http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/04/bush_moon.html
April 29, 2007
Bush Sr. To Celebrate Rev. Sun Myung Moon—Again
Washington Dispatch: Ex-president’s keynote speech at Washington Times
bash this month is latest link between Bush and Unification Church
founder.
By James Ridgeway
Next month the Washington Times, the conservative newspaper with close
ties to every Republican administration since Reagan, celebrates its
25th anniversary.
Former President George H.W. Bush will be the headliner.
And the former President deserves the honor.
Barbara Bush ought to get a rousing cheer as well.
The two of them have been beating the bushes for Reverend Sun Myung
Moon for years.
Moon and his Unification Church came to America in the 1970s and
quickly plunged into Washington politics.
“In the 1970s, church officials organized prayer breakfasts and
rallies in support of President Richard M. Nixon, dispatched young
female members to infiltrate congressional offices and had extensive
‘operational ties’ with the Korean Central Intelligence Agency as part
of the agency's efforts to influence U.S. officials, according to a
1978 report by a House subcommittee,” the Washington Post would later
report. http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/Unif11.html
Those ties became fodder for the 1976 Koreagate scandal, which
centered around the figure of Washington lobbyist Tongsun Park, a man
legendary for his lavish parties and gifts of cash in white envelopes.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N22222770.htm
He, too, was long suspected of being connected to Korean intelligence;
he was also an influence peddler of great renown, and anywhere from 30
to more than 100 members of congress were said to be under his thumb
at the time.
Park was never charged with any crime in connection with Koreagate,
but last year he was convicted on conspiracy charges for his role in
Saddam Hussein’s United Nations oil-for-food machinations.
Moon was not prosecuted in connection with Koreagate, but he later
became a target of an IRS investigation and in 1982 was convicted of
conspiracy and filing false tax returns.
He spent 18 months in federal prison. It was also in 1982 that he
launched the Washington Times, which—with its access to conservative
figures and reporters drawn from the newsroom of the defunct
Washington Star —soon became essential reading for political news
junkies.
Through the early 80s, while Bush served as Vice President, Moon
operatives were building ties with the New Right—flying Hill staffers
to junta-ruled El Salvador, and supporting the Nicaraguan contras’
fight against the Sandinista government.
The late Terry Dolan, chairman of the National Conservative Political
Action Committee (NCPAC) and often credited with pioneering the modern
political attack ad, helped Moon burrow into the conservative
mainstream.
A Moon group, the Confederation of Associations for the Unification of
the Societies of the Americas (CAUSA), contributed $500,000 to Dolan’s
Conservative Alliance in the early 1980s.
“We're trying to combat communism and we're trying to uphold
traditional Judeo-Christian values,” James Gavin, special assistant to
Moon’s top deputy, Col. Bo Hi Pak, told the Washington Post.
“The Washington Times is standing up for those values and fighting
anything that would tear them down. Causa is doing the same thing, by
explaining what the enemy is trying to do."
Four years after leaving the White House, in 1996, Bush traveled to
Buenos Aires for the opening of Moon’s pan Latin American newspaper,
Tiempos del Mundo, and according to the Washington Post received
$100,000 for his trouble.
Then he accompanied Moon to Uruguay to help open a seminary.
His son Neil received $1 million from a Moon foundation for an
educational company.
(Much of what is known about Moon comes from the efforts of a tiny
group of reporters, including blogger John Gorenfeld,
http://iapprovethismessiah.com/2003/12/flashback-bush-praises-sun-myung-moon.html
as well as Robert Parry, the former AP reporter who broke many of the
Iran contra stories. Bill Berkowitz
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/4/19/15131/3739 and Fred
Clarkson are two others in a small band of reporters who have followed
the Bush-Moon connection.)
The Houston Chronicle in 2006 obtained evidence that Moon’s Washington
Times Foundation had contributed $1 million to Bush’s presidential
library using the Greater Houston Community Foundation as a conduit.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/3953506.html
The deal came to light in a rather roundabout way.
When he was asked if Moon’s $1 million went to the library, Jim
McGrath, the family spokesman, told the Chronicle, “We’re in an
uncomfortable position. … If a donor doesn’t want to be identified we
need to honor their privacy.”
He was then asked whether the money was meant to suggest to the Bush
family that the time was at hand for President George W. Bush to grant
Moon a pardon for his 1982 conviction McGrath replied, “If that’s why
he gave the grant, he’s throwing his money away. … That’s not the way
the Bushes operate.”
For the Washington Times extravaganza on May 17, Bush will appear in
the National Building Museum’s monumental Great Hall.
Moon, resplendent as always, will deliver the Founder’s Address.
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Figured you'd find this kinda interesting
Harry
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