Trivializing FFWPU mass weddings and underestimating the Christian Right
an extract from Chapter 8 of
Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy
by Frederick Clarkson (1997) pages 181-185
… Similarly, the analysis by Stephen Carter, [who teaches at Yale Law School and wrote The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion] of how mainstream press reporting trivializes religion often misses the mark. He cites, for example, the “general cultural amusement” over the mass weddings presided over by Rev. & Mrs. Sun Myung Moon.72 Carter is correct that some bemused reporting may trivialize the faith of those who subordinate themselves to clerical authority in this way. However, Carter ignores the serious issues raised by the theocratic goals and practices of the Unification Church and how the mass weddings figure into the church’s larger plans to eliminate democracy, pluralism, and religious freedom.
As was discussed in Chapter 3 [of Eternal Hostility], Sun Myung Moon has declared that he and his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, “are the True Parents of all humanity... we are the Savior, the Lord of the Second Advent, the Messiah.”73 And that “when it comes to our age, we must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world.” He has further explained that his aim is the “subjugation of the American government and population.”74 There is copious literature on Moon’s record of predatory recruiting and indoctrination practices, his 30-year record of antidemocratic pronouncements and activities,75 the billions of dollars of assets of mysterious origin, the central role this small church plays in American life through its media, and on its business and political empire. In this light, Carter’s focus on the trivialization of the Unification Church by the superficial reporting on Moon’s mass weddings is breathtakingly shallow and fundamentally misguided.
Carter also fails to distinguish between oppressive attacks on religion aimed at curtailing religious expression, on the one hand, and critical debate about religion generally, and specifically religion in politics, on the other. Debating the latter issues is healthy in a country where active theocratic movements are working to undermine the principles of the enlightenment vital to meaningful democracy.
The Christian Right: Weak and Divided?
Carter extends his concern from the supposed excesses of secular society to how society should view the Christian Right. However, this discussion is hampered by his apparent lack of knowledge of the history, ideology and players of the Christian Right. Although Carter was shocked by the Christian Right’s performance at the 1992 Republican national convention in Houston, he was unable to explain either how this came about or what it really meant. In the first chapter of The Culture of Disbelief he derided the “expression of some loud fears about the influence of the weak and divided Christian Right.”76 Oddly, the final chapter’s discussion of the new-found political strength of the Christian Right is titled “Religious Fascism.” Unfortunately, Carter failed to define what he meant by religious fascism, let alone its relevance to his discussion.
Still, Carter’s concern for religious expression is rooted in the best of American contributions to advancing this principle. He calls not for “mere tolerance,” but for religious “equality,” because tolerance is extended at the whim of the majority and can be withdrawn. “[I]n a nation where 85 percent of adults identify themselves as Christians,” he explains, “it may seem easier to speak of toleration of Jews and other non-Christians than to speak of equality of any practical sort. But the language of tolerance is the language of power.”77 Non-Christians, he points out, “rightly object to language suggesting that Christians (or anyone else) should ‘tolerate’ them. The fundamental message of the First Amendment is one of religious equality—a message to which the idea of majority and minority religions should be bitter anathema.”78
One glaring example of Carter’s good intentions thwarted by his superficial approach is a too-brief discussion of the 1992 flap over Mississippi Republican governor Kirk Fordice’s public claim that the U.S. is a Christian Nation.79 Carter summarizes the episode as it appeared in the media, but makes no mention of the Christian Nationalist authors, leaders and constituencies that give the term its contemporary meaning. Senior politicians rarely make declarations about such things unless they are speaking to and for a significant constituency. There was much that could have been said in this context, for example, about the role of the Christian Coalition in Fordice’s election, or the significance of such Christian historical revisionists as David Barton and Gary DeMar.80
Nevertheless, “It is painful to me as a Christian,” Carter concluded, “to watch the perversion of [Christ’s message of love and inclusion]... by the far right wing of my own faith, into a call for holy war—a call which even if metaphorical, can only raise the terrifying imagery of the wholesale slaughter of the crusades.”81 While the specter of religious warfare is painful for everyone. Carter does not address the role of Christian Nationalism as an integral and animating doctrine of the Christian Right, and thus much more than a metaphor, that could lead to just such a ‘holy war.’ Indeed, it was precisely the grim history of religious nationalism, religious warfare and Christian persecution, of not only minority religions but fellow Christians, that led the framers of the Constitution to seek to create a constitutional structure for, and national ethos of, religious equality.
It is the cultivation (if not always successful implementation) of this ethos of religious equality over the past 200 years that has been one of the most extraordinary cultural projects in the history of the world. The Christian Nationalists of the 18th century didn’t like the Constitution when it was written, and their political and theological descendants don’t like it today.
The Defeat of the Christian Right?
Carter correctly concludes that the “defeat of the Christian Right— if indeed defeat is to be” will be a matter of alerting “a sufficiency of one’s fellow citizens of the danger, creating a democratic counter insurgency. And then, harder still, one must get this majority to the polls on election day.”82 However, political victory over the formidable Christian Right requires knowledge and accurate assessments of its positions and prospects—something Carter does not much provide. For example, early in The Culture of Disbelief, he argues that “one must be wary of attributing too much influence to the emergent religious right. The Reverend Pat Robertson’s efforts to gain the 1988 Republican presidential nomination was of interest mainly to the mass media...”83
As argued in the chapter “Neither Juggernaught nor Joke,” he is correct that it is important not to unwarily “attribute too much influence” to the religious right. But it is just as important not to naively— and inaccurately—dismiss their actual strength and potential.
Indicative of a larger problem in Carter’s reporting is his use of the word “Reverend” in reference to Pat Robertson. Robertson resigned his Baptist ministry to run for president in 1988, and does not, nor is he entitled to, use the honorific, “Reverend.” More importantly, it is well known that Robertson has for many years been positioning himself to exert political power in the U.S. The run for president was integral to the building of a political movement, and thus was of far more than passing interest to those who follow religion and politics, especially in the GOP. Robertson actually beat George Bush in the Iowa Republican caucuses in 1988, and did well in the disputed Michigan precinct caucuses. Although the campaign unraveled after Robertson’s poor showing in the “Super Tuesday” primaries in the South, Iowa and Michigan provided clues about Robertson’s long-term political significance.
The Robertson campaign served as an experiment and a building block in much the same way that Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful 1964 campaign for president served as the cornerstone of the modern conservative movement. In light of Carter’s claim that Robertson’s 1988 campaign was a creature of the media, it is important to note that the same media generally missed the story of the rise of the Christian Coalition until well into the 1992 campaign season. Carter’s lack of knowledge of the on-the-ground history of this and related political phenomena undermines his media criticism and misdirects his “attitude” about religion in public life—which he says is the main subject of the book.84
The problem with Hunter’s and Carter’s books is not that they don’t have useful thoughts and information in them. These influential books pose special challenges to those who are committed to democracy, pluralism and religious freedom. Hunter is a partisan scholar from the Christian Right who is generally committed to civility, but who uses a facade of neutrality to mask that he’s stacking the deck of his argument. Carter is a legal scholar who disagrees with the Christian Right on most things,85 but hasn’t really studied it, and thus fails to locate the original and current threats to religious freedom from theocratic movements.
As long as such books are major sources of intellectual guidance to which people turn for insight into the Christian Right, misdirection, misinformation, misreporting and political mistakes will be the norm for every segment of society that follows them.86 James Davison Hunter offers some sound advice in this regard in Culture Wars. “As with military campaigns, cultural warfare is always decided over the pragmatic problems of strategy, organization and resources... The factions with the best strategies, most efficient organization, and access to resources will plainly have the advantage and very possibly, the ultimate victory.”87
Thus great care must be taken when reading material that will inform the strategy of a movement.
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Notes
72. Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States, Ninth Edition, 1990. Abingdon Press, pp. 25-26.
73. Sun Myung Moon, “Leaders Building World Peace,” Unification News, September 1992.
74. John Judis, “Rev. Moon’s Rising Political Influence: His Empire Is Spending Big Money To Try To Win Favor With Conservatives,” U.S. News and World Report, March 21, 1989.
75. See for example, Steve Hassan, Combating Cult Mind Control, Park Street Press, 1988; see also Flo Conway and Jim Seigelman, Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, Second Edition, Stillpoint Press, 1995.
76. Stephen L. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, Basic Books, 1993, p. 11.
77. Carter, op. cit., p. 96.
78. Carter, op. cit., p. 93.
79. Carter, op. cit., pp. 86-89.
80. See for example, Barton’s book To Pray or Not to Pray, (1988) and The Myth of Separation, (1992), WallBuilder Press, Aledo, TX. Both books were in wide circulation in Christian Right circles prior to the publication of The Culture of Disbelief.
81. Carter, op. cit., p. 90.
82. Carter, op. cit., p. 267.
83. Carter, op. cit., p. 19.
84. Carter, p. 15. “And through all of this trivializing rhetoric runs the subtle but unmistakable message: pray if you like; worship if you must, but whatever you do, do not on any account take your religion seriously. That rhetoric, and that message, are the subjects of this book. This book is not about law, but about attitudes—the attitude that we as a political society hold toward religion.”
85. Carter, p. 15. He agrees, with the Christian Right on “broad parental rights to exempt children from educational programs on religious grounds and participation by parochial schools in private school voucher programs...”
86. I hope that this essay will encourage people to seek out better information and analysis about the Christian Right — and to demand better than they usually get from the media. Personally I recommend the books and articles of knowledgeable writers like Russ Bellant, Chip Berlet, Robert Boston, Joe Conn, Sara Diamond, Jean Hardisty, Skipp Porteous, and Lenny Zeskind, among others who have studied this and related movements for many years. Their work is cited throughout the text, notes and resources section of this book. The Christian Right would be far less powerful today, if writers like these had received half of the media and scholarly attention accorded Hunter and Carter.
87. James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, Basic Books, 1991, p. 64.
________________________________________
Sun Myung Moon: “church and the state must become one”
U.S. Presidents Endorse Sun Myung Moon From ‘Spirit World’
The CIG constitution is the paperwork for what Fraser and every Moon org critic has warned was the Moon org’s goal all along
Hak Ja Han’s Cheon Il Guk Constitution is troubling
“Moon’s Law: God Is Phasing Out Democracy”
by Frederick Clarkson
Missing Pieces of the Story of Sun Myung Moon
by Frederick Clarkson
Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy
Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy
by Frederick Clarkson
Frederick Clarkson is a widely published journalist, author and lecturer who specializes in the Radical Right.
Book published March 1, 1997 (Bear in mind, since this book was written things have moved swiftly to the right.)
____________________________________________
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
– Thomas Jefferson, who was attacked by the religious right in the election of 1800. These words are engraved inside the Jefferson Memorial.
____________________________________________
Back cover
What is behind the violence against abortion clinics, attacks on gays and lesbians and the growing power of the religious right?
Frederick Clarkson makes it clear that beyond the bombers and assassins who sometimes make news, is a growing, if not well understood, movement that encompasses Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon and the Promise Keepers—the lead agency of the so-called Christian men’s movement.
Drawing on years of rigorous research, Clarkson exposes the wild card of the “theology of vigilantism” which urges the enforcement of “God’s law” and argues for fundamentalist revolution against constitutional democracy. Contrary to popular belief, these figures are usually neither nuts nor alone.
Eternal Hostility concludes with a challenge to leading neoconservative academics who attempt to blame much of the current culture wars on the legalization of abortion while ignoring the theocratic intentions of leading “conservatives.”
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Review
Frederick Clarkson’s Eternal Hostility provides a chilling road map to a growing movement whose roots go back to the founding days of the country. Clarkson asks the reader to consider what it would be like if having an abortion was punishable by death, if gays and lesbians were thrown into jail, or if our constitutional rights were replaced by biblical law. In a stunning analysis, Clarkson debunks the “objective” bestseller Culture Wars to reveal a tract written by a rightwing church elder.
Chastising liberals and the left for failing to recognize the depth of the threat to liberty, Clarkson argues that we must develop a coherent response to a well-organized effort aimed at overthrowing democracy. When he exposes the aims and strategies of such diverse Christian zealots as the “Promise Keepers” and the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon, remember that it was Clarkson who first to exposed the Christian Coalition’s plans to take over the Republican Party, plans which have largely succeeded in several states and was actually seen as it was acted out on television in the 1996 Texas Republic Convention. Clarkson was also the first to expose how elements of the Christian Right were encouraging the formation of citizen “militias” almost five years before the Oklahoma City bombing propelled the militia movement into general public awareness. Eternal Hostility is a warning bell in the night and is essential reading for any secular humanist or freethinker needing to be aroused from a complacency that “it can’t happen here” — because it has, it is, and it may well succeed if enough good men do nothing to stop it.
— Midwest Book Review
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Contents
Introduction by Robert Meneilly vi
Acknowledgements viii
1. Eternal Hostility: The Born-Again Struggle 1
2. Neither a Juggernaut nor a Joke: 19
How Overestimating and Underestimating Helps the Christian Right
3. Americans for Theocratic Action: 45
Rev. Sun Myung Moon, “Family Values,” and the Christian Right—One Dangerous Theocrat
4. Laying Down the (Biblical) Law: 77
Christian Reconstructionism by the Book
5. Theocrats in Action: From Theory to Practice 97
6. The Devil in the Details: 125
How the Christian Right’s Vision of Political and Religious
Opponents as Satanic May Lead to Religious Warfare
8. The Fight for the Framework: 163
Resetting the Terms of Debate
9. Promise Keepers: The Death of Feminism? 187
10. Defending Democracy: Rethink the Strategy 203
Appendix: Resources 217
Notes 227
Index 264
About the Author 280
____________________________________________
Introduction
Rev. Robert H. Meneilly
As a Presbyterian (USA) clergy with a life-long zeal for both my Christian religion and our democratic country, Eternal Hostility has illuminated my mind and sensitized my heart like nothing I have read in recent times. This is exactly what is needed to help us secure the health of our democracy and preserve true religious liberty. Its honest and intelligent investigative journalism embodies some of the most in-depth research and reporting on the religious right in print. An encounter of my own with the religious right may serve to illustrate the need for this book.
In the spring of 1994, I gave a sermon to our 7,600 member congregation, introducing the personnel, theology, and goals of the radical religious right. The text was subsequently published locally and then in the Sunday New York Times. This drew the wrath of religious right leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family in the form of a full page ad in the Kansas City Star. This was just the tip of a large iceberg of stealth campaigns by the religious right to take over the Republican Party and run for public office in our area. It was then that a local grassroots Mainstream Coalition was formed to challenge the religious right.
I first met Fred Clarkson when we shared the podium at a public forum a few months later in July, 1994, titled “Exposing the Agenda of the Radical Religious Right” and sponsored by Planned Parenthood. The event turned out to be a benchmark in the growing struggle with the religious right in our suburban community outside of Kansas City.
The Planned Parenthood Forum drew extensive coverage from television, radio, and out of town newspapers. Fred spent all day before the evening forum doing interviews. So concerned had the community become that more people had to be turned away than those who packed the large auditorium. On that unforgettable evening, Fred detailed with clarity, and with good humor essential to civil discourse, the imminent threat of the radical religious right to our democratic institutions. This was especially significant in that there were many religious right activists present. It is evident that people are starved for accurate information and analysis about the radical religious right as it affects our communities.
Now Clarkson has drawn on the themes of that address and more, to create a very readable and well-documented book. In bringing out the facts, he is discerning, and not judgmental—a true investigative journalist.
From his critique of authors dealing with the so-called “culture wars,” to his first-hand observation of the founding meetings of the Christian Coalition, much of his writing comes of personal experience, not hearsay. Everything he reports is carefully documented.
Clarkson exposes the distorted use of American colonial history— as some use statistics, interpreting as they will in an attempt to prove whatever they want—and the misreading of the Constitution by the leadership of the religious right. Pat Robertson and his fellow generals in the army do the same with holy Scripture to give their narrow sectarian views the authority of “thus says the Lord.” Clarkson eliminates any confusion; he clearly demonstrates that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were purposefully designed to preserve this democracy and forever save it from being made a theocracy.
Eternal Hostility introduces many important players who receive little media attention, from the anti-democratic “reconstructionist” theologians to James Dobson, long-hailed hero of family values who has been building a prime political empire for a decade. He may well influence more people than the Christian Coalition. His “Focus On The Family” brings in annual revenues of more than $100 million. But while Clarkson issues a warning about these groups and others such as the Unification Church and the Promise Keepers, the author makes clear that apathy on the part of mainline Christians and other centrists is more to be feared. Clarkson insists that “Political participation must not be limited to the voting booth, but active participation in political and electoral life must span the calendar year.”
Too many wonderfully good citizens upon hearing the religious right stand back and say, “They certainly don’t speak for me.” But they do speak for you if you are not doing anything to keep our democracy from being converted to a theocracy!
This book is a masterpiece for God and country!
—Robert H. Meneilly
Robert H. Meneilly founded and then pastored the Village Presbyterian Church (USA) for more than 47 years in Prairie Village, Kansas. It is the second largest mainstream Presbyterian Church in the country. He is one of the founders of the Interfaith Alliance and the Mainstream Coalition, organizations of mainstream religious leaders who oppose the agenda of the religious right.
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“Moon’s Law: God Is Phasing Out Democracy” by Frederick Clarkson
Missing Pieces of the Story of Sun Myung Moon by Frederick Clarkson
Trivializing FFWPU mass weddings and underestimating the Christian Right
The CIG constitution is the paperwork for what Fraser and every Moon org critic has warned was the Moon org’s goal all along
Hak Ja Han’s Cheon Il Guk Constitution is troubling
Church and state: A personal and public tug of war
Sun Myung Moon: “church and the state must become one”
U.S. Presidents Endorse Sun Myung Moon From ‘Spirit World’
United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization
Rev. Sun Myung Moon was among the most pernicious anti-democratic figures in the United States in the latter half of the 20th century.
“Rev. Sun Myung Moon was among the most pernicious anti-democratic figures in the United States in the latter half of the 20th century. Moon hated America. He hated our tradition of individual rights and independent thought. He hated democracy and said he wanted to replace it with a theocracy under his rule. Although many would be loath to admit it, Moon has been a central figure in the development of the modern American conservative movement since the 1960s – from Richard Viguerie’s direct mail operations to the religious and political empire of Jerry Falwell.
“Whether one’s religious or non-religious identity – Christian, Jew, atheist or whatever – the Moon organization has treated the minds and sacred beliefs of others like they were targets of a covert operation. The Moon organization has no respect, and only contempt for the views of anyone who is not a member of the True Family, and part of the covert operation.”
– Frederick Clarkson is a Senior Fellow at Political Research Associates in Somerville, Massachusetts. A longtime observer of the Religious Right, including Rev. Moon, he devoted a chapter to the Moon organization in his book, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.
This article by Frederick Clarkson, written just after Moon’s death in 2012, covers the long criminal career of global felon Moon.
Missing Pieces of the Story of Sun Myung Moon
“Moon’s Law: God Is Phasing Out Democracy”
Eternal Hostility, The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy
It is rare to find an article that gives a sense of proportion and depth to the life of Sun Myung Moon. His life still seems to be a subject of mystery. He was a convicted felon, though his conviction on tax evasion did not fully convey the depth of his sick and twisted life. Recently we’ve had a few articles that have begun to reveal more of the madness Moon embodied, and inspired in his followers. This article by Frederick Clarkson, written just after Moon’s death in 2012, covers the long criminal career of global felon Moon.
________________________________________
Missing Pieces of the Story of Sun Myung Moon
by Frederick Clarkson September 8, 2012
The reporting and punditry in the wake of the death of Sun Myung Moon has left a lot to be desired. Even long, seemingly comprehensive treatments of Moon’s life and empire, such as the one that ran in The New York Times, did not delve deeply into Moon’s profound far right and criminal involvements; antidemocratic politics; or even the mysterious sources of foreign cash for The Washington Times, and extensive political operations in the U.S. for decades, let alone the Moon organization’s broad, insidious affects on American culture and democracy. There has also been some embarrassingly credulous material published about the nature of life in the Church itself, and some odd, unsubstantiated pooh poohery about the problem of cultism.
Of course, history lives, despite the best efforts of some of us not to notice.
Here are a few things from my own knowledge that merit far greater, and better attention than they have generally received so far.
No report that I have seen has gone very deeply into the role of the Moon organization in the Koreagate scandal of the 1970s. A Congressional investigation exposed a massive covert operation and influence buying effort by the government of South Korea against the U.S. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency, (KCIA), some of whose operatives were top leaders of the Unification Church. The church itself was revealed to have been crafted by the KCIA into a “political tool.” A notable exception to this unfortunate trend, was a remembrance by a staffer on the Koreagate investigation, published in the MinnPost. The article quotes from a book by Koreagate staff director Robert Boettcher, Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park, and the Korean scandal. For details on the investigation, see the conclusions of the Report by the House Committee on International Relations, October, 31, 1978.
One of the architects of the “New Right” of the 1970s and beyond was Richard Viguerie. He was best known as a direct mail entrepreneur. Much less well-known is that one of his first clients was a front group for the KCIA and the Moon organization called the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation. This group, ostensibly about anti-communist education, was broadcasting KCIA propaganda radio programming into North Korea and Vietnam. Viguerie has had many Moon front groups as clients over the years, and when his businesses foundered in the 1980s, the Moon organization purchased his office building for ten million dollars. (I detail some of this history in my book, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.
In 1987 I published an exposé in Extra!, the magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, on how top executives of The Washington Times and its parent company [NWC – News World Communications], were current or former KCIA agents:
Three NWC executives are not only top Unification Church officials, but have also had high-ranking posts in the Korean CIA (KCIA). Sang Kook Han, a “personal assistant” to the KCIA director in the early 1960s, later served as South Korea’s ambassador to Norway and Panama. In 1984, Han was installed at the Washington Times, precipitating the resignation of editor James Whelan. Currently senior vice president of New World Communications, Han is described by Whelan as the “de facto publisher” and “inspector general” of the Times.
Kim Sang In, another NWC executive, was KCIA station chief in Mexico in the ‘70s. There, according to U.S. congressional investigators, he functioned as the “control agent” for Tungsun Park, who bribed U.S. officials to gain favors for the South Korean government in what became known as “Koreagate.” Congressional probers disclosed that illegal espionage operations linked to Koreagate were carried out by the Unification Church at the behest of the KCIA.
Bo Hi Pak, the president of NWC, served as liaison to the U.S. intelligence community while posted in Washington as South Korean military attache in the 1960s and early ’70s, according to the Koreagate inquiry. Pak is also president of CAUSA (Confederation of the Associations for Unity of the Societies of the Americas), the political arm of the Unification Church. CAUSA was instrumental in providing aid to the Nicaraguan contras.
Although I wish the paper had gotten into it more, The Washington Post’s epic coverage of Moon’s life and empire offered a few telling details about the way that the Moon organization has intervened in our domestic politics and foreign policy.
During the height of the Nicaraguan civil war in the 1980s, the Washington Times led a fundraising drive on behalf of the contras, a rebel group that sought to overthrow the country’s leftist government. Another church-linked organization, the American Freedom Coalition, paid for a direct mailing to 25 million households that criticized 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis.
What the story does not mention is that Richard Viguerie was an officer of the American Freedom Coalition and did direct mail for the organization. In Eternal Hostility, I discuss how the AFC was, between the collapse of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, and the creation of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, the leading political organization of the Religious Right; for example, spending millions of dollars printing and distributing presidential candidate scorecards tilted to favor George H.W. Bush over Michael Dukakis in 1988 – among many other campaign activities.
While the issue of religious freedom is much in the news lately, Moon and his supporters who were waving the bloody shirt of alleged violations of religious freedom to advance their interests in the 1980s. Moon was convicted of tax fraud and served 13 months in federal prison. (I wrote about the case and the subsequent bruhaha at the time, and later in Eternal Hostility.) Moon was shown to have been specifically advised by his attorneys to keep his personal and church accounts separate. He didn’t. He diverted contributions intended for church purposes to his personal use; and later supervised the production of a false books. He is a convicted felon. But you would not know that to read most of the accounts of his life.
The Moon organization has played a pivotal role in underwriting vast political and media projects in the U.S. But the sources of the funding has always been mysterious, although every investigation has shown that most if not all of the funding comes from foreign sources, primarily Japan. This includes as much as three billion spent to underwrite the The Washington Times alone over the past 30 years.
Former Newsweek and Associated Press investigative reporter Robert Parry has published a vast amount of material on this, including Moon’s involvement with military dictators and drug cartels in Latin America and the Japanese Yakuza.
Parry reported:
But Moon’s relationships with drug-tainted gangsters and corrupt right-wing politicians go back to the early days of his Unification Church in Asia. Moon’s Korea-based church made its first important inroads in Japan in the early 1960s after gaining the support of Ryoichi Sasakawa, a leader of the Japanese yakuza crime syndicate who once hailed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as “the perfect fascist.” In Japan and Korea, the shadowy yakuza ran lucrative drug smuggling, gambling and prostitution rings.
The Sasakawa connection brought Moon both converts and clout because Sasakawa was a behind-the-scenes leader of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. On the international scene, Sasakawa helped found the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League, which united the heroin-stained leadership of Nationalist China with rightists from Korea, Japan and elsewhere in Asia. [For details, see Yakuza by David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro]
In 1966, the Asian league evolved into the World Anti-Communist League with the inclusion of former Nazis from Europe, overt racialists from the United States and “death squad” operatives from Latin America, along with more traditional conservatives.
For more on the World Anti-Communist League, see the book Inside the League, by Jon Lee Anderson and Scott Anderson. For a serious discussion of the role of cultism in the Moon organization, see Combating Cult Mind Control, by Steven Hassan.
The Moon organization has undermined American democracy for decades, and helped to make the conservative movement what it is today. The cult totalism that made ordinary Americans into zealots for a messianic Korean with a fascist political agenda and ties to the people who brought us World War II, is not something to be taken as lightly as seems to be fashionable among some of those who have been asked to comment on the life and death of Sun Myung Moon. As always, there is a battle going on for the narrative of American history, and the role of the Moon organization is part of it.
_____________________________________
Frederick Clarkson September 9, 2012 at 08:20:30 PM
We are so disconnected from history. Even recent history of great consequence. It is just astounding to me. I had written a great deal about the Moon organization over the years, but was otherwise occupied when Moon died. I figured that much of this would be well covered elsewhere, and I was shocked when it wasn’t.
On reflection, I shouldn’t have been. Progressive publications do a somewhat better job than they used to in covering these things, but the mainstream media does much less well.
Progressive political conferences do not much discuss current trends on the political and religious right, let alone how it connects with eye opening understandings of our own history. And I have had people I know and respect adamantly insist that they should not.
I really did not anticipate having to write this diary. But here we are.
Rev. Sun Myung Moon was among the most pernicious anti-democratic figures in the United States in the latter half of the 20th century.
“Rev. Sun Myung Moon was among the most pernicious anti-democratic figures in the United States in the latter half of the 20th century. Moon hated America. He hated our tradition of individual rights and independent thought. He hated democracy and said he wanted to replace it with a theocracy under his rule. Although many would be loath to admit it, Moon has been a central figure in the development of the modern American conservative movement since the 1960s – from Richard Viguerie’s direct mail operations to the religious and political empire of Jerry Falwell.
“Whether one’s religious or non-religious identity – Christian, Jew, atheist or whatever – the Moon organization has treated the minds and sacred beliefs of others like they were targets of a covert operation. The Moon organization has no respect, and only contempt for the views of anyone who is not a member of the True Family, and part of the covert operation.”
– Frederick Clarkson is a Senior Fellow at Political Research Associates in Somerville, Massachusetts. A longtime observer of the Religious Right, including Rev. Moon, he devoted a chapter to the Moon organization in his book, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.
________________________________________
This article by Frederick Clarkson, written just after Moon’s death in 2012, covers the long criminal career of global felon Moon.
Missing Pieces of the Story of Sun Myung Moon
The reporting and punditry in the wake of the death of Sun Myung Moon left a lot to be desired. Even long, seemingly comprehensive treatments of Moon's life and empire, such as the one that ran in The New York Times, did not delve deeply into Moon's profound far right and criminal involvements; antidemocratic politics; or even the mysterious sources of foreign cash for The Washington Times, and extensive political operations in the U.S. for decades, let alone the Moon organization's broad, insidious affects on American culture and democracy. There has also been some embarrassingly credulous material published about the nature of life in the Church itself, and some odd, unsubstantiated pooh poohery about the problem of cultism.
Of course, history lives, despite the best efforts of some of us not to notice.
Here are a few things from my own knowledge that merit far greater, and better attention than they have generally received so far.
No report that I have seen has gone very deeply into the role of the Moon organization in the Koreagate scandal of the 1970s. A Congressional investigation exposed a massive covert operation and influence buying effort by the government of South Korea against the U.S. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency, (KCIA), some of whose operatives were top leaders of the Unification Church. The church itself was revealed to have been crafted by the KCIA into a "political tool." A notable exception to this unfortunate trend, was a remembrance by a staffer on the Koreagate investigation, published in the MinnPost. The article quotes from a book by Koreagate staff director Robert Boettcher, Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park, and the Korean scandal. For details on the investigation, see the conclusions of the Report by the House Committee on International Relations, October, 31, 1978.
One of the architects of the "New Right" of the 1970s and beyond was Richard Viguerie. He was best known as a direct mail entrepreneur. Much less well-known is that one of his first clients was a front group for the KCIA and the Moon organization called the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation. This group, ostensibly about anti-communist education, was broadcasting KCIA propaganda radio programming into North Korea and Vietnam. Viguerie has had many Moon front groups as clients over the years, and when his businesses foundered in the 1980s, the Moon organization purchased his office building for ten million dollars. (I detail some of this history in my book, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.)
In 1987 I published an exposé in Extra!, the magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, on how top executives of The Washington Times and its parent company were current or former KCIA agents:
Three NWC executives are not only top Unification Church officials, but have also had high-ranking posts in the Korean CIA (KCIA). Sang Kook Han, a "personal assistant" to the KCIA director in the early 1960s, later served as South Korea's ambassador to Norway and Panama. In 1984, Han was installed at the Washington Times, precipitating the resignation of editor James Whelan. Currently senior vice president of News World Communications, Han is described by Whelan as the "de facto publisher" and "inspector general" of the Times.
Kim Sang In, another NWC executive, was KCIA station chief in Mexico in the '70s. There, according to U.S. congressional investigators, he functioned as the "control agent" for Tongsun Park, who bribed U.S. officials to gain favors for the South Korean government in what became known as "Koreagate." Congressional probers disclosed that illegal espionage operations linked to Koreagate were carried out by the Unification Church at the behest of the KCIA.
Bo Hi Pak, the president of NWC, served as liaison to the U.S. intelligence community while posted in Washington as South Korean military attache in the 1960s and early '70s, according to the Koreagate inquiry. Pak is also president of CAUSA (Confederation of the Associations for Unity of the Societies of the Americas), the political arm of the Unification Church. CAUSA was instrumental in providing aid to the Nicaraguan contras.
Although I wish the paper had gotten into it more, The Washington Post's epic coverage of Moon's life and empire offered a few telling details about the way that the Moon organization has intervened in our domestic politics and foreign policy.
During the height of the Nicaraguan civil war in the 1980s, the Washington Times led a fundraising drive on behalf of the contras, a rebel group that sought to overthrow the country's leftist government. Another church-linked organization, the American Freedom Coalition, paid for a direct mailing to 25 million households that criticized 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis.
What the story does not mention is that Richard Viguerie was an officer of the American Freedom Coalition and did direct mail for the organization. In Eternal Hostility, I discuss how the AFC was, between the collapse of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, and the creation of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, the leading political organization of the Religious Right; for example, spending millions of dollars printing and distributing presidential candidate scorecards tilted to favor George H.W. Bush over Michael Dukakis in 1988 – among many other campaign activities.
While the issue of religious freedom is much in the news lately, Moon and his supporters who were waving the bloody shirt of alleged violations of religious freedom to advance their interests in the 1980s. Moon was convicted of tax fraud and served 13 months in federal prison. (I wrote about the case and the subsequent bruhaha at the time, and later in Eternal Hostility.) Moon was shown to have been specifically advised by his attorneys to keep his personal and church accounts separate. He didn't. He diverted contributions intended for church purposes to his personal use; and later supervised the production of false books. He is a convicted felon. But you would not know that to read most of the accounts of his life.
The Moon organization has played a pivotal role in underwriting vast political and media projects in the U.S. But the sources of the funding has always been mysterious, although every investigation has shown that most if not all of the funding comes from foreign sources, primarily Japan. This includes as much as three billion spent to underwrite The Washington Times alone over the past 30 years.
Former Newsweek and Associated Press investigative reporter Robert Parry has published a vast amount of material on this, including Moon's involvement with military dictators and drug cartels in Latin America and the Japanese Yakuza.
Parry reported:
But Moon's relationships with drug-tainted gangsters and corrupt right-wing politicians go back to the early days of his Unification Church in Asia. Moon's Korea-based church made its first important inroads in Japan in the early 1960s after gaining the support of Ryoichi Sasakawa, a leader of the Japanese yakuza crime syndicate who once hailed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as "the perfect fascist." In Japan and Korea, the shadowy yakuza ran lucrative drug smuggling, gambling and prostitution rings.
The Sasakawa connection brought Moon both converts and clout because Sasakawa was a behind-the-scenes leader of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party. On the international scene, Sasakawa helped found the Asian People's Anti-Communist League, which united the heroin-stained leadership of Nationalist China with rightists from Korea, Japan and elsewhere in Asia. [For details, see Yakuza by David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro]
In 1966, the Asian league evolved into the World Anti-Communist League with the inclusion of former Nazis from Europe, overt racialists from the United States and "death squad" operatives from Latin America, along with more traditional conservatives.
For more on the World Anti-Communist League, see the book Inside the League, by Jon Lee Anderson and Scott Anderson. For a serious discussion of the role of cultism in the Moon organization, see Combating Cult Mind Control, by Steven Hassan.
The Moon organization has undermined American democracy for decades, and helped to make the conservative movement what it is today. The cult totalism that made ordinary Americans into zealots for a messianic Korean with a fascist political agenda and ties to the people who brought us World War II, is not something to be taken as lightly as seems to be fashionable among some of those who have been asked to comment on the life and death of Sun Myung Moon. As always, there is a battle going on for the narrative of American history, and the role of the Moon organization is part of it.
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Robert Parry’s investigations into Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon and the United Nations
The Moon Organization Academic Network by Daniel Junas
Sun Myung Moon and Takeru Kamiyama jailed in 1984 for US tax crimes
United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization
Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon and Koreagate – Robert Boettcher
Over the years, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the founder, spiritual leader, and titular head of the vast Unification Church conglomerate, has repeatedly declared that his goal is global theocracy. He has expressed his desire for political and economic control originating from centralized religious power. Moon and his organization have been consistent in their efforts to carry out this vision. They are not always successful, but they persist. What is essential to understand about the Unification Church and its related operations is that its religion and its politics are virtually inseparable. Equally important to understand is that the Moon organization [see note 1 below] is an integral part of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), which in turn has played a pivotal role in the development and activities of the Unification Church.
In the U.S. the Moon organization has sought allies on many fronts, notably the New Right, and particularly the religious Right. These efforts have met with mixed success, but there is no doubt that it has made deep inroads into American political life. Where they intend going may be gauged by Moon’s sermons. In 1973, for example, he declared, “My dream is to organize a Christian political party, including the Protestant denominations and Catholics, and all the other religious sects.2
The purpose of this article is to detail the religious and political origins of the Moon phenomenon in the U.S. in order to clarify the more confusing elements.3
Inside the League
The World Anti-Communist League (WACL) is an international coalition of fascist and conservative groups and political parties founded in 1966 by agents of the governments of Taiwan and South Korea.4 One of the original groups was the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League (APACL). Its Japanese affiliate, Shokyo Rengo, became a WACL chapter in 1968. Shokyo Rengo (Victory Over Communism) began after a 1967 meeting between Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, Yoshio Kodama, and two of his lieutenants. Kodama was the head of Japanese organized crime, the Yakuza. One of [Moon’s] lieutenants, Osami Kuboki, became head of the Unification Church in Japan, as well as a leader in WACL. Soon afterward, WACL began indoctrinating young Yakuza gang members in anticommunist ideology similar to what the Moon organization was already doing in Korea with government officials. Sasakawa, an important World War II Japanese fascist leader, became the head of Shokyo Rengo, and Kodama its chief advisor.
Sasakawa’s relationship to the Moon organization, which dates back to 1958, continues to this day, including ongoing financing of both the Unification Church and Shokyo Rengo, which is controlled by the Church.
Sasakawa, Kodama, and other important “Class A” war criminals were mysteriously released from Sugamo prison only a year and a half after World War II. They went on to found the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and have played prominent roles since. One fellow inmate, Nobusuke Kishi, became a prime minister. In 1959, Kishi helped establish a quasi-govemmental, boat-racing/gambling franchise, which he gave to Sasakawa, who grew fantastically rich from the proceeds. Kishi was also the prime mover in establishing APACL in Japan and remained active in WACL throughout the 1960s, serving as chairman of the planning committee in 1970.
▲ Left to right: Won-bok Choi (a ‘second wife’ of Moon), Hak Ja Han, Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, unknown, Hyo-won Eu (who wrote the 1957 Divine Principle and was the main lecturer and organizer of the UC in Korea in the late 1950s and 1960s) and Osami Kuboki (leader of the UC of Japan).
Sasakawa was described by U.S. Army intelligence as “one of the most active fascist organizers prior to the war.” In the 1930s both Sasakawa and Kodama were jailed: Sasakawa for plotting the murder of a former premier, and Kodama for plotting the murder of a prime minister. Kodama was a notorious war profiteer and Japanese intelligence agent in China. “His long and fanatic involvement in ultra-nationalist activities, violence included, and his skill in appealing to youth make him a man who, if released from internment, would surely be a grave security risk.”5
Meanwhile, the first Moon missionaries arrived in the U.S. in 1959. By the early 1960s, Moon fronts had been established and were working in collaboration with the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). Indeed, shortly after the military coup which elevated Park Chung Hee to power in 1961, his KCIA director (and founder), Kim Jong Pil, stated that he intended to “organize and utilize” the Unification Church as a “political tool” (see sidebar), according to the October 31, 1978 Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, known as the Fraser Report.6
The Fraser Report, a House of Representatives investigation into Korean covert operations in the U.S., chaired by Donald Fraser (Dem.-Minn.), reveals that one of the early KCIA/Moon projects was the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation (KCFF). The ostensibly non-profit organization quickly turned from a “cultural” to a political operation under the influence of “Honorary Chairman” Kim Jong Pil, who wanted the “Freedom Center” in Seoul, South Korea to be its principal project. Thus, by the spring of 1964, KCFF was raising funds from Americans for the Freedom Center, which was, in fact, an APACL project promoted and subsidized by the Korean government with at least $796,231.,7 The Freedom Center serves as the “secretariat” of WACL to this day.
In 1966, KCFF launched another KCIA project, Radio Of Free Asia (ROFA), which broadcast anticommunist programming to the region. The Korean government provided the broadcast facilities, and the KCIA controlled the programming through their psychological warfare section, called the “7th Bureau.”8 During its period of organization, Lt. Col. Bo Hi Pak, a military attaché at the Korean Embassy in Washington, actually ran KCFF, despite a series of American figureheads fronting the Freedom Center and ROFA fundraising campaigns. Pak had been given a special discharge from the Korean Army, apparently to devote full time to KCFF in Washington. He was among Moon’s principal operatives as well, and used KCFF for Church purposes. KCFF hoodwinked a number of prominent Americans, including former presidents Eisenhower and Truman to serve on its advisory board. Using their names, KCFF raised funds for their projects and some money was apparently skimmed to fund the Unification Church.9
The International Federation for Victory Over Communism (IFVC) was formed in 1968 in Seoul. This was Moon’s principal political organization. Shokyo Rengo, the Japanese affiliate, was also formed in 1968. The American affiliate was incorporated in Washington, D.C. in 1969 as the Freedom Leadership Foundation (FLF). Shokyo Rengo hosted the 1970 WACL Conference in Tokyo, for which Moon claimed to have raised $1.4 million.10 FLF President Allen Tate Wood attended as a “youth delegate” with several American Moonies. He later broke with Moon, gave press conferences denouncing Moon, and testified before the Fraser Committee. While visiting Korea on the same trip, Wood was instructed by Moon to “win the power centers” of the U.S. for him, beginning with academia.11 Moon also told him that “part of our strategy in the U.S. must be to make friends in the FBI, the CIA and police forces, the military and business community... as a means of entering the political arena, influencing foreign policy, and ultimately of establishing absolute dominion over the American people.”12
According to the Fraser Report, political operations in the U.S. were at first opposed by religious “purists” in the Unification Church. However it was “pointed out to them that the Church in Japan and Korea carried extensive anticommunist political programs. They were told it was Master’s expressed desire to begin political work in the United States. Thereafter, a member’s objection to political activities was considered infidelity to Master and was like being disobedient to God.”13 In 1971, Moon came to the U.S. after his immigration difficulties were overcome through the intervention of Senator Strom Thurmond (Rep.-S.C.), who had spoken at Moon’s 1970 WACL conference in Tokyo. Based on interviews with ex-Moonies, Robert Boettcher, the staff director of the Fraser Committee, wrote that Moon was “appalled” by American individualism, and he considered relocating to Germany, where people “were trained in totalism.” Some former members recall that Nazi films on organizing Hitler Youth were shown as examples to Moonie leaders. Nothing was more important than developing a cadre of strong leaders totally subservient to his will.”14
▲ Moon stands before his prime target.
Wood has said that “[u]nder the aegis of American Youth for a Just Peace (AYJP)...set up by myself and a man named Charles Stephens, the Unification Church carried out extensive lobbying in the spring of 1970. This lobbying was carried out by church members under orders from their superiors...to try to indicate to Congress...strong grassroots support for a hard line in Vietnam.” He also emphasized that because “the church’s tax exempt status would be threatened if we carried out our political activities openly, we were careful to hide our real identity behind the guise of AYJP. During this time, AYJP received ‘anonymous’ donations from ‘friends of the President’ [Nixon] through connections with Charles Colson and Jeb Magruder. So the Unification Church in the 1970s was the recipient of money to carry out the programs of the government.”
“Mr. Moon has said,” continued Wood, “that ‘God is phasing out democracy.’ Well, whether or not God is doing it, it is clear that Sun Myung Moon wants to do this... so right now, the United States is acting as a seedbed for fascist religious cults whose objective is in the end to destroy the Constitution, and remake America in the image of an autocratic hierarchical fascist state.”15
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SIDEBAR:
▲ David Finzer addresses a WACL conference.
Finzer and MNR
David Finzer is also involved in the counterrevolutionary war against Mozambique. There are two factions of the Mozambique National Resistance (MNR or Renamo). The first, led by Mozambican exile Artur Vilankulu, is endorsed by the Conservative Action Foundation and some State Department officials. David Finzer, secretary-general of the World Youth Freedom League, the WACL youth affiliate, has assured the press that even Gen. John Singlaub supports this faction.
However, to cover its bets, the CIA, along with the Heritage Foundation and South Africa, is backing a second MNR group with offices in the Heritage Foundation’s Washington building. Luis B. Serapiao, also a Mozambican exile who is an associate professor of African studies at Howard University, is the spokesperson for this group, which has also enlisted the aid of Bishop Abel Muzorewa of Zimbabwe. •
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In 1975, Moon publicly denounced WACL as “fascist” and purportedly withdrew; however, this was most likely simply an effort to keep a lower profile. The Washington Post, covering the 1978 WACL conference in Washington, reported that the Unification Church was absent and no longer involved.16 However, a Unification Church minister hired buses for CIA-connected Cuban exiles to attend, according to interviews with the Cubans by Jeff Stein, writing in New York magazine.17 It is clear that the Moon organization never really left WACL. Osami Kuboki has been a member of the WACL executive board for many years, and even hosted the 1982 WACL conference in Japan.
Significantly, the youth section of WACL, currently headed by David Finzer18 of the Washington-based Conservative Action Foundation, has reportedly received a grant from the South Korean WACL chapter.19 Finzer’s group is providing seminars on “political technology” for WACL Youth, and originated the Chevron/Gulf boycott—a campaign which received support from the RAMBO Coalition (see sidebar in “Shepherding,” in this issue)—designed to highlight the efforts of Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA to overthrow the government of Angola.
“An Automatic Theocracy”
While WACL generally promotes fascist political programs, when the Moon organization is involved, the messages released are more explicitly theocratic. Essentially, Moon’s followers believe he is the new Messiah, the second coming, not of Jesus but of the Messiah. Moon says that God told him: “You are the son I have been seeking, the one who can begin my eternal history.”20 He says that God has revealed his plan to him and that he has spoken with Jesus, Moses, and other great historical religious figures.
Moon intends to bend the U.S. to “God’s will,” which will lead to a final war with Soviet communism, and finally to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. According to The Divine Principle, the basic theological work of Unificationism, World War III is “inevitable”. This war may be fought with weapons, or with “ideology,” in order to “subjugate and unify the Satanic world.” The organization created to refine and promote this ideology appears to be CAUSA (see sidebar) which the Unification News describes as an “ideological movement,” which “unites all religious people as a God-accepting force against the God-denying forces such as communism.”21
The Divine Principle denounces the tripartite constitutional system of western democracies, stating that “Since the Constitution is not made of God’s words” the three branches of government “cannot help opposing and conflicting with one another, and lack mutual harmony and order.”
Moreover, in 1973, Moon said that “American style democracy” is ‘‘a good nursery for the growth of communism.”22 Ten years later he told his annual International Conference for the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS) that ‘‘neither Democracy nor Communism provides the means to cure the ills of society.... Not only has Democracy been unsuccessful at this task, but it has proved itself unable to resist and overcome the destructiveness of Communism.... What is needed is a third alternative, a movement based on a new understanding of truth...this is the Unification Movement, with Unification ideology.”23
Echoing Moon and The Divine Principle, Bo Hi Pak told an audience composed largely of retired American and Asian military officers in May 1985, “We believe we are at war. This Third World War began long ago. This war will not be fought just militarily. A fundamental characteristic of this war, we feel is the ideological battle.” Evidently referring to the Soviet Union he continued, “The enemy of our freedoms and our faith in God regards this war as total war, and he feels bound by none of our religious convictions of right behavior. He utilizes everything as a weapon in this war, not only in the military field, but also in the areas of politics, economics, education, communications media, arts, and even sports.” He called it an “inevitable showdown” that “may occur with[in] the next ten years.”
Thus the Moon organization has been consistent over the years, from their basic book through the speeches of the Master and his most prominent disciple. One former member observed that Moon’s teachings “were often referred to by other members as an ‘ideology’ that would change the political systems of the world. It was made clear to me that so long as the church-related aspects of the group were emphasized, Moon’s followers would be in a protected position as far as first amendment religious freedom was concerned, and be able to take advantage of the tax laws as well.”24
Moon’s theocratic aspirations are well documented in a series of speeches and sermons from the 1970s, compiled under the title Master Speaks. In 1973, for example, Moon declared that “[w]hen it comes to our age, we must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world. So we cannot separate the political field from the religious.... Separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most.” In Moon’s kingdom, Korea would be the central nation; the Rome of a new Empire. What is more, “In the ideal world centered upon God, everyone will speak only Korean, so no interpreter will be necessary.”25
Moon’s religion-is-everything ideology includes the economy. He says that under his system, “even in Japan and Germany, the people will not buy products from their own country, but will buy according to centralized instructions. What kind of system of thought or economy can function to give these centralized instructions? Religion is the only system that can do that.”26
Moonism also transcends biology. Church members, [after being married by Moon,] are considered [purified and thus able to start new sinless lineages.] Moon and his wife are the “True Parents” [and together with their own physical children they are known as the “True Family.”] Members celebrate as birthdays the day they joined the Church. Anthropologist Willa Appel has written of messianic cults and how this aspect is characteristic of many groups: “For both messiah and followers, entrance into a messianic movement constitutes spiritual rebirth. The messiah is reborn as God’s Second Son, his followers as his children. The recruitment process that the messiah undergoes is repeated by his followers. They too are required to give themselves up to God (in the person of his stand-in, the messiah) and forced to renounce their pasts, worldly possessions, attachments and ideas.” As for the messiah, “He is the Savior, destined to rescue the world from imminent destruction and they are the Chosen People who will implement his mission.”27
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SIDEBAR:
The CAUSA Kingdom
▲ CAUSA conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, February 1984
CAUSA is the principal political arm of the Unification Church. It was founded in 1980, following an exploratory tour of Latin America countries, during which Bo Hi Pak met with key rightwing and military leaders. CAUSA’s main activities from 1980-1982 were arranging ideological indoctrination seminars for political, military, and other leadership groups all over the continent. In 1983, CAUSA North America was founded, and began organizing similar seminars in the U.S. Although originally known as the Confederation of the Associations for the Unification of the Societies of the Americas, by this time, the “Unification” had been changed to “Unity” in an apparent effort to distance CAUSA from the taint of the church.
Whatever its name, control of the organization by the Unification Church has been continuous. The directors of CAUSA International are all serious Church members. According to an internal CAUSA strategy memo dated January 1984,1, the CAUSA directors proposed to “cooperate so as to best support Our True Parents [Mr. and Mrs. Moon] and Colonel Pak in this campaign to find 70 million members.... We in CAUSA have been called by True Parents to participate in a most crucial campaign which will focus upon recruiting 70 million members within the coming two years.” The “directors” of CAUSA are the department heads within the organization. The “principal participants” in the meetings which led to drafting the document were: Antonio Betancourt, Thomas Ward, William Lay, Joe Tully, Takeshi Furuta, Frank Grow, Celia Roomet, Roger Johnstone, David Decker, and Tony Colombrito. Significantly, the CAUSA directors planned to learn from “the Japan IFVC’s (International Federation for Victory over Communism, or Shokyo Rengo) drive for 3.5 million members.” The IFVC model was to aim for leaders, mostly political leaders “and when the leader committed himself, he also committed his movement.”
Takeshi Furuta is apparently the key liaison between the Japanese and the American organizations. While a director of CAUSA, Furuta was a member of the Japanese delegation to the 1985 WACL conference in Dallas. At the 1986 WACL conference, Osami Kuboki, Furuta, and their wives were the Japanese delegates.
Meanwhile, the CAUSA regional advisors attending the 1985 U.S. CAUSA conference in San Francisco, were also all Unification Church ministers. On the agenda of events for 1984, along with numerous ideological conferences, was a media tour of Asia, ostensibly under the auspices of the World Media Conference (WMC). WMC is purportedly a project of News World Communications, the parent company of the Washington Times. However the CAUSA document suggests that it was planned, if not organized by CAUSA. The Asian tour was led by former U.S Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur, and delegates met with Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone, among other leaders in Asia. Similar tours have been organized to Central America, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union.
Once limited to the Western Hemisphere, since 1983 CAUSA has become a global project with significant activities on every continent. The general thrust of the CAUSA seminar is anti-communist education from a historical perspective. The CAUSA antidote to communism is “God-ism”, which is simply the Unification Church philosophy without Moonist mythology.
Bo Hi Pak offered a CAUSA perspective of the Godist or Moonist Kingdom, when speaking of Paraguayan dictator Gen. Alfredo Stroessner. “I believe he’s a special man, chosen by God to run his country.”2 This echoes an earlier revelation by Moon who said of the 1961 military coup of Korean dictator Park Chung Hee: “God set up a powerful new leader, the present president of this Korea, and the new order in our society.”3 •
1. CBS News, “West 57th Street,” May 14, 1986.
2. Christianity and Crisis, October 28, 1985.
3. Fraser Report, p. 353.
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“A Movement Like Le Pen’s”
Moon’s political operations have taken many forms. In Brazil, for example, CAUSA/Brazil has organized a long-term campaign to collect eight million signatures on an “anticommunist manifesto.” They plan to use these petitions to pressure the Brazilian Congress.28 At stake is the Brazilian Constitution, which is to be drafted by the new Congress. The head of CAUSA/Brazil says 57 candidates received “logistical but not financial support.” He said “we are forming the future base for a large party, though at present we are still apolitical” and “we wanted to form a movement like Le Pen’s in France.”29
Le Pen is the leader of the fascist National Front which, according to the British journal Searchlight, has close ties to the Moon organization. Searchlight reported that “according to Le Pen’s estranged wife, CAUSA is an important financier of the National Front.” The head of CAUSA in France was a member of the French delegation to the 1986 WACL conference in Luxembourg.30
CAUSA conducts petition campaigns in the U.S., although its petitioners are often very secretive about their affiliations. They frequently refuse to identify themselves or to say what the petitions will be used for. In Madison, Wisconsin for example, a Moonie would not tell a reporter “who would have access to the information, or what purposes the names and addresses would serve.”31 However, internal CAUSA strategy documents, originally revealed by CBS News,32 suggest a broader purpose (see sidebar on CAUSA). The November 1986 CAUSA newsletter claimed that “7.5 million Americans have signed the CAUSA petition, stating their agreement with CAUSA’s goal to affirm a God-centered morality, uphold freedom for all, and educate people about the dangers of atheistic communism.”
The Moon organization has a long history of electoral activism. The Fraser Report noted that they, in alliance with “powerful rightwing figures in Japan, such as Ryoichi Sasakawa,...openly participated in election campaigns there.”33 Even before Moon came to the U.S., he had high ambitions. Allen Tate Wood told the Fraser committee that the Moon organization sought to gain enough influence in the U.S. to be able to “dictate policy on major issues, to influence legislation, and to move into electoral politics.”34
After American Youth for a Just Peace was disbanded in 1971, its co-founder Charles Stephens moved to New York, and ran (unsuccessfully), first for the State legislature in 1972, and for Congress in 1974. In both campaigns, FLF provided “volunteers.” Also in 1974, the Moon organization provided considerable support for Republican Louis Wyman in his unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate seat from New Hampshire. Wyman reportedly promised to hire a church member for his staff if he won.35 Vengeful Moonies converged on Minnesota in 1978 in a successful effort to defeat Rep. Don Fraser, the sponsor of the congressional investigative report on Koreagate, in the Democratic Senate primary.36 Moon called Fraser’s defeat an “act of God.”
▲ Congressman Donald Fraser (Dem.-Minn.) at the time of the Koreagate hearings.
The Moon organization’s party of choice has always been the Republicans, and the New Right of the GOP in particular. This relationship, epitomized by Moon’s VIP seat at the first Reagan inaugural, has been denounced repeatedly by the moderate Republican Ripon Society. Ripon president Rep. Jim Leach (Rep.-Iowa) wrote that the “ties between the New Right and Moon undercut the New Right’s raison d’être. A political movement basing its appeal on old-fashioned patriotism and family values simply cannot justify alliance with a cult that preys on the disintegration of the American family and advocates allegiance to an international social order operating with cell-like secrecy.”37
The FLF, though apparently supplanted by CAUSA as Moon’s U.S. political arm, is still occasionally active. In May 1984 FLF paid for three Republican Senate staff members, representing Senators Robert Kasten (Rep.-Wisc.), Steve Symms (Rep.-Idaho), and William Armstrong (Rep.-Colo.), to “fly to Central America where they met with government leaders and U.S. Embassy officials in Honduras and Guatemala and joined the official U.S. observer delegation to the Salvadoran election.”38
Convicted Felons
In 1984, Moon entered Danbury Federal Prison to serve an 18-month sentence for conspiracy to file false tax returns, to obstruct justice, and to commit perjury.39 The Moon organization claims that Moon and his co-defendant Takeru Kamiyama were unfairly prosecuted due to racial and religious intolerance on the part of the U.S. government. Remarkably, the Moon organization has used the disaster of Moon’s imprisonment to benefit its public image. Across the political spectrum, many people offered grudging support for Moon because they believed he was mistreated by the judicial system. The Moon organization has skillfully exploited these sentiments, and indeed, had a major role in creating them. What began as a campaign for “religious freedom” has become a multi-faceted strategy to further the Moonist agenda. In 1984, Bo Hi Pak said that “freedom of religion has become a major issue in America, and Reverend Moon is the rallying point.”40 Echoing this theme. New York Unification Church leader Ken Sudo told fellow Moonie leaders in May 1985 that, “Father went to Danbury as the leader of the Unification Church, but when he comes out, he must be the leader of the Free World.”41
If Moon had only failed to pay income tax on $160,000 he would not ordinarily have been prosecuted on criminal charges. But evidence of willful violation of the law made criminal prosecution inevitable. In 1973, tax lawyers and accountants told Moon’s representatives to keep his personal assets separate from those of the Church. Kamiyama ignored this advice and prepared Moon’s taxes under Master’s personal supervision. They forged and backdated ledgers to hide Moon’s assets within the Church’s. The prosecution proved, among other things, that the paper used to falsify the 1973 records was not even manufactured until 1974.42
Moon’s defense on appeal, (known as the “Messiah defense”) is consistent with his theocratic ambitions. Moon claimed that some of his followers believed he is “potentially the new Messiah,” the “embodiment” of the Church, and thus exempt from personal income taxes. The court held, however, that even Messiahs are not exempt from taxes, and have a status as an individual distinct from the church. Freedom of religion is “subordinate to the criminal laws of the country.” The court ruled that “To allow otherwise would be to permit church leaders to stand above the law.”
Moon as Martyr
The Moon-as-martyr campaign has been orchestrated by the Moon organization, public relations firms, and grantees. The most prominent example is the Washington-based Coalition for Religious Freedom (CRF) which, according to CRF president Don Sills, has received at least $500,000 from Moon sources.43 A prominent CRF spokesperson and executive committee member is Joseph Paige. As Executive Vice President of the Black Baptist Shaw Divinity School, Paige received $60,000 from the Unification Church for his school, which in turn gave Moon a much publicized honorary doctorate. Paige is also active in CAUSA.44
In 1984, the Association of Concerned Taxpayers, headed by then Rep. George Hansen (Rep.-Idaho), started CRF.45 A CRF fundraising letter signed by Hansen declared that “a deadly government assault against religion has erupted in America [and] powerful government forces are moving quickly to smash the great constitutional guarantees protecting the freedom of religion.” Hansen strongly objected when the IRS withdrew tax-exempt status from Bob Jones University because of racial discrimination and policies against interracial dating. He also condemned the state of Nebraska for arresting fundamentalist Everett Sileven after Sileven refused to allow teachers at his private school to be certified by the state as required by state law.46
The obstacle to “religious freedom” as defined by Moon and much of the Christian Right, is “secular” government, which they see as a stepping stone to “Satanic, atheistic, Communism.” Bo Hi Pak declared that the world is a battleground between “God and no God.”47 CRF claims that the Moon prosecution and the alleged attack on religion by government “is largely the result of the ungodly secular humanist philosophy that has contaminated our schools, the media, and the various levels of government.” The 1985 CAUSA Lecture Manual stated that “in the United States, an intermediary stage prior to communism may be secular humanism.”48
The CRF executive committee has developed rapidly since 1984, to include most of the major televangelists, such as Tim LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, James Robison, Rex Humbard, D. James Kennedy, and Jimmy Swaggart. Recently, the Moon organization opened an international front in its “religious freedom” campaign. According to Moon’s New York City Tribune, the World Council on Religious Liberty (WCRL) was founded in December 1986 at a conference in Geneva, Switzerland. The Chairman of WRCL is Joseph Paige, and its “Chairman of the North American Caucus” is Don Sills. They have recruited Dr. Robert G. Muller, assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, as chairman of the Council’s International Advisory Committee. The Council’s headquarters are in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is also home to Paige’s Shaw Divinity School.49
Gray Areas
While “Father” Moon served time, his followers organized an elaborate public relations campaign which included the religious freedom campaign, efforts to get Supreme Court review of the Moon case, and finally a campaign to get Moon pardoned. The Moon organization hired, among others, the public relations firm of Gray and Co., headed by Robert Keith Gray, a former Reagan campaign official. In early 1984, according to sources familiar with the incident, Gray and Co. director Robert B. Anderson solicited the signature of prominent Washington Rabbi Joshua Haberman for Hansen’s religious freedom petition to President Reagan. The petition was general in nature, but was then used in CRF’s direct mail blitz. Haberman withdrew, saying he had been deceived and that his name was being used to advance causes which he did not support.
Robert Anderson, a former Treasury Secretary in the Eisenhower administration, was already involved with the Moon organization at the time. He spoke at the founding conference of CAUSA North America in Montego Bay, Jamaica in 1983. He also headed a Moon-funded front known as the Global Economic Action Institute from 1983 to 1986. He was succeeded in this post by former Senator Eugene McCarthy.
Gray, who co-chaired the 1981 Reagan Inaugural Committee, was the first President of the Georgetown Club, an elite social club financed by his friend, KCIA operative Tongsun Park (see sidebar). According to a former KCIA director, the Georgetown Club was a KCIA front used by Park to facilitate “lobbying activities” in the 1970s.50 For at least the past few years, Gray and Co. has been registered as a foreign agent for Japan and South Korea.
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SIDEBAR:
The KCIA Connection
The Moon organization was central to the Koreagate scandal of the 1970s. The tale goes back before the 1961 military coup that brought Park Chung Hee to power. The House of Representatives’ investigation of the scandal, headed by Rep. Donald Fraser (Dem.-Minn.), summarized some of this early history:
In the late 1950s, Moon’s message was favorably received by four young, English-speaking Korean Army officers, all of whom were later to provide important contacts with the post-1961 Korean government. One was Bo Hi Pak, who had joined the ROK (Republic of Korea) Army in 1950. Han Sang Keuk...became a personal assistant to Kim Jong Pil, the architect of the 1961 coup and founder of the KCIA. Kim Sang In retired from the ROK Army in May 1961, joined the KCIA and became an interpreter for Kim Jong Pil until 1966. At that time, [Kim Sang In] returned to his position as KCIA officer, later to become the KCIA’s chief of station in Mexico City. He was a close friend of Pak Bo Hi and a supporter of the Unification Church. The fourth, Han Sang Kil, was a military attaché at the ROK embassy in Washington in the late 1960s. Executive branch reports also link him to the KCIA. On leaving the service of the ROK government, Han became Moon’s personal secretary and tutor to his children....
In the period immediately after the coup, Kim Jong Pil founded the KCIA and supervised the building of a political base for the new regime. A February 1963 unevaluated CIA report stated that Kim Jong Pil had “organized” the Unification Church while he was KCIA director and had been using the Unification Church “as a political tool.”1
Though the Fraser report noted that “organized” is not to be confused with “founded,” since the Unification Church was founded in 1954, “...there was a great deal of independent corroboration for the suggestion in this and later intelligence reports that Kim Jong Pil and the Moon organization had a mutually supportive relationship, as well as for the statement that Kim used the Unification Church for political purposes.”2 The report also notes that the four above named Moonie army officers played key roles in early ROK/U.S. relations. Han Sang Keuk was a translator for Park Chung Hee when he met with President Kennedy in November 1961. And Kim Sang In accompanied Kim Jong Pil when he visited Washington in 1962, where they were briefed by the CIA, FBI, and Defense Department. One of their escorts was Bo Hi Pak who was a military attaché at the ROK embassy in Washington at the time. Pak was also reportedly the liaison to the American intelligence community.3
The Fraser Committee also “obtained a copy of Kim Jong Pil’s itinerary...which showed that [Kim Sang In] was part of the entourage which toured the United States, meeting numerous U.S. officials. While in San Francisco, Kim Jong Pil...met secretly with a small group of Unification Church members who were among Moon’s earliest followers in the United States.” A person present at that meeting “recalled that Kim [Jong Pil] told Unification Church members that he would give their movement political support in Korea, though he could not afford to do so openly.”4
All this serves as a backdrop to the Koreagate scandal. The Moon organization, as noted above, cooperated closely with Kim Jong Pil in establishing the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation as a mutually beneficial political operation. However, as of at least 1970, Park Chung Hee and his associates developed multifaceted plans to influence and subvert the U.S. Congress and Executive Branch, primarily it seems, to assure continued U.S. military presence in South Korea. Also involved were efforts to influence trade legislation, discredit opponents of the Park regime in the U.S., influence the U.S. academic community, influence the U.S. news media, and a host of other activities, many of them illegal. The key areas of the scandal, as exposed by the congressional investigations, were bribes and campaign contributions made to Members of Congress and Senators. Several were indicted and jailed. For most others, there was apparently insufficient evidence for prosecution. Much of the congressional influence scheme was organized by Tongsun Park, a KCIA agent and businessman. Kim Sang In, a frequent visitor to Park’s house, and traveling companion, was believed by congressional investigators to have been Park’s supervisor or “control agent.” During this period, the early 1970s, Kim Sang In was an aid to the KCIA Director Lee Hu Rak, and was later KCIA Station Chief in Mexico City. The Fraser Report also notes that he “served for a time as liaison to the U.S. CIA.”5
Kim Sang In has, since at least 1982, been executive Vice President of the parent company of Moon’s Washington Times newspaper, News World Communications (NWC). Bo Hi Pak is President of NWC, as well as CAUSA, and the still existent Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation (KCFF). Han Sang Keuk later became the Korean Ambassador to Norway,6 and is currently involved in CAUSA’s International Security Council.
As for the Koreagate scandal, the Korean influence scheme apparently had its origins in a desire to emulate successful foreign governmental lobbies in the U.S., notably Israel and Taiwan (“the China Lobby”).7 There were plans to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions on rice deals, which in turn would be spent on congressional bribes and other expenses; to infiltrate Congress, the White House, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While there was no evidence the KCIA succeeded in infiltrating the White House or the Pentagon, KCIA agents were found to be on the staffs of Rep. Cornelius Gallagher (Dem.-N.J.) and House Majority Leader Carl Albert (Dem.-Okla.). There were also numerous Moonies working, mostly as volunteers in Congressional offices, including Albert’s. Among the “interns” who have been placed on Capitol Hill through the Conservative Youth Foundation (see sidebar) in the past year are, again, a number of Moonies, according to reliable sources. •
1. Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, October 31, 1978 (the Fraser Report), pp. 354, 24.
2. Ibid., p. 24.
3. Robert Boettcher, Gifts of Deceit (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980), p. 40.
4. Fraser Report, p. 355.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., pp. 102, 363.
7. Ibid., p. 111.
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The pardon campaign failed. However, four months after his release from prison, Moon visited Korea where, in the Olympic stadium, a rally of about 30,000 people was hosted by his original political organization (still a part of WACL), the International Federation for Victory over Communism (IFVC). According to the London Times, no senior Korean government officials were present. However, Osami Kuboki read a message of support from Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone. Kuboki said both Nakasone and former Prime Minister Kishi had “interceded on Moon’s behalf with President Reagan.” According to the Times of London, Nakasone “telephoned the President because of Mr. Moon’s status as an international leader, while Mr. Kishi, a supporter of the Unification Church in Japan, had written to the President three times.”51
▲ Nobusuke Kishi, Japanese war criminal, founding member of WACL, and CAUSA official. Kishi is standing between Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han. On the right is Osami Kuboki.
Kishi, who was a WACL leader in the late 1960s, is also involved with CAUSA’s International Security Council (ISC). ISC’s purpose includes organizing retired military officers of the Western Alliance, and holding anticommunist conferences. Kishi also co-chaired Moon’s 1984 World Media Conference in Tokyo.
Kishi’s involvement underscores the importance of Japan to the Moon organization. Despite its Korean roots and the historical animosity between Korea and Japan, the Unification Church has had a limited popular following in Korea and very large support in Japan. Indeed, its predominant source of funding has been Japan. The Washington Post, quoting a former ranking Japanese Moon official, reported that some $800 million had flowed from Japan to the U.S. Unification Church over the preceding nine years (1975-1984).52 Where the money went is a matter of intense speculation. Some was invested in businesses and real estate. Hundreds of millions have by now spent on Moon’s major publications, notably the Washington Times, the New York City Tribune, and the newsweekly Insight magazine. But clearly too, Moon money has been invested in domestic American politics; and the funds documented here are but the tip of the iceberg. (See sidebar.)
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SIDEBAR:
Who Does Moon Finance?
Amidst the many rumors of Moon organization funding of conservative political groups, there have been a few documented examples. Those exposed to date include:
Conservative Alliance (CALL), received $775,000 in 1984 from CAUSA.1
Coalition for Religious Freedom received $500,000 in 1984 from unidentified Moon sources.2
Conservative Youth Foundation received $250,000 in 1985 from CAUSA.3
California Republican Youth Caucus received $5,000 in 1984 from CAUSA.4
Republican National Committee received $10,000 in 1984 from Bo Hi Pak.5
Republican National Committee received $10,000 in 1984 from James Gavin.6
1. Wall Street Journal, December 17, 1985. This money was inaccurately reported as having gone to the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC). A legal contribution to a PAC is limited to $5,000. However, CALL, a non-profit lobbying group, shared an office and switchboard with NCPAC, and was also headed by NCPAC’s Terry Dolan. The money was used for TV spots opposing trade with the Soviet Union, and to lobby Congress in favor of aid to the contras and for funding for the MX missile.
2. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 27, 1986. CRF head Don Sills admits to this figure. It could be much more.
3. Wall Street Journal, December 17, 1985. This operation, also tied to Terry Dolan, who is a director of CYF, places young conservatives in Capitol Hill internships.
4. Ripon Forum, October 1985. This money went towards a statewide youth conference at which a CAUSA representative spoke.
5. Federal Election Commission records show that Pak is an “Eagle,” or $10,000 contributor to the GOP. This status gives one special access to high government officials. Pak is the head of most of Moon’s world-wide operations.
6. FEC records also show that James Gavin is an Eagle contributor. Gavin is a long-time Moonie and political operative. He headed the “Capitol Hill Ministry” of the Unification Church during the Koreagate scandal and later served as public relations director of the Washington Times.
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Inside the New Right
Part of Moon’s U.S. strategy has been to seek alliances with the religious Right. However, the relationship has been highly controversial within the movement. While Moon money is widely rumored to be a major financial underpinning of the New Right, it is often kept secret because so many conservatives find the Moon organization repugnant.
Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, and one of the founders and executive committee members of the Coalition for Religious Freedom, dropped his support for Moon in early 1984. His spokesperson, Ron Godwin, denounced as “peculiar” those who take money from a church whose “founder believes he’s divine.... They’re taking money from a cult whose doctrines are 180 degrees opposed. It’s a little like the Jewish National Fund accepting money from Arafat.”53
But by August 1985, Falwell had cut short a tour of South Africa to appear at a press conference at Moon’s God and Freedom Banquet. Both events were organized by CRF. Godwin later became the business manager of Insight.
In a letter to Bo Hi Pak, taped onto a cassette by Rev. Tim LaHaye of the American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV is a political coalition of televangelists), LaHaye thanked Pak for providing “timely” and “generous help” in connection with an “extremely expensive” move of ACTV’s headquarters from California to Washington, DC.54 Like Falwell, LaHaye was one of the founders and executive committee members of CRF. LaHaye later denied receiving money from the Moon organization.
Whose Voice Is Christian Voice?
The rightwing Christian Voice claims 350,000 members, including 40,000 ministers who become members by virtue of having responded to direct mail funding appeals. The organization, which employs 17 field organizers, stepped into the void left by the departure of the Moral Majority and ACTV from significant political activity. However, they may have overstepped their position.
Christian Voice has come under fire recently for misrepresenting itself, and for its ties to the Moon organization. Its claim to represent 45 million Christian evangelicals has been challenged, notably by Robert P. Dugan of the National Association of Evangelicals. He told Christianity Today magazine that Christian Voice is “not constructed to be a representative organization and its political positions may well be determined by a handful of activists meeting over lunch. They are accountable to no one but themselves.” New Right leader Paul Weyrich characterized Christian Voice as “conservative first and Christian incidentally, as opposed to other groups that are Christian first, and conservative incidentally.”55
▲ Gary L. Jarmin, undercover Moonie.
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SIDEBAR:
U.S. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) has admitted that he arranged for followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon to get space in the Dirksen Senate Office Building March 23, 2004 for the self-proclaimed messiah’s coronation. But, Warner says, he did so unknowingly.
The Washington Post reported July 21 that a Moon operative, Gary L. Jarmin of Christian Voice, a Moon front group based in Alexandria, Va., approached Warner and asked for assistance in getting the room. Warner said he agreed to help only as a courtesy to a constituent and that he was unaware that Christian Voice is related to Moon and that Jarmin is a long-time Moon associate.
Several members of Congress attended the event, during which Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han, were dressed in royal robes and adorned with golden crowns. A Unification Church website later reported that the coronation was intended to symbolize America’s submission to Moon and his wife.
Church & State magazine LINK
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The relationship between Christian Voice and the Moon organization has plagued them for some time. At the center of this controversy is lobbyist Gary Jarmin, a Moonie from 1967-1973 who was active in Moon’s Freedom Leadership Foundation and who many suspect may be a Moon agent in the New Right. A May 1981 article in Mother Jones raised this question. Jarmin, who was the legislative director of Christian Voice at the time, insisted, ‘Tm no longer affiliated with the church; I’m not a member of it and I don’t consult with their people. This organization, [Christian Voice] is run by a board of directors for whom I work, which is not in any way affiliated with or controlled by the church. I think my actions speak louder than my words.”56 Nevertheless, by February 1983 Jarmin had helped organize the first CAUSA North America conference, held in Jamaica. Also in attendance were Christian Voice chairman Robert Grant and Advisory Board members W. Steuart McBirney and Ray Allen, and political strategist Colonel V. Doner.
The relationships go even deeper. The three-member board of Christian Voice’s political action committee is chaired by Jarmin, and includes Rev. Don Sills of the Moon-funded Coalition for Religious Freedom. In August of 1985, Jarmin helped organize CRF’s God and Freedom Banquet held in celebration of Moon’s release from jail. He also led legislative workshops at secretive CAUSA indoctrination sessions for American state legislators during 1986. These events drew about 100 conservative legislators from both parties to all-expense-paid junkets, ostensibly to discuss the Constitution. A more elite version of these meetings is the CAUSA-sponsored American Leadership Conference, where Jarmin has also spoken. Jarmin has been joined at other CAUSA events by Robert Grant, who addressed the 1985 CAUSA National Conference in San Francisco. Grant currently chairs the Executive Committee of the Coalition for Religious Freedom.
Although CRF declares its independence from the Moon organization (despite the Moon funding), the current executive director of CRF is Dan Holdgreiwe, a longtime Moon operative who worked for Moon’s Freedom Leadership Foundation from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.57
The Moon relationship with Christian Voice surfaced as a last-minute issue in the 1986 Colorado Senate race between Rep. Ken Kramer (Rep.) and Rep. Tim Wirth (Dem.). Kramer, who is a member of the Christian Voice Congressional Advisory Board, claimed not to know of the Moon connection. He told the Denver Post, “I’m not a Moonie,”58 and asserted to the Rocky Mountain News that the Moon connection, if proven, would “be a matter of great concern to me, and I would have to take a new look at the situation.... I do not support the Moonies in any way.”59 Nevertheless, Wirth won the race.
CAUSA and the Catholic Church
While best known for its growing relationship with Protestant fundamentalism, the Moon organization has actively sought close links with the Catholic Church, particularly in Latin America.60 Their success has been decidedly mixed. The Bishops of Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, and Japan have all denounced the Unification Church in pastoral letters. While this has put a crimp in their operations, Moonism is not without allies. The Archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, sponsored the first CAUSA seminar in that country, and later awarded an honorary doctorate to Moon from the Catholic University, while he was in jail.
According to an internal strategy document dated January 1985, CAUSA views its relationship with the Catholic Church as “extremely important…. One [pastoral] letter of the Bishops in any country will considerably damage our activities. If it happens in a Third World country, all the faithful Catholics will go away, leaving us with ‘non-faithful’ ones, making our situation even more miserable.”61
Indeed, the Honduran Bishops denounced CAUSA as “anti-Christian” and declared that the Unification Church “creates a species of material and spiritual slavery” that poses “serious dangers to the psychological, religious, and civic integrity of anyone who yields to its influence.”62 The Japanese Bishops, noting major theological differences with the Unification Church, also “discourage all Catholics from any collaboration with it. While the Holy See is contrary to any participation by the faithful, it is even more opposed to whatsoever [sic] attendance and collaboration on the part of Catholic priests.”63
The principal Moon advocate within the Church appears to be Father Sebastian Matczak, a Polish priest who has spoken frequently at CAUSA conferences, and who teaches philosophy at the Unification Seminary in Barrytown, New York. The CAUSA paper notes that “Dr. Matczak, in his latest visit to Rome the past January [1984] could verify that the bad reputation of our movement is mainly coming from Latin America, while there they say that official documents from the Vatican prevent them from any relation with us.”64
Despite serious obstacles to Moonist advances on the Catholic Church, the organization claims that CAUSA has a “strong connecting point” with the Church in most Latin countries. The internal report notes, however, that the strategy of seeking relationships with the hierarchy, and inviting priests to CAUSA conferences, has generally failed. As a result, “it seems that we have to open two fronts, one in Rome, one in Latin America.” The latter option emphasized secret and highly selective CAUSA conferences with priests as a way to build a core of supporters, whose favorable reports would percolate up to the Vatican. Dr. Matczak reportedly “finds this strategy...the only way and an absolute necessity.” The twin goals of this plan were to “STOP THE NEGATIVITY FROM WITHIN” (the Catholic Church) and to “Declare war to the Liberation theology.”65
▲ Pope John Paul II with Moonies Tom Ward (circled) and Bo Hi Pak (standing behind the Pope) at an AULA conference in Rome.
It is possible that the Rome option is still viable. A new Moon unit called AULA (Association for the Unification of Latin America) was formed in Rome in December 1984.66 AULA’s second annual conference, in December 1985 in Rome, was attended by a dozen former presidents of Latin American countries and was received by the Pope. The Moon organization is skilled at using the prestige of out-of-power politicians. Two weeks later three former presidents of Colombia, and two of Costa Rica represented AULA at Moon’s welcome home rally in Seoul, South Korea.67
According to Unification News, AULA is drafting a proposed constitution for a “United States of Latin America.”68 AULA’s constitutional specialist is Cleon Skousen, head of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, who worked closely with CAUSA in 1986, organizing conferences of conservative U.S. state legislators. According to Church and State magazine, Skousen is not only far-right but “believes America is a fulfillment of Mormon prophesy regarding the pre-millennial preparation of the Earth.”69
Prior to becoming the current “prophet” of the Mormon church, Ezra Taft Benson endorsed Skousen’s work as having “the Lord’s approval” and appeared at many Skousen events. Benson’s son Mark, is on Skousen’s board of directors. Skousen is the most visible link in an apparent Moon/Mormon alliance. Another important link is U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (Rep.-Utah), who is a Mormon Bishop and has spoken at several CAUSA/Skousen conferences in the past year which have had a disproportionate number of Mormon politicians from Utah and Idaho in attendance.
▲ Cleon Skousen of the National Center for Constitutional Studies at a CAUSA seminar in New York. Left to right: Bo Hi Pak, Cleon Skousen, Matthew Morrison, Michael Beard and Tom McDevitt.
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Conclusion: Moon’s Law
The Moon organization is an ominous, anti-democratic element in American and world politics. Its history is synonymous with post-World War II fascism. In coalition with rightwing secular and religious groups the Moon organization is attempting to create a broad-based, mainstream fascist movement in the U.S.
The simplistic and distorted CAUSA worldview is appealing to authoritarians who glean a sense of historical importance from the notion of an imminent and ultimate battle between good and evil—where they are the good guys. It is all the more convenient that those who stand in opposition— liberals, communists, democratic conservatives, and fools—are all lumped together as forces which are either complicit with the enemy or must be ignored.
The totalist Moon ideology tells new Moonies that everyone outside the [church of the] “True Family,” including their biological parents, may be agents of Satan. CAUSA’s philosophy expresses a similar view. Doubt about Moon, even personal doubts, may be Satan at work. Moon’s law is arbitrary and totalitarian. The Moon organization’s willful violation of American laws is based on theological premises which recognize neither the legitimacy of constitutional democracy, nor the legitimacy of any law, save its own. The Fraser Report, the testimony of former Moonies, media stories, and legal proceedings offer repeated examples of criminal activity. Though the Moon organization speaks of love and peace, these sentiments ring hollow when contrasted with the violent rhetoric of Bo Hi Pak and the hate-filled sermons of Sun Myung Moon. The activities of the Moon organization should be examined in this context, because despite the mendacity of the Moon organization, when it comes to politics, they mean what they say. •
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Notes
1. The Moon organization is the term used by the congressional committees investigating the “Koreagate" scandal in the mid 1970s. It is used here with the assumption that the various Moon enterprises, including the church, operate with a high degree of central coordination and common purpose.
2. Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, October 31, 1978 (hereafter, the Fraser Report), p. 315.
3. A list of the many Moon fronts is available for $1.00 and a self-addressed stamped envelope from Steve Hassan, Box 45032, Somerville, MA 02145.
4. Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside The League (New York: Dodd Mead, 1986) is the first book-length exposé of the World Anti-Communist League. It details the role of the Moon organization, as well as the involvement of Nazi war criminals, fascist governments, American racists, Latin American death squad leaders, and other extremist and criminal elements that comprise much of the League’s membership. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the political context, and activities of the Moon organization. See also CAIB Number 25 (Winter 1986), for a discussion of WACL aid to the Nicaraguan contras.
5. Anderson, op. cit., n. 4, pp. 61,62.
6. Fraser Report, pp. 118, 354.
7. Ibid., pp. 121, 357-58.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., pp. 357-58.
10. Ibid., pp. 319-20.
11. Press Statement by Allen Tate Wood. November 15, 1979 (hereafter Wood Press Statement).
12. Ripon Forum, January 1983.
13. Fraser Report, p. 320.
14. Robert Boettcher, Gifts of Deceit (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980), p. 166.
15. Wood Press Statement.
16. Paul Valentine, “The Fascist Specter Behind the World Anti-Red League,” Washington Post, May 28, 1978.
17. New York Magazine, September 10, 1979.
18. See “Christian Voice,” in this issue of CAIB.
19. Searchlight, October 1986.
20. Boettcher, op. cit., n. 14, p. 31.
21. Church and State, May 1986.
22. Fraser Report, p. 314.
23. “Absolute Values and the New Cultural Revolution,” 12th International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, Chicago, Illinois, 1983, pp. 17-18.
24. Fraser Report, p. 316.
25. Ibid., p. 314.
26. Ibid., p. 315.
27. Willa Appel, Cults in America (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983) pp. 49-50. The Moon organization has used classic brainwashing techniques to gain and keep recruits. Bereaved parents and friends have sometimes resorted to various forms of “deprogramming.” This moral and legal twilight zone has been much discussed elsewhere. Appel’s book describes how various forms of cult brainwashing work. This is significant in this story because of the religious and political totalitarianism advocated by the Moon organization.
28. Protestant fundamentalist and Pentecostal sects in Brazil also organized to try to influence the November 1986 elections. Alarmed about the purpose of this activism, the Catholic Church wrote to the Vatican: “There are indications this was part of American geo-political strategy as well as that of nationalist, or rightwing military governments. Certain groups may have been infiltrated by the CIA.” Independent (London), October 8, 1986.
29. Ibid.
30. Searchlight, October 1986.
31. The Daily Cardinal, September 25, 1986.
32. CBS News, “West 57th Street,” May 14, 1986.
33. Fraser Report, p. 319.
34. Ibid., p. 312.
35. Boettcher, op. cit., n. 14, pp. 162-64.
36. The Nation, March 31, 1979.
37. Ripon Forum, January 1983.
38. Washington Post, September 16-17, 1984. An edited version appears in the Cult Awareness Network News, June 1985. CAN, P.O. Box 608370, Chicago IL 60626.
39. As summarized by the Court of Appeals, Moon and his co-defendant, Takeru Kamiyama, were both charged with “conspiracy to file false federal income tax returns, to obstruct justice, and to make false statements to government agencies and to a federal grand jury.” Moon was also charged with three counts of filing false returns, and Kamiyama was charged with aiding and abetting two of the false filings. Kamiyama also faced two other charges of obstruction of justice and five charges of perjury. The defendants were convicted of all charges; on appeal, one of Kamiyama’s perjury convictions was overturned; all the other convictions were upheld. The “Messiah defense” notwithstanding, the Supreme Court declined to review the case. LINK
40. Proceedings of the 7th World Media Conference, November 19-22, 1984.
41. Fred Clarkson, “The Manifest Sins of Sun Myung Moon,” Christianity and Crisis, October 28 1985. Back issues are available from: 537 West 121 Street, New York, NY 10027.
42. The Moon case has been discussed in more detail in Christianity and Crisis, October 28, 1985; the New Republic, August 26, 1985; and the Sacramento Bee, September 15, 1985.
43. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 27, 1986.
44. Clarkson, Op. cit., n. 41.
45. Hansen himself was later jailed for fraud and failure to disclose loans and profits from rightwing oil baron Nelson Bunker Hunt to his wife, as required by congressional disclosure rules. He was recently paroled. Joseph Paige has also served time. According to a Washington Post account (August 14, 1973), Paige and a co-conspirator formed a “non-profit corporation... falsely representing it as part of the [Federal City] college, [of which Paige was Dean] and diverted checks written on the $230,000 federal education grant into a special...bank account from which they drew checks for personal use.” The criminal records of Moon, Hansen, and Paige have led Washington insiders to refer to CRF as the “Coalition of Religious Felons.”
46. These, and the Moon case, have been a major rallying point for the religious Right against what Hansen calls, a conspiracy by “government planners.” Elsewhere, “independent” churches have refused health and safety inspections of churches, schools, and orphanages, as well as state licensing of child care centers. These are usually based on a refusal to submit to “secular authorities” and the claim they serve only the higher authority of God.
47. Fred Clarkson, “‘Privatizing’ the War,” CAIB, Number 22 (Fall 1984).
48. Clarkson, Op. cit., n. 41.
49. New York City Tribune, December 10, 1986.
50. Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda (New York: Bailantine, 1984), p. 145.
51. Times [London], December 17, 1985.
52. Washington Post, September 16-17, 1984.
53. Carolyn Weaver, “Unholy Alliance,” Mother Jones, January 1986.
54. Ibid.
55. Christianity Today, November 7, 1986. Prior to the 1986 elections, the Christian Voice political lobbying group used the religious freedom issue to attack People for the American Way (PAW), a major liberal critic of the religious Right. The PAW board includes such targets of the Right as the National Education Association, as well as such mainstream religious figures as Rev. Charles Bergstrom of the Lutheran Council for Public Affairs, and John Buchannan, a Baptist minister and former Republican Congressman from Alabama. In a 28-minute film (aired October 9, 1986 on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network) PAW was attacked as “intolerant,” “un-American,” “secular humanist,” “communist,” and “totalitarian.” Co-hosted by Christian Voice chairman Robert Grant (see “Christian Voice,” in this issue) and Washington Times columnist John Lofton, the film was a fundraiser for the distribution of “millions” of the “moral Scorecards” (or “Biblical Scorecards”) used for rating candidates’ qualifications for office. The implication is that such public policy positions as the Balanced Budget Amendment and Star Wars are based on a biblical imperative.
56. Mother Jones, May 1981.
57. Louis Wolf, “Accuracy in Media Rewrites the News and History,”
in CAIB, Number 21 (Spring 1984), p. 24, at 36.
58. Denver Post, November 3, 1986.
59. Rocky Mountain News, November 2, 1986.
60. Wolf, Op. cit., n. 57.
61. Internal CAUSA document. January 1985.
62. Interchange Report, Fall 1984.
63. Arlington [Virginia] Catholic Herald, August 8, 1985.
64. Internal CAUSA document, January 1985. The Report is a confidential 3-year review of CAUSA/Catholic relations. Written by Roger Johnstone and Liliana Karlson, and submitted to CAUSA’s Bo Hi Pak, Tom Ward, and Antonio Betancourt, the Report makes clear that their intentions are more than ecumenical in spirit: “The goal is: the CATHOLIC WORLD (80% of all Christianity). The time is: NOW! Tomorrow might be too late!”
65. Ibid.
66. AULA is headed by Jose Maria Chaves, a longtime Moon operative. A native of Colombia, Chaves is now based in New York. He is a director of the Committee to Defend the U.S. Constitution, a Moon front group which placed full page ads in major American newspapers claiming Moon was a “Victim of a Government Conspiracy.” Warren Richardson, the first director of CAUSA North America and former general counsel to the Liberty Lobby was a director at one time as was David Finzer of the Conservative Action Foundation. In 1985, Finzer took over the youth arm of WACL, and in 1986 was elevated to the executive board. See “Christian Voice,” in this issue [of CovertAction].
67. Times [London], December 17, 1985.
68. Church and State, May 1986.
69. Ibid.
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Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy
Rescuing Religious Freedom
Trivializing FFWPU mass weddings and underestimating the Christian Right
Sun Myung Moon: “church and the state must become one”
The CIG constitution is the paperwork for what Fraser and every Moon org critic has warned was the Moon org’s goal all along
Hak Ja Han’s Cheon Il Guk Constitution is troubling
Church and state: A personal and public tug of war
Sun Myung Moon: The Emperor of the Universe
Robert Parry’s investigations into Sun Myung Moon
FBI and other reports on Sun Myung Moon
United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization
Gifts of Deceit – Robert Boettcher
Politics and religion interwoven
Sun Myung Moon organization activities in Central & South America
“Moon’s Law: God Is Phasing Out Democracy”
CovertAction No 27, Spring 1987
By Fred Clarkson
extract:
The CAUSA Kingdom
CAUSA is the principal political arm of the Unification Church. It was founded in 1980, following an exploratory tour of Latin America countries, during which Bo Hi Pak met with key rightwing and military leaders. CAUSA’s main activities from 1980-1982 were arranging ideological indoctrination seminars for political, military, and other leadership groups all over the continent. In 1983, CAUSA North America was founded, and began organizing similar seminars in the U.S. Although originally known as the Confederation of the Associations for the Unification of the Societies of the Americas, by this time, the “Unification” had been changed to “Unity” in an apparent effort to distance CAUSA from the taint of the church.
Whatever its name, control of the organization by the Unification Church has been continuous. The directors of CAUSA International are all serious Church members. According to an internal CAUSA strategy memo dated January 1984,(1), the CAUSA directors proposed to “cooperate so as to best support Our True Parents [Mr. and Mrs. Moon] and Colonel Pak in this campaign to find 70 million members.... We in CAUSA have been called by True Parents to participate in a most crucial campaign which will focus upon recruiting 70 million members within the coming two years.” The “directors” of CAUSA are the department heads within the organization. The “principal participants” in the meetings which led to drafting the document were: Antonio Betancourt, Thomas Ward, William Lay, Joe Tully, Takeshi Furuta, Frank Grow, Celia Roomet, Roger Johnstone, David Decker, and Tony Colombrito. Significantly, the CAUSA directors planned to learn from “the Japan IFVC’s (International Federation for Victory over Communism, or Shokyo Rengo) drive for 3.5 million members.” The IFVC model was to aim for leaders, mostly political leaders “and when the leader committed himself, he also committed his movement.”
Takeshi Furuta is apparently the key liaison between the Japanese and the American organizations. While a director of CAUSA, Furuta was a member of the Japanese delegation to the 1985 WACL conference in Dallas. At the 1986 WACL conference, Osami Kuboki, Furuta, and their wives were the Japanese delegates.
Meanwhile, the CAUSA regional advisors attending the 1985 U.S. CAUSA conference in San Francisco, were also all Unification Church ministers. On the agenda of events for 1984, along with numerous ideological conferences, was a media tour of Asia, ostensibly under the auspices of the World Media Conference (WMC). WMC is purportedly a project of News World Communications, the parent company of the Washington Times. However the CAUSA document suggests that it was planned, if not organized by CAUSA. The Asian tour was led by former U.S Ambassador to Japan, Douglas MacArthur, and delegates met with Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone, among other leaders in Asia. Similar tours have been organized to Central America, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union.
Once limited to the Western Hemisphere, since 1983 CAUSA has become a global project with significant activities on every continent. The general thrust of the CAUSA seminar is anti-communist education from a historical perspective. The CAUSA antidote to communism is “God-ism”, which is simply the Unification Church philosophy without Moonist mythology.
Bo Hi Pak offered a CAUSA perspective of the Godist or Moonist Kingdom, when speaking of Paraguayan dictator General Alfredo Stroessner, Pak said: “I believe he’s a special man, chosen by God to run his country.”(2) This echoes an earlier revelation by Moon who said of the 1961 military coup of Korean dictator Park Chung Hee: “God set up a powerful new leader, the present president of this Korea, and the new order in our society.”(3)
(1) CBS News, “West 57th Street,” May 14, 1986.
(2) Christianity and Crisis, October 28, 1985.
(3) Fraser Report, page 353.
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Gen. Alfredo Stroessner “chosen by God” – killed at least 423, tortured 18,722 and raped many young girls
CAUSA and the Catholic Church in the 1980s
CAUSA and Three South American Terror Generals
“Through CAUSA… people will eventually be drawn to the root, which is Rev. Moon.”
“Moon’s Law: God Is Phasing Out Democracy”
Sun Myung Moon organization activities in Central & South America
