Reply #17: Dark Side of Rev Moon: Truth, Legend & Lies

[Octafish]

Hillary knew what she was talking about when she called it a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

Dark Side of Rev Moon: Truth, Legend & Lies

By Robert Parry
Consortiumnews.com

For a decade and a half, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times has pushed deeper and deeper into Washington's political mainstream. Though viewed initially as a quirky right-wing propaganda sheet, the newspaper now gets the respect that is afforded few other daily American newspapers. Given its strategic spot in Washington, many of its stories are picked up nationally; its columnists are regulars on TV talk shows; and C-SPAN's Brian Lamb often hoists the front page before a national cable audience.

More broadly, the Times' day-in-day-out treatment of issues shapes the parameters of journalistic attitudes in the nation's capital. Yet, since its founding in 1982, the paper has held itself above traditional journalistic principles of balance and objectivity.

During the 1980s, the Times gushed with favorable stories about Ronald Reagan and his White House while pouring abuse on presidential critics. Moon's paper was an important Republican weapon in congressional battles and electoral campaigns, such as when it spread false rumors about Michael Dukakis's mental health in 1988.

President Reagan and his successor, George Bush, recognized the Times' contributions. Reagan hailed it as his "favorite" newspaper, and in 1991, when Wesley Pruden was elevated to editor-in-chief, Bush invited him to a private White House lunch "just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day."

SNIP...

Yet, while demanding thorough investigations of some Asian influence-buying, the newspaper still takes pains to conceal its own clandestine Asian financing -- and the Koreans who pull the strings of the newspaper's editors. On the editorial page, the Times' masthead touts its nickname as "America's Newspaper" and lists 19 executives with European-sounding surnames: from the company's vice president to director of computer services. But conspicuously absent from the list is the newspaper's publisher, Dong Moon Joo, and its founder, Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah who heads the Korea-based Unification Church.

In Moon's case, the Asian connection is especially relevant, because of scandals surrounding his early activities in America. U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies monitored the church in the 1960s and '70s, considering it a potential national security threat to the United States. Reports by the CIA, the FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency painted a picture of a secretive religion with close ties to South Korea's brutal intelligence service, the KCIA, as well as to prominent right-wing industrialists linked to the Japanese mob, the yakuza.

In the late 1970s, a congressional investigation drew on these reports in tying the Unification Church to "Koreagate," an influence-buying scheme directed by the KCIA against American targets. Investigators traced the church's chief sources of money to bank accounts in Japan, but could follow the cash no further.

When I inquired about the vast fortune that the Unification Church has poured into its American operations, the church's chief spokesman refused to divulge dollar amounts for any of Moon's activities. "Each year the church retains an independent accounting firm to do a national audit and produce an annual financial statement," wrote church legal representative Peter D. Ross. "While this statement is used in routine financial transactions by the church, is not my policy to make it otherwise avail-able." Ross also refused to pass on interview requests to Moon and other church leaders.

For years, church officials have maintained that the money comes from U.S. fund-raising and from varied businesses, machine manufacturing to tuna fishing. But my interviews with a half dozen former senior church figures found solid agreement that the expense of just keeping The Washington Times afloat -- a figure that one ex-leader put at $100 million-plus a year -- far exceeds what the church generates in the United States.


Who Is Sun Myung Moon?

Despite Moon's influence in Washington, few Americans know much about his life and allegiances. His disciples already have begun to shroud his biography in the fog of legend. Church publications are filled with inspirational Sunday-school-type tales of Moon's courage and beneficence. Propaganda has worked its way into popular accounts as well, with books from conservative outlets, such as Regnery Publishing, challenging U.S. government evidence on Moon. Still, much of the record of Moon's life and his church's growth can be pieced together from government documents and statements by longtime followers.

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http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon4.html

In 1988, Pruneface Reagan said he wouldn't call Michael Dukakis a "mental invalid" for seeking counseling after Duakakis' brother was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The Moonie Times ran with the theme, which was picked up and echoed by the rest of Corporate McPravda. It would be difficult to get more vast than that.