| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
*Because **NYC** Could B
Guest
|
 Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2004 7:47 am Post subject: HASTERT Inquiry Into BUSH=MOON Drug Money-Laundering? WHY NO |
 |
|
The Dark Side of Rev. Moon
Rev. Sun Myung Moon and American politics
Mysterious Republican Money
By Robert Parry
September 7, 2004
If House Speaker Dennis Hastert were really concerned about drug profits
being laundered into the U.S. political process, he would not be sliming
billionaire financier George Soros with that suspicion.
Hastert would be looking at a principal conservative funder: South
Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon.
While Hastert was unable to cite a shred of evidence that the liberal
Soros is funneling illicit money, there is a substantial body of
evidence that Moon has long commanded a criminal enterprise with close
ties to Asian and South American drug lords. The evidence includes
first-hand accounts of money laundering disclosed by Moon confidantes
and even family members. Besides those more recent accounts,
Moon was convicted of tax fraud based on evidence developed in the late
1970s about his money-laundering activities.
Since serving his tax-evasion sentence in the early 1980s, however, Moon
appears to have bought himself protection by spreading hundreds of
millions of dollars around conservative causes and through generous
speaking fee payments to Republican leaders, including former President
George H.W. Bush.
Moon himself has boasted that he spent $1 billion on the right-wing
Washington Times in its first decade alone. The newspaper, which started
in 1982, continues to lose Moon an estimated $50 million a year but
remains a valuable propaganda organ for the Republican Party.
How Moon has managed to cover the vast losses of his media empire and
pay for lavish conservative conferences has been one of the most
enduring mysteries of Washington, but curiously one of the least
investigated – at least since the Reagan-Bush era.
Limited investigations of Moon's organization have revealed large sums
of money flowing into the United States mostly from untraceable accounts
in Japan, where Moon had close ties to yakuza gangster Ryoichi Sasakawa.
Former Moon associates also have revealed major money flows from shadowy
sources in South America, where Moon built relationships with right-wing
elements associated with the cocaine trade, including the so-called
Cocaine Coup government of Bolivia in the early 1980s.
But Hastert, an Illinois Republican, made news at the Republican
National Convention by suggesting that liberal funder Soros may be
fronting for foreign "drug groups." In a Fox News appearance, Hastert
said, "You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't
know where – if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it
comes from.…"
Soros demanded an apology for the smear. "Your recent comments implying
that I am receiving funds from drug cartels are not only untrue, but
also deeply offensive," Soros said in a letter. "You do a discredit to
yourself and to the dignity of your office by engaging in these
dishonest smear tactics. You should be ashamed."
A Bush-Style Warning
Hastert and other Republicans seem to have targeted Soros because he has
helped finance liberal activist groups that have engaged in voter
registration drives and run TV ads criticizing George W. Bush. Hastert
and other Bush loyalists could be laying down a marker that people who
finance anti-Bush politics can expect to have their reputations
destroyed and possibly become subjects of federal investigations.
Yet for Moon, despite his criminal record and eyewitness accounts of his
money-laundering activities, opposite rules apply. Republicans – who
now control the Executive Branch, the Congress and the federal judiciary
– protect Moon and his money from any serious examination. (I detail
Moon's history of money laundering and organized-crime associations in
my forthcoming book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from
Watergate to Iraq.)
Moon's criminal associations go back to the early days of his
Unification Church when South Korean intelligence saw the church as a
means to conduct covert operations. Kim Jong-Pil, who founded South
Korea's KCIA in 1961, became closely associated with Moon's church
during a transitional phase as the institution evolved from an obscure
Korean sect into a powerful international organization.
In the early 1960s, Kim Jong-Pil also was in charge of talks to
improve bilateral relations with Japan, Korea's historic enemy. Those
talks put Kim Jong-Pil in touch with two other important figures in the
Far East, Japanese rightists Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa, both
of whom were jailed after World War II as war criminals but were later
released. The pair grew rich from their association with the yakuza, an
organized crime syndicate that profited off drug smuggling, gambling and
prostitution in Japan and Korea.
Behind the scenes, Kodama and Sasakawa became power-brokers in
Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Immediately after Kim Jong-Pil opened the door to Kodama and Sasakawa
in late 1962, 50 leaders of an ultra-nationalist Japanese Buddhist sect
converted en masse to the Unification Church.
According to David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro in their authoritative
book, Yakuza, "Sasakawa became an adviser to Reverend Sun Myung Moon's
Japanese branch of the Unification Church" and collaborated with
Moon in building far-right anti-communist organizations in Asia.
Worldwide Connections
Authors Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson wrote in their 1986 book,
Inside the League, that Sun Myung Moon was one of five indispensable
Asian leaders who made the World Anti-Communist League possible. The
five were Taiwan's dictator Chiang Kai-shek, South Korea's dictator Park
Chung Hee, yakuza gangsters Sasakawa and Kodama, and Moon, "an
evangelist who planned to take over the world through the doctrine of
'Heavenly Deception,'" the Andersons wrote.
WACL became a well-financed worldwide organization after a secret
meeting between Sasakawa and Moon, along with two
Kodama representatives, on a lake in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. The
purpose of the meeting was to create an anti-communist organization that
"would further Moon's global crusade and lend the Japanese
yakuza leaders a respectable new façade," the Andersons wrote.
Mixing organized crime and political extremism, of course, has a long
tradition throughout the world. Violent political movements often have
blended with criminal operations as a way to arrange covert funding,
move operatives or acquire weapons. Drug smuggling has proven to be a
particularly effective way to fill the coffers of extremist movements,
especially those that find ways to insinuate themselves within more
legitimate operations of sympathetic governments or intelligence
services.
Nazi Rat Lines
After World War II, some Nazi leaders faced war-crimes tribunals, but
others managed to make their escapes along "rat lines" to Spain or
South America or they finagled intelligence relationships with the
victorious powers, especially the United States. Argentina became a
natural haven given the pre-war alliance that existed between the
European fascists and prominent Argentine military leaders, such as Juan
Peron.
The fleeing Nazis also found a home with like-minded right-wing
politicians and military officers across Latin America who already used
repression to keep down the indigenous populations and the legions of
the poor.
In the post-World War II years, some Nazi war criminals chose reclusive
lives, but others, such as former SS officer Klaus Barbie, sold their
intelligence skills to less-sophisticated security services in countries
like Bolivia or Paraguay. Other Nazis on the lam trafficked in
narcotics.
Often the lines crossed between intelligence operations and criminal
conspiracies. Auguste Ricord, a French war criminal who had collaborated
with the Gestapo, set up shop in Paraguay and opened up the French
Connection heroin channels to American Mafia drug kingpin Santo
Trafficante Jr., who controlled much of the heroin traffic into the
United States. Columns by Jack Anderson identified Ricord's
accomplices as some of Paraguay's highest-ranking military officers.
Another French Connection mobster, Christian David, relied on protection
of Argentine authorities. While trafficking in heroin, David also "took
on assignments for Argentina's terrorist organization, the Argentine
Anti-Communist Alliance," Henrik Kruger wrote in The Great Heroin
Coup.
During President Nixon's "war on drugs," U.S. authorities smashed the
famous French Connection and won extraditions of Ricord and David in
1972 to face justice in the United States.
By the time the French Connection was severed, however, powerful Mafia
drug lords had forged strong ties to South America's military leaders.
An infrastructure for the multi-billion-dollar drug trade, servicing the
insatiable U.S. market, was in place.
Trafficante-connected groups also recruited displaced anti-Castro
Cubans, who had ended up in Miami, needed work, and possessed some
useful intelligence skills gained from the CIA's training for the Bay of
Pigs and other clandestine operations. Heroin from the Golden Triangle
of Southeast Asia soon filled the void left by the broken French
Connection and its mostly Middle Eastern heroin supply routes.
Moon's Arrival
During this time of transition, Sun Myung Moon brought his evangelical
message to South America. His first visit to Argentina had occurred in
1965 when he blessed a square behind the presidential Pink House in
Buenos Aires. But he returned a decade later to make more lasting
friendships.
Moon first sank down roots in Uruguay during the 12-year reign of
right-wing military dictators who seized power in 1973. He also
cultivated close relations with military dictators in Argentina,
Paraguay and Chile, reportedly ingratiating himself with the juntas by
helping the military regimes arrange arms purchases and by channeling
money to allied right-wing organizations.
"Relationships nurtured with right-wing Latin Americans in the [World
Anti-Communist] League led to acceptance of the [Unification] Church's
political and propaganda operations throughout Latin America," the
Andersons wrote in Inside the League. "As an international money
laundry, … the Church tapped into the capital flight havens of Latin
America.
Escaping the scrutiny of American and European investigators, the Church
could now funnel money into banks in Honduras, Uruguay and Brazil,
where official oversight was lax or nonexistent."
Moon's organization also funneled money to the United States with the
goal of helping friendly U.S. politicians and hurting others who were
considered unfriendly.
In the late 1970s, a congressional investigation into South Korea's
influence-buying operations in Washington
– the so-called Koreagate scandal – implicated Moon and traced the
church's chief sources of money to bank accounts in Japan, but could
follow the cash no further.
Cocaine Coup
In 1980, Moon made more friends in South America when Bolivia's Cocaine
Coup plotters seized power in a terrifying alliance of fledgling cocaine
cartels, international neo-Nazis and right-wing Bolivian military
officers. Before the coup, WACL associates, such as Alfred Candia,
allegedly had coordinated the arrival of some of the paramilitary
operatives who assisted in the violent coup.
Afterwards, one of the first well-wishers arriving in La Paz to
congratulate the new government was Moon's top lieutenant, Bo Hi Pak.
The Moon organization published a photo of Pak meeting with the new
strongman, General Garcia Meza. After the visit to the mountainous
capital,
Pak declared, "I have erected a throne for Father Moon in the world's
highest city."
According to later Bolivian government and newspaper reports, a Moon
representative invested about $4 million in preparations for the coup.
Bolivia's WACL representatives also played key roles, and CAUSA, one of
Moon's anti-communist organizations, listed as members nearly all the
leading Bolivian coup-makers.
Soon, Colonel Luis Arce-Gomez, a coup organizer and the cousin of
cocaine kingpin Roberto Suarez, went into partnership with big
narco-traffickers, including Trafficante's Cuban-American smugglers.
Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and his young neo-fascist followers
found new work protecting Bolivia's major cocaine barons and
transporting drugs to the border.
"The paramilitary units – conceived by Barbie as a new type of SS
– sold themselves to the cocaine barons," German journalist Kai
Hermann wrote.
"The attraction of fast money in the cocaine trade was stronger than the
idea of a national socialist revolution in Latin America."
A month after the coup, General Garcia Meza participated in the Fourth
Congress of the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation, an arm of
the World Anti-Communist League. Also attending that Fourth Congress was
WACL president Woo Jae Sung, a leading Moon disciple.
On May 31, 1981, Moon representatives sponsored a CAUSA reception at
the Sheraton Hotel's Hall of Freedom in La Paz. Moon's lieutenant Bo Hi
Pak and Bolivian strongman Garcia Meza led a prayer for President
Reagan's recovery from an assassination attempt. In his speech, Bo Hi
Pak declared, "God had chosen the Bolivian people in the heart of
South America as the ones to conquer communism." According to a later
Bolivian intelligence report, the Moon organization sought to recruit
an "armed church" of Bolivians, with about 7,000 Bolivians receiving
some paramilitary training.
But by late 1981, the cocaine taint of Bolivia's military junta was so
deep and the corruption so staggering that U.S.-Bolivian relations were
stretched to the breaking point. "The Moon sect disappeared overnight
from Bolivia as clandestinely as they had arrived," Hermann reported.
The Cocaine Coup leaders soon found themselves on the run, too.
Interior Minister Arce-Gomez was eventually extradited to Miami and
was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking. Drug lord
Roberto Suarez got a 15-year prison term. General Garcia Meza became
a fugitive from a 30-year sentence imposed on him in Bolivia for abuse
of power, corruption and murder. Barbie was returned to France to
face a life sentence for war crimes. He died in 1992.
Untouchable
But Moon's organization suffered few negative repercussions from its
association with the Cocaine Coup. By the early 1980s, flushed with
seemingly unlimited funds, Moon had moved on to promoting himself with
the new Republican administration in Washington.
An invited guest to the Reagan-Bush Inauguration, Moon made his
organization useful to President Reagan, Vice President Bush and other
leading Republicans.
"Some Moonie-watchers even believe that some of the business enterprises
are actually covers for drug trafficking," wrote Scott and Jon Lee
Anderson. "Others feel that, despite the disclosures of Koreagate, the
Church has simply continued to do the Korean government's international
bidding and is receiving official funds to do so."
While Moon's representatives have refused to detail how they've
sustained their far-flung activities – including many businesses that
insiders say lose money – Moon's spokesmen have denied recurring
allegations about profiteering off illegal trafficking in weapons and
drugs. In a typical response to a gun-running question by the Argentine
newspaper, Clarin,
Moon's representative Ricardo DeSena responded, "I deny categorically
these accusations and also the barbarities that are said about drugs and
brainwashing. Our movement responds to the harmony of the races, nations
and religions and proclaims that the family is the school of love."
Without doubt, however, Moon's organization has had a long record of
association with organized crime figures, including ones implicated in
the drug trade.
Besides collaborating with Sasakawa and other leaders of the Japanese
yakuza and the Cocaine Coup government of Bolivia, Moon's organization
developed close ties with the Honduran military and with Nicaraguan
contra units tied to drug smuggling. Moon's organization also used its
political clout in Washington to intimidate or discredit government
officials and journalists who tried to investigate those criminal
activities.
In the mid-1980s, for instance, when journalists and congressional
investigators began probing the evidence of contra-connected drug
trafficking, they came under attacks from Moon's Washington Times.
An Associated Press story that I co-wrote with Brian Barger about a
Miami-based federal probe into gun- and drug-running by the
contras was denigrated in a front-page Washington Times article
with the headline: "Story on [contra] drug smuggling denounced as
political ploy."
Kerry's Probe
When Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts conducted a Senate probe and
uncovered additional evidence of contra drug trafficking, The Washington
Times denounced him, too. The newspaper first published articles
depicting Kerry's probe as a wasteful political witch hunt. "Kerry's
anti-contra efforts extensive, expensive, in vain," announced the
headline of one Times article.
But when Kerry exposed more contra wrongdoing, The Washington Times
shifted tactics. In 1987 in front-page articles, it began accusing
Kerry's staff of obstructing justice because their investigation was
supposedly interfering with Reagan-Bush administration efforts to get at
the truth.
"Kerry staffers damaged FBI probe," said one Times article that opened
with the assertion: "Congressional investigators for Sen. John
Kerry severely damaged a federal drug investigation last summer by
interfering with a witness while pursuing allegations of drug smuggling
by the Nicaraguan resistance, federal law enforcement officials said."
Despite the attacks from The Washington Times and pressure from the
Reagan-Bush administration to back off, Kerry's contra-drug
investigation eventually concluded that a number of contra units –
both in Costa Rica and Honduras – were implicated in the cocaine
trade.
"It is clear that individuals who provided support for the
contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the
contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the
contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance
from drug traffickers," Kerry's investigation stated in a report issued
April 13, 1989.
"In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had
information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring or
immediately thereafter."
Kerry's probe also found that Honduras had become an important way
station for cocaine shipments heading north during the contra war.
"Elements of the Honduran military were involved ... in the protection
of drug traffickers from 1980 on," the report said. "These activities
were reported to appropriate U.S. government officials throughout the
period.
Instead of moving decisively to close down the drug trafficking by
stepping up the DEA presence in the country and using the foreign
assistance the United States was extending to the Hondurans as a lever,
the United States closed the DEA office in Tegucigalpa and appears to
have ignored the issue."
Drug Evidence
The available evidence now shows that there was much more to the contra
drug issue than either the Reagan-Bush administration or Moon's
organization wanted the American people to know in the 1980s. The
evidence – assembled over the years by inspectors general at the CIA,
the Justice Department and other federal agencies – indicates that
Bolivia's Cocaine Coup government was only the first in a line of drug
enterprises that tried to squeeze under the protective umbrella of
Ronald Reagan's favorite covert operation, the contra war.
Other cocaine smugglers soon followed, cozying up to the contras and
sharing some of the profits as a way to minimize investigative interest
by the Reagan-Bush law enforcement agencies. The contra-connected
smugglers included the Medellin cartel, the Panamanian government of
Manuel Noriega, the Honduran military, the Honduran-Mexican smuggling
ring of Ramon Matta Ballesteros, and the Miami-based anti-Castro Cubans
with their connections to Mafia operations throughout the United States.
As Moon continued to expand his influence in American politics, some
Republicans began to raise red flags. In 1983, the GOP's moderate Ripon
Society charged that the New Right had entered "an alliance of
expediency" with Moon's church. Ripon's chairman, Representative Jim
Leach of Iowa, released a study which alleged that the College
Republican National Committee "solicited and received" money from Moon's
Unification Church in 1981.
The study also accused Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media of benefiting
from low-cost or volunteer workers supplied by Moon.
Leach said the Unification Church has "infiltrated the New Right and the
party it wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the
media as well." Leach's news conference was disrupted when then-college
GOP leader Grover Norquist accused Leach of lying. (Norquist is now a
prominent conservative leader in Washington with close ties to the
highest levels of George W. Bush's administration.)
The Washington Times dismissed Leach's charges as "flummeries" and
mocked the Ripon Society as a "discredited and insignificant left-wing
offshoot of the Republican Party."
Despite periodic fretting over Moon's influence, conservatives continued
to accept his deep-pocket assistance. When White House aide Oliver
North was scratching for support for the Nicaraguan contras, for
instance, The Washington Times established a contra fund-raising
operation.
By the mid-1980s, Moon's Unification Church had carved out a niche as an
acceptable part of the American Right. In one speech to his followers,
Moon boasted that "without knowing it, even President Reagan is being
guided by Father [Moon]."
George H.W. Bush's Praise
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, The Washington Times was the daily
billboard where conservatives placed their messages to each other and to
the outside world.
In 1991, when conservative commentator Wesley Pruden was named the new
editor of The Washington Times, President George H.W. Bush invited
Pruden to a private White House lunch. The purpose, Bush explained, was
"just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where
we read it every day."
While the Moon organization was promoting the interests of the
Reagan-Bush team, the administration was shielding Moon's operations
from federal probes into its finances and possible intelligence role,
U.S. government documents show.
According to Justice Department documents released under the Freedom of
Information Act, administration officials were rebuffing hundreds of
requests – many from common U.S. citizens – for examination of
Moon's foreign ties and money sources.
Typical of the responses was a May 18, 1989, letter from Assistant
Attorney General Carol T. Crawford rejecting the possibility that Moon's
organization be required to divulge its foreign-funded propaganda under
the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). "With respect to FARA, the
Department is faced with First Amendment considerations involving the
free exercise of religion,"
Crawford said. "As you know, the First Amendment's protection of
religious freedom is not limited to the traditional, well-established
religions."
A 1992 PBS documentary about Moon's political empire and its
free-spending habits started another flurry of citizen demands for an
investigation, according to Justice Department files. One letter from a
private citizen to the Justice Department stated, "I write in
consternation and disgust at the apparent support, or at least the
sheltering, of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a foreign agent ... who has
subverted the American political system for the past 20 years. ... Did
Reagan and/or Bush receive financial support from Moon or his agents
during any of their election campaigns in violation of federal law?"
However, all these U.S. citizen complaints were rebuffed.
South American Money
In the mid-1990s, more evidence surfaced about Moon's alleged South
American money laundry.
In 1996, the Uruguayan bank employees union blew the whistle on one
scheme in which some 4,200 female Japanese followers of Moon allegedly
walked into the Moon-controlled Banco de Credito in Montevideo and
deposited as much as $25,000 each.
By the time the parade of women ended, the total had swelled to about
$80 million. Authorities did not push the money-laundering
investigation, apparently out of deference to Moon's political influence
and fear of disrupting Uruguay's secretive banking industry.
Some Uruguayan politicians did protest, however.
"The first thing we ought to do is clarify to the people [of Uruguay]
that Moon's sect is a type of modern pirate that came to the country to
perform obscure money operations, such as money laundering," said Jorge
Zabalza, a leader of the Movimiento de Participacion Popular, part of
Montevideo's ruling left-of-center political coalition. "This sect is a
kind of religious mob that is trying to get public support to pursue its
business."
Back in the United States, some of Moon's confidantes supplied more
evidence of money laundering. When Moon's daughter-in-law Nansook Moon
fled from abuse at the hands of one of Moon's sons, Hyo Jin, she
described her personal participation in money-laundering schemes.
In a sworn affidavit – and a later book – Nansook said the price for
her life of luxury was being part of what she regarded as a criminal
enterprise.
To finance his personal and business activities, Hyo Jin received
hundreds of thousands of dollars in unaccounted cash, Nansook said.
"On one occasion, I saw Hyo Jin bring home a box about 24 inches wide,
12 inches tall and six inches deep," she wrote in her affidavit. "He
stated that he had received it from his father. He opened it. ...
"It was filled with $100 bills stacked in bunches of $10,000 each for a
total of $1 million in cash!
He took this money and gave $600,000 to the Manhattan Center, a church
recording studio that he ostensibly runs. He kept the remaining $400,000
for himself. ... Within six months he had spent it all on himself,
buying cocaine and alcohol, entertaining his friends every night, and
giving expensive gifts to other women." Another time, a Filipino church
member gave Hyo Jin $270,000 in cash, according to Nansook.
Nansook's lawyers secured corroborating testimony from a former
Manhattan Center official and Unification Church member, Madelene
Pretorious. At a court hearing, Pretorious testified that in December of
1993 or January of 1994, 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."
Front Companies
As the Nansook's divorce case played out, I met with Pretorious at a
suburban Boston restaurant. A law school graduate from South Africa, the
34-year-old full-faced brunette said she was recruited by the
Unification Church through a student front group, the Collegiate
Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), in San Francisco in
1986-1987. In 1992, Pretorious went to work at the Manhattan
Center and grew concerned about the way cash, brought to the United
States by Asian members, would circulate through the Moon business
empire as a way to launder it.
The money would then go to support the Moon family's lavish life style
or be diverted to other church projects. At the center of the financial
operation,
Pretorious said, was One-Up Corporation, a Delaware-registered holding
company that owned Manhattan Center and other Moon enterprises including
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."
Hyo Jin Moon did not respond to interview requests sent through his
divorce lawyer and the church. Church officials also were unwilling to
discuss Hyo Jin's case. But Hyo Jin was forced to produce documents
and discuss his financial predicament in a related bankruptcy
proceeding.
In a bankruptcy deposition on November 15, 1996, Hyo Jin sounded
alternately confused and petulant. "All I like was guns and music," he
volunteered at one point. "I'm a boring person." But Hyo Jin confirmed
that he had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash at the
Manhattan Center that was not reported as taxable income.
"[In] 1993, I received some cash, yes," he said. "At that time around
300, 500 Japanese members were touring America and they stopped by to
see the progress that was happening at Manhattan Center, because it was
well known within the inner ... church community that I was doing a
project, a cultural project. And they came and I presented a slide show,
and they were inspired by that prospect and actual achievement at that
time, so they gave donations. ... It was given to me. It was a donation
to me."
"Did you report that gift to the taxing authorities?" a lawyer asked.
"It was [a] gift," Hyo Jin responded. "I asked [Rob Schwartz, the
center's treasurer] whether I should. He said I didn't have to. You have
to ask him." When pressed for clarification about this tax advice, his
lawyer counseled Hyo Jin not to answer. "I'm taking that advice,"
Hyo Jin announced. "My lawyer's advice not to answer it."
John Stacey, a former CARP leader in the Pacific Northwest, was
another Unification Church member who described Moon's organization as
dependent on money arriving from overseas.
Stacey told me that the fund-raising operations inside the United
States barely covered the costs of local offices, with little or nothing
going to the big-ticket items, such as The Washington Times. Stacey
added that the church-connected U.S. businesses are mostly money losers.
"These failing businesses create the image of making money ... to cover
his back," Stacey said of Reverend Moon. "I think the majority of the
money is coming from an outside source."
Another member who quit a senior position in the church confirmed that
virtually none of Moon's American operations makes money. Instead, this
source, who declined to be identified by name, said hundreds of
thousands of dollars are carried into the United States by visiting
church members. The cash is then laundered through domestic businesses.
Another close church associate, who also requested anonymity out of fear
of reprisals, said cash arriving from Japan was used in one major
construction project to pay "illegal" laborers from Asia and South
America. "They [the church leaders] were always waiting for our money to
come in from Japan," this source said. "When the economy in Japan
crashed, a lot of our money came from South America, mainly Brazil."
First-Hand Account
In Nansook Moon's 1998 memoirs, In the Shadow of the Moons, Moon's
ex-daughter-in-law – writing under her maiden name Nansook Hong –
alleged that Moon's organization had engaged in a long-running
conspiracy to smuggle cash into the United States and to deceive U.S.
Customs agents.
"The Unification Church was a cash operation," Nansook Hong wrote. "I
watched Japanese church leaders arrive at regular intervals at East
Garden [the Moon compound north of New York City] with paper bags full
of money, which the Reverend Moon would either pocket or distribute to
the heads of various church-owned business enterprises at his breakfast
table.
"The Japanese had no trouble bringing the cash into the United States;
they would tell Customs agents that they were in America to gamble at
Atlantic City.
In addition, many businesses run by the church were cash operations,
including several Japanese restaurants in New York City.
I saw deliveries of cash from church headquarters that went directly
into the wall safe in Mrs. Moon's closet."
Mrs. Moon pressed her daughter-in-law into one cash-smuggling incident
after a trip to Japan in 1992, Nansook Hong wrote.
Mrs. Moon had received "stacks of money" and divvied it up among her
entourage for the return trip through Seattle, Nansook Hong wrote. "I
was given $20,000 in two packs of crisp new bills," she recalled. "I hid
them beneath the tray in my makeup case. ... I knew that smuggling was
illegal, but I believed the followers of Sun Myung Moon answered to
higher laws."
U.S. currency laws require that cash amounts above $10,000 be declared
at Customs when the money enters or leaves the country. It is also
illegal to conspire with couriers to bring in lesser amounts when the
total exceeds the $10,000 figure, a process called "smurfing."
In the Shadow of the Moons raised anew the question of whether Moon's
money laundering – from mysterious sources in both Asia and South
America – has made him a conduit for illicit foreign money influencing
the U.S. government and American politics. Moon's spokesmen have denied
that he launders drug money or moves money from other criminal
enterprises. They attribute his wealth to donations and business
profits, but have refused to open Moon's records for public inspection.
Given Moon's influence over the Republican Party – and The Washington
Times' impact on U.S. national politics – House Speaker Hastert might
want to investigate where Moon's money originates, assuming that Hastert
is truly concerned about illicit foreign money entering the U.S.
political process.
It may be more likely, however, that Hastert simply wants to smear a
liberal adversary.
This story was adapted from Robert Parry's book, Secrecy & Privilege:
Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. A 27-year veteran of
Washington journalism, Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra scandal
stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.
Back to front
http://www.Consortiumnews.com is a product of The Consortium for
Independent Journalism, Inc., a non-profit organization that relies on
donations from its readers to produce these stories and keep alive this
Web publication.
=================the above x-posted as a community service. an informed voter makes for a
more real election. if you don't vote you let someone else vote twice by
default.
====================
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(-->>BeTTeR LiVinG Thru BetteR LiVING !!<<----)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PS: The ASPCA of NYC still KILL Dogs & Cats & are a Bunch of LYING
MONEY-GRUBBERS and their SHOW "Animal Precinct" is a con-job
extraordinaire. FEEL FREE To BOYCOTT The Sponsors on The Animal Planet
Cable Channel Until the 43 Wire-haired Terriers who have were released
to the public with active Cushings Disease are treated gratis as per NYS
& NYC Humane Law and LET ASPCA Know You Know About their Attempts at
Coverup: 212-876-7700!!!!
Especially if you have any spare Anipryl or Lysodren Or Nizoral for my
doggie to ease the symptoms, email me!
http://www.marianne41.250free.com/BLANKTAGS2/HEART110.gif |
|
| |
|
 Back to top |
dicknbush
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2004 7:28 pm Post subject: Re: HASTERT Inquiry Into BUSH=MOON Drug Money-Laundering? WH |
|
|
seems plausable...we know Bush is a coke head and there are witnesses who
says Laura sold pot in college.
"*Because **NYC** Could Be BETTER!!" <rosaphilia@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:26667-4169F42D-54@storefull-3216.bay.webtv.net...
The Dark Side of Rev. Moon
Rev. Sun Myung Moon and American politics
Mysterious Republican Money
By Robert Parry
September 7, 2004
If House Speaker Dennis Hastert were really concerned about drug profits
being laundered into the U.S. political process, he would not be sliming
billionaire financier George Soros with that suspicion.
Hastert would be looking at a principal conservative funder: South
Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon.
While Hastert was unable to cite a shred of evidence that the liberal
Soros is funneling illicit money, there is a substantial body of
evidence that Moon has long commanded a criminal enterprise with close
ties to Asian and South American drug lords. The evidence includes
first-hand accounts of money laundering disclosed by Moon confidantes
and even family members. Besides those more recent accounts,
Moon was convicted of tax fraud based on evidence developed in the late
1970s about his money-laundering activities.
Since serving his tax-evasion sentence in the early 1980s, however, Moon
appears to have bought himself protection by spreading hundreds of
millions of dollars around conservative causes and through generous
speaking fee payments to Republican leaders, including former President
George H.W. Bush.
Moon himself has boasted that he spent $1 billion on the right-wing
Washington Times in its first decade alone. The newspaper, which started
in 1982, continues to lose Moon an estimated $50 million a year but
remains a valuable propaganda organ for the Republican Party.
How Moon has managed to cover the vast losses of his media empire and
pay for lavish conservative conferences has been one of the most
enduring mysteries of Washington, but curiously one of the least
investigated - at least since the Reagan-Bush era.
Limited investigations of Moon's organization have revealed large sums
of money flowing into the United States mostly from untraceable accounts
in Japan, where Moon had close ties to yakuza gangster Ryoichi Sasakawa.
Former Moon associates also have revealed major money flows from shadowy
sources in South America, where Moon built relationships with right-wing
elements associated with the cocaine trade, including the so-called
Cocaine Coup government of Bolivia in the early 1980s.
But Hastert, an Illinois Republican, made news at the Republican
National Convention by suggesting that liberal funder Soros may be
fronting for foreign "drug groups." In a Fox News appearance, Hastert
said, "You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't
know where - if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it
comes from.."
Soros demanded an apology for the smear. "Your recent comments implying
that I am receiving funds from drug cartels are not only untrue, but
also deeply offensive," Soros said in a letter. "You do a discredit to
yourself and to the dignity of your office by engaging in these
dishonest smear tactics. You should be ashamed."
A Bush-Style Warning
Hastert and other Republicans seem to have targeted Soros because he has
helped finance liberal activist groups that have engaged in voter
registration drives and run TV ads criticizing George W. Bush. Hastert
and other Bush loyalists could be laying down a marker that people who
finance anti-Bush politics can expect to have their reputations
destroyed and possibly become subjects of federal investigations.
Yet for Moon, despite his criminal record and eyewitness accounts of his
money-laundering activities, opposite rules apply. Republicans - who
now control the Executive Branch, the Congress and the federal judiciary
- protect Moon and his money from any serious examination. (I detail
Moon's history of money laundering and organized-crime associations in
my forthcoming book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from
Watergate to Iraq.)
Moon's criminal associations go back to the early days of his
Unification Church when South Korean intelligence saw the church as a
means to conduct covert operations. Kim Jong-Pil, who founded South
Korea's KCIA in 1961, became closely associated with Moon's church
during a transitional phase as the institution evolved from an obscure
Korean sect into a powerful international organization.
In the early 1960s, Kim Jong-Pil also was in charge of talks to
improve bilateral relations with Japan, Korea's historic enemy. Those
talks put Kim Jong-Pil in touch with two other important figures in the
Far East, Japanese rightists Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa, both
of whom were jailed after World War II as war criminals but were later
released. The pair grew rich from their association with the yakuza, an
organized crime syndicate that profited off drug smuggling, gambling and
prostitution in Japan and Korea.
Behind the scenes, Kodama and Sasakawa became power-brokers in
Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Immediately after Kim Jong-Pil opened the door to Kodama and Sasakawa
in late 1962, 50 leaders of an ultra-nationalist Japanese Buddhist sect
converted en masse to the Unification Church.
According to David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro in their authoritative
book, Yakuza, "Sasakawa became an adviser to Reverend Sun Myung Moon's
Japanese branch of the Unification Church" and collaborated with
Moon in building far-right anti-communist organizations in Asia.
Worldwide Connections
Authors Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson wrote in their 1986 book,
Inside the League, that Sun Myung Moon was one of five indispensable
Asian leaders who made the World Anti-Communist League possible. The
five were Taiwan's dictator Chiang Kai-shek, South Korea's dictator Park
Chung Hee, yakuza gangsters Sasakawa and Kodama, and Moon, "an
evangelist who planned to take over the world through the doctrine of
'Heavenly Deception,'" the Andersons wrote.
WACL became a well-financed worldwide organization after a secret
meeting between Sasakawa and Moon, along with two
Kodama representatives, on a lake in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. The
purpose of the meeting was to create an anti-communist organization that
"would further Moon's global crusade and lend the Japanese
yakuza leaders a respectable new façade," the Andersons wrote.
Mixing organized crime and political extremism, of course, has a long
tradition throughout the world. Violent political movements often have
blended with criminal operations as a way to arrange covert funding,
move operatives or acquire weapons. Drug smuggling has proven to be a
particularly effective way to fill the coffers of extremist movements,
especially those that find ways to insinuate themselves within more
legitimate operations of sympathetic governments or intelligence
services.
Nazi Rat Lines
After World War II, some Nazi leaders faced war-crimes tribunals, but
others managed to make their escapes along "rat lines" to Spain or
South America or they finagled intelligence relationships with the
victorious powers, especially the United States. Argentina became a
natural haven given the pre-war alliance that existed between the
European fascists and prominent Argentine military leaders, such as Juan
Peron.
The fleeing Nazis also found a home with like-minded right-wing
politicians and military officers across Latin America who already used
repression to keep down the indigenous populations and the legions of
the poor.
In the post-World War II years, some Nazi war criminals chose reclusive
lives, but others, such as former SS officer Klaus Barbie, sold their
intelligence skills to less-sophisticated security services in countries
like Bolivia or Paraguay. Other Nazis on the lam trafficked in
narcotics.
Often the lines crossed between intelligence operations and criminal
conspiracies. Auguste Ricord, a French war criminal who had collaborated
with the Gestapo, set up shop in Paraguay and opened up the French
Connection heroin channels to American Mafia drug kingpin Santo
Trafficante Jr., who controlled much of the heroin traffic into the
United States. Columns by Jack Anderson identified Ricord's
accomplices as some of Paraguay's highest-ranking military officers.
Another French Connection mobster, Christian David, relied on protection
of Argentine authorities. While trafficking in heroin, David also "took
on assignments for Argentina's terrorist organization, the Argentine
Anti-Communist Alliance," Henrik Kruger wrote in The Great Heroin
Coup.
During President Nixon's "war on drugs," U.S. authorities smashed the
famous French Connection and won extraditions of Ricord and David in
1972 to face justice in the United States.
By the time the French Connection was severed, however, powerful Mafia
drug lords had forged strong ties to South America's military leaders.
An infrastructure for the multi-billion-dollar drug trade, servicing the
insatiable U.S. market, was in place.
Trafficante-connected groups also recruited displaced anti-Castro
Cubans, who had ended up in Miami, needed work, and possessed some
useful intelligence skills gained from the CIA's training for the Bay of
Pigs and other clandestine operations. Heroin from the Golden Triangle
of Southeast Asia soon filled the void left by the broken French
Connection and its mostly Middle Eastern heroin supply routes.
Moon's Arrival
During this time of transition, Sun Myung Moon brought his evangelical
message to South America. His first visit to Argentina had occurred in
1965 when he blessed a square behind the presidential Pink House in
Buenos Aires. But he returned a decade later to make more lasting
friendships.
Moon first sank down roots in Uruguay during the 12-year reign of
right-wing military dictators who seized power in 1973. He also
cultivated close relations with military dictators in Argentina,
Paraguay and Chile, reportedly ingratiating himself with the juntas by
helping the military regimes arrange arms purchases and by channeling
money to allied right-wing organizations.
"Relationships nurtured with right-wing Latin Americans in the [World
Anti-Communist] League led to acceptance of the [Unification] Church's
political and propaganda operations throughout Latin America," the
Andersons wrote in Inside the League. "As an international money
laundry, . the Church tapped into the capital flight havens of Latin
America.
Escaping the scrutiny of American and European investigators, the Church
could now funnel money into banks in Honduras, Uruguay and Brazil,
where official oversight was lax or nonexistent."
Moon's organization also funneled money to the United States with the
goal of helping friendly U.S. politicians and hurting others who were
considered unfriendly.
In the late 1970s, a congressional investigation into South Korea's
influence-buying operations in Washington
- the so-called Koreagate scandal - implicated Moon and traced the
church's chief sources of money to bank accounts in Japan, but could
follow the cash no further.
Cocaine Coup
In 1980, Moon made more friends in South America when Bolivia's Cocaine
Coup plotters seized power in a terrifying alliance of fledgling cocaine
cartels, international neo-Nazis and right-wing Bolivian military
officers. Before the coup, WACL associates, such as Alfred Candia,
allegedly had coordinated the arrival of some of the paramilitary
operatives who assisted in the violent coup.
Afterwards, one of the first well-wishers arriving in La Paz to
congratulate the new government was Moon's top lieutenant, Bo Hi Pak.
The Moon organization published a photo of Pak meeting with the new
strongman, General Garcia Meza. After the visit to the mountainous
capital,
Pak declared, "I have erected a throne for Father Moon in the world's
highest city."
According to later Bolivian government and newspaper reports, a Moon
representative invested about $4 million in preparations for the coup.
Bolivia's WACL representatives also played key roles, and CAUSA, one of
Moon's anti-communist organizations, listed as members nearly all the
leading Bolivian coup-makers.
Soon, Colonel Luis Arce-Gomez, a coup organizer and the cousin of
cocaine kingpin Roberto Suarez, went into partnership with big
narco-traffickers, including Trafficante's Cuban-American smugglers.
Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and his young neo-fascist followers
found new work protecting Bolivia's major cocaine barons and
transporting drugs to the border.
"The paramilitary units - conceived by Barbie as a new type of SS
- sold themselves to the cocaine barons," German journalist Kai
Hermann wrote.
"The attraction of fast money in the cocaine trade was stronger than the
idea of a national socialist revolution in Latin America."
A month after the coup, General Garcia Meza participated in the Fourth
Congress of the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation, an arm of
the World Anti-Communist League. Also attending that Fourth Congress was
WACL president Woo Jae Sung, a leading Moon disciple.
On May 31, 1981, Moon representatives sponsored a CAUSA reception at
the Sheraton Hotel's Hall of Freedom in La Paz. Moon's lieutenant Bo Hi
Pak and Bolivian strongman Garcia Meza led a prayer for President
Reagan's recovery from an assassination attempt. In his speech, Bo Hi
Pak declared, "God had chosen the Bolivian people in the heart of
South America as the ones to conquer communism." According to a later
Bolivian intelligence report, the Moon organization sought to recruit
an "armed church" of Bolivians, with about 7,000 Bolivians receiving
some paramilitary training.
But by late 1981, the cocaine taint of Bolivia's military junta was so
deep and the corruption so staggering that U.S.-Bolivian relations were
stretched to the breaking point. "The Moon sect disappeared overnight
from Bolivia as clandestinely as they had arrived," Hermann reported.
The Cocaine Coup leaders soon found themselves on the run, too.
Interior Minister Arce-Gomez was eventually extradited to Miami and
was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking. Drug lord
Roberto Suarez got a 15-year prison term. General Garcia Meza became
a fugitive from a 30-year sentence imposed on him in Bolivia for abuse
of power, corruption and murder. Barbie was returned to France to
face a life sentence for war crimes. He died in 1992.
Untouchable
But Moon's organization suffered few negative repercussions from its
association with the Cocaine Coup. By the early 1980s, flushed with
seemingly unlimited funds, Moon had moved on to promoting himself with
the new Republican administration in Washington.
An invited guest to the Reagan-Bush Inauguration, Moon made his
organization useful to President Reagan, Vice President Bush and other
leading Republicans.
"Some Moonie-watchers even believe that some of the business enterprises
are actually covers for drug trafficking," wrote Scott and Jon Lee
Anderson. "Others feel that, despite the disclosures of Koreagate, the
Church has simply continued to do the Korean government's international
bidding and is receiving official funds to do so."
While Moon's representatives have refused to detail how they've
sustained their far-flung activities - including many businesses that
insiders say lose money - Moon's spokesmen have denied recurring
allegations about profiteering off illegal trafficking in weapons and
drugs. In a typical response to a gun-running question by the Argentine
newspaper, Clarin,
Moon's representative Ricardo DeSena responded, "I deny categorically
these accusations and also the barbarities that are said about drugs and
brainwashing. Our movement responds to the harmony of the races, nations
and religions and proclaims that the family is the school of love."
Without doubt, however, Moon's organization has had a long record of
association with organized crime figures, including ones implicated in
the drug trade.
Besides collaborating with Sasakawa and other leaders of the Japanese
yakuza and the Cocaine Coup government of Bolivia, Moon's organization
developed close ties with the Honduran military and with Nicaraguan
contra units tied to drug smuggling. Moon's organization also used its
political clout in Washington to intimidate or discredit government
officials and journalists who tried to investigate those criminal
activities.
In the mid-1980s, for instance, when journalists and congressional
investigators began probing the evidence of contra-connected drug
trafficking, they came under attacks from Moon's Washington Times.
An Associated Press story that I co-wrote with Brian Barger about a
Miami-based federal probe into gun- and drug-running by the
contras was denigrated in a front-page Washington Times article
with the headline: "Story on [contra] drug smuggling denounced as
political ploy."
Kerry's Probe
When Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts conducted a Senate probe and
uncovered additional evidence of contra drug trafficking, The Washington
Times denounced him, too. The newspaper first published articles
depicting Kerry's probe as a wasteful political witch hunt. "Kerry's
anti-contra efforts extensive, expensive, in vain," announced the
headline of one Times article.
But when Kerry exposed more contra wrongdoing, The Washington Times
shifted tactics. In 1987 in front-page articles, it began accusing
Kerry's staff of obstructing justice because their investigation was
supposedly interfering with Reagan-Bush administration efforts to get at
the truth.
"Kerry staffers damaged FBI probe," said one Times article that opened
with the assertion: "Congressional investigators for Sen. John
Kerry severely damaged a federal drug investigation last summer by
interfering with a witness while pursuing allegations of drug smuggling
by the Nicaraguan resistance, federal law enforcement officials said."
Despite the attacks from The Washington Times and pressure from the
Reagan-Bush administration to back off, Kerry's contra-drug
investigation eventually concluded that a number of contra units -
both in Costa Rica and Honduras - were implicated in the cocaine
trade.
"It is clear that individuals who provided support for the
contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the
contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the
contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance
from drug traffickers," Kerry's investigation stated in a report issued
April 13, 1989.
"In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had
information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring or
immediately thereafter."
Kerry's probe also found that Honduras had become an important way
station for cocaine shipments heading north during the contra war.
"Elements of the Honduran military were involved ... in the protection
of drug traffickers from 1980 on," the report said. "These activities
were reported to appropriate U.S. government officials throughout the
period.
Instead of moving decisively to close down the drug trafficking by
stepping up the DEA presence in the country and using the foreign
assistance the United States was extending to the Hondurans as a lever,
the United States closed the DEA office in Tegucigalpa and appears to
have ignored the issue."
Drug Evidence
The available evidence now shows that there was much more to the contra
drug issue than either the Reagan-Bush administration or Moon's
organization wanted the American people to know in the 1980s. The
evidence - assembled over the years by inspectors general at the CIA,
the Justice Department and other federal agencies - indicates that
Bolivia's Cocaine Coup government was only the first in a line of drug
enterprises that tried to squeeze under the protective umbrella of
Ronald Reagan's favorite covert operation, the contra war.
Other cocaine smugglers soon followed, cozying up to the contras and
sharing some of the profits as a way to minimize investigative interest
by the Reagan-Bush law enforcement agencies. The contra-connected
smugglers included the Medellin cartel, the Panamanian government of
Manuel Noriega, the Honduran military, the Honduran-Mexican smuggling
ring of Ramon Matta Ballesteros, and the Miami-based anti-Castro Cubans
with their connections to Mafia operations throughout the United States.
As Moon continued to expand his influence in American politics, some
Republicans began to raise red flags. In 1983, the GOP's moderate Ripon
Society charged that the New Right had entered "an alliance of
expediency" with Moon's church. Ripon's chairman, Representative Jim
Leach of Iowa, released a study which alleged that the College
Republican National Committee "solicited and received" money from Moon's
Unification Church in 1981.
The study also accused Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media of benefiting
from low-cost or volunteer workers supplied by Moon.
Leach said the Unification Church has "infiltrated the New Right and the
party it wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the
media as well." Leach's news conference was disrupted when then-college
GOP leader Grover Norquist accused Leach of lying. (Norquist is now a
prominent conservative leader in Washington with close ties to the
highest levels of George W. Bush's administration.)
The Washington Times dismissed Leach's charges as "flummeries" and
mocked the Ripon Society as a "discredited and insignificant left-wing
offshoot of the Republican Party."
Despite periodic fretting over Moon's influence, conservatives continued
to accept his deep-pocket assistance. When White House aide Oliver
North was scratching for support for the Nicaraguan contras, for
instance, The Washington Times established a contra fund-raising
operation.
By the mid-1980s, Moon's Unification Church had carved out a niche as an
acceptable part of the American Right. In one speech to his followers,
Moon boasted that "without knowing it, even President Reagan is being
guided by Father [Moon]."
George H.W. Bush's Praise
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, The Washington Times was the daily
billboard where conservatives placed their messages to each other and to
the outside world.
In 1991, when conservative commentator Wesley Pruden was named the new
editor of The Washington Times, President George H.W. Bush invited
Pruden to a private White House lunch. The purpose, Bush explained, was
"just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where
we read it every day."
While the Moon organization was promoting the interests of the
Reagan-Bush team, the administration was shielding Moon's operations
from federal probes into its finances and possible intelligence role,
U.S. government documents show.
According to Justice Department documents released under the Freedom of
Information Act, administration officials were rebuffing hundreds of
requests - many from common U.S. citizens - for examination of
Moon's foreign ties and money sources.
Typical of the responses was a May 18, 1989, letter from Assistant
Attorney General Carol T. Crawford rejecting the possibility that Moon's
organization be required to divulge its foreign-funded propaganda under
the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). "With respect to FARA, the
Department is faced with First Amendment considerations involving the
free exercise of religion,"
Crawford said. "As you know, the First Amendment's protection of
religious freedom is not limited to the traditional, well-established
religions."
A 1992 PBS documentary about Moon's political empire and its
free-spending habits started another flurry of citizen demands for an
investigation, according to Justice Department files. One letter from a
private citizen to the Justice Department stated, "I write in
consternation and disgust at the apparent support, or at least the
sheltering, of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a foreign agent ... who has
subverted the American political system for the past 20 years. ... Did
Reagan and/or Bush receive financial support from Moon or his agents
during any of their election campaigns in violation of federal law?"
However, all these U.S. citizen complaints were rebuffed.
South American Money
In the mid-1990s, more evidence surfaced about Moon's alleged South
American money laundry.
In 1996, the Uruguayan bank employees union blew the whistle on one
scheme in which some 4,200 female Japanese followers of Moon allegedly
walked into the Moon-controlled Banco de Credito in Montevideo and
deposited as much as $25,000 each.
By the time the parade of women ended, the total had swelled to about
$80 million. Authorities did not push the money-laundering
investigation, apparently out of deference to Moon's political influence
and fear of disrupting Uruguay's secretive banking industry.
Some Uruguayan politicians did protest, however.
"The first thing we ought to do is clarify to the people [of Uruguay]
that Moon's sect is a type of modern pirate that came to the country to
perform obscure money operations, such as money laundering," said Jorge
Zabalza, a leader of the Movimiento de Participacion Popular, part of
Montevideo's ruling left-of-center political coalition. "This sect is a
kind of religious mob that is trying to get public support to pursue its
business."
Back in the United States, some of Moon's confidantes supplied more
evidence of money laundering. When Moon's daughter-in-law Nansook Moon
fled from abuse at the hands of one of Moon's sons, Hyo Jin, she
described her personal participation in money-laundering schemes.
In a sworn affidavit - and a later book - Nansook said the price for
her life of luxury was being part of what she regarded as a criminal
enterprise.
To finance his personal and business activities, Hyo Jin received
hundreds of thousands of dollars in unaccounted cash, Nansook said.
"On one occasion, I saw Hyo Jin bring home a box about 24 inches wide,
12 inches tall and six inches deep," she wrote in her affidavit. "He
stated that he had received it from his father. He opened it. ...
"It was filled with $100 bills stacked in bunches of $10,000 each for a
total of $1 million in cash!
He took this money and gave $600,000 to the Manhattan Center, a church
recording studio that he ostensibly runs. He kept the remaining $400,000
for himself. ... Within six months he had spent it all on himself,
buying cocaine and alcohol, entertaining his friends every night, and
giving expensive gifts to other women." Another time, a Filipino church
member gave Hyo Jin $270,000 in cash, according to Nansook.
Nansook's lawyers secured corroborating testimony from a former
Manhattan Center official and Unification Church member, Madelene
Pretorious. At a court hearing, Pretorious testified that in December of
1993 or January of 1994, 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."
Front Companies
As the Nansook's divorce case played out, I met with Pretorious at a
suburban Boston restaurant. A law school graduate from South Africa, the
34-year-old full-faced brunette said she was recruited by the
Unification Church through a student front group, the Collegiate
Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), in San Francisco in
1986-1987. In 1992, Pretorious went to work at the Manhattan
Center and grew concerned about the way cash, brought to the United
States by Asian members, would circulate through the Moon business
empire as a way to launder it.
The money would then go to support the Moon family's lavish life style
or be diverted to other church projects. At the center of the financial
operation,
Pretorious said, was One-Up Corporation, a Delaware-registered holding
company that owned Manhattan Center and other Moon enterprises including
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."
Hyo Jin Moon did not respond to interview requests sent through his
divorce lawyer and the church. Church officials also were unwilling to
discuss Hyo Jin's case. But Hyo Jin was forced to produce documents
and discuss his financial predicament in a related bankruptcy
proceeding.
In a bankruptcy deposition on November 15, 1996, Hyo Jin sounded
alternately confused and petulant. "All I like was guns and music," he
volunteered at one point. "I'm a boring person." But Hyo Jin confirmed
that he had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash at the
Manhattan Center that was not reported as taxable income.
"[In] 1993, I received some cash, yes," he said. "At that time around
300, 500 Japanese members were touring America and they stopped by to
see the progress that was happening at Manhattan Center, because it was
well known within the inner ... church community that I was doing a
project, a cultural project. And they came and I presented a slide show,
and they were inspired by that prospect and actual achievement at that
time, so they gave donations. ... It was given to me. It was a donation
to me."
"Did you report that gift to the taxing authorities?" a lawyer asked.
"It was [a] gift," Hyo Jin responded. "I asked [Rob Schwartz, the
center's treasurer] whether I should. He said I didn't have to. You have
to ask him." When pressed for clarification about this tax advice, his
lawyer counseled Hyo Jin not to answer. "I'm taking that advice,"
Hyo Jin announced. "My lawyer's advice not to answer it."
John Stacey, a former CARP leader in the Pacific Northwest, was
another Unification Church member who described Moon's organization as
dependent on money arriving from overseas.
Stacey told me that the fund-raising operations inside the United
States barely covered the costs of local offices, with little or nothing
going to the big-ticket items, such as The Washington Times. Stacey
added that the church-connected U.S. businesses are mostly money losers.
"These failing businesses create the image of making money ... to cover
his back," Stacey said of Reverend Moon. "I think the majority of the
money is coming from an outside source."
Another member who quit a senior position in the church confirmed that
virtually none of Moon's American operations makes money. Instead, this
source, who declined to be identified by name, said hundreds of
thousands of dollars are carried into the United States by visiting
church members. The cash is then laundered through domestic businesses.
Another close church associate, who also requested anonymity out of fear
of reprisals, said cash arriving from Japan was used in one major
construction project to pay "illegal" laborers from Asia and South
America. "They [the church leaders] were always waiting for our money to
come in from Japan," this source said. "When the economy in Japan
crashed, a lot of our money came from South America, mainly Brazil."
First-Hand Account
In Nansook Moon's 1998 memoirs, In the Shadow of the Moons, Moon's
ex-daughter-in-law - writing under her maiden name Nansook Hong -
alleged that Moon's organization had engaged in a long-running
conspiracy to smuggle cash into the United States and to deceive U.S.
Customs agents.
"The Unification Church was a cash operation," Nansook Hong wrote. "I
watched Japanese church leaders arrive at regular intervals at East
Garden [the Moon compound north of New York City] with paper bags full
of money, which the Reverend Moon would either pocket or distribute to
the heads of various church-owned business enterprises at his breakfast
table.
"The Japanese had no trouble bringing the cash into the United States;
they would tell Customs agents that they were in America to gamble at
Atlantic City.
In addition, many businesses run by the church were cash operations,
including several Japanese restaurants in New York City.
I saw deliveries of cash from church headquarters that went directly
into the wall safe in Mrs. Moon's closet."
Mrs. Moon pressed her daughter-in-law into one cash-smuggling incident
after a trip to Japan in 1992, Nansook Hong wrote.
Mrs. Moon had received "stacks of money" and divvied it up among her
entourage for the return trip through Seattle, Nansook Hong wrote. "I
was given $20,000 in two packs of crisp new bills," she recalled. "I hid
them beneath the tray in my makeup case. ... I knew that smuggling was
illegal, but I believed the followers of Sun Myung Moon answered to
higher laws."
U.S. currency laws require that cash amounts above $10,000 be declared
at Customs when the money enters or leaves the country. It is also
illegal to conspire with couriers to bring in lesser amounts when the
total exceeds the $10,000 figure, a process called "smurfing."
In the Shadow of the Moons raised anew the question of whether Moon's
money laundering - from mysterious sources in both Asia and South
America - has made him a conduit for illicit foreign money influencing
the U.S. government and American politics. Moon's spokesmen have denied
that he launders drug money or moves money from other criminal
enterprises. They attribute his wealth to donations and business
profits, but have refused to open Moon's records for public inspection.
Given Moon's influence over the Republican Party - and The Washington
Times' impact on U.S. national politics - House Speaker Hastert might
want to investigate where Moon's money originates, assuming that Hastert
is truly concerned about illicit foreign money entering the U.S.
political process.
It may be more likely, however, that Hastert simply wants to smear a
liberal adversary.
This story was adapted from Robert Parry's book, Secrecy & Privilege:
Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. A 27-year veteran of
Washington journalism, Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra scandal
stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.
Back to front
http://www.Consortiumnews.com is a product of The Consortium for
Independent Journalism, Inc., a non-profit organization that relies on
donations from its readers to produce these stories and keep alive this
Web publication.
==================
the above x-posted as a community service. an informed voter makes for a
more real election. if you don't vote you let someone else vote twice by
default.
=====================
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(-->>BeTTeR LiVinG Thru BetteR LiVING !!<<----)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
PS: The ASPCA of NYC still KILL Dogs & Cats & are a Bunch of LYING
MONEY-GRUBBERS and their SHOW "Animal Precinct" is a con-job
extraordinaire. FEEL FREE To BOYCOTT The Sponsors on The Animal Planet
Cable Channel Until the 43 Wire-haired Terriers who have were released
to the public with active Cushings Disease are treated gratis as per NYS
& NYC Humane Law and LET ASPCA Know You Know About their Attempts at
Coverup: 212-876-7700!!!!
Especially if you have any spare Anipryl or Lysodren Or Nizoral for my
doggie to ease the symptoms, email me!
http://www.marianne41.250free.com/BLANKTAGS2/HEART110.gif |
|
| |
|
| Back to top |
|
