Indeed, the newest disclosure about Moon funneling
money to a Bush family entity bears many of the earmarks of Moon’s
business strategy of laundering money through a complex maze of front
companies and cut-outs so it can’t be easily followed. In this case,
according to an article in the Houston Chronicle, Moon’s Washington
Times Foundation gave $1 million to the Greater Houston Community
Foundation, which in turn acted as a conduit for donations to the George
H.W. Bush Presidential Library.
The Chronicle obtained indirect confirmation that
Moon’s money was passing through the Houston foundation to the Bush
library from Bush family spokesman Jim McGrath. Asked whether Moon’s $1
million had ended up there, McGrath responded, “We’re in an
uncomfortable position. … If a donor doesn’t want to be identified we
need to honor their privacy.”
But when asked whether the $1 million was intended
to curry favor with the Bush family to get President George W. Bush to
grant a pardon for Moon’s 1982 felony tax fraud conviction, McGrath
answered, “If that’s why he gave the grant, he’s throwing his money
away. … That’s not the way the Bushes operate.”
McGrath then added, “President Bush has been very
grateful for the friendship shown to him by the Washington Times
Foundation, and the Washington Times serves a vital role in Washington.
But there can’t be any connection to any kind of a pardon.” [Houston
Chronicle, June 8, 2006, citing the work of private researcher Larry
Zilliox.]
But Moon has many other interests beyond clearing
his criminal record with a presidential pardon.
While it’s true Moon has sought a pardon since the
latter years of Ronald Reagan’s administration, Moon also has counted on
powerful political connections to shield his business activities from
renewed federal investigation that otherwise might have pried into
criminal offenses ranging from money laundering to evading the U.S.
embargo on the rogue state of North Korea.
Moon has achieved this remarkable insulation for
his operations largely by spreading around hundreds of millions of
dollars for political activities, charitable functions and the
publication of one of Washington’s daily newspapers, the Washington
Times.
The founder of the South Korean-based Unification
Church has made himself particularly useful to the Bush family and other
prominent Republicans who have returned the favor by speaking at his
events, lavishing praise on his business operations and granting him
Capitol Hill space for some of his ceremonies.
Bags of Cash
Faced with Moon’s political clout, federal
authorities have looked the other way for more than two decades even
when principals within Moon’s organization have made public declarations
about its continuing criminal practices.
For instance, Moon’s former daughter-in-law,
Nansook Hong, admitted to participating in money-laundering schemes by
personally smuggling cash from South Korea into the United States. She
also said she witnessed other cases in which bags of cash were carried
into the United States and delivered to Moon’s businesses.
Moon “demonstrated contempt for U.S. law every time he accepted a
paper bag full of untraceable, undeclared cash collected from true
believers” who smuggled the money in from overseas, Nansook Hong wrote
in her 1998 book, In the Shadows of the Moons.
Nansook Hong’s allegations were corroborated by other disaffected
Moon disciples in press interviews and in civil court proceedings.
Maria Madelene Pretorious, a former Unification Church member who
worked at Moon’s Manhattan Center, a New York City music venue and
recording studio, testified at a court hearing in Massachusetts that in
December of 1993 or January of 1994, one of Moon’s sons, Hyo Jin Moon,
returned from a trip to Korea “with $600,000 in cash which he had
received from his father. ... Myself along with three or four other
members that worked at Manhattan Center saw the cash in bags, shopping
bags.”
In an interview with me in the mid-1990s,
Pretorious said Asian church members would bring cash into the United
States where it would be circulated through Moon’s business empire as a
way to launder it. At the center of this financial operation, Pretorious
said, was One-Up Corp., a Delaware-registered holding company that owned
many Moon enterprises including the Manhattan Center and New World
Communications, the parent company of the Washington Times.
“Once that cash is at the Manhattan Center, it has to be accounted for,”
Pretorious said. “The way that’s done is to launder the cash. Manhattan
Center gives cash to a business called Happy World which owns
restaurants. ... Happy World needs to pay illegal aliens. ... Happy
World pays some back to the Manhattan Center for ‘services rendered.’
The rest goes to One-Up and then comes back to Manhattan Center as an
investment.”
The lack of federal investigative interest in
these admissions of guilt was especially curious because evidence of
Moon’s money-laundering dated back to the late 1970s when Moon’s
operations came under the scrutiny of a congressional probe into a South
Korean influence-buying plot called “Koreagate.” Investigators
discovered Moon’s pattern of money transfers emanating from mysterious
sources in Asia and ending up funding media, political, educational and
religious activities in the United States.
By the early 1980s, that federal
money-laundering probe had led to the criminal charges against Moon for
tax evasion, a prosecution that the new Reagan-Bush Justice Department
tried to derail but couldn’t because it was being handled by career
prosecutors in New York City. Moon was convicted in 1982 and imprisoned
for 13 months.
Buying Influence
But Moon’s influence-buying operation was only
just beginning.
He launched the Washington Times in 1982 and
its staunch support for Reagan-Bush political interests quickly made it
a favorite of Reagan, Bush and other influential Republicans. Moon also
made sure that his steady flow of cash found its way into the pockets of
key conservative operatives, especially when they were most in need,
when they were facing financial crises.
For instance, when the New Right’s direct-mail
whiz Richard Viguerie fell on hard times in the late 1980s, Moon had a
corporation run by a chief lieutenant, Bo Hi Pak, buy one of Viguerie’s
properties for $10 million. [See
Orange County Register, Dec. 21, 1987;
Washington Post, Oct. 15,
1989]
Moon also used the Washington Times and its
affiliated publications to create seemingly legitimate conduits
to funnel money to individuals and companies. In another example of
Moon’s largesse, the Washington Times hired Viguerie to conduct a pricy
direct-mail subscription drive, boosting his profit margin.
Another case of saving
a right-wing icon occurred when the Rev. Jerry Falwell was facing
financial ruin over the debts piling up at Liberty University.
But the fundamentalist
Christian school in Lynchburg, Va., got a last-minute bail-out in the
mid-1990s ostensibly from two Virginia businessmen, Dan Reber and Jimmy
Thomas, who used their non-profit Christian Heritage Foundation to snap
up a large chunk of Liberty’s debt for $2.5 million, a fraction of its
face value.
Falwell rejoiced and
called the moment “the greatest single day of financial advantage” in
the school’s history, even though it was accomplished at the
disadvantage of many small true-believing investors who had bought the
church construction bonds through a Texas company.
But
Falwell’s secret benefactor behind the debt
purchase was Sun Myung Moon, who was kept in the background partly
because of his controversial Biblical interpretations that hold Jesus to
have been a failure and because of Moon’s alleged brainwashing of
thousands of young Americans, often shattering their bonds with their
biological families.
Moon had used his tax-exempt Women’s Federation for World Peace to
funnel $3.5 million to the Reber-Thomas Christian Heritage Foundation,
the non-profit that purchased the school’s debt. I stumbled onto this
Moon-Falwell connection by examining the Internal Revenue Service
filings of Moon’s front groups.
The Women Federation’s vice president Susan Fefferman confirmed that
the $3.5 million grant had gone to “Mr. Falwell’s people” for the
benefit of Liberty University. The indirect funneling of money to
Falwell’s school paralleled the technique used a decade later to donate
funds to George H.W. Bush’s presidential library. [For more on Moon’s
funding of the Right, see Robert Parry’s
Secrecy & Privilege.]
Bush Speeches
Moon also used the
Women’s Federation to pay substantial speaking fees to George H.W. Bush,
who gave talks at Moon-sponsored events. In
September 1995, Bush and his wife, Barbara, gave six speeches in Asia
for the Women’s Federation. In one speech on Sept. 14 to 50,000 Moon
supporters in Tokyo, Bush said “what really counts is faith, family and
friends.”
Moon’s wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, followed the
ex-President and announced that “it has to be Reverend Moon to save the
United States, which is in decline because of the destruction of the
family and moral decay.” [Washington Post, Sept. 15, 1995]
In summer 1996, Bush was lending his prestige to Moon again. Bush
addressed the Moon-connected Family Federation for World Peace in
Washington, an event that gained notoriety when comedian Bill Cosby
tried to back out of his contract after learning of Moon’s connection.
Bush had no such qualms. [Washington Post, July 30, 1996]
In fall 1996, Moon needed the ex-President’s
help again. Moon was trying to replicate his Washington Times influence
in South America by opening a regional newspaper, Tiempos del Mundo.
But South American journalists were recounting unsavory chapters of
Moon’s history, including his links to South Korea’s feared intelligence
service and various neo-fascist organizations.
In the early 1980s, Moon had used friendships
with the military dictatorships in Argentina and Uruguay – which had
been responsible for tens of thousands of political murders – to invest
in those two countries. There also were allegations of Moon’s links to
the region’s major drug traffickers. [For details on the drug ties, see
Robert Parry’s
Lost History.]
Heaven Sent
Moon’s disciples fumed about the critical
stories and accused the Argentine news media of trying to sabotage
Moon’s plans for an inaugural gala in Buenos Aires on Nov. 23, 1996.
“The local press was trying to undermine the event,” complained the
church’s internal newsletter, Unification News.
Given the controversy, Argentina’s elected president, Carlos Menem,
decided to reject Moon’s invitation.
But Moon had a trump card: the endorsement of
an ex-President of the United States, George H.W. Bush. Agreeing to
speak at the newspaper’s launch, Bush flew aboard a private plane,
arriving in Buenos Aires on Nov. 22. Bush stayed at Menem’s official
residence, the Olivos.
As the headliner at the newspaper’s inaugural
gala, Bush saved the day, Moon’s followers gushed. “Mr. Bush’s presence
as keynote speaker gave the event invaluable prestige,” wrote the
Unification News. “Father [Moon] and Mother [Mrs. Moon] sat with several
of the True Children [Moon’s offspring] just a few feet from the podium”
where Bush spoke.
“I want to salute Reverend Moon,” Bush
declared. “A lot of my friends in South America don’t know about the
Washington Times, but it is an independent voice. The editors of the
Washington Times tell me that never once has the man with the vision
[Moon] interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that in my view
brings sanity to Washington, D.C.”
Bush’s speech was so effusive that it
surprised even Moon’s followers. “Once again, heaven turned a
disappointment into a victory,” the Unification News exulted. “Everyone
was delighted to hear his compliments. We knew he would give an
appropriate and ‘nice’ speech, but praise in Father’s presence was more
than we expected. ... It was vindication. We could just hear a sigh of
relief from Heaven.”
While Bush’s assertion about Moon’s Washington Times as a voice of
“sanity” may be a matter of opinion, Bush’s vouching for its editorial
independence simply wasn’t true. Almost since it opened in 1982, a
string of senior editors and correspondents have resigned, citing the
manipulation of the news by Moon and his subordinates. The first editor,
James Whelan, resigned in 1984, confessing that “I have blood on my
hands” for helping Moon’s church achieve greater legitimacy.
Ties That Bind
But Bush’s boosterism was just what Moon
needed in South America. “The day after,” the Unification News observed,
“the press did a 180-degree about-turn once they realized that the event
had the support of a U.S. President.” With Bush’s help, Moon had gained
another beachhead for his worldwide business-religious-political-media
empire.
After the event, Menem told reporters from La Nacion that Bush
had claimed privately to be only a mercenary who did not really know
Moon. “Bush told me he came and charged money to do it,” Menem said. [La
Nacion, Nov. 26, 1996]
But Bush was not telling Menem the whole
story. By fall 1996, Bush and Moon had been working in political tandem
for at least a decade and a half. The ex-President also had been earning
huge speaking fees as a front man for Moon for more than a year.
Throughout these public appearances for Moon, Bush’s office refused to
divulge how much Moon-affiliated organizations have paid the
ex-President. But estimates of Bush’s fee for the Buenos Aires
appearance alone ran between $100,000 and $500,000. Sources close to the
Unification Church told me that the total spending on Bush ran into the
millions, with one source telling me that Bush stood to make as much as
$10 million from Moon’s organization.
The senior George Bush may have had a political motive, too. By 1996,
sources close to Bush were saying the ex-President was working hard to
enlist well-to-do conservatives and their money behind the presidential
candidacy of his son, George W. Bush. Moon was one of the deepest
pockets in right-wing circles.
North Korean Cash
Moon, who has the status of a U.S. permanent
resident alien, has skirted other federal laws, including prohibitions
on financial relations with the hard-line communist government of North
Korea.
Despite Moon’s history of extreme
anti-communism, Moon began spreading money around inside North Korea –
much as he has in other countries – while seeking business advantages
during the first Bush administration, according to U.S. intelligence
documents.
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents,
which I obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, showed
Moon’s organization paying millions of dollars to North Korean leaders.
The payments included a $3 million “birthday present” to current
communist leader Kim Jong Il and offshore payments amounting to “several
tens of million dollars” to the previous communist dictator, Kim Il
Sung, the partially declassified documents said.
Yet, in the 1990s, while
Moon was passing out money, North Korea was scrambling for the resources
to develop missiles and other advanced weaponry, including a nuclear
weapons capability. Moon’s activities attracted the attention of the
Defense Intelligence Agency because it is responsible for monitoring
potential military threats to the United States.
Moon negotiated one North
Korean business deal in 1991, after face-to-face meetings with Kim Il
Sung, the longtime communist leader, the DIA documents said.
“These talks took place
secretly, without the knowledge of the South Korean government,” the DIA
wrote on Feb. 2, 1994. “In the original deal with Kim [Il Sung], Moon
paid several tens of million dollars as a down-payment into an overseas
account,” the DIA said in a cable dated Aug. 14, 1994.
The DIA said Moon's
organization also delivered money to Kim Il Sung's son and successor,
Kim Jong Il.
“In 1993, the Unification Church sold a piece of property
located in Pennsylvania,” the DIA reported on Sept. 9, 1994. “The profit
on the sale, approximately $3 million was sent through a bank in China
to the Hong Kong branch of the KS [South Korean] company ‘Samsung
Group.’ The money was later presented to Kim Jung Il [Kim Jong Il] as a
birthday present.”
After Kim Il Sung's death
in 1994 and his succession by his son, Kim Jong Il, Moon dispatched his
longtime aide, Bo Hi Pak, to ensure that the business deals were still
on track with Kim Jong Il “and his coterie,” the DIA reported.
“If necessary, Moon
authorized Pak to deposit a second payment for Kim Jong Il,” the DIA
wrote.
The DIA declined to
elaborate on the documents. “As for the documents you have, you have to
draw your own conclusions,” said DIA spokesman, U.S. Navy Capt. Michael
Stainbrook. [To see two of the DIA documents, click
here.]
Contacted in Seoul, South Korea, Bo Hi Pak,
a former publisher of the Washington Times, denied that payments were
made to individual North Korean leaders and called “absolutely untrue”
the DIA’s description of the $3 million land sale benefiting Kim Jong
Il. But Bo Hi Pak acknowledged that Moon met with North Korean officials
and negotiated business deals with them in the early 1990s. Pak said the
North Korean business investments were structured through South Korean
entities.
“Reverend Moon is not doing this in his own name,” Pak said.
Pak said he went to North Korea in 1994, after Kim Il Sung’s death,
only to express “condolences” to Kim Jong Il on behalf of Moon and his
wife. Pak denied that another purpose of the trip was to pass money to
Kim Jong Il or to his associates.
Asked about the seeming contradiction between Moon’s avowed
anti-communism and his friendship with leaders of a communist state, Pak
said, “This is time for reconciliation. We're not looking at ideological
differences. We are trying to help them out” with food and other
humanitarian needs.
Samsung officials said they could find no information in their files
about the alleged $3 million payment.
Embargo Busting
North Korean officials clearly valued their relationship with Moon.
In February 2000, on Moon’s 80th birthday, Kim Jong Il sent Moon a
gift of rare wild ginseng, an aromatic root used medicinally, Reuters
reported.
Because of the long-term U.S. embargo against North Korea – eased
only in 2000 – Moon’s alleged payments to the communist leaders raised
potential legal issues for Moon especially if some of the money stemmed
from a land sale in Pennsylvania.
“Nobody in the United States was supposed to be providing funding to
anybody in North Korea, period, under the Treasury (Department's)
sanction regime,” said Jonathan Winer, former
deputy assistant secretary of state handling international crime.
The U.S. embargo of North Korea dated back to the Korean War. With a
few exceptions for humanitarian goods, the embargo barred trade and
financial dealings between North Korea and “all U.S. citizens and
permanent residents wherever they are located, … and all branches,
subsidiaries and controlled affiliates of U.S. organizations throughout
the world.”
Moon became a permanent resident of the United States in 1973,
according to Justice Department records. When interviewed in 2000, Bo Hi
Pak said Moon had kept his “green card” status. Though often in South
Korea and South America, Moon maintained a residence near Tarrytown,
north of New York City, and controlled dozens of affiliated U.S.
companies.
Direct payments to foreign leaders in connection with business deals
also could prompt questions about possible violations of the U.S.
Corrupt Practices Act, a prohibition against overseas bribery.
Ironically, although Moon
reportedly gave North Korea desperately needed foreign capital, Moon’s
Washington Times attacked the Clinton administration for failing to take
a more aggressive stand against North Korea’s missile program. The
newspaper called the administration’s policy an “abdication of
responsibility for national security.”
Moon also was
consolidating his influence with American conservatives as he was
growing increasingly anti-American. While former President Bush was
hailing Moon in public in the mid-1990s, Moon was calling the United
States “Satan’s harvest” and claiming that American women descended from
a “line of prostitutes.”
But Moon understood one
basic rule of politics that applied the world over: money talks. He knew
he could get politicians to do his bidding if the bribes were big
enough. In one sermon on Jan. 2, 1996, Moon was unusually blunt about
how he expected his wealth to buy influence among the powerful in South
America, just as it had in Washington.
“Father has been
practicing the philosophy of fishing here,” Moon said, through an
interpreter who spoke of Moon in the third person. “He [Moon] gave the
bait to Uruguay and then the bigger fish of Argentina, Brazil and
Paraguay kept their mouths open, waiting for a bigger bait silently. The
bigger the fish, the bigger the mouth. Therefore, Father is able to hook
them more easily.”
For Moon, there has been
no bigger fish than the powerful Bush family and its many friends in the
U.S. government.