to raise
funds and to create
political influence for itself and the ROK
Government.

(8) A Moon
Organization business is an important defense contractor in
Korea. It is
involved in the production of M-16 rifles, antiaircraft
guns, and other
weapons.

(9) Moon Organization agents attempted to obtain permission from
an
American corporation to export M-16’s manufactured in Korea. The
M-16’s
are manufactured under a coproduction

34-674 O – 78 –
26

388
agreement approved by the U.S. Government, which puts M-16
production
under the exclusive control of the Korean Government. Despite
this, Moon
Organization representatives appeared — apparently on behalf of
the
Korean Government — to negotiate an extension of the
agreement.

(10) The Moon Organization attempted to obtain a controlling
interest in
the Diplomat National Bank by disguising the source of funds used
to
purchase stock in the names of UC members.

(12) The Moon
Organization used church and other tax-exempt components
in support of its
political and economic activities.

(13) Although many of the goals and
activities of the Moon Organization
were legitimate and lawful, there was
evidence that it had
systematically violated U.S. tax, immigration, banking,
currency, and
Foreign Agents Registration Act laws, as well as State and
local laws
related to charity fund, and that these violations were related to
the
organization’s overall goals of gaining temporal power.

Despite
the Moon Organization’s cooperative relationship with the ROK
Government the
UC was far less influential as a religious movement in
Korea than elsewhere.
A large proportion of the hundreds of Koreans
interviewed in the course of
the investigation said that they had never
heard of Moon or the UC until the
early or mid-1970’s, when their
activities became widely publicized. In the
United States, the UC
appears to have had little success in attracting
followers from the
Korean community. Most Korean-Americans interviewed
expressed varying
degrees of embarrassment or hostility toward Moon and the
UC; few saw
them as a positive factor in Korean-American
relations.

The subcommittee found that the Moon Organization has had a
number of
influential allies in the Korean Government, including Kim Jong
Pil, Pak
Chon Kyu, and others.

Although investigations and publicity
in the 1976-78 period appear to
have had an effect on the degree of influence
Moon’s supporters had with
the Korean Government, there were continuing
indications that the Moon
Organization retained significant
support.

Many of the activities of the Moon Organization would not
raise
questions of impropriety if carried out openly and without violations
of
laws. The subcommittee does not fault the many Americans, Koreans,
and
others who identified themselves with Moon
Organization-sponsored
activities such as the Little Angels, or who shared
the Moon
Organization’s expressed concerns about communism and South
Korean
security.

However, the Moon Organization’s ulterior motives
behind even its most
benign activities tended to negate its positive
contributions. For
example, the Little Angels, a highly accomplished
children’s dance
group, undoubtedly improved the image of Koreans around the
world and in
particular contributed to the Americans’ understanding of
Korean
culture. The Korean Government’s decision to bar the Little Angels
from
traveling outside Korea was a loss for Korean-American relations.
The
demise of the little Angels as a touring group followed growing
public
awareness of its ties to

389
Moon, who — after founding and
quietly backing the group –
increasingly used it to further his political
and economic goals. In his
own speeches to followers, Moon made it clear that
the Little Angels,
the annual science conference, and other seemingly
philanthropic
projects were in reality geared toward his ambitious and
carefully
thought plans for winning control and influence over political and
other
secular institutions.

Moon, like Tongsun Park, showed a keen
understanding of the use of
imagery in building political influence. Just as
Tongsun Park used his
close relationship with a few Congressmen to attract
others, Moon used
the names and pictures of prominent Americans, Japanese,
Koreans, and
others to create an image of power and respectability for
himself and
his movement. The multifaceted Moon Organization thereby obtained
the
help and cooperation of numerous Americans who had no idea they
were
contributing to Moon’s plan for world theocracy.

Like Tongsun
Park and others who conducted pro-ROK influence activities
in the United
States, Moon and his organization acted from a mixture of
motives and
objectives. Service to Korea was combined with a desire to
advance personal
and organizational goals. Like Tongsun Park and others,
Moon and his
organization attempted to gain influence in Seoul through
activities in the
United States; to this end, the Moon Organization
exaggerated its success in
the United States to create influence in
Korea and elsewhere. Thus, although
the Moon Organization often acted
for the ROK Government — even to the point
of accepting money for its
services — control and influence over Korean
political institutions was
no less a goal there than in the United States. In
this respect, the
Moon Organization was not an agent of influence for the ROK
Government
so much as it was a volatile factor in Korean-American
relations,
capable of distorting the perceptions each country held of the
other.

In the United States, for example, Moon has aroused
widespread
antipathy. To the extent that his organization’s activities here
are
associated with Korea or the Korean Government, there is potential
harm
to Korean-American relations. Recent attempts by the ROK Government
to
dissociate itself from Moon seemed to recognize this problem.
However,
these attempts at dissociation came only in the context of a
public
controversy over Moon, investigations into Korean influence
activities,
and strained relations between the two countries.

The
misuse of the names of prominent Americans by the KCFF was of
concern to U.S.
Government agencies as early as 1966. Much of the
executive branch’s early
awareness of Korean influence activities in the
United Sates — including
those of Tongsun Park — arose from State
Department and congressional
inquiries into KCFF publicity and
fundraising activities. However, these
activities were not then
perceived to be linked to Moo. Later, when Moon’s
activities generated
publicity in the United Sates, there were numerous
requests to the
executive branch, as well as to the Congress and to State and
local
authorities, for information about Moon and for investigations of
his
organization’s activities. The response to these inquiries was
fragment.
Numerous investigations were launched by agencies such as the NEC,
INS,
and Depart-

390
ment of Justice which involved one or another
component of the Moon
Organization. The subcommittee’s investigation led it
to conclude that
these investigations were justified and should continue.
However, the
subcommittee believes that these investigations will be
inconclusive and
redundant unless they are coordinated with each other and
treated as an
investigation of essentially one organization. The
subcommittee
concludes that the following objective could be met by
combining
investigative activities related to the Moon Organization into
an
interagency task force:

(1) Consideration could be given as to
whether apparently unrelated
immigration, FARA, currency, banking, and other
violations were in
furtherance of a common scheme or plan.

(2) All
existing information bearing upon the same subjects could be
brought together
and analyzed; earlier investigations which failed to do
this allowed improper
influence activities to continue until they caused
a major public scandal
affecting Korean-American relations.

(3) Maximum resources could be
employed toward tracing cash and
obtaining evidence from outside the United
States.

(4) Tax money could be saved by combining related investigations
and
eliminating duplication of effort.

Executive Branch Task
Force

(1) The Department of Justice, the SEC, the IRS, and other
executive
branch agencies currently investigation allegations relating to
Sun
Myung Moon, Pak Bo Hi, the UC, the KCFF, and other individuals
and
organizations comprising the Moon Organization (as described in
this
report) should coordinate their efforts and form an interagency
task
force.

(2) In addition to continuing present investigations, the
task force
should address itself to the following issues:

(a) Whether
there have been systemic and planned violations of U.S.
immigration laws and
regulations in connection with the importation of
large numbers of foreign
nationals for purposes of fundraising,
political activities, and employment
in the Moon Organization business
enterprises.

(b) Whether there have
been systematic and planned violations of U.S.
currency and foreign exchange
laws in connection with the movement of
millions of dollars of cash and other
financial assets into and out of
the United States without complying with
appropriate reporting
requirements.

(c) Whether U.S. tax laws have
been violated through large cash
transfers to individuals which were
characterized as loans.

(d) Whether tax-exempt organizations such as the
Unification Church,
Freedom Leadership Foundation, Korean Cultural and
Freedom Foundation,
and International Cultural Foundation, have engaged in
political,
business, and other activities inconsistent with their
tax-exempt
status; and whether these organizations are so closely affiliated
with
each other and with non-tax-exempt business and organizations so as
to
render them ineligible for tax-exempt status.

(e) Whether there
have been systemic violations of the Foreign Agents
Registration Act by the
Moon Organization.

391
(f) Whether there have been violations of
currency, immigration, banking
and tax laws in connection with Moon
Organization investments in the
Diplomat National Bank and other businesses
in the United States.

(g) Whether there have been instances of charity
fraud, violations of
currency and immigration laws, and abuse of tax-exempt
status in
connection with the Moon Organization’s control over the Korean
Cultural
and Freedom Foundation.

(h) Whether there have been attempts
to violate, or violations of, the
Arms Export Control Act in connection with
the manufacture, sale, or
attempted sale of M-16 rifles or other armaments by
agents of the Moon
Organization.

(3) The task force should use the
resources of the following agencies:
Department of Justice (including the
FBI, Anti-Trust Division, and INS);
Department of Treasure;
Securities and
Exchange Commission;
Federal Reserve Board;
Internal Revenue Service;
and
Department of State.


(4) The Department of State should assist
the task force in attempting
to obtain witnesses, financial data, and other
cooperation from foreign
governments, particularly Japan and South
Korea.

(5) The task force should seen information from appropriate State
and
local governments and should make information available to State
and
local governments for use in appropriate proceedings
involving
enforcement of their laws.

The subcommittee also recommends
that appropriate committees of the
Congress review certain information
pertaining to the Moon Organization.
Current U.S. tax laws and regulations
made it impractical for the
subcommittee to examine the tax returns of such
Moon Organization
components as the Unification Church International, which
was denied
tax-exempt status by the IRS. However, there is reason to believe
that
taxable Moon Organization components derive tax advantages
from
transfers to tax-exempt components. Since both taxable and
tax-exempt
organizations are used interchangeably in the Moon Organization,
such
tax advantages would enable the Moon Organization to pyramid
economic
power and achieve a substantial advantage over competing
organizations.
The subcommittee therefore suggests a review by the House Ways
and Means
Committee and the Senate Finance Committee — which have access to
tax
returns — to determine whether transfers of funds within the
Moon
Organization raise issues which point to the need for legislation
to
prevent the abuse of tax-exempt status. More specifically,
the
subcommittee recommends that the House Ways and Means Committee and
the
Senate Finance Committee review the applications for tax-exempt
status
(where applicable) and the tax returns of Moon Organization
entities,
including: Unification Church; Freedom Leadership
Foundation;
Unification Church International; International Cultural
Foundation;
Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation; Tong-Il Enterprises;
One-Way
Productions; International Oceanic Enterprises; and News
World
Communications.

392
and determine whether:

(a) Income
from abroad is properly reported.

(b) Deductions are taken by businesses
for charitable contributions to
tax-exempt organizations, the actual control
of which is in the hands of
the same persons and organizations in control of
the businesses.

(c) New legislation or regulations are needed to prevent
tax avoidance
and pyramiding of economic power by means of recycling funds
through an
international organization, part of which is
tax-exempt.

The subcommittee has also referred its findings to the Armed
Services
and Intelligence Committees of the House and Senate, and to
the
Munitions Control Board of the State Department, with the
suggestion
that more precise information be obtained without the
Moon
Organization’s role as a Korean defense contractor. During
the
investigation, the subcommittee found it very difficult to
obtain
reliable information about the extent to which Moon industries
were
involved in weapons production and sales. The Moon Organization
has
self-proclaimed goals of controlling political and secular
institutions
and a strident ideology which envisions the formation of a
“Unification
Crusade Army.” Moon’s speeches forsee an apocalyptic
confrontation
involving the united States, Russia, China, Japan, and North
and South
Korea, in which the Moon Organization would play a key role, Under
these
circumstances, the subcommittee believes it is in the interest of
the
United States to know what control Moon and his followers have
over
instruments of war and to what extent they are in a position
to
influence Korean defense policies.

Of particular concern is the
Moon Organization’s involvement in the
production and sale of M-16 rifles and
other weapons provided to Korea
under U.S. aid programs and subject to the
Arms Export Control Act. In
late 1977, Moon Organization representatives
tried to renegotiate a
coproduction agreement between Colt Industries and the
ROK Government.
The circumstances suggested they were secret envoys of the
Korean
Government which, under the coproduction agreement, has
exclusive
control over M-16 production. Although the ROK Government said it
wanted
to produce 300,000 extra M-16’s because of the need to equip its
own
forces, Moon Organization tried to get Colt’s agreement to export
guns
to third countries.

The subcommittee therefore
recommends:

That the House International Relations Committee, the House
Armed
Services Committee, and the corresponding committee of the
Senate
ascertain whether businesses operated by the Moon Organization
are
engaging in the production or same of armaments supplied to the
ROK
Government through U.S. military aid programs, including
coproduction
agreements. Information about the role played by Moon
Organization
industries in Korean defense production should be sought from
the
Appropriate U.S. defense and intelligence agencies.

The document
Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations
of the Committee on
International Relations is a publication of the
United States Government and
is thus part of the Public
Domain.
=====================================================================
(2)
George
W. Bush and The Moonies
The National Examiner/January 9, 2001
By Tom
Kuncl
President-Elect George W. Bush has a strong personal and
financial
connection with the cult-like Moonie church, say sources. Critics
say
the Moonie church opposes Christianity and the American way.

In
fact, the Bush family may have received as much as $10 million from
the
Moonies in recent years. Rev. Sun Myung Moon considers himself a
personal
friend of our new president, according to newspaper reports.

The incoming
chief executive’s own father – former President George H.
Bush – has been
courted by the Rev. Moon’s Unification Church since he
became vice president
in the Reagan administration, says a report by
investigative journalist and
Newsweek correspondent Robert Parry.

Rev. Moon, now 80, was even a VIP
guest at the Reagan-Bush inauguration.

The mega-wealthy South Korea-based
church remained an unwavering
supporter of the elder Bush’s presidency,
especially in the Moonie-owned
Washington Times newspaper, Parry
says.

“The 15-year-old Washington Times doesn’t rank among the Top 100
U.S.
dailies in terms of circulation,” writes columnist Norman
Solomon.

“Yet, financied by the Unification Church’s deep pockets, it
wields
enormous influence in the nation’s capital. Elevating innuendo
to
‘news’, the paper excels at smearing liberals and centrists.”

This
influence, writes Parry, “could extend into the next century as
the
ex-president works to shore up convervative support for his eldest
son.”
The Times endorsed Bush in his election race against Al
Gore.

“Sources close to Bush say the ex-president has worked hard to
pull
well-to-do conservatives and their money behind their son’s
candidacy.
Moon is one of the deepest pockets in right-wing circles,
having
financed important conservative activists from both the religious
right,
such as Jerry Falwell, and Inside-the-Beltway right-wing
professionals.”

When the elder Bush was defeated after one term, says
Solomon, the
Unification Church in essence handed the ex-president a
so-called
“golden parachute” – business slang for chief executives’ usually
hefty
severance packages.

Solomon quoted a spokesman for the elder
Bush as saying: “President Bush
has no relationship with Rev. Moon or the
Unification Church.” But,
Solomon wrote: “The facts tell a very different
story.”

Parry confirms that the elder Bush could have become a wealthy
man
merely from the checks for speaking at many high-profile Moonie
events
on three continents, including the launch of a church-owned newspaper
in
Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“Estimates of Bush’s fee for the Buenos
Aires appearance alone ran
between $100,000 and $500,000,” wrote Parry.
“Sources close to the
Unification Church have put the total Bush-Moon package
in the millions,
with one source [estimating] that Bush stood to make as much
as $10
million.” Bush has consistently refused to answer if or how much he
has
been paid by Moon.

Shockingly, if the Bush family is accepting all
this cash, it’s coming
from a man who has given speeches calling America “the
kingdom of Satan”
and vowing “the liquidation of American
individualism.”

John Stacey, a former Moonie, says: “It’s very
anti-Jesus. Moon says:
‘Jesus failed miserably. He died a lonely death. Rev.
Moon is the hero
that comes and saves Jesus.’ That’s why I left.”

As
President-elect George W. Bush prepares to occupy the Oval Office,
critics
claim the elder Bush’s activities create a clear conflict
of
interest.

The elder Bush has a “public persona as the happy World
War II veteran
who is letting the American people see him jumping out of
airplanes and
being a good family man,” says historian Douglas Brinkley of
the
University of Louisiana. “And the covert persona is going around
giving
talks with people like Rev. Moon.”

Meanwhile, the incoming
president has admitted that while his father
won’t have a formal title in his
administration, “of course, I will seek
his
advice.”

=====================================================================
(3)
Rev.
Moon, North Korea & the Bushes
Consortium News.com/October 11, 2000
By
Robert Parry
The Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s business empire, which includes
the
conservative Washington Times, paid millions of dollars to North
Korea’s
communist leaders in the early 1990s when the hard-line
government
needed foreign currency to finance its weapons programs, according
to
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents.

The payments included a
$3 million “birthday present” to current
communist leader Kim Jong Il and
offshore payments amounting to “several
tens of million dollars” to the
previous communist dictator, Kim Il
Sung, the partially declassified
documents said.

Moon apparently was seeking a business foothold in North
Korea. But the
transactions also raise legal questions for Moon and could
cast a shadow
on George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, given the Bush
family’s
longstanding financial and political ties to Moon and his
organization.

Besides making alleged payments to North Korea’s communist
leaders, the
80-year-old founder of the South Korean-based Unification Church
has
funneled large sums of money, possibly millions of dollars as well,
to
former President George H.W. Bush.

One well-placed former leader of
Moon’s Unification Church told me that
the total earmarked for former
President Bush was $10 million. The
father of the Republican nominee has
declined to say how much Moon’s
organization actually paid him for speeches
and other services in Asia,
the United States and South America.

At
one Moon-sponsored speech in Argentina in 1996, Bush declared, “I
want to
salute Reverend Moon,” whom Bush praised as “the man with the
vision.” Bush
made these speeches at a time when Moon was expressing
intensely
anti-American views. In his own speeches, Moon termed the
United States
“Satan’s harvest” and claimed that American women
descended from a “line of
prostitutes.”

During this year’s presidential campaign, Moon’s Washington
Times has
attacked the Clinton-Gore administration for failing to take
more
aggressive steps to defend against North Korea’s missile program.
The
newspaper called the administration’s decisions an “abdication
of
responsibility for national security.”

A Helping Hand

Yet,
in the 1990s when North Korea was scrambling for the resources to
develop
missiles and other advanced weaponry, Moon was among a small
group of outside
businessmen quietly investing in North Korea.

Moon’s activities attracted
the attention of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, which is responsible for
monitoring potential military threats
to the United States.

Though
historically an ardent anticommunist, Moon negotiated a business
deal in 1991
with Kim Il Sung, the longtime communist leader, the DIA
documents
said.

The deal called for construction of a hotel complex in Pyongyang as
well
as a new Holy Land at the site of Moon’s birth in North Korea,
one
document said. The DIA said the deal sprang from a face-to-face
meeting
between Moon and Kim Il Sung in North Korea from Nov. 30 to Dec.
8,
1991.

“These talks took place secretly, without the knowledge of
the South
Korean government,” the DIA wrote on Feb. 2, 1994. “In the original
deal
with Kim [Il Sung], Moon paid several tens of million dollars as
a
down-payment into an overseas account,” the DIA said in a cable
dated
Aug. 14, 1994.

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, on Moon’s 80th birthday, Kim Jong Il sent
Moon a
gift of rare wild ginseng, an aromatic root used medicinally,
Reuters
reported.

Legal Issues

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.” [WT, 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 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.

Last year, 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, N.H., 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.” [WT, 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. [For details
on
other case, see The DailyHowler.]

‘Abdication’

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
administration for
postponing a U.S. missile defense system to counter
missiles from North
Korea and other “rogue states.” Gov. 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.” [WT,
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.

Robert Parry is a veteran
investigative reporter, who broke many of the
Iran-contra stories in the
1980s for The Associated Press and
Newsweek.
=====================================================================
(4)
The
Bush-Kim-Moon Triangle of Money
The Consortium/March 10, 2001
By Robert
Parry
At this past week’s summit, George W. Bush and South Korean
President
Kim Dae Jung disagreed publicly on how to deal with communist
North
Korea – Bush advocated a harder line. But the two leaders have
a
little-known bond in common: the political largesse of the Rev.
Sun
Myung Moon.

For more than three decades, Moon, the founder of the
South Korea-based
Unification Church, has spun a worldwide spider’s web of
influence,
connecting to hundreds of powerful leaders through the silken
threads of
his mysterious money.

Moon’s beneficiaries include the Bush
family and, according to U.S.
intelligence reports, Kim Dae Jung. Though
seldom discussed publicly,
the Moon-Bush connection has been reported before
- and detailed in this
publication. But Moon’s financial links to Kim Dae
Jung – a longtime
dissident who opposed the authoritarian governments that
ruled South
Korea during the Cold War – have remained secret.

U.S.
intelligence stumbled onto the Moon-Kim connection while monitoring
South
Korean political developments in 1987. By that time, Moon’s
Unification
Church already had built close ties to the Reagan-Bush
administration,
especially through Moon’s funding of conservative causes
and his
$100-million-a-year subsidy of the right-wing Washington Times,
hailed by
Ronald Reagan as his “favorite” newspaper.

Back in South Korea, however,
Moon’s longtime coziness with his home
nation’s autocratic rulers was
strained. Moon was on the outs with the
ruling Democratic Justice Party
(DJP), the U.S. Defense Intelligence
Agency noted in a cable dated Sept. 10,
1987.

“The UC (Unification Church) … has not been happy with the
somewhat
cold treatment it has received under the current DJP government,”
the
DIA cable reported.

In response to this chilliness, Moon secretly
began financing several
opposition figures, the DIA reported. One was a
longtime Moon ally, Kim
Jong Pil, not to be confused with North Korea’s
current leader Kim Jong
Il.

By the late 1980s, Kim Jong Pil had a long
record of association with
Moon. A 1978 U.S. congressional investigation into
the so-called
“Koreagate” influence-buying scandal reported that Kim Jong Pil
founded
the South Korean CIA in the 1960s and assisted Moon’s Unification
Church
in building its influence in Japan and the United States.

The
congressional investigation concluded that Kim Jong Pil and the
South Korean
CIA helped Moon expand his church into a well-financed
international
organization. They then used Moon’s organization to buy
influence inside the
U.S. government, the congressional investigation
found.

Kim Jong Pil
also had served as South Korean prime minister in the early
1970s. In 1987,
however, Kim Jong Pil was out of power and considering a
run for the South
Korean presidency.


The DIA Reports
According to the Defense
Intelligence Agency, Kim Jong Pil was one of
the candidates who benefited
from Moon’s estrangement from the ruling
Democratic Justice
Party.

“Kim Jong-Pil is reportedly receiving financial and
organizational
support for his KS (South Korean) presidential bid from
the
controversial Unification Church,” the DIA reported in its Sept.
10,
1987, cable. But Moon’s organization did not stop with its old ally.
The
DIA discovered that Moon was hedging his bets by putting money into
the
hands of Kim Dae Jung and other leaders of the Reunification
Democratic
Party.

“Cult trying to win influence with the next KS
government while
defeating the current ruling party’s candidate,” read the
title of
another DIA report dated Sept. 22, 1987.

“The controversial
Unification Church (UC) is actively funneling large
amounts of political
funds to opposition Reunification Democratic Party
(RDP) advisor Kim
Dae-Jung, … RDP president Kim Young-Sam, … and
former KS prime minister
Kim Jong-Pil for their campaigns for KS
president, leaving out only the
ruling party candidate, Democratic
Justice Party (DJP) president Roh
Tae-Woo,” the DIA report said.

“The UC wants to see Roh defeated and is
funneling large amounts of
political funds to Roh’s three opponents with the
expectation that it
will have influence with whomever of the three should end
up as the next
president.” [I obtained these DIA reports under a Freedom of
Information
Act request.]

Eventually, the race boiled down to a
contest between Roh Tae Woo, Kim
Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam. On Dec. 16,
1987, Roh won with 36 percent of
the vote. Kim Young Sam got 28 percent and
Kim Dae Jung received 27
percent. Kim Jong Pil garnered only 8 percent. [For
details on the
election, see The Two Koreas by Don
Oberdorfer.]


Discreet Relationships
Though losing that round,
Moon’s beneficiaries did better in the years
that followed. Kim Jong Pil
again became prime minister, a post he held
from 1998 to early 1999. Kim Dae
Jung became president in 1998 and also
won the Nobel Peace
Prize.

Through the years, Kim Dae Jung did not advertise his ties to
Moon.
Kim’s association with the theocrat who considers himself the
new
Messiah has remained discreet, with the two men generally
avoiding
contact in public.

One exception came on Feb. 1, 1999, when
Moon and his wife – known to
their followers as the “True Parents” – were
holding a celebration at
the Lotte Hotel in Seoul. To the surprise of Moon’s
followers, Kim Dae
Jung arrived and enthusiastically joined the couple in
their ceremony.

According to the Unification News, the church’s internal
newsletter, the
Lotte Hotel event was “the first time President Kim appeared
in public
with our True Parents.”

Though less secret, Moon’s
relationship with the Bush family also
remains little known to most
Americans. Moon’s organization has paid the
Bush family directly – for
speeches in the 1990s – but the alliance
appears to have grown primarily
through Moon’s extravagant financial
support for The Washington Times, which
has consistently backed the
Bushes politically.

After its founding in
1982, The Washington Times staunchly supported
some of the Reagan-Bush
administration’s most controversial policies,
such as the contra war in
Nicaragua.

When the contra operation was embarrassed by initial public
disclosures
of contra drug trafficking in 1985-86, The Washington Times led
the
counterattack, criticizing journalists and congressional
investigators
who uncovered the first evidence of the problem.

Those
attacks helped cement a conventional wisdom in the Washington
political
community that the contra-drug allegations were bogus, a
belief that
persisted until 1998 when the CIA’s inspector general
admitted that dozens of
contra units were implicated in cocaine
trafficking and that the Reagan-Bush
administration had hidden much of
the evidence. [See Robert Parry's Lost
History.]

The Washington Times also led the charge against Iran-contra
special
prosecutor Lawrence Walsh in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The
newspaper’s rear-guard defense of its allies proved important
when
Walsh’s investigation threatened to break through the long-running
White
House cover-up that was protecting Bush’s assertion that he was “out
of
the loop” on the scandal. [For details on The Washington Times'
role,
see Walsh's book, Firewall.]

During national political
campaigns, Moon’s Washington Times was
especially influential, mounting harsh
- and often inaccurate – attacks
on the Bush family’s adversaries.

In
1988, when George H.W. Bush was running for president, The Washington
Times
publicized false rumors about the mental health of Democratic
candidate
Michael Dukakis, an important first step in raising doubts
about the
Massachusetts governor.

President George H.W. Bush grew so appreciative
of The Washington Times
that in 1991, he invited its editor-in-chief, Wesley
Pruden, to the
White House for a private lunch. Bush explained that the
purpose of the
lunch was “just to tell you how valuable the Times has become
in
Washington, where we read it everyday.” [WT, May 17, 1992]

In
Bush’s 1992 reelection campaign, The Washington Times was helping
again,
spreading new false rumors that Bill Clinton might have betrayed
his country
during a college trip to Moscow, possibly being recruited by
the KGB as a
spy.


Lining Pockets
After George H.W. Bush lost in 1992, The
Washington Times shifted from
defense to offense. The newspaper became a
leading conservative weapon
in mounting attacks on the Clinton
administration.

During the Bush family’s years out of power, Moon put
money directly
into their pockets, too. Moon-affiliated organizations paid
for speeches
by former President Bush in the United States, Asia and South
America.
Sometimes, Barbara Bush joined her husband in these appearances.
The
price tag for the speeches has been estimated at from hundreds
of
thousands of dollars to $10 million, a figure cited to me by a
senior
Unification Church official in the mid-1990s.

The elder Bush
has refused to divulge how much money he received from
Moon-affiliated
organizations. During one 1996 appearance in Buenos
Aires, Argentina, the
senior Bush went beyond a mere speech to act as a
kind of international
lobbyist for the Moon organization.

At the time, Moon was planning to
launch a new newspaper, Tiempos del
Mundo, and his supporters were upset over
critical coverage in South
American newspapers. The South American press was
pointing out Moon’s
close association with right-wing “death-squad”
governments of the 1970s
and the so-called “Cocaine Coup” regime in Bolivia
in the early 1980s.

Moon’s defenders were forced to issue public denials
that Moon’s
mysterious source of wealth came from drug trafficking and
other
organized-crime activities.

These allegations were threatening
the Tiempos del Mundo launch, Moon’s
followers feared. But Moon had a special
weapon to prove his
respectability: the endorsement of the 41st president of
the United
States.

Bush arrived on Nov. 22, 1996, and stayed with
Argentine President
Carlos Menem at his official residence. The next day,
Bush gave the
keynote address at the newspaper’s inaugural
dinner.

“Mr. Bush’s presence as keynote speaker gave the event
invaluable
prestige,” wrote the Unification News. “Father [Moon] and Mother
[Mrs.
Moon] sat with several of the True Children [Moon's offspring] just
a
few feet from the podium.”

Bush lavished praise on Moon and his
journalistic enterprises. “I want
to salute Reverend Moon,” Bush said. “A lot
of my friends in South
America don’t know about The Washington Times, but it
is an independent
voice. 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.”

Bush’s endorsement wasn’t exactly accurate. A stream of editors
and
correspondents have left The Washington Times, complaining about
the
interference of Moon’s operatives. But Moon’s followers believed
Bush’s
intervention stanched the flow of negative press stories and saved
the
day.


‘Satanic’ America
In those eight years of the Bush
family’s hiatus from power, Moon also
grew increasingly anti-American, often
telling his followers that the
United States was “Satanic.” He vowed to build
a movement powerful
enough to absorb America and eliminate what Moon saw as
America’s
destructive tendencies toward individualism.

“Americans who
continue to maintain their privacy and extreme
individualism are foolish
people,” Moon told his followers during one
speech on Aug. 4, 1996. He then
said, “Once you have this great power of
love, which is big enough to swallow
entire America, there may be some
individuals who complain inside your
stomach. However, they will be
digested.”

During the 2000 campaign,
The Washington Times was back helping the Bush
family achieve its political
restoration. Day after day, the newspaper
published articles undercutting
Democrat Al Gore – even questioning his
sanity – while boosting the candidacy
of George W. Bush.

In late 1999, The New York Times and The Washington
Post created a
controversy by misquoting Gore as claiming credit for starting
the Love
Canal toxic-waste cleanup. The two newspapers quoted Gore as saying
“I
was the one that started it all” when in fact he was referring to
a
similar Tennessee toxic-waste case and said, “that was the one
that
started it all.”

Yet, with the bogus quote touching off a wave of
media ridicule about
Gore’s supposed lack of credibility, The Washington
Times eagerly joined
the pack and returned to its old game of questioning the
sanity of its
political enemies. A Washington Times editorial termed Gore
“delusional”
and stated, “The real question is how to react to Mr.
Gore’s
increasingly bizarre utterings.”

The editorial went on to call
Gore “a politician who not only
manufactures gross, obvious lies about
himself and his achievements but
appears to actually believe these
confabulations.” [WT, Dec. 7, 1999]

Even after The New York Times and The
Washington Post corrected their
misquote, The Washington Times continued to
use the bogus quote. On Dec.
31, 1999, Moon’s newspaper published a column
entitled “Liar, Liar;
Gore’s Pants on Fire.” The column repeated the false
quote and concluded
that “when Al Gore lies, it’s without any apparent
reason.”

The media drumbeat about Gore’s supposed lies – often built on
similar
press exaggerations and outright errors – became a key element of
the
2000 campaign. Many Republican strategists viewed the
widespread
perception of Gore as untrustworthy as crucial in holding down
Gore’s
vote and clearing George W. Bush’s route to the White
House.


Payback
Now, with the Bush family back in charge, Moon’s
organization appears in
line for some financial payback. George W. Bush’s
plan to funnel
government money into religious charities is expected to be
especially
profitable for Moon’s front groups that are organized as
non-profit
charities.

The Rev. Pat Robertson, the conservative
televangelist, is among those
who have raised the alarm about how Bush’s
“faith-based” initiative
could line Moon’s pockets.

On the “700 Club”
television program, Robertson warned that Moon’s
Unification Church could
become one of the financial “beneficiaries of
the proposal to expand
eligibility for government grants to religious
charities.” [Washington Post,
Feb. 22, 2000]

Besides the possibility of collecting U.S. taxpayers’
money, Moon also
continues to benefit from a determined see-no-evil stance of
the U.S.
government toward Moon’s political-religious-business
organization.

Widespread evidence exists of money-laundering by Moon’s
operation -
including first-hand statements by church insiders including his
former
daughter-in-law. But this evidence simply disappears into a black
hole
of federal indifference.

Moon’s business dealings with communist
North Korea, dating back to 1991
and the first Bush administration, also have
prompted no official U.S.
reaction. Based on what is known publicly, Moon
would appear to be in
violation of the long-standing U.S. trade embargo
against North Korea.
That embargo covered Moon because he is a legal U.S.
resident -
possessing a “green card” – and thus required to abide by U.S.
sanction
laws.

According to other DIA documentation that I obtained
under FOIA, Moon
delivered millions of dollars in secret payments to North
Korea’s top
officials – including current communist leader Kim Il
Song.

Those payments, in the early-to-mid 1990s, came at a time when
the
communist regime was desperate for hard currency to support
its
development of nuclear weapons and long-range
missiles.

Ironically, it is that arms buildup that George W. Bush now
cites as a
chief reason for postponing further negotiations with North Korea
- and
for spending tens of billions of dollars to build a U.S. nuclear
“Star
Wars” shield.

During this past week’s summit, South Korea’s
president Kim Dae Jung
disagreed with Bush over the cessation of talks with
North Korea. Bush
attacked the North Koreans as untrustworthy.

Yet,
behind the scenes — though perhaps not fully apparent to either
man — was
this odd connection linking the Bush family, Kim Dae Jung and
the communist
leaders of North Korea.

It was the secret bond of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s
mysterious money. Robert
Parry is an investigative reporter who broke many of
the Iran-contra
stories in the 1980s for The Associated Press and
Newsweek.
=====================================================================
(5)
Longtime
Moonie for Dubya’s team?
George W. Bush has raised some eyebrows by
nominating a former V.I.P.
from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church
to a top government
position.

MSNBC News/April 22, 2003
By Jeanette
Walls with Ashley Pearson
For his new Deputy of U. S. Trade, Bush has
selected Josette Shiner, a
longtime member of the Unification Church, whose
members are sometimes
derisively called “The Moonies.” Shiner was also the
managing editor for
Moon’s Washington Times newspaper.

In December,
Bush gave another longtime Moon follower a plum
appointment. He named David
Caprara to head AmeriCorps at VISTA, leading
some to question whether Bush is
paying back the reverend for his
generosity to the Bush family.

Shiner
joined the Unification Church in 1975, and although she has said
that she
became a practicing Episcopalian in 1996, she has never
publicly repudiated
Moon, whose followers believe that he is the true
Messiah.

If
appointed, Shiner will have tremendous influence over trade in Africa
and
Asia, including, of course, Moon’s homeland of Korea, where he has
extensive
business
interests.
=====================================================================
(6)Why
is TV news ignoring the relationship between Moon and the Bush
family?
Why
won’t Congress and the television news media investigate the
relationship
between the Bush family and Sun Myung Moon?

Online Journal/February 22,
2001
By Carla Binion
The following essay explains why the story is
newsworthy. While TV
talking heads hamm

Folks,