Mysterious Republican Money

[Guest guest]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/090704.html

 

Mysterious Republican Money

 

By Robert Parry

September 7, 2004

 

If House Speaker Dennis Hastert is 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 Connectionmobster, 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 Ricordand 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 Coupplotters 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 Candi, 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 Moondisciple.

 

On May 31, 1981, Moonrepresentatives 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, Moonhad 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

contraunits 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 Timesdenounced

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 Timesshifted 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

FBIprobe,” 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 Timesand

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 contraswas used by drug

trafficking organizations, and elements of the

contrasthemselves 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

Coupgovernment 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 contrasand 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 Mooncontinued 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 Churchin

1981. The study also accused Reed Irvine’s Accuracy in

Media of benefiting from low-cost or volunteer workers

supplied by Moon.

 

Leachsaid 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 Societyas 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 Churchhad 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 Reaganis 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 Prudento 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 PBSdocumentary 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 Moonallegedly 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 Centerofficial 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 the student front group,

the 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 Centerthat 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,” Staceysaid 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 Moonanswered

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 Moonsraised 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 forthcoming

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.