sean moon rod of iron

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see moonie tag (no cont 7/14); see Wash Times

1020 bak/capt

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AN NO LNX

Busted: Embatteled Trump pick told 'Church of the AR-15' that US institutions must fall

Courtesy Kingdom Generation YouTube channel

Jordan Greenand Raw StoryMay 08, 2025

Ed Martin, Donald Trump’s embattled pick for U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, once told an AR-15-toting fringe religious group that institutions preventing Trump from overturning the 2020 election would fall like Jericho, according to footage reviewed by Raw Story but now seemingly removed from the internet by the group concerned.

“We’re gonna have Jericho March, Jericho March all around,” Martin said, alluding to the Biblical story of how Joshua led the Israelite army to attack the city of Jericho and slaughter its inhabitants.

“And if these principalities won’t yield to the truth and the Constitution, we know what happened in Jericho.”

Martin was then a Missouri Republican activist best known for leading Eagle Forum, a group formed by the arch-conservative Phyllis Schlafly.

He spoke outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 9, 2020, less than a month before Congress would convene a joint session to certify the electoral votes for the next president.

On Jan. 6 2021, when Congress convened, a mob of supporters who Trump told to “fight like hell” in his cause stormed the Capitol building. The attack failed to overturn Joe Biden’s election win but is now linked to nine deaths. In January, after Trump returned to power, he issued pardons and commutations for about 1,500 people in relation to the attack.

After being named top prosecutor for D.C. in an acting capacity, Martin personally dismissed charges against Jan. 6 defendants still awaiting trial.

Now, though, Martin’s chances of being confirmed in a permanent capacity appear to be foundering, amid concerns about his connections to the Capitol attack and his role in the “Stop the Steal” movement that fueled it.

‘We speak His truth’

Amid a frenzy of reporting on Martin's chances of confirmation, Martin’s speech outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 9 has been little remarked. But it reveals a startling moment.

Martin spoke to Rod of Iron Ministries, a breakaway sect from the Unification Church that worships with AR-15 rifles and is led by Pastor Sean Moon, son of the late Sun Myung Moon, who is revered by followers as the second coming of Christ.

On Jan. 6, Sean Moon would lead followers to the Capitol. Later, in an Instagram post, Moon celebrated rioters who he said “took dominion of the Satanic temple,” while sending “the most powerful people on the planet scurrying away, like rats, in total fear, total panic, in tunnels.”

On Dec. 9, Martin approached the group, which was preparing to rally in support of Trump. Dressed in a tan overcoat, he asked if he could borrow their microphone.

Introducing himself as “one of the founders of Stop the Steal,” Martin sought to encourage Moon and his followers to not get too hung up on whether Trump’s effort to overturn the election got snagged at the Supreme Court, and to keep fighting regardless.

Speaking with religious fervor, Martin entwined a vision of a Christian nation with unstinting loyalty to Trump.

“We are a republic founded on a Constitution and the rule of law,” Martin said. “But the Constitution and the rule of law mean nothing if you do not have the Judeo-Christian values that underlie it.

“Every one of us has turned to repent to the Lord; our nation has too. But we also turn to our fellow man, and say, ‘Do your job.’”

“Do your job! Do your job!” Rod of Iron members chanted.

The “fake news,” Martin warned, would say the Supreme Court’s decision on whether to hear challenges to the election would determine the winner. Not true, claimed Martin: “We all know at the end of today, the winner’s Jesus Christ almighty God.”

Trust the lawyers to fight the legal battles, Martin said, adding that the Rod of Iron members should stay focused on a greater truth.

“We speak His truth,” Martin said, “and then we bring our truth down here. And we have to be — like the old days — evangelizers of the truth, in the country, in this nation, because there’s too much at stake for us to turn away now. So, here’s the thing: Be encouraged. Be strengthened. Be fortified. And pray. But be ready to keep fighting.”

Martin then invited the Rod of Iron members to come back to the Supreme Court in three days for a “Jericho March,” alluding to the grisly fate of that city.

Video of Martin’s speech was filmed by Kyle Yoder, a supporter of Sean Moon, and posted on a YouTube channel named “Kingdom Generation” under the title “The Second King in front of the US Supreme Court,” an apparent reference to Moon.

Raw Story reviewed, transcribed and took screenshots of the video in July 2021. The video now appears to have been taken down.

Ed Martin (right) and Pastor Sean Moon, leader of Rod of Iron Ministries, hold up a "Stop the Steal" sign at the Supreme Court on Dec. 9, 2020.Courtesy Kingdom Generation YouTube channel

On Dec. 12, 2020, a “Jericho March” went ahead. One of the speakers was Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, who called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act or face a “much more desperate, much more bloody war.”

After the Capitol attack, Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 18 years in federal prison. He was released in January after receiving a commutation from Trump.

Martin was present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but was not charged. As an attorney, he represented some Jan. 6 defendants and became a fixture on conservative outlets that sought to recast the rioters as patriots duped by either “antifa” — leftwing groups — or the FBI.

In one 2024 podcast, Martin said he supported pardons even for defendants who were violent on Jan. 6, reasoning that “this whole thing was such a setup that, while I would never condone hitting a cop, the people that were put in a position and charged with that were put in a position.

“It’s not entrapment — it’s much more sophisticated than entrapment. It’s much more like an incitement on behalf of the entire system to get a result, and then to name it [insurrection]. And so I’m for pardoning all the people that were related to January 6, because I think it was such an egregious thing.”

‘No tolerance for anybody who entered the building’

After Trump’s return to power, Martin’s nomination as U.S. attorney for D.C. seemed set to succeed.

But Martin’s comments on Jan. 6 appear to have become a dealbreaker for some Republicans. While U.S. attorney appointments typically move through the Senate to confirmation without controversy, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, hasn’t scheduled a vote on Martin’s nomination.

In a more worrying sign for Martin, at the Capitol on Tuesday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a key swing vote, told ABC News that after meeting with Martin, he could not support him.

“I think anybody who breached the perimeter should have been in prison for some time,” Tillis said, of those who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6. “Whether it’s 30 days or three years is debatable, but I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January 6, and that’s probably where most of the friction was.”

When Trump was impeached for inciting the Capitol attack, Tillis voted to acquit, though he said Trump’s “words and actions were reckless and he shares responsibility for the disgrace that occurred on Jan. 6.”

Since Trump’s return to power, Tillis has expressed opposition to Jan. 6 pardons. But he must walk a political tightrope, towards a reelection bid in North Carolina that is expected to be among the closest contests next year. Angering Trump would put him at risk of a primary defeat.

Trump has spoken to senators. Nonetheless, on Tuesday, majority leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters he thought Tillis’s opposition would leave Martin’s nomination stuck in committee, and thus doomed. ABC said Tillis could still vote to advance Martin’s nomination to the full Senate, just without his support.

Raw Story requested comment from Martin, via the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He did not respond.

ALSO READ: 'Not regurgitating lies': The best way to combat Trump's maniacal delusions

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[### A Christian Gun Cult Holds a Trump Festival

The Nation

https://www.thenation.com › Article](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/rod-iron-freedom-festival-moon/)

Oct 21, 2024 — Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon began the second day of the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival with a sermon. Moon, 45, clutched a gold AR-15 and wore his ...

NATION MAG

Rev. Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon began the second day of the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival with a sermon. Moon, 45, clutched a gold AR-15 and wore his signature crown of bullets. He stood underneath a big tent in a muddy field in Greeley, Pennsylvania, and told his audience, “In John Chapter 2, we see that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, is an assault weapons manufacturer.”

His congregation, dressed in their Sunday best with red Make America Great Again hats, listened intently as Moon explained that Jesus told his disciples to break unconstitutional laws to save America from tyranny. The sermon was short, and Moon abruptly shifted from pastor to emcee. “Welcome to the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, folks. God bless you; may God save America using President Trump and every single one of you. God bless you. MAGA 2024, let’s go, baby!”

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October 2024 Issue

In 2017, Rod of Iron Ministries splintered from the Unification Church, a Korean cult founded by Sean Moon’s father, Sun Myung Moon. Adherents are called Moonies and believe that Sun Myung Moon is the messiah. Two of Sun Myung Moon’s sons, Sean and Kook-jin, or Justin, founded Rod of Iron Ministries. The church has many of the same core beliefs as the Unification Church—but it claims that AR-15s are the “rod of iron” that Jesus wields in the Book of Revelation. Perhaps not coincidentally, Justin Moon founded Kahr Arms, a firearms manufacturer that produces a commemorative Donald Trump AR-15.

The two-day festival was free and open to the public, but admission to Friday’s pre-event screening of Flynn, a film about the life of Michael T. Flynn, was $25. The retired lieutenant general and former national security adviser to Donald Trump has been touring to promote the movie. Flynn has partnered with Ivan Raiklin for Q&As across the country.

Raiklin is the man behind the “Pence card,” a legal theory that then–Vice President Mike Pence could have blocked the election certification on January 6, 2021, which led to Trump’s now-infamous tweet saying Pence lacked courage. Raiklin is also the self-appointed secretary of the so-called Department of Retribution, for which he maintains a “Deep State Target List” of journalists, politicians, and other foes. He wants to use sheriffs and local officials to arrest his enemies, and he has said that officials who crafted pro-vaccine Covid-19 policies should face “Public, Live-Streamed (in the interest of transparency) Capital punishment.”

After the first assassination attempt on Trump, Raiklin demanded that the former US Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle be executed. In a social-media post captioned “capital punishment,” Raiklin told Mark Zuckerberg, “There is no lawyering up” to defend his “crime” of restricting some pandemic misinformation on Meta.

Raiklin was not an outlier at the festival. One audience member asked Flynn if, under a Trump presidency, he “would sit at the head of a military tribunal to not only drain the swamp, but imprison the swamp, and on a few occasions, execute the swamp?”

Flynn said that accountability is needed, but “we have to win first.” The response was met with cheers. Given that members of the church were involved in the January 6 insurrection, this was not surprising.

Saturday featured a long lineup of speakers that included former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka, Pizzagate hoaxer and current Trump Force 47 associate Jack Posobiec, former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan, and Raiklin. The speeches were standard fare for right-wing events, which is to say alternately terrifying and bizarre. Homan promised to run the “biggest deportation operation ever in the United States” if Trump wins. Gorka told an over-the-top story about wearing a MAGA hat into a liberal coffee shop and finding secret Trump allies everywhere. The messages were clear: Americans are being replaced by immigrants, and only Donald Trump, who is beloved by most Americans no matter what the polls or voters say, can save us.

Faith Branch

Something that was unusual, even for a right-wing event, was that a shooting range was open for four hours each day. Guests had the opportunity to shoot AR-15s and other rifles. It wasn’t long before Raiklin made his way down to the range, taking his turn with one of the guns.

Raiklin is not usually friendly to journalists, even to ones not yet on his list. But after hitting the target just two-thirds of the time, Raiklin offered a few of journalists a ride back to the stage on his golf cart, and we set off, listening to him describe his plans for the Department of Retribution. “I’m doing it with or without Trump,” Raiklin told us. “It’s easier with him.”

Another journalist asked how having Trump in the White House would make things easier. Raiklin responded, “It would help because the president would not be on the list to receive retribution.”

The Freedom Festival is in its sixth year, and it never ceases to render even hardened reporters of the far right speechless—not necessarily because moments are so outrageous but because they’re so creepy. On Saturday, Reverend Moon—apparently going by his rapper name, King Bullethead—walked on stage and sang some bars about the upcoming election (“Too big! To rig!”). The calmest mosh pit I’d ever seen broke out, and then young men lined up on the stage. They each dove into the crowd in an orderly fashion, one at a time.

The next day, a Japanese choir, which had been flown in, performed. They wore MAGA hats and carried Trump flags and banners, including an AI-generated one where Trump is holding an assault rifle with a magazine emerging from both the top and bottom of the gun. The show started off normal enough; they sang “God Bless America.”

But then they began yelling, “We love Trump! We love Trump! We need Trump!” and wildly cheered when someone waved a cardboard cutout of Trump around the center of the stage. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” the choir yelled. Then they took off their red hats, bowed, and walked off stage.

A choir from Japan performs at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in in Greeley, Pennsylvania, on October 13.(Amanda Moore)

The final event is a bonfire meant to symbolize the burning of Babylon. (Sean Moon refers to his mother, who now leads the Unification Church, as the “whore of Babylon.”) Last year, the group lit the bonfire with a burning while singing and listening to a sermon. I was readying myself for a similar experience this year, but what happened was even more disturbing. There was firewood stacked at the top of a small hill, and a yellow rope for crowd control was set up to keep people from getting too close. A few of us journalists gathered in between the designated viewing space and the base of the hill, giving us a view of the crowd and the burning pyre.

The fire started quickly, without any preamble. The crowd sang “Amazing Grace,” and then stood in silence. Only the cackling of the fire and the occasional cries of a baby pierced the air. The silence seemed more sinister than the cheering and singing from last year. Standing in front of the rope, I started to feel like we were part of the show, too. The red-hatted crowd was staring at us, or maybe through us—the media—their expressionless faces illuminated by the fire.

“Was it like this last year? Were they this quiet?” I asked a videographer who had attended previous Rod of Iron festivals. He shook his head. “I was actually going to ask if you guys wanted to leave.”

Relieved that I wasn’t the only one uncomfortable, we slipped into the audience and began making our way to the back. Before we left, everyone in the audience raised their arms above their heads and yelled, “MAGA 2024!”

But true to form, the event balanced its terror with absurdity. As we returned to the car, a young man ran up to us and asked if we were the journalists. When we confirmed, he enthusiastically shared his message with us: Talk therapy should be illegal. He called it “spiritual prostitution” and handed us each a flyer. “I am a proud Christian Patriot determined to stand up to Big Therapy,” the flyer read. “I want to expose the damage done to conservatives by the people they have been misguided into trusting with their inner thoughts.”

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The Rod of Iron Ministries Reveres Guns, Is Ready to Fight for Trump

no pix lnx

Inside the Bizarre and Dangerous Rod of Iron Ministries

The AR-15 is a divine instrument for enforcing God's will — and that will, says Rod of Iron Ministries' leader, favors Trump

By Tim Dickinson

August 18, 2022

Days after the insurrection at the Capitol — where he’d been close enough to the rioting to get tear-gassed — Pastor Sean Moon posted an incendiary rant to Instagram. Wearing his trademark crown of bullets and speaking to the camera from behind a golden AR-15 assault rifle, Moon declared Jan. 6 had been the “Boston Tea Party of the Second American Revolution.”

Far from condemning the day’s violence, Moon praised the insurrectionists who “took dominion of the Satanic Temple” — that is to say, the U.S. Capitol building — and sent “the most powerful people on the planet scurrying away, like rats, in total fear, total panic, in tunnels.”

“God was victorious that day,” Moon insisted. “The criminals,” the pastor added — referring to America’s elected representatives who refused to back Donald Trump’s coup attempt — “can never take that image out of their mind. Now they realize, ‘Oh crap, if that happens again, the cops may stand down.’”

Moon is the leader of Rod of Iron Ministries, a breakaway militant sect of the Unification Church. The pastor, 42, is the son of the late global religious leader Sun Myung Moon, revered as the second coming of Christ by his followers, known colloquially as the “Moonies.” The younger Moon’s church has gained infamy by glorifying the AR-15 assault rifle as the biblical “rod of iron,” an instrument of God’s justice.

Headquartered outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Rod of Iron Ministries has stirred alarm with ceremonies in which its faithful bring their weapons to church. Moon preaches an end-times theology that’s intertwined with earthly politics. And along with his brother Justin — who, in a nifty twist, owns a gun company that sells assault weapons — Sean Moon has sought to build political power in MAGA world, by cultivating connections to the Trump sons, hosting an annual Freedom Festival that has attracted Steve Bannon to speak, and even forging ties to the NRA board member who put his name at the top of the list of the fake slate of 2020 Electoral College voters from Pennsylvania. Moon calls Teddy Daniels, a Jan. 6 participant who ran as Doug Mastriano’s preferred candidate for Pennsylvania lieutenant governor, “our great friend and brother in Christ.”

Moon has often been portrayed as a zany zealot rather than a threatening revolutionary, but the days when a preacher in a bullet crown could be laughed off as an oddity are over. At a time when GOP leaders are increasingly embracing violence as an acceptable — or even necessary — response to losing an election, Moon’s teachings offer another layer of cover, painting the overthrow of government as ordained by God.

The fervor for regime change that Moon uncorked after the assault on the Capitol has not abated. When the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago last week, Moon turned again to Instagram to blast the attorney general and top Justice Department officials as “abominable, deceit-spewing sociopaths,” imploring “Resist these devils, America. God is with us.”

Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon’s childhood was, to put it mildly, far from typical.

He grew up cloistered in his family’s 19-acre church compound in Westchester County, outside of New York City. Because of security threats his family faced, Moon recalls in a 2018 book, he was “not permitted to wander the neighborhoods, hang out with friends, or ride our bikes outside.” His outlet from bitter isolation — home, he writes, “seemed like a prison” — was self-defense training, including Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, of which he’s now a blackbelt, and, eventually, firearms.

Sean’s father, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, was the founder and leader of the Unification Church, the conservative global religious movement founded in South Korea. The elder Moon presented himself as a biblical messiah, and famously presided over mass “wedding” events in which believers were purportedly absolved of sin. For the elder Moon, homosexuality was a grave trespass against God, and he compared gay men to “dirty dung-eating dogs.”

‘Spiritual battle’

Rev. Hyung Jin "Sean" Moon poses with his gold AR-15 "rod of iron" at his home in Matamoras, Pennsylvania, in 2018. (Photo by Bryan Anselm/Redux for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Moon made inroads with the antigovernment movement and the far right thanks to his pro-Trump rhetoric and stance on firearms.

Rod of Iron is a staunchly pro-Second Amendment group. Moon made headlines in 2018 when he oversaw a blessing ceremony for Sanctuary Church members and their assault rifles, which Moon views as Biblical “rods of iron” to rule the coming heavenly kingdom built by his followers on earth.

Moon wears camouflage suits and a crown of bullets. During a 2018 interview, Moon told VICE News his appearance was “a little wacky” but “a fun way to talk about serious issues.”

These issues include calling left-wing politics “political Satanism,” telling his followers godly people “have to fight” communism, focusing on the “spiritual nature of the battle" to re-elect former President Donald Trump and claiming Capitol police and antifa made a deal to “instigate and try to make the Trumpers look bad” on Jan. 6.

Saccone will speak at the festival, but his topic is not stated on the festival’s website. Both Moon and Saccone attended the Jan. 6 protest that became an insurrection.

“We are storming the capitol,” Saccone said in a now-deleted Facebook post. “Our vanguard has broken through the barricades. We will save this nation. Are u with me?”

Former Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone (left) waves to the crowd as former President Donald J. Trump speaks to supporters in 2018 in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Saccone also posted a Jan. 6 photo with Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano, who has also appeared at Rod of Iron events, according to VICE.

None of the men face charges for attending the Jan. 6 protest.

Mastriano signed a letter in December 2020 asking the delegation to object to the state’s Electoral College votes cast in favor of President Joe Biden. Mastriano also traveled to Arizona to observe the Republican-controlled state Senate’s audit of ballots in the 2020 presidential election.

“Politics makes strange bedfellows sometimes,” Clarkson continued. “They need allies to go forward with undermining and seeking to discredit the validity of democratic institutions, making people lose confidence.”

Pro-Trump members of the Oath Keepers militia and Three Percenters also attended the insurrection. PRA said before the insurrection that militias’ “near lockstep support for Trump” could fashion them into a pro-Trump, anti-democratic paramilitary.

Moon leads his own group known as the Peace Police Peace Militia and trains followers in deadly force. Its political positions – including Patriot movement talking points about smaller government and local sovereignty – align with the broader antigovernment movement.

“They are organization with connections and significant power and able to play a pivotal role as an armed faction in the ongoing effort to destabilize democracy,” Clarkson said.

Cults and Christians

The speakers list also shows Rod of Iron’s reach into the Christian Right, in spite of its theological foundation.

The Sanctuary church is an offshoot of the Unification Church, which Moon’s father, Sun Myung Moon, founded in 1954. That church is based on unorthodox interpretations of Biblical texts. Sun Myung believed Christ did not complete his role as the Messiah because he died without starting a family, a necessary part of humanity’s path to salvation.

Sun Myung said Jesus passed him the role of savior. He married his second wife, Hak Ja Han, in 1960. Unification Church members refer to them as the “True Parents” who will redeem humanity.

Many consider the Unification Church a cult due to its control over members’ lifestyles**. Teddy Hose and Lisa Kohn, both former Unification Church members who grew up close to the Moon family, told Hatewatch they consider it a cult.

Sun Myung chose Sean as his successor in 2010, two years before his death. Moon separated from the main church in 2012 over disagreements with his mother, Hak Ja Han, who took leadership of the Unification Church. However, Moon still holds his father as a returned Messiah.

Janja Lalich, a cult expert and professor emeritus of California State University, Chico, told Hatewatch she considers the Sanctuary Church “a cult” and Rod of Iron Ministries a “troublesome movement.”

That has not stopped conservative Christian pastors from associating with Moon. Fisher and Haskell are both pastors at churches that hold Christ as the Messiah.

They call for a revival of the “Black Robed Regiment,” a group of New England pastors who fought the British in the American Revolution. The calls mirror present-day antigovernment extremist remarks about tyrannical government.

Fisher’s biography on the Rod of Iron website calls the original Black Robed Regiment “Patriot Pastors … who preached the biblical principles of liberty and government.”

Moon supports the regiment and wears a Black Robed Regiment patch on his vest.

Haskell’s biography says, “Our American Revolution would have never happened if it were not for the pastors in New England.”

The mixture of Christian pastors and far-right, antigovernment groups under the Rod of Iron banner “is disturbing,” said Jonathan Den Hartog, a scholar who specializes in American political and religious history and serves as chair of the history department at Samford University, a private Christian university in Birmingham, Alabama.

Further, stories about the Black Robed Regiment have little grounding in reality, according to Den Hartog.

“There was no such thing as an official ‘Black Robe Regiment’ in the revolution. … There were individual pastors who were involved in various ways,” he told Hatewatch.

There were some who preached in favor of war, Den Hartog said. Still, pastors of the revolutionary era gave few sermons in direct opposition to the British, and apart from those, “There aren’t any other calls for violence,” Den Hartog explained. “In fact, it’s the exact opposite, that the solidarity in opposition should remain relatively peaceful.”

Former Oath Keepers chaplain and Black Robed Regiment supporter Pastor Chuck Baldwin delivered a sermon to antigovernment forces at the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014. Cliven Bundy and hundreds of armed antigovernment extremists held off federal agents who attempted to collect over $1 million in owed fees.

A federal grand jury indicted Bundy on 16 counts related to the 41-day standoff in 2016, including conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States. A jury found him not guilty on all counts on Oct. 27, 2016. The jury’s decision shocked court watchers.

At least one group scheduled to appear at the festival regularly participates in violence. Patriot Prayer – which considers itself a Christian group – regularly planned protests in the Pacific Northwest that devolved into clashes with left-wing counterprotesters.

Joey Gibson, leader of Patriot Prayer, leads a group of "alt-right" demonstrators in August 2019 in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)

Gibson, the group’s leader, has said, “Everyone should be carrying around guns at all times.” Reggie Axtell, a Patriot Prayer associate, threatened Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, saying, “I promise you this, Ted Wheeler: I’m coming for you, you little punk.” Skylor Jernigan, an attendee of several Patriot Prayer events, made threats toward antifa on a Facebook video: “You’re gonna be getting knives put into your throat. You’re going to be getting bullets put into your head.”

Moon claims his militia and arms are only for self-defense.

But Den Hartog expressed concern over Rod of Iron’s armed training, along with the other speakers at the festival, given their antigovernment beliefs.

He concluded: “Are they talking about violence, are they talking about armed resistance? If you begin to see those types of discussion, that’s where I would be very concerned.”

Hatewatch sent a request for comment to the Sanctuary Church. Regis Hanna, media coordinator for the Freedom Festival, responded.

Hanna said festival speakers were “PRO-democracy.” Regarding concerns about Moon and attendees attending the Jan. 6 protest, Hanna said the actions of thousands of rioters “should not reflect poorly on those who attended and behaved in a respectful, peaceful and honorable manner.”

Hanna declined to comment on accusations that the Sanctuary Church is a cult.

Pastors Fisher and Haskell did not respond to Hatewatch’s request for comment, sent via email and through the website of the church where Haskell preaches.

===

GGL 10 24

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6 23

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d93qd/moms-for-liberty-proud-boys

alexandra Caballero was already well-known in Miami’s far-right scene as an organizer of anti-mask protests at school board meetings when, in August 2021, she joined the city’s chapter of the extremist “parental rights” group known as Moms for Liberty.

}::{

For six months, Caballero told VICE News that she was happy to be a member of the group. Founded in 2020, Moms for Liberty portrays itself as a wholesome, grassroots movement that is focused on protecting students. However, previous VICE News investigations uncovered a pattern of disturbing behavior by the group’s members, who have violently harassed and intimidated parents, school superintendents, school board members, and students who have stood up to them. Caballero took part in many of these protests and harassment campaigns until April 2022

Then, things turned sour.

}::{

After an argument with the local leader of the chapter, Eulalia María Jiménez-Hincapie, Caballero claims that she became the target of the very same harassment campaigns she’d once taken part in.

}::{

But the attacks didn’t just come from Moms for Liberty members, Caballero said; they also came from members of a local Proud Boys chapter. The Vice City Proud Boys were co-founded by former Proud Boy “chairman” Enrique Tarrio, who earlier this month was found guilty of seditious conspiracy by a federal jury in Washington, D.C. The alleged attacks included threats to her business, deeply personal messages referencing past trauma, and false police reports against her.

}::{

It’s not just Proud Boys that Moms for Liberty has allegedly gotten involved with, however. A VICE News investigation has uncovered links between numerous Moms for Liberty chapters and extremist groups like the Proud Boys, :{Three Percenters:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, :{sovereign citizen groups:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, :{QAnon conspiracist:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, :{Christian nationalists:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:, and in one case, with the founder of the AK-47-worshiping :{Rod of Iron Ministries:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: church in Pennsylvania. Around the country, Moms for Liberty has formed links with extremist groups and militias, which are joining forces with the “parental rights” group at protests and school board meetings, and in turn pushing the already far-right organization toward even more extreme ideology.

“There's an ongoing campaign by these neo-Nazi groups to radicalize some of these more benign patriot MAGA groups—and it's working because I've seen more Nazi content creeping into posts from Moms for Liberty people recently,” a researcher, who is known as Trash City, and who closely tracks Moms for Liberty activity, told VICE News earlier this month.

The attacks didn’t just come from Moms for Liberty members, Caballero said; they also came from members of a local Proud Boys chapter.

Earlier this month, a day after former President Donald Trump announced he would speak at the group’s annual summit alongside fellow Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the :{Southern Poverty Law Center:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: (SPLC) designated Moms for Liberty as an “anti-government extremist” organization for the first time.

}::{

“The group’s primary goals are to fuel right-wing hysteria and to make the world a less comfortable or safe place for certain students–primarily those who are Black, LGBTQ or who come from LGBTQ families,” the SPLC said in its report published this week.

}::{

In an emailed statement to VICE News, Moms for Liberty dismissed the designation as “name-calling” and said “no amount of hate from groups like [the SPLC] is going to stop” what its members are doing.

“The common mission”

During her six months as a member of Moms for Liberty, Caballero was involved in multiple situations where the group's members collaborated with the Proud Boys, she said, including a school board meeting in October 2021 where a left-wing activist was harassed outside a meeting for wearing a mask.

}::{

“The Proud Boys are heavily involved in the Miami chapter of Moms for Liberty,” Caballero said. "Moms for Liberty want to push their agenda with fear, harassment, and intimidation, and they have the Vice CityProud Boys as their foot soldiers.”

}::{

The two groups collaborated in Telegram chats, according to screenshots of the groups shared by Caballero and Miami Against Fascism, a group of online researchers who track the activity of far-right extremists in the region.

}::{

“They’ll create a Telegram chat group and they'll invite people and they'll do a call to action, and the call to action is usually attacking where the person works, making phone calls, leaving bad reviews,” Caballero said, describing the process of harassment.

“There's an ongoing campaign by these neo-Nazi groups to radicalize some of these more benign patriot MAGA groups—and it's working.”

In those chats, Jiménez-Hincapie can be seen interacting with Tarrio prior to the revelations in January 2021 that he once worked as a police informant about a decade ago. In one message, Tarrio compares Moms for Liberty to the “gestapo with vaginas.”

Tarrio was ousted soon after he was revealed as an informant, but Jiménez-Hincapie continued to collaborate with the local Proud Boys chapter, declaring in a message that she was “friends & loyal with Vice City.”

}::{

Jiménez-Hincapie also had a relationship with Chris Barcenas, one member of the local Proud Boys chapter who was part of the Proud Boys group that :{broke police lines on Jan. 6th:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:. Jiménez-Hincapie admitted in a July 2022 Telegram post that they “went out a couple of times” over a period of several months.

}::{

Jiménez-Hincapie dismissed her group’s links to the Proud Boys, telling VICE News that “right leaning organizations congregate in common core events for the common mission.” She refused to answer any other questions.

}::{

The national office of Moms for Liberty did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including emails with detailed lists of questions about the group’s links to extremists. Caballero also sent a registered letter, viewed by VICE News, informing Moms for Liberty leaders about Jiménez-Hincapie’s online harassment campaigns and close links to the Proud Boys. She said she never heard back from them.

}::{

The Miami-Dade chapter of Moms for Liberty has also been fairly successful at accomplishing their goals. Earlier this month, the group took credit for filing the complaint that led to :{the removal:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:of The Hill We Climb, a book adaptation of the poem Amanda Gorman recited at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, from a school library. The group has also :{successfully lobbied Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis}: to include one of the liberal school board members in Miami Dade in his list of 14 school board seats he is targeting in next year’s elections.

After breaking with the group, Caballero said her business was targeted with negative reviews and threatening messages were sent to her employees; Caballero believes, based on messages shared in Telegram groups she was a part of, that the harassment came from Moms for Liberty and the Proud Boys.

}::{

Caballero took out multiple restraining orders against Jiménez-Hincapie and others who were harassing her online, and, according to Caballero, only in recent weeks have the attacks subsided somewhat.

Political leanings

The political views of The Washington Times are often described as conservative.^{[^^25]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-24)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-25)^{26]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-25)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-26)^{27]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-26) The Washington Post reported: "the Times was established by Moon to combat communism and be a conservative alternative to what he perceived as the liberal bias of The Washington Post."^{[^^6]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-Washington_Post-5) In 1994 Reed Irvine, chairman of Accuracy in Media, a conservative media watchdog group, said: "The Washington Times is one of the few newspapers in the country that provides some balance."

The Times was read every day by President Ronald Reagan during his terms in office.^{[^^28]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-27) In 1997 he said:

The American people know the truth. You, my friends at The Washington Times, have told it to them. It wasn't always the popular thing to do. But you were a loud and powerful voice. Like me, you arrived in Washington at the beginning of the most momentous decade of the century. Together, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. And—oh, yes—we won the Cold War.^{[^^29]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-28)

Commentator Paul Weyrich has called the Timesan antidote to its liberal competitor:

The Washington Post became very arrogant and they just decided that they would determine what was news and what wasn't news and they wouldn't cover a lot of things that went on. And the Washington Timeshas forced the Post to cover a lot of things that they wouldn't cover if the Times wasn't in existence.^{[^^30]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-29)

In 1999 the Times was criticized by the Daily Howler for misquoting vice-president Al Gore.^{[^^31]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-dailyhowler.com-30) In 2000 the Howler criticized the Timesagain, this time for making unsubstantiated allegations about Gore's campaign fundraising.^{[^^32]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-31) In 2004 the Howler criticized a Times' front page story which made fun of Democratic Party presidential candidate John Kerry's vacationing in France.^{[^^33]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-32)

Conservative-turned-liberal writer David Brock, who worked for the Times' sister publication *Insight on the News*, said in his 2002 book *Blinded by the Right* that the news writers at the Times were encouraged and rewarded for giving news stories a conservative slant. In his 2004 book *The Republican Noise Machine*, Brock wrote "the Washington Times was governed by a calculatedly unfair political bias and that its journalistic ethics were close to nil."^{[^^34]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-33)

In his 2003 book, *Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them): A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right*, comedian, author, and later senator Al Franken devoted a chapter to criticizing the Times after executive editor Wesley Pruden re-wrote a reporter's story—without the reporter's knowledge—about Franken's performance at a White House party. According to Franken, the rewrite was made to appear as if Franken had received a negative reception, which he says was not the case.^{[^^35]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-lll-34)

The Washington Times has been accused of promoting racist views. Max Blumenthal in *The Nation* claimed that Times editor Fran Coombs had made a number of racist and sexist comments and was being sued by his colleagues for his remarks.^{[^^36]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-35). The Southern Poverty Law Center in its Spring 2005 report criticized the wife of Fran Coombs, for writing articles in what the report claimed as white nationalist websites such as the Occidental Quarterly.^{[^^37]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-36).

The Times has generally opposed gay and transgender rights.^{[^^38]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-MetroWeekly-Homosexual-37) In 2010, the Timespublished an editorial opposing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act because of its legal protections for transgender people.^{[^^39]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-WashingtonTimes-ENDA-38)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-Advocate-ENDA-39)^{40]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-Advocate-ENDA-39)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-GLAAD-ENDA-40)^{41]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-GLAAD-ENDA-40)The editorial criticized transgender people and said that gender identity is a choice, not an innate characteristic.^{[^^39]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-WashingtonTimes-ENDA-38)

In 2002, the Times published a story accusing the National Educational Association (NEA), the largest teachers' union in the United States, of promoting teaching students that the policies of the United States government were partly to blame for the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.^{[^^42]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-Salon.com_2002-09-05-41) This was denied by the NEA and by other commentators.^{[^^43]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-The_Boston_Globe.2C_2002-09-02-42)^{[^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-43)^44]

In 2007, *Mother Jones* said that the Times had become "essential reading for political news junkies" soon after its founding, and quoted James Gavin, special assistant to Bo Hi Pak:

We're trying to combat communism and we're trying to uphold traditional Judeo-Christian values. The Washington Times is standing up for those values and fighting anything that would tear them down. Causais doing the same thing, by explaining what the enemy is trying to do.^{[^^45]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-44)

In a 2008 essay published in *Harper's Magazine*, historian Thomas Frank linked the Times to the modern American conservative movement, saying:

There is even a daily newspaper—the Washington Times—published strictly for the movement’s benefit, a propaganda sheet whose distortions are so obvious and so alien that it puts one in mind of those official party organs one encounters when traveling in authoritarian countries.^{[^^46]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-45)

In 2009 the *New York Times* reported:

With its conservative editorial bent, the paper also became a crucial training ground for many rising conservative journalists and a must-read for those in the movement. A veritable who’s who of conservatives — Tony Blankley, Frank J. Gaffney Jr., Larry Kudlow, John Podhoretzand Tony Snow — has churned out copy for its pages.^{[^^47]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times#cite_note-nyt1212009-46)

Recent changes

---

hmmn

http://realsunmyungmoon.blogspot.com/

honorsFallwell

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3944/is_200003/ai_n8887990/

Haig attended (and Dennis K)

daut-in-law book: odd sex, violent, bastard son,

http://www.nndb.com/people/745/000022679/

---

2003 salon

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/09/24/moon/print.html

bad moon

---

blog

http://realsunmyungmoon.blogspot.com/2007/10/click-here-to-go-to-main-page-of-this.html

---

Robert Parry, "Money, Media & the Mess in America, consortiumnews.com, January 28, 2005.

Dirty Money

Another aspect of the conservative media corruption can be found in where some of the right-wing money originates.

The evidence is clear, for instance, that the wealth of one major conservative media tycoon – Rev. Sun Myung Moon – traces back to money illicitly laundered into the United States and possibly even to operatives connected to organized crime.

In the late 1970s, a congressional investigation, headed by Rep. Donald Fraser, discovered that Moon was a South Korean intelligence operative whose operations were financed from secretive bank accounts in Japan. Investigators also uncovered Moon’s close ties to the Japanese yakuza crime syndicate which runs drugs, gambling and prostitution rings in Asia.

Moon also associated with right-wing South American leaders implicated in cocaine trafficking. In 1980, Moon’s organization aided Bolivia’s “Cocaine Coup” conspirators who overthrew a left-of-center government and seized dictatorial power. The violent coup installed drug-tainted military officers at the head of Bolivia’s government, giving the putsch the nickname the “Cocaine Coup.”

U.S. government evidence about Moon’s money-laundering activities led to his conviction for tax fraud in 1982. But in that same year, flush with seemingly unlimited supplies of cash, Moon established the Washington Times as a reliable booster of Reagan-Bush policies.

Since then, the theocrat, who considers himself the new Messiah, has become a political untouchable in Washington. Both President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush made special pronouncements about how valuable they considered Moon’s newspaper.

After leaving office, George H.W. Bush gave paid speeches on behalf of Moon’s front groups. Though the exact amount of Moon’s payments to Bush has never been revealed, one former Unification Church official told me the Moon organization had budgeted $10 million for the ex-president.

For details on Moon’s background and his ties to the Bush family, see Parry’s *[Secrecy & Privilege*.]

---

exerpt;

According to FBI documents obtained by Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan, the FBI collected reports from Moon’s Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), which was spying on CISPES supporters. The reports came from CARP members at 10 university campuses around the United States and included commentaries on the purported political beliefs of Reagan’s critics. [Boston Globe, April 20, 1988]

...

Iran contra

Moon’s organization also used its political clout in Washington to intimidate or discredit government officials and journalists who tried to investigate those criminal activities. In the mid-1980s, for instance, when journalists and congressional investigators began probing the evidence of contra-connected drug trafficking, they came under attacks from Moon’s Washington Times.

An Associated Press story that I co-wrote with Brian Barger about a Miami-based federal probe into gun- and drug-running by the contras was denigrated in an April 11, 1986, front-page Washington Times article with the headline: “Story on [contra] drug smuggling denounced as political ploy.”

When Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, conducted a Senate probe and uncovered additional evidence of contra drug trafficking, the Washington Times denounced him, too. The newspaper first published articles depicting Kerry’s probe as a wasteful political witch hunt. “Kerry’s anti-contra efforts extensive, expensive, in vain,” announced the headline of one Times article on Aug. 13, 1986.

But when Kerry exposed more contra wrongdoing, the Washington Times shifted tactics. In 1987 in front-page articles, it began accusing Kerry’s staff of obstructing justice because their investigation was supposedly interfering with Reagan-Bush administration efforts to get at the truth.

“Kerry staffers damaged FBI probe,” said one Times article that opened with the assertion: “Congressional investigators for Sen. John Kerry severely damaged a federal drug investigation last summer by interfering with a witness while pursuing allegations of drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan resistance, federal law enforcement officials said.” [Washington Times, Jan. 21, 1987]

Despite the attacks, Kerry’s contra-drug investigation eventually concluded that a number of contra units – both in Costa Rica and Honduras – were implicated in the cocaine trade.

“It is clear that individuals who provided support for the contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers,” Kerry’s investigation stated in a report issued April 13, 1989. “In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring or immediately thereafter.”

Kerry’s investigation also found that Honduras had become an important way station for cocaine shipments heading north during the contra war.

“Elements of the Honduran military were involved ... in the protection of drug traffickers from 1980 on,” the report said. “These activities were reported to appropriate U.S. government officials throughout the period. Instead of moving decisively to close down the drug trafficking by stepping up the DEA presence in the country and using the foreign assistance the United States was extending to the Hondurans as a lever, the United States closed the DEA office in Tegucigalpa and appears to have ignored the issue.” [Drug, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy – the Kerry Report – December 1988]

The Kerry investigation represented an indirect challenge to Vice President George H.W. Bush, who had been named by President Reagan to head the South Florida Task Force for interdicting the flow of drugs into the United States and was later put in charge of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System.

In short, Bush was the lead official in the U.S. government to cope with the drug trade, which he himself had dubbed a national security threat.

If the American voters came to believe that Bush had compromised his anti-drug responsibilities to protect the image of the Nicaraguan contras and other rightists in Central America, that judgment could have threatened the political future of Bush and his politically ambitious family.

By publicly challenging press and congressional investigations of this touchy subject, the Washington Times helped keep an unfavorable media spotlight from swinging in the direction of the Vice President

...

Red Flags

As Moon continued to expand his influence in American politics, some Republicans began to raise red flags.

In 1983, the GOP’s moderate Ripon Society charged that the New Right had entered “an alliance of expediency” with Moon’s church.Ripon’s chairman, Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, released a study which alleged that the College Republican National Committee “solicited and received” money from Moon’s Unification Church in 1981. The study also accused Reed Irvine’s Accuracy in Media of benefiting from low-cost or volunteer workers supplied by Moon.

Leach said the Unification Church has “infiltrated the New Right and the party it wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the media as well.” Leach’s news conference was disrupted when then-college GOP leader Grover Norquist accused Leach of lying. (Norquist is now a prominent conservative leader in Washington with close ties to the highest levels of George W. Bush’s administration.)

Despite periodic fretting over Moon’s influence, American conservatives continued to accept his deep-pocket assistance. When White House aide Oliver North was scratching for support for the Nicaraguan contras, for instance, the Washington Times established a contra fund-raising operation.

By the mid-1980s, Moon’s Unification Church had carved out a niche as an acceptable part of the American Right. In one speech to his followers,Moon boasted that “without knowing it, even President Reagan is being guided by Father [Moon].”

Yet, Moon also made clear that his longer-range goal was destroying the U.S. Constitution and America’s democratic form of government...

After the Iran-Contra scandal exploded in fall 1986, the Washington Times and other Moon-related organizations rushed to the battlements to defend Reagan’s White House and Oliver North.

Ronald S. Godwin, who was a link between Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and Moon’s Washington Times, raised funds for North through a group called the Interamerican Partnership, which was a forerunner to North’s own Freedom Alliance. [See Common Cause Magazine, Fall 1993]

Another Moon-connected group, the American Freedom Coalition, went to bat for North. According to Andrew Leigh, who worked for a Moon front called Global Image Associates, AFC broadcast a pro-North video, “Ollie North: Fight for Freedom,” more than 600 times on more than 100 TV stations.

Leigh quoted one AFC official as saying that AFC received $5 million to $6 million from business interests associated with Moon. AFC also bragged that it helped put George H.W. Bush into the White House in 1988 by distributing 30 million pieces of political literature. [Washington Post, Oct. 15, 1989]

When Vice President Bush was struggling in his 1988 presidential campaign against Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, Moon’s Washington Times came to the rescue again publishing a slanted story about Dukakis’s mental health.

Times reporter Gene Grabowski had interviewed a Dukakis relative and asked whether Dukakis had ever sought psychiatric help during a low period in his life. “It’s possible, but I doubt it,” the relative responded.

Grabowski’s editors, however, snipped out the phrase “but I doubt it” while keeping the phrase “it’s possible” and then spotlighting the story under a headline, “Dukakis Kin Hints at Sessions.”

Dukakis’s supposedly questionable mental health became an important theme for the Republicans. President Reagan personally underscored the message by referring to Dukakis as a “cripple,” which forced more mainstream publications to reprise the suspicions about the suspected psychiatric treatment.

The story spread doubts among the electorate about Dukakis’s fitness for office. For his part, Grabowski, a former Associated Press reporter, resigned in protest of the distortion, but by then the damage to Dukakis was done.

Weird Behavior

...

Reber and Thomas earned Falwell’s public gratitude by excusing the Lynchburg, Virginia, school of about one-half of its $73 million debt. In the late 1980s, that flood of red ink had forced Falwell to abandon his Moral Majority political organization and the debt nearly drowned Liberty University in bankruptcy.

Reber and Thomas came to Falwell’s rescue in the nick of time. Their non-profit Christian Heritage Foundation of Forest, Virginia, snapped up a big chunk of Liberty’s debt for $2.5 million, a fraction of its face value. Thousands of small religious investors who had bought church construction bonds through a Texas company were the big losers.

But Falwell was joyous. He told local reporters that the moment was “the greatest single day of financial advantage” in the school’s history.

Left unmentioned in the happy sermon was the identity of the bigger guardian angel who had appeared at the propitious moment to protect Falwell’s financial interests. Falwell’s secret benefactor was Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed South Korean messiah who is controversial with many fundamentalist Christians because of his strange Biblical interpretations and his alleged brainwashing of thousands of young Americans, often shattering their bonds with their biological families.

Covertly, Moon had helped bail out Liberty University through one of his front groups which funneled $3.5 million to the Reber-Thomas Christian Heritage Foundation, the non-profit that had purchased the school’s debt.

I discovered this Moon-Falwell connection while looking for something else: how much Moon’s Women’s Federation for World Peace had paid former President George H.W. Bush for a series of speeches in Asia in 1995. I obtained the federation’s Internal Revenue Service records but discovered that Bush’s undisclosed speaking fee was buried in a line item of $13.6 million for conference expenses.

There was, however, another listing for a $3.5 million “educational” grant to the Christian Heritage Foundation. A call to the Virginia corporate records office confirmed that the foundation was the one run by Reber and Thomas.

---

excerpt:

Moon’s multi-billion-dollar political investments, in turn, have shielded him from sustained scrutiny since 1978 when he was identified by the congressional “Koreagate” investigation as part of a covert Korean influence-buying scheme. As a result of those findings about his finances, he was convicted in 1982 of tax fraud.

The GOP's $3 Billion Propaganda Organ

By Robert Parry (A Special Report)

December 27, 2006

The American Right achieved its political dominance in Washington over the past quarter century with the help of more than $3 billion spent by Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon on a daily propaganda organ, the Washington Times, according to a 21-year veteran of the newspaper.

George Archibald, who describes himself “as the first reporter hired at the Washington Times outside the founding group” and author of a commemorative book on the Times’ first two decades, has now joined a long line of disillusioned conservative writers who departed and warned the public about extremism within the newspaper.

In an Internet essay on recent turmoil inside the Times, Archibald also confirmed claims by some former Moon insiders that the cult leader has continued to pour in $100 million a year or more to keep the newspaper afloat. Archibald put the price tag for the newspaper’s first 24 years at “more than $3 billion of cash.”

At the newspaper’s tenth anniversary, Moon announced that he had spent $1 billion on the Times – or $100 million a year – but newspaper officials and some Moon followers have since tried to low-ball Moon’s subsidies in public comments by claiming they had declined to about $35 million a year.

The figure from Archibald and other defectors from Moon’s operation is about three times higher than the $35 million annual figure.

The apparent goal of downplaying Moon’s subsidy has been to quiet concerns that Moon was funneling vast sums of illicit money into the United States to influence the American political process in ways favorable to right-wing leaders – and possibly criminal cartels – around the world.

Though best known as the founder of the Unification Church, Moon, now 86, has long worked with right-wing political forces linked to organized crime and international drug smuggling, including the Japanese yakuza gangs and South American cocaine traffickers.

Moon insiders, including his former daughter-in-law Nansook Hong, also have described Moon’s system for laundering cash into the United States and then funneling much of it into his businesses and influence-buying apparatus, led by the Washington Times.

The Times, in turn, has targeted American politicians of the center and left with journalistic attacks – sometimes questioning their sanity, as happened with Democratic presidential nominees Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. Those themes then resonate through the broader right-wing echo chamber and into the mainstream media.

Washington Times articles are routinely cited by C-SPAN, for instance, without explanations to viewers that the newspaper is financed by an ultra-right religious cult leader, a convicted tax fraud and a publicly identified money-launderer. Most American listeners just think they’re getting straightforward news.

The Times also has led attacks on investigators who threatened to expose crimes committed by Republican and right-wing operatives. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Times targeted Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, who recounted in his memoir Firewall the importance of the Times in protecting the Reagan-Bush administration’s legal flanks.

When journalistic and congressional investigations began uncovering evidence of drug trafficking by the Nicaraguan contra rebels, the Washington Times counter-attacked, too, although in that case the Moon organization may have had a direct interest in containing the probes that could have exposed its relationship with South American drug lords.

Buying Influence

Besides the estimated $3 billion-plus invested in the Washington Times, Moon has spread money around to influential right-wingers, often coming to their rescue when they are facing financial ruin as happened with Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell in the mid-1990s. [See below.]

Moon also has paid lucrative speaking fees to political figures, such as former President George H.W. Bush who has appeared at Moon-organized functions in the United States, Asia and South America. At the launch of Moon’s South American newspaper in 1996, Bush hailed Moon as “the man with the vision.”

Moon has key defenders, too, in the U.S. Congress, such as Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2004, Moon was given space in the Senate’s Dirksen building for a coronation of himself as “savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.” See [The Hill, June 22, 2004]

Though primarily allied with the Republican Right, Moon has tossed money to some African-American ministers to gain favor with a key Democratic constituency.

Ironically, however, as Moon implemented the influence-buying blueprint exposed by the “Koreagate” probe – investing in U.S. media, politicians and academia – he became an untouchable. He founded the Washington Times in 1982 and quickly put it into the service of Republican power.

President Ronald Reagan hailed Moon’s publication as his “favorite newspaper”; it even helped raise money for the Nicaraguan contras; and President George H.W. Bush invited its editor Wesley Pruden to the White House in 1991 “just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day.”

Washington Times defenders argue that the newspaper is independent of Moon’s religion and doesn’t proselytize for his faith.

But the argument misses the point because Moon’s organization is only a religious entity on one level. More substantively, it is an international conglomerate with investments in fishing, restaurants, gun manufacturing, tourism, banks, real estate and media.

Since its finances often operate on the shady side of the law, Moon’s organization requires, most of all, political influence for protection.

Similarly, Moon’s operation is not really “conservative” in the normal sense of the word. While it has worked with everyone from right-of-center Republicans to neo-fascist organizations, it also has joined forces with the reclusive communist leaders of North Korea when that was to Moon’s advantage. See Consortiumnews.com’s “[Moon, North Korea & the Bushes.”]

Power Struggle

Veteran Washington Times journalist Archibald as well as other Times employees who recently spoke to The Nation magazine have described a bitter internal struggle at the newspaper.

Times president “Douglas” Dong Moon Joo is standing by Pruden and other right-wing editors who have run the Times for years, while other influential Moon operatives believe it’s time to abandon the newspaper’s hard-right positions.

“A nasty succession battle is now heating up at the paper, punctuated by allegations of racism, sexism and unprofessional conduct, that have implications far beyond its fractious newsroom,” wrote Max Blumenthal in The Nation.

“According to several reliable inside sources, Preston Moon, the youngest son of Korean Unification Church leader and Times financier Sun Myung Moon, has initiated a search committee to find a replacement for editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden – a replacement who is not Pruden’s handpicked successor, managing editor Francis Coombs.

“Preston Moon wants to wrest control of the paper from Pruden and Coombs, according to a Times senior staffer, in order to shift the paper away from their brand of conservatism, which is characterized by extreme racial animus and connections to nativist and neo-Confederate organizations. A Harvard MBA, Preston Moon is said to be seeking to install an editorial regime with more widely palatable politics.”

Archibald’s essay describes Pruden as “an unreconstructed Confederate from Little Rock, Arkansas, who still believes the South and slavery were right and Lincoln was wrong in saving the Union.”

Pruden’s father, Wesley Pruden Sr., was a Baptist minister and chaplain to Little Rock’s segregationist Capital Citizens Council, which spearheaded the opposition to President Dwight Eisenhower’s order in 1957 to integrate the city’s Central High School.

In the 1990s, Pruden’s Washington Times continued to tap into those old segregationist ties, such as “Justice” Jim Johnson, to get salacious allegations about President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary. The mainstream press soon followed, setting the stage for the Republican congressional sweep in 1994 and Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.

In 2000, the Washington Times again was at the center of the assault on Al Gore’s candidacy – highlighting apocryphal quotes by Gore and using them to depict him as either dishonest or delusional. See Consortiumnews.com’s “[Al Gore vs. the Media.”]

By then, however, the Washington Times had the help of a rapidly expanding right-wing media as well as mainstream journalists from the New York Times and the Washington Post who had come to realize the career advantage of tilting their reporting to the right.

Arguably one of the measures of the Washington Times’ success was how the major U.S. news organizations increasingly seemed to march to the same drummer, even when not under direct pressure to do so.

Over the past half dozen years, it has often been hard to distinguish between the fawning coverage of George W. Bush from the Washington Times and from the Washington Post. Both major Washington dailies bought into Bush’s false claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction with almost no skepticism.

Currently, the Washington Times seems inclined to continue serving as a leading defender of Republican power and thus of President Bush. Calling itself “America’s Newspaper,” the Moon-financed Times also has championed the cause of anti-immigration activists, another hot-button issue on the Right.

But the Times and other right-wing news outlets risk a credibility crisis as more and more Americans turn away from the Bush presidency and are turned off by the right-wing rhetoric demonizing citizens who have objected to Bush’s policies.

Nevertheless, history will surely record that Moon’s $3 billion-plus investment succeeded in buying a remarkable degree of Washington influence – and legal protection – for his dubious political/business/religious empire.

The extraordinary rise of Sun Myung Moon also tells a cynical story about how “respectability” is just one more Washington commodity that can be purchased with enough money.

Known for crowning himself at lavish ceremonies and ranting for hours in Korean about the proper use of sex organs, Sun Myung Moon may have the distinction of being the most unusual person ever to gain substantial influence in the U.S. capital. He has proved that in Washington, money talks.

When Moon became a major benefactor of the American conservative movement starting in the latter half of the 1970s, it was a time when the conservatives desperately needed money to build what they called their counter-establishment.

From a mysterious and seemingly bottomless slush fund, Moon ladled out cash to sponsor lavish conferences, to finance political interest groups and to publish the Washington Times.

Despite his strange goals – including the need to replace democracy and individuality with his own personal theocratic rule over the most intimate details of every person’s life – Moon lured into his circle some of the most prominent political figures of the modern era, including George H.W. Bush who grasped Moon’s value as a deep pocket for the conservative movement and for the Bush family.

Moon began building his political influence in Washington at a time when he was best known to Americans as the leader of the Unification Church, called the “Moonies.” Moon was blamed by thousands of American parents for brain-washing their children and transforming them into automatons who gave up their previous lives to devote nearly every waking hour in the service of Rev. Moon.

Gradually, however, Moon’s money gained him access to the nation’s ruling elite. The worst of the negative press coverage subsided. But few Americans, even those who took his money, knew much about his life and his true allegiances.

Who Is Moon?

Moon was born on Jan. 6, 1920, in a rural, northwestern corner of Korea, a rugged Asian peninsula then occupied by Japan, an occupation that would continue through the first 25 years of Moon’s life. Allied forces liberated the peninsula from the Japanese in 1945 and then divided Korea into two sections, the south controlled by the United States and the north occupied by Soviet troops.

In this post-war period, Moon, who had been raised within a Christian sect, moved to southern Korea and joined a mystical religious group called Israel Suo-won. The group preached the imminent arrival of a Korean Messiah and practiced a strange sexual ritual called “pikarume,” in which ministers purified women through sexual intercourse, the so-called “blessing of the womb.”

As he developed his own theology, Moon returned to the North, to communist-ruled North Korea, where he soon ran into legal troubles. North Korean authorities arrested him twice, apparently on morals charges connected to his sexual rites with young women. Moon’s supporters, however, have tried to portray Moon as the victim of communist repression, claiming that he was arrested not for sex charges but for espionage.

Whatever the real story about his detention in North Korea, Moon’s luck soon changed. On Oct. 14, 1950, with war raging on the Korean peninsula, United Nations troops overran the prison where Moon was held, freeing Moon and all the other inmates. According to Unification Church histories, Moon then trekked south, carrying on his back an injured prisoner named Pak Chung Hwa.

For years, church officials even published a photograph purportedly showing Pak piggy-backing on Moon across a river. But much of that story appears to be propaganda. Several church sources have since admitted that the photo was a hoax, that Moon is not the man in the picture and the location is not where Moon was.

Moon’s southward journey ended in the South Korean port of Pusan, where he resumed his missionary work. He later moved to Seoul, South Korea’s capital, where he founded his own church in May 1954. He called it T’ong-il Kyo, or Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. It became known as the Unification Church.

At the center of Moon’s theology was a new twist to the Old Testament story about the Fall of Man. Instead of biting into a forbidden apple, Eve copulated with Satan and then passed on the sin by having sex with Adam.

Thousands of years later, God sent Jesus to restore man to his original purity, Moon taught. But Jesus failed because he was betrayed by the Jews and died before he could father any sinless children.

Sex, therefore, remained at the center of Moon’s theology, the need for a Messiah to purify the human race through the reversal of the contamination caused by Satan’s seduction of Eve.

Moon taught that the failure of Jesus to begin this purification process by fathering children forced God to send a second Messiah, who turned out to be Moon himself. Moon saw his task as starting this sexual purification process and thus establishing God’s Kingdom on Earth.

The ultimate goal would be a worldwide theocracy ruled by Moon and his followers cleansed of Satan’s influence. Political power and religious authority went together, Moon lectured. “We cannot separate the political field from the religious,” Moon said.

But in South Korea, Moon found that government continued to be an obstacle to his religious plans. When he began to concentrate his religious recruitment on young idealistic college students, especially from an all-girls Christian school, Moon landed in legal hot water again.

The South Korean government arrested Moon in 1955 for allegedly conducting more sexual “purification” rites, according to several U.S. intelligence reports which are now public. Moon was freed three months later because none of the young women would testify for fear of public humiliation, according to an undated FBI summary, released under a Freedom of Information Act request.

“During the next two years in the national news media of South Korea, Rev. Moon was the butt of scandalist humor,” the FBI report said.

Six Marys

Church officials repeatedly have denied the reports of Moon’s sexual rituals. But the charges received new attention in 1993 with the Japanese publication of The Tragedy of the Six Marys -- a book by the early Moon disciple, Pak Chung Hwa, whom Moon supposedly carried to South Korea.

According to Pak’s book, Moon taught that Jesus was intended to save mankind by having sex with six already-married women who would then have sex with other men who would pass on the purification to other women until, eventually, all mankind would have pure blood.

Pak contended that Moon took on this personal duty as the second Messiah and began having sex with the “six Marys.” But Pak alleged that Moon began to abuse the practice by turning the “six Marys” into a kind of rotating sex club.

Pak wrote that Moon’s first wife divorced him after catching him in a sex ritual. In all, Pak estimated that there were at least 60 “Marys,” many of whom ended up destitute after Moon discarded them.

According to the testimony of one “Mary,” named Yu Shin Hee, she met Moon in the early 1950s and became a follower along with her husband. Devoted to the church, her husband abandoned her and her five children, whom she then put into an orphanage. She, in turn, agreed to become one of Moon’s “six Marys.”

But Yu Shin Hee claimed that Moon tired of her after just one “blood exchange,” a phrase referring to sexual intercourse. Still, she was required to have sex with other men. Seven years later, a broken woman with no money, she tried to return to her children, but they also rejected her.

When Moon impregnated another one of the women, Moon sent her to Japan where she gave birth to a baby boy, according to Pak’s account. Moon later admitted fathering the child, who died in a train crash at the age of 13. But Pak wrote that Moon refused to admit responsibility for other illegitimate children born to the women.

“By forwarding this teaching, he violated mothers, their daughters, their sisters,” Pak wrote. (After The Tragedy of the Six Marys was published, the Unification Church denounced the allegations as spurious. Under intense pressure, the aging Pak Chung Hwa agreed to recant. However, his book’s accounts tracked closely with U.S. intelligence reports of the same period and interviews with former church leaders.)

Moon’s history of sexual liaisons out of wedlock also was corroborated by Nansook Hong, one of Moon’s daughters-in-law who broke with the so-called True Family in 1995 over abuse she suffered at the hands of Moon’s eldest son, Hyo Jin Moon, during their 14-year marriage.

Nansook Hong reported in her 1998 book, In the Shadow of the Moons, that family members, including Moon himself, acknowledged that he had “providential” sex with women in his role as the Messiah. Nansook Hong said she learned about Moon’s sexual affairs when her husband, Hyo Jin, began justifying his affairs as mandated by God, as his father claimed his affairs were.

“I went directly to Mrs. Moon with Hyo Jin’s claims,” Nansook Hong wrote. “She was both furious and tearful. She had hoped that such pain would end with her, that it would not be passed on to the next generation, she told me.

“No one knows the pain of a straying husband like True Mother, she assured me. I was stunned. We had all heard rumors for years about Sun Myung Moon’s affairs and the children he sired out of wedlock, but here was True Mother, confirming the truth of these stories.

“I told her that Hyo Jin said his sleeping around was ‘providential’ and inspired by God, just as Father’s affairs were. ‘No, Father is the Messiah, not Hyo Jin. What Father did was in God’s plan.’” Later, in a discussion about the extramarital sex, Moon himself told Nansook Hong that “what happened in his past was ‘providential,’” she wrote.

As for the sexual purification rituals, Nansook Hong said the rumors had followed the church for decades, despite the official denials.

“In the early days of the Unification Church, members met in a small house with two rooms,” Nansook Hong wrote. “It was known as the House of the Three Doors. It was rumored that at the first door one was made to take off one’s jacket, at the second door one’s outer clothing, and at the third one’s undergarments in preparation for sex.”

As for Chung Hwa Pak’s Tragedy of the Six Marys, Nansook Hong said Moon succeeded in persuading his old associate to rejoin the church and then got him to disavow the memoirs. “I’ve always wondered what the price was of that retraction,” Nansook Hong wrote.

Madeleine Pretorious, a Unification Church member from South Africa, also had worked closely with Moon’s temperamental son, Hyo Jin, and had learned from him that the long-denied accounts of Moon’s sexual rites with female initiates were true.

“When Hyo Jin found out about his father’s ‘purification’ rituals, that took a lot out of wind out of his sails,” Pretorious told me in an interview after she left the church in the mid-1990s.

In late 1994, during conversations in Hyo Jin's suite at the New Yorker Hotel, "he confided a lot of things to me," Pretorious said. Hyo Jin also had discovered that the Reverend Moon fathered a child out of wedlock in the early 1970s. Moon arranged for the child to be raised by his longtime lieutenant Bo Hi Pak, Pretorious said.

The boy – now a young man – had confronted Hyo Jin, seeking recognition as Hyo Jin's half-brother. Pretorious said she later corroborated the story with other church members.

Intelligence Ties

The alleged sexual rituals, which involved passing around women, would become a point of embarrassment later, but the practices apparently helped the Unification Church in recruiting men in the early days.

By the late 1950s, Moon had managed to build a small cadre of loyal followers and was reaching out beyond Korea. By the early 1960s, the church also was pulling in better educated young men, including some with connections to South Korea's intelligence services.

Kim Jong-Pil and three other young English-speaking army officers became closely associated with Moon's church during this transitional phase as the institution evolved from an obscure Korean sect into a powerful international organization.

Beyond his association with Moon’s sect, Kim Jong-Pil was a rising star in South Korea’s intelligence community. In 1961, he founded the KCIA, which centralized Seoul's internal and external intelligence activities. Another one of the promising young KCIA officers was Colonel Bo Hi Pak, also a Moon disciple.

With these KCIA officers, however, it was never clear whether the benefits of the religion were paramount or if they simply recognized the potential that an international church held as a cover for intelligence operations.

In many countries, especially the United States, churches are granted broad protections against government interference. With missionaries traveling around the world and with church members attending international religious conferences, a church also provided an effective cover for spying, money-laundering or passing on messages to agents.

In 1962, KCIA founder Kim Jong-Pil traveled to San Francisco where he met with Unification Church members. According to an account later published by a congressional investigation, Kim Jong-Pil promised discreet support for Moon's church.

At the same time of his contacts with associates from the Unification Church, Kim Jong-Pil was in charge of another sensitive negotiation: talks to improve bilateral relations with Japan, Korea’s historic enemy.

Those talks put Kim Jong-Pil in touch with two other important figures in the Far East, Japanese rightists Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa, who once hailed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as "the perfect fascist."

Kodama and Sasakawa were jailed as fascist war criminals at the end of World War II, but a few years later, both Kodama and Sasakawa were freed by U.S. military intelligence officials.

The U.S. government turned to Kodama and Sasakawa for help in combating communist labor unions and student strikes, much as the CIA protected German Nazi war criminals who supplied intelligence and performed other services in the intensifying Cold War battles with European communists.

Kodama and Sasakawa obliged U.S. intelligence by dispatching right-wing goon squads to break up demonstrations, according to the authoritative book, Yakuza, by David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro.

Kodama and Sasakawa also allegedly grew rich from their association with the yakuza, a shadowy organized crime syndicate that profited off drug smuggling, gambling and prostitution in Japan and Korea. Behind the scenes, Kodama and Sasakawa became power-brokers in Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Kim Jong-Pil's contacts with these right-wing leaders proved invaluable to the Unification Church, which had made only a few converts in Japan by the early 1960s. Immediately after Kim Jong-Pil opened the door to Kodama and Sasakawa in late 1962, 50 leaders of an ultra-nationalist Japanese Buddhist sect converted en masse to the Unification Church, according to Kaplan and Dubro.

"Sasakawa became an advisor to Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Japanese branch of the Unification Church" and collaborated with Moon in building far-right anti-communist organizations in Asia, Kaplan and Dubro wrote.

The church's growth spurt did not escape the notice of U.S. intelligence officers in the field. One CIA report, dated Feb. 26, 1963, stated that "Kim Jong-Pil organized the Unification Church while he was director of the ROK [Republic of Korea] Central Intelligence Agency, and has been using the church, which had a membership of 27,000, as a political tool."

Though Moon's church had existed since the mid-1950s, the report appeared correct in noting Kim Jong-Pil's key role in transforming the church from a minor Korean sect into a potent international organization.

New Worlds

With alliances in place in Tokyo and Seoul, the Unification Church next took aim at Washington.

In 1964, Bo Hi Pak, who was emerging as one of Moon’s most able lieutenants, moved to America and started the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation, a front that performed the dual purpose of helping Moon meet important Americans, while assisting the KCIA in its international operations.

Bo Hi Pak named KCIA founder Kim Jong-Pil to be the foundation's "honorary chairman." The foundation also sponsored the KCIA’s anti-communist propaganda outlets, such as Radio of Free Asia, according to the congressional report on the “Koreagate” scandal.

Moon's church also was active in the Asian People's Anti-Communist League, a fiercely right-wing group founded by the governments of South Korea and Taiwan. In 1966, the group expanded into the World Anti-Communist League, an international alliance that brought together traditional conservatives with former Nazis, overt racialists and Latin American “death squad” operatives.

Retired U.S. Army Gen. John K. Singlaub, a former WACL president, told me that “the Japanese [WACL] chapter was taken over almost entirely by Moonies.”

By the 1970s, the U.S. public was aware of Moon and his church, but much of the attention was negative. Parents complained that the church brainwashed their children and pressured them to cut off contacts with their families, while proclaiming Moon their “True Father.”

The totalitarian nature of Moon's church stood out in his staging of mass marriages, or "blessings," in which he would pair up husbands and wives who had never met. Moon also regulated the sexual behavior of even his married followers, a practice that replaced the more personal method of “blessing the womb” that allegedly had prevailed in the church’s early days.

In 1973, amid American reversals in Indochina, alarm began to spread within Seoul’s right-wing dictatorship about the strength of the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea in case of aggression from the communist North. Those fears led the KCIA, long known for its gross human rights violations, to begin plotting how to bolster its friends in the United States and undermine its enemies.

Lee Jai Hyon, the chief cultural and information attaché at the South Korean embassy in Washington, later testified before the U.S. Congress that he sat in on a series of meetings chaired by the KCIA’s station chief, involving senior embassy officials.

Lee Jai Hyon described six sessions over a five-week period in spring 1973 at which a conspiracy was outlined to “manipulate,” “coerce,” “threaten,” “co-opt,” “seduce,” and “buy off” political and other leaders of the United States. Lee Jai Hyon said one of the South Koreans participating in the operation was Moon's top aide Bo Hi Pak.

At the time, Moon was raising concerns among U.S. immigration authorities for bringing hundreds of foreign followers to the United States on tourist visas and then assigning them to mobile fund-raising teams.

But Moon, who owned property outside New York City while maintaining a residence in South Korea, somehow managed to secure a “green card” from the Nixon administration on April 30, 1973. The permit making Moon a “lawful permanent resident” also granted him more legal rights than would be available to a foreign visitor.

“The advantages of using the First Amendment were seen early,” wrote Robert Boettcher, the former staff director of the House Subcommittee on International Relations, in his 1980 book, Gifts of Deceit. “Before Moon moved to the United States in 1971, he and his small band of followers realized the operation would have the most flexibility if it was called a church. Businesses, political activities, and tax-exempt status could be protected.”

As Moon stepped up his activities, however, the FBI soon began to suspect that Moon’s activities had a political motive. The FBI summary of its evidence about Moon’s church was marked by a number indicating that the Unification Church was under a counter-intelligence investigation in the 1970s.

Although blacked-out portions obscured who was stating some of the conclusions – an individual source or the FBI – the report described the church as "an absolutely totalitarian organization" which was part of an international "conspiracy" that functioned by its own rules.

"One of the central doctrines of the Moon relig[i]ous aspects is what they call heavenly deception,” the FBI report said. “It basically says that to take from Satan what rightfully belongs to God, you may do most anything. You may lie, cheat, steal or kill."

Making Friends

Despite the FBI's concerns, Moon began making friends in Washington the old-fashioned way: by spreading around lots of money. Moon also had his followers cozy up to government officials.

According to the FBI summary, Moon designated "300 pretty girls" to lobby members of Congress. "They were trying to influence United States senators and congressmen on behalf of South Korea," the FBI document read.

"Moon had laid the foundation for political work in this country prior to 1973 [though] his followers became more openly involved in political activities in that and subsequent years," a congressional investigative report on the "Koreagate" influence-buying scandal stated in 1978.

The report added that Moon's organization used his followers' travels to smuggle large sums of money into the United States in apparent violation of federal currency laws.

Moon organized rallies in support of the Vietnam War and in defense of President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Moon sponsored a National Prayer and Fast Committee, using the slogan: "forgive, love, unite." The public rallies earned Moon a face-to-face "thank you" from the embattled President on Feb. 1, 1974.

Intercepted Message

In late 1975, the CIA intercepted a secret South Korean document entitled "1976 Plan for Operations in the United States." In the name of "strengthening the execution of the U.S. security commitment to the ROK [South Korea]," it called for influencing U.S. public opinion by penetrating American media, government and academia.

Thousands of dollars were earmarked for "special manipulation" of congressmen; their staffs were to be infiltrated with paid "collaborators"; an "intelligence network" was to be put into the White House; money was targeted for "manipulation" of officials at the Pentagon, State Department and CIA; some U.S. journalists were to be spied on, while others would be paid; a "black newspaper" would be started in New York; contacts with American scholars would be coordinated "with Psychological Warfare Bureau"; and "an organizational network of anti-communist fronts" would be created.

Several months later, in summer 1976, Moon returned to the United States and delivered a flattering pro-U.S. speech at a red-white-and-blue flag-draped rally at the Washington Monument.

"The United States of America, transcending race and nationality, is already a model of the unified world," Moon declared on Sept. 18, 1976. Calling America "the chosen nation of God," Moon said, "I not only respect America, but truly love this nation."

While professing his love for America in public, Moon shared with his followers a very different sentiment in private. He despised American concepts of individuality and democracy, believing that he was destined to rule through a one-world theocracy that would eradicate all personal freedoms.

"Here's a man [Moon] who says he wants to take over the world, where all religions will be abolished except Unificationism, all languages will be abolished except Korean, all governments will be abolished except his one-world theocracy," Steve Hassan, a former church leader, told me. "Yet he's wined and dined very powerful people and convinced them that he's benign."

In 1976, Moon’s search for growing influence in the United States seemed to be following the KCIA script.

Moon started a small-circulation newspaper in New York City that featured a column by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. Moon promoted the anti-communist cause through front groups which held lavish conferences and paid speaking fees to academics, journalists and political leaders.

In 1976, Moon, Bo Hi Pak and other church members deepened their investments in the U.S. capital, buying stock in the Washington-based Diplomat National Bank. Simultaneously, South Korean agent Tongsun Park was investing heavily in the same bank.

But the South Korean scheme backfired in the late 1970s with the explosion of the "Koreagate" scandal. Rep.Donald Fraser, a Democrat from Minnesota, led a congressional probe which tracked Tongsun Park's influence-buying campaign and exposed the KCIA links to the Unification Church.

The “Koreagate” investigation revealed a sophisticated intelligence project run out of Seoul that used the urbane Park as well as the mystical Moon to cultivate U.S. politicians as influential friends of South Korea – and conversely to undermine politicians who were viewed as enemies.

Though it's clear the church did collaborate with the KCIA during the 1960s and 1970s, it's less clear whether Moon was using the KCIA or it was using him. Most likely, the relationship was symbiotic, each using the other to advance their overlapping but different interests.

The alliance with the KCIA gave Moon political protection and business opportunities, while the KCIA got a cover for promoting South Korean interests inside the United States, the country responsible for South Korea's defense.

The “Koreagate” investigation traced the church's chief sources of money to bank accounts in Japan, but could follow the cash no further. In the years since, the sources of Moon’s money have remained cloaked in secrecy.

In the mid-1990s 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 the church’s legal representative Peter D. Ross. "While this statement is used in routine financial transactions by the church, [it] is not my policy to make it otherwise available."

In 1978, Fraser got a taste of the negative side of Moon’s propaganda clout as the South Korean religious leader’s new U.S. conservative allies mounted a strong defense against the “Koreagate” allegations.

In pro-Moon publications, Fraser and his staff were pilloried as leftists. Anti-Moon witnesses were assailed as unstable liars. Minor bookkeeping problems inside the investigation, such as Fraser's salary advances to some staff members, were seized upon to justify demands for an ethics probe of the congressman.

One of those letters, dated June 30, 1978, was written by John T. "Terry" Dolan of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC). Dolan's group was pioneering the strategy of "independent" TV attack ads against liberal Democrats. In turn, Moon's CAUSA International helped Dolan by contributing $500,000 to a Dolan group, known as the Conservative Alliance or CALL. [Washington Post, Sept. 17, 1984]

With support from Dolan and other conservatives, Moon weathered the “Koreagate” political storm. Facing questions about his patriotism, Fraser lost a Senate bid in 1978 and left Congress.

Though Moon had helped defeat his chief congressional critic, the evidence unearthed by Fraser became the foundation of a tax-fraud conviction of Moon in 1982 and his sentencing to two years in federal prison.

A Media Empire

Despite his felony conviction, Moon pressed ahead with his boldest bid for political influence. In 1982, Moon launched the Washington Times.

The Times was just what the Reagan administration wanted, a reliable voice for its version of events that would push the message into the public debate.

Though Moon would have to subsidize his publications with hundreds of millions of dollars from his seemingly bottomless pool of cash, the newspaper – over the next two decades – would change the parameters of how the U.S. press corps works and affect the course of U.S. presidential campaigns.

Where all that money came from, however, would remain one of Washington’s least examined secrets.

Authors Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson wrote in their 1986 book, Inside the League, that Sun Myung Moon was one of five indispensable Asian leaders who made the World Anti-Communist League possible.

The five were Taiwan’s dictator Chiang Kai-shek, South Korea’s dictator Park Chung Hee, yakuza gangsters Ryoichi Sasakawa and Yoshio Kodama, and Moon, “an evangelist who planned to take over the world through the doctrine of ‘Heavenly Deception,’” the Andersons wrote.

WACL became a well-financed worldwide organization after a secret meeting between Sasakawa and Moon, along with two Kodama representatives, on a lake in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. The purpose of the meeting was to create an anti-communist organization that “would further Moon’s global crusade and lend the Japanese yakuza leaders a respectable new façade,” the Andersons wrote.

Mixing organized crime and political extremism, of course, has a long tradition throughout the world. Violent political movements often have blended with criminal operations as a way to arrange covert funding, move operatives or acquire weapons.

Drug smuggling has proven to be a particularly effective way to fill the coffers of extremist movements, especially those that find ways to insinuate themselves within more legitimate operations of sympathetic governments or intelligence services.

In the quarter century after World War II, remnants of fascist movements managed to do just that. Shattered by the major Allies – the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union – the surviving fascists got a new lease on political life with the start of the Cold War, helping both Western democracies and right-wing dictatorships battle international communism.

Some Nazi leaders faced war-crimes tribunals after World War II, but others managed to make their escapes along “rat lines” to Spain or South America or they finagled intelligence relationships with the victorious powers, especially the United States.

Argentina became a natural haven given the pre-war alliance that existed between the European fascists and prominent Argentine military leaders, such as Juan Peron. The fleeing Nazis also found like-minded right-wing politicians and military officers across Latin America who already used repression to keep down the indigenous populations and the legions of the poor.

In the post-World War II years, some Nazi war criminals chose reclusive lives, but others, such as former SS officer Klaus Barbie, sold their intelligence skills to less-sophisticated security services in countries like Bolivia or Paraguay.

Other Nazis on the lam trafficked in narcotics. Often the lines crossed between intelligence operations and criminal conspiracies.

Auguste Ricord, a French war criminal who had collaborated with the Gestapo, set up shop in Paraguay and opened up the French Connection heroin channels to American Mafia drug kingpin Santo Trafficante Jr., who controlled much of the heroin traffic into the United States. Columns by Jack Anderson identified Ricord’s accomplices as some of Paraguay’s highest-ranking military officers.

Another French Connection mobster, Christian David, relied on protection of Argentine authorities. While trafficking in heroin, David also “took on assignments for Argentina’s terrorist organization, the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance,” Henrik Kruger wrote in The Great Heroin Coup.

During President Nixon’s “war on drugs,” U.S. authorities smashed the famous French Connection and won extraditions of Ricord and David in 1972 to face justice in the United States.

By the time the French Connection was severed, however, powerful Mafia drug lords had forged strong ties to South America’s military leaders. An infrastructure for the multi-billion-dollar drug trade, servicing the insatiable U.S. market, was in place.

Trafficante-connected groups also recruited displaced anti-Castro Cubans, who had ended up in Miami, needed work, and possessed some useful intelligence skills gained from the CIA’s training for the Bay of Pigs and other clandestine operations. Heroin from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia soon filled the void left by the broken French Connection and its mostly Middle Eastern heroin supply routes.

Enter Rev. Moon

During this time of transition, Sun Myung Moon brought his evangelical message to South America. His first visit to Argentina had occurred in 1965 when he blessed a square behind the presidential Pink House in Buenos Aires. But he returned a decade later to make more lasting friendships.

Moon first sank down roots in Uruguay during the 12-year reign of right-wing military dictators who seized power in 1973. He also cultivated close relations with military dictators in Argentina, Paraguay and Chile, reportedly ingratiating himself with the juntas by helping the military regimes arrange arms purchases and by channeling money to allied right-wing organizations.

“Relationships nurtured with right-wing Latin Americans in the [World Anti-Communist] League led to acceptance of the [Unification] Church’s political and propaganda operations throughout Latin America,” the Andersons wrote in Inside the League.

“As an international money laundry, … the Church tapped into the capital flight havens of Latin America. Escaping the scrutiny of American and European investigators, the Church could now funnel money into banks in Honduras, Uruguay and Brazil, where official oversight was lax or nonexistent.”

In 1980, Moon made more friends in South America when a right-wing alliance of Bolivia military officers and drug dealers organized what became known as the Cocaine Coup. WACL associates, such as Alfred Candia, coordinated the arrival of some of the paramilitary operatives who assisted in the violent putsch.

Right-wing Argentine intelligence officers mixed with a contingent of young European neo-fascists collaborating with Nazi war criminal Barbie in carrying out the bloody coup that overthrew the elected left-of-center government.

The victory put into power a right-wing military dictatorship indebted to the drug lords. Bolivia became South America’s first narco-state.

One of the first well-wishers arriving in La Paz to congratulate the new government was Moon’s top lieutenant, Bo Hi Pak. The Moon organization published a photo of Pak meeting with the new strongman, General Garcia Meza.

After the visit to the mountainous capital, Pak declared, “I have erected a throne for Father Moon in the world’s highest city.”

According to later Bolivian government and newspaper reports, a Moon representative invested about $4 million in preparations for the coup. Bolivia’s WACL representatives also played key roles, and CAUSA, one of Moon’s anti-communist organizations, listed as members nearly all the leading Bolivian coup-makers.

Soon, Colonel Luis Arce-Gomez, a coup organizer and the cousin of cocaine kingpin Roberto Suarez, went into partnership with big narco-traffickers, including Trafficante’s Cuban-American smugglers. Nazi war criminal Barbie and his young neo-fascist followers found new work protecting Bolivia’s major cocaine barons and transporting drugs to the border.

“The paramilitary units – conceived by Barbie as a new type of SS – sold themselves to the cocaine barons,” German journalist Kai Hermann wrote. “The attraction of fast money in the cocaine trade was stronger than the idea of a national socialist revolution in Latin America.” [An English translation of Hermann’s article was published in Covert Action Information Bulletin, Winter 1986]

A month after the coup, General Garcia Meza participated in the Fourth Congress of the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation, an arm of the World Anti-Communist League. Also attending that Fourth Congress was WACL president Woo Jae Sung, a leading Moon disciple.

As the drug lords consolidated their power in Bolivia, the Moon organization expanded its presence, too. Hermann reported that in early 1981, war criminal Barbie and Moon leader Thomas Ward were seen together in apparent prayer.

On May 31, 1981, Moon representatives sponsored a CAUSA reception at the Sheraton Hotel’s Hall of Freedom in La Paz. Moon’s lieutenant Bo Hi Pak and Bolivian strongman Garcia Meza led a prayer for President Reagan’s recovery from an assassination attempt.

In his speech, Bo Hi Pak declared, “God had chosen the Bolivian people in the heart of South America as the ones to conquer communism.” According to a later Bolivian intelligence report, the Moon organization sought to recruit an “armed church” of Bolivians, with about 7,000 Bolivians receiving some paramilitary training.

But by late 1981, the cocaine taint of Bolivia’s military junta was so deep and the corruption so staggering that U.S.-Bolivian relations were stretched to the breaking point.

“The Moon sect disappeared overnight from Bolivia as clandestinely as they had arrived,” Hermann reported.

The Cocaine Coup leaders soon found themselves on the run, too. Interior Minister Arce-Gomez was eventually extradited to Miami and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking. Drug lord Roberto Suarez got a 15-year prison term. General Garcia Meza became a fugitive from a 30-year sentence imposed on him in Bolivia for abuse of power, corruption and murder. Barbie was returned to France to face a life sentence for war crimes. He died in 1992.

But Moon’s organization suffered few negative repercussions from the Cocaine Coup. By the early 1980s, flush with seemingly unlimited funds, Moon had moved on to promoting himself with the new Republican administration in Washington. An invited guest to the Reagan-Bush Inauguration, Moon made his organization useful to President Reagan, Vice President Bush and other leading Republicans.

Domestic Spying

An early concern of the Reagan administration was the possibility that a popular movement – similar to the anti-Vietnam War protests – would undermine the hard-line policies that the new U.S. government considered indispensable for stopping the spread of Soviet influence in Central America.

Staunch anticommunists in the administration also suspected that some groups opposed to U.S. intervention in the region could be discredited for holding suspect political loyalties. Though Moon’s organization itself had been exposed by the “Koreagate” investigation as a foreign intelligence operation, the administration still turned to it to help probe the loyalty of Americans.

Starting in 1981, the FBI cooperated with one of Moon’s front groups during a five-year nationwide investigation of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), a domestic organization critical of Reagan’s policies in Central America.

One CARP report called a CISPES supporter “well-educated in Marxism” while other CARP reports attached “clippings culled from communist-inspired front groups.” The Globe investigation reported that Frank Varelli, who worked for the FBI from 1981 to 1984 coordinating the CISPES probe, said an FBI agent paid members of the Moon organization at Southern Methodist University while the Moon activists were raiding and disrupting CISPES rallies.

“Every week, an agent I worked with used to go to SMU to pay the Moonies,” Varelli said in an interview. Because of the CARP harassment, CISPES closed its SMU chapter.

While Moon’s organization was helping to spy on American citizens, the case against Moon as a suspected intelligence agent for South Korea was petering out. It’s still not clear why.

“I don’t think there was any doubt that the Moon newspaper took a virulently pro-South Korea position,” Oliver “Buck” Revell, then a senior FBI official in the national security area, told me. “But whether there was something illegal about it...” His voice trailed off. As for the internal security investigation of Moon, Revell added only: “It led its full life.”

Part Two: Mysterious Cash

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/122706.html

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defends moon: At times, Moon's penetration of conservative ranks has raised red flags among Republicans. In 1983, the GOP's moderate Ripon Society charged that the New Right had entered "an alliance of expediency" with Moon's church. Ripon's chairman, Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, released a study which alleged that the College Republican National Committee "solicited and received" money from Moon's Unification Church in 1981. The study also accused Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media of benefitting from low-cost or volunteer workers supplied by Moon.

Leach said the Unification Church has "infiltrated the New Right and the party it [the New Right] wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the media as well." Leach's news conference was broken up when then-college GOP leader Grover Norquist accused Leach of lying. (Norquist is now head of Americans for Tax Reform and a prominent ally of House Speaker Newt Gingrich.)

For its part, The Washington Times dismissed Leach's charges as "flummeries" and mocked the Ripon Society as a "discredited and insignificant left-wing offshoot of the Republican Party." [WP, Jan. 6, 1983]

Despite periodic fretting over Moon's influence, conservatives continued to accept his deep-pocket assistance. When President Reagan and Oliver North were scratching for support for the Nicaraguan contras, The Washington Times established a contra fund-raising operation. Moon's international group, CAUSA, also dispatched operatives to Central America to assist the contras. robt parry wapost

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon3.html

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