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CounterPunch
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."
Now, at a time when Moon may be influencing
United States foreign policy vis a vis North Korea, a known nuclear
power, and risking a nuclear war in northeast Asia and hundreds
of thousands and possibly millions of deaths, it may be time
for Congress to once again launch an investigation of a man whose
sole purpose is to unify the world under his direction. It has
been over 60 years since the world heard a man talk like that:
his name was Adolf Hitler.
Wayne Madsen
is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist.
He wrote the introduction to Forbidden
Truth.
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
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