Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park, and the Korean scandal
by Robert B. Boettcher (with Gordon L. Freedman) 1980
Hardcover: 402 pages
Back cover
As staff director of the House Subcommittee on International Relations, Robert Boettcher was in on the Korean scandal from the beginning. It was the investigations done by his staff that led directly to the breaking of that scandal. His work put him in liaison with top officials in the CIA and in the departments of State and Justice as well as with Special Counsel Leon Jaworski and the staff and principals of the Ethics Committee investigation. Fluent in two Far Eastern languages and with an M.S. in international relations from Georgetown University, Mr. Boettcher served five years as a Foreign Service Officer with a specialty in Far Eastern affairs before joining Congressman Donald Fraser’s staff in 1971.
Cover flaps
Gifts of Deceit tells a cautionary tale. It is the story of well-meaning public officials whose anti-Communism was matched only by their credulity; of Congressmen whose self-interests just happened to coincide neatly with the interests of their constituents; of State Department officials who performed their duties with integrity—and were ignored; and of others who dutifully looked the other way at the excesses of a corrupt and brutal regime.
It is the story of a Korean playboy who spent thousands and made millions conning Koreans and Americans alike, and of a Korean government that, through its own Central Intelligence Agency, came close to manipulating American foreign policy even as it intervened in American domestic politics.
It is the story of decent citizens who too readily lent their names and prestige to organizations that were nothing more than fronts for a clever, messianic man —and of decent and bewildered families who lost their children to that same man.
And it is the story, in its fullest account to date, of the origins and operations of the man who calls himself the Lord of the Second Advent and Son of God—the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
Cool, precise, and factual, Gifts of Deceit makes its message clear: America is vulnerable. Vulnerable to the kind of intervention in domestic politics that was the basis of the Korean scandal. It can happen again — and probably is happening now. And vulnerable to the machinations of a man whose message of Divine Deception has already misled millions and whose political and economic dealings in this country penetrate far deeper than even the most concerned observers had believed.
Here is the book that lays it out, making all the connections—including Moon’s links to the Korean CIA and to high Korean government officials, his support for Nixon and his meddling in U.S. politics, his front organizations and business interests, his manipulation of First Amendment freedoms to protect his cult as it engages in systematic lawbreaking, and the methods he uses to keep thousands in thrall. It is a sad and chilling story.
The ramifications of the Korean scandal are with us still. They are with us because the very flaws and weaknesses that invited the bribery, corruption, and coercion remain —in our institutions, in our public officials. And they are with us, in more immediate ways, in the person of the Reverend Moon —a man whose ambitions are nothing less than cosmic. As Gifts of Deceit unravels the interwoven threads of the Korean scandal, it brings this message home.
▲ Robert B. Boettcher
Note on Korean Names
Korean custom is to put the family name first, followed by given names; for example, President Park is Park Chung Hee. This book adheres to the custom except in cases of Koreans whose names have become known in this country in the Western order, such as Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park, Bo Hi Pak, and Hancho Kim.
Acknowledgments
Significant portions of this book were written in collaboration with Gordon Freedman. Most of the material on Tongsun Park’s activities was derived from his expert investigative work, research, and preliminary drafts. Gordon and I are both indebted to former Congressman Richard Hanna for the very helpful cooperation he gave.
It was my great fortune to have known and worked with Congressman Donald M. Fraser and the staff of his subcommittee’s investigation of Korean-American relations. Throughout our long association, they contributed to the creation of this book in more ways than they could be aware.
In addition to the thousands of pages published on the Korean scandal, a considerable amount of new information was needed. Those who supplied it were both willing and patient with my repeated checking and double-checking. In this regard, I am thankful to Steve Hassan, Lee Jai-Hyon, Ed Baker, Gregory Henderson, Ed Gragert, and An Hong-Kyoon. …
Contents
Prologue 1
PART ONE
1 His Excellency 11
2 The Lord of the Second Advent (with notes) 31
3 The Charmer 56
4 The Origins of the Influence Campaign 78
5 Tongsun and His Congressmen 99
6 Minions and Master (with notes) 144
PART TWO
7 Washington Looks the Other Way 189
8 Three Who Stood in the Way: Ranard, Habib, Fraser 213
9 Koreagate 241
10 Inviting Tongsun Back 267
11 Kim Dong Jo: The Still-Untold Story 290
12 Dueling with the Moonies (with notes) 307
13 The Menace (with notes) 325
Notes 351
Index 389
Prologue
pages 1-8
When Lee Jai-Hyon walked into the conference room on the third floor of the Korean Embassy in Washington, everyone else was already there. He hurried to his usual place near Ambassador Kim Dong Jo’s chair at the head of the long table. Looking around the room, he saw the usual cast of characters: the Counselor for Political Affairs, the Economic Attaché, the Counselor for Commercial Affairs, the Defense Attaché, the Consul General, and the Education Attaché. Seated nearest the ambassador on the left was Yang Doo Won, head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) in the United States. Lee wondered for a moment if he were the only one with no idea of what the meeting was about. As the Embassy’s chief spokesman, with the title of Chief Cultural and Information Attaché, he was usually told in advance so he could prepare.
With all the senior officials present, Ambassador Kim began to speak. “This meeting will be devoted to sensitive matters of the highest importance to our government. It is therefore necessary to take special precautions for security.” Nothing from the meeting was to be discussed outside the room, he said. Those who attended were not allowed even to talk about it among themselves. As for written records, notes taken during the meeting were to be left on the table and destroyed.
“Does everyone understand?” the ambassador asked. Heads nodded around the table.
Ambassador Kim then turned the meeting over to KCIA station chief Yang Doo Won. Like the American intelligence agency abroad, the Korean CIA had its own organization within the Embassy. And like the American CIA, the head of that unit was called the station chief. Yang Doo Won was known in Washington by an assumed name, Lee Sang-Ho, as was customary for the KCIA in foreign countries. A few months later, when the State Department would quietly tell the Korean Embassy that he was no longer welcome in the United States because of his harassment of Koreans living here, he returned to Seoul under his real name and became Assistant Director of the KCIA.
“We all have a responsibility to retain the support of the United States for His Excellency’s policies,” he began. “The United States is our strongest friend against another attack by the northern puppet.” The term “northern puppet” was standard parlance among South Koreans when referring to North Korea or its leader, Kim Il-Sung. In the same way, North Koreans referred to the Seoul government as “the stooge of American imperialism.” Yang was describing the world as the South Korean government saw it: locked in deadly confrontation between fervent Communists and fervent anti-Communists.
Yang Doo Won went on to praise the wisdom of President Park Chung Hee, newly referred to as “His Excellency,” for promulgating the Yushin Constitution in October 1972, six months before. Yushin, which blocked all criticism of the government, was, Yang pointed out, a necessary step to ensuring national solidarity.
So far, none of this was news to his listeners. It was the standard government line, and any one of them could have made the same little speech, perhaps with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
The KCIA chief was worried, though, about trends in the United States. Americans, he lamented, never hesitated to criticize governments, their own and others. It was the time of Watergate, and Korean officials were amazed by the attacks on Richard Nixon. Although he was confident Nixon would not interfere with Yushin, he was not so sure about Congress and the public.
“Will Americans meddle in our internal affairs by preaching about American-style democracy?” he asked gravely. “What if they condemn the Yushin policy and withdraw their support?”
Yang then asserted the “absolute necessity” for the Embassy to reach out and convince Americans in all walks of life to give “His Excellency” full support. He urged more frequent contacts with Congressmen and other government officials, businessmen with vested interests in Korea, journalists, and university professors. “We must use all such persons for the vital task of enhancing the image of our government if we want to retain American support.”
The meeting ended after about half an hour. No one had said anything from around the table. Lee Jai-Hyon sensed the others shared his puzzlement over Yang Doo-Won’s curious lecture. Never before had there been a meeting where the KCIA did all the talking. The KCIA always worked apart from the rest of the Embassy; there were no day-to-day contacts with its officers in the course of business.
Lee Jai-Hyon was sick of trying to make Park’s dictatorship look good in the United States. He knew the only reason Park had dumped the old constitution was to stay in power. Whatever the KCIA chief was getting at, Lee intended not to be affected by it for very long. He had already decided to resign quietly from government service as soon as he and his wife, a registered pharmacist, could arrange for jobs in Seoul.
In the weeks that followed, there were more secret meetings, never announced more than a day in advance and always with the stringent security measures. During the course of six sessions over a period of about five weeks in the spring of 1973, KCIA intentions came into focus. A conspiracy was being outlined. Bit by bit the pieces of the puzzle fell into place as the KCIA chief, cautiously at first, made words like “manipulate,” “coerce,” “threaten,” “co-opt,” and “seduce” a part of the vocabulary of his talks. After a few meetings, he felt confident enough to declare, “If you know something bad about a person, you can use it to manipulate him.”
The KCIA chief also spoke of “buying off’ Americans. Lee had reason to think that delicate matter was being handled personally by Ambassador Kim Dong-Jo. There had been the incident several months earlier when Lee walked into the ambassador’s office and found him busily stuffing packets of $100 bills into unaddressed white envelopes. Feeling awkward about the strange activity he was witnessing, Lee pretended not to notice and proceeded to raise the matter he had come to discuss. But the ambassador brushed him aside. “I can’t talk to you now; I’m on my way to Capitol Hill,” he said hurriedly. Lee excused himself and left the room.
It seemed to Lee that the ambassador and the KCIA were trying to recruit the whole Embassy. Apparently a lot of manpower was needed. “Front men” and “undercover agents” were mentioned. Lee began to wonder about certain Koreans in the Washington area.
Tongsun Park was one. A wealthy socialite often seen with Congressmen, he obviously had some powerful connections in Seoul. Lee knew Ambassador Kim detested Tongsun but had been told by President Park not to interfere.
For an outsider, Bo Hi Pak was also very close to the KCIA. Lee Jai-Hyon had learned Pak used the KCIA’s secret telecommunications facilities to send messages. At first, it had not seemed important to Lee that Bo Hi Pak was a follower of Sun Myung Moon. In Korea, Lee vaguely remembered Moon as a crackpot evangelist. But Moon had become very active in the United States lately. And there was the time the KCIA had hired some new secretaries on Pak’s recommendation, through the Freedom Leadership Foundation whose founder was Moon.
At the end of April, Han Hyohk-Hoon, Lee’s senior assistant, resigned and went into hiding. That was the beginning of more trouble for Lee.
The Korean Minister of Information, calling from Seoul the day after Han’s defection, told Lee to persuade Han to return to Korea. Lee said there was nothing he could do because the man was already gone.
Things escalated quickly with another call the following night from a very angry minister. “I cannot believe you would hesitate to exert every possible effort to make that traitor return to Seoul. You should be making it clear to Han in no uncertain terms that he must come back at once. That is your duty without even being told,” the minister said.
“I cannot force him to return, Mr. Minister. The American government is processing him for a change in visa status so he can stay here as long as he wishes,” Lee explained.
“That should be no problem for you,” the minister retorted. “You can issue a public statement saying Han is a Communist agent who fled because he knew we were about to catch him after discovering his espionage contacts with North Koreans. The Americans will then turn him over to you gladly.”
It was all Lee could do to restrain his mounting anger. “Mr. Minister, I cannot frame an innocent man. All he did was to leave quietly. He hasn’t denounced the government publicly. And what he tells his friends will do us no harm. I appeal to you: Let him go.”
“I may as well tell you that some of us here are beginning to have questions about your own loyalty. You had better do something to bring Han back or you may be in deep trouble yourself.”
Lee began to worry. What would happen if the government held him responsible for Han’s defection? He wondered whether retirement in Seoul would be safe. He was only a month or so away from announcing his resignation and returning to Korea. But perhaps the plan was no longer workable.
For the next several days there were no calls from Seoul, nor pressure at the Embassy. Instead, the Lee family found itself under surveillance in an unusual way. Embassy colleagues began dropping by the house unexpectedly every night with their wives—not close friends, but casual acquaintances who rarely, if ever, had visited the Lee home. Each couple would stay several hours, and at least one couple paid a “social call” each evening. Both sides—callers and hosts alike—knew exactly what was going on. But both sides, faithful to the rules of Korean etiquette, maintained a pleasant demeanor throughout. To do otherwise would have been unpardonably rude. There could be no personal umbrage, neither taken by the Lees nor intended by the callers. That the callers had been organized to serve as watchdogs over the Lees was a fact lost in the flow of pleasant conversation. So the evenings passed amid the cordial exchange of inconsequential chitchat about the weather, children, the cost of living, mutual friends, and the like, ending each time with the warmest of farewells.
On June 4, 1973, another secret session with the KCIA was held at the Embassy. Lee was still among those invited. This one lasted only about fifteen minutes. As Lee rose from his chair to leave the conference room, the KCIA station chief placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Dr. Lee, I want to interrogate you in my office now.”
The two men walked together in silence to Yang Doo Won’s office, where another KCIA officer was waiting. Lee Jai-Hyon sat in the chair offered him. Seated behind the desk, Yang slowly read to himself a two-page cable from KCIA headquarters before addressing Lee. The questioning then began, politely but professionally, as if straight from an interrogator’s manual: Name, address, date of birth, family, education, and professional background. Lee felt as if he were in a police station. Then to the crux of the matter:
“Why don’t you cooperate with us to get Han Hyohk Hoon back to Korea? Where is he? Surely you know. Talk to him. Pressure him. If that doesn’t convince him, let us persuade him.” And so forth, returning repeatedly to questions whose answers had not been satisfactory.
Lee recalled stories he had heard about KCIA torture techniques. The interrogation, he realized, was only the first step in breaking him down. After about three hours, the KCIA chief decided to stop for lunch and resume two hours later. Lee Jai-Hyon walked out into the commotion of midday Washington traffic. He never went back to the Korean Embassy again.
Two years and six days later, on June 10, 1975, Professor Lee Jai-Hyon of Western Illinois University was sitting at the witness table in the cavernous hearing room of the House International Relations Committee in Washington. He had been invited by Congressman Donald M. Fraser of Minnesota, chairman of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, to appear as a witness at one of the subcommittee’s hearings on human rights in South Korea and the implications for United States policy.
The witnesses preceding Lee had given accounts of Park Chung Hee’s repression: torture of political prisoners, mass arrests, prolonged detention without trial, constant surveillance by the KCIA, media censorship, rigged elections, and an emasculated National Assembly.
Concurring with the other witnesses as he took the stand, Lee announced, “I will testify on other aspects that have not yet been touched upon.”
He now felt safe enough to blow the whistle on the KCIA. The time and place were right.
The KCIA’s nefarious activities were not limited to Korea, he said, but also had been exported to the United States in an ambitious plan of clandestine operations based on “seduction, payoff, and intimidation,” to mute criticism of Park Chung Hee’s rule and to buy supporters in the United States. This was something the subcommittee had not expected to hear.
“It took me two years to come here today to tell these things,” Lee declared, “and I am very grateful I can do it here.” He then revealed a detailed plan, drawn from the secret meetings he had attended at the Korean Embassy in 1973.
The KCIA, he said, was trying to “buy off American leaders,” especially members of Congress. American businessmen who had invested in Korea were to be pressured into lobbying for President Park’s policies in Washington. Academic conferences were to be rigged to “rationalize Park’s dictatorship,” and friendly professors were to be rewarded with “free VIP trips to Korea.” The KCIA was to send undercover men into the Korean community in the United States to use newspapers and broadcasting for propaganda, control Korean residents’ associations, and intimidate uncooperative Koreans by threatening the safety of their relatives in Korea.
Congressman Fraser was alarmed by what Lee Jai-Hyon said. If the statements were true, the activities of the KCIA amounted to outright subversion by a supposedly friendly country. He therefore instructed the subcommittee staff to begin making inquiries about Lee’s allegations at the Justice Department and among Korean-Americans. At the time, he had no idea where the inquiries would lead. But in fact, “Koreagate” had begun.
NOTES for Prologue
Pages 1-8
Based on interviews with Lee Jai-Hyon; also his testimony before the Fraser Subcommittee, June 10, 1975, published in Human Rights in South Korea and the Philippines: Implications for United States Policy, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, 1975, pp. 177-185.
Chapter 2 The Lord of the Second Advent
pages 31-55
▲ Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han wearing shaman crowns with disciples at Cheongpyeong LINK
Sun Myung Moon leaves no room for doubt about where he and Korea stand in the eyes of God: he is the new Messiah and Korea is God’s chosen nation. This is the culmination of God’s six-thousand-year quest to restore man from the fall of Adam. It was revealed to him by God when he was a young man, Moon tells his cult followers. God said, “You are the son I have been seeking, the one who can begin my eternal history.”
Moon felt no humility. After all, it was God’s will to choose him after an exhaustive search through thousands of years and billions of lives. The title “Son of God” could go to only the rarest of individuals, he says, one capable of winning victory over all human history. He was proud to inherit God’s Kingdom.
Moon’s theology, the Divine Principle, teaches that man can be restored to original goodness by restoring Adam, Eve, and three archangels. Adam’s fall resulted from Eve’s being seduced by the archangel Lucifer, who was jealous because God gave Eve to Adam instead of to him. Human history has been a constant replay of the same interaction among Adams, Eves, and archangels. God’s eternal plan for man’s perfection has been thwarted as potential Adams are undone by Eves and archangels. The positions of Adam, Eve, and the archangels are occupied by persons, nations, and movements identified as such by Moon. Ultimately, Adam must dominate after successfully going through three stages: formation, growth, and perfection. But if an Eve or an archangel is at a higher stage than Adam, they must help restore Adam to perfection so he can assume his rightful role in the unified system of things.
Moon is Perfect Adam, so he must be obeyed without question. Jesus, the most important Adam between the original one and Moon, attained spiritual perfection but was a flawed Messiah. His mission was foredoomed by John the Baptist, who spent his time baptizing people instead of becoming Jesus’ obedient disciple for influencing the politics of the Herod regime. Making things worse, Jesus was a child of adultery, not immaculate conception, according to Moon. Mary was impregnated by Zachariah. Jesus had an unhappy home life because Joseph was jealous of Zachariah and resented Jesus.
The Divine Principle therefore teaches family unity as dictated by Moon. When Jesus grew up he failed as a leader because he was unable to love his disciples enough to motivate them to kill for him or die in his place. Moonies are taught that because Moon’s love is not of the weak Jesus kind, their love for Moon must be strong enough to do what Jesus’ disciples were unprepared to do. Since Jesus was incapable of perfect love, owing to his unwholesome upbringing, he was also unable to marry as intended by God.
“The reason why Jesus died was because he couldn’t have a bride. Because there was no preparation of Bride to receive Jesus, that was the cause of his death,” Moon preaches.
[However, it should be noted that the first version of the Divine Principle, which was called Wolli Wonbon, told a very different story. Moon had written it himself in two notebooks in Busan, completing it in May 1952. In Wolli Wonbon Moon clearly explained that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. The Jesus marriage narrative was reversed by the time the Divine Principle was first published as a book in Korea in 1957.]
Political action is central to Moon’s mission, although the cult denies that it engages in politics at all. Moon views Jesus’ failure as a political failure for not gaining control of the government of Israel. Jesus was able to establish a spiritual kingdom, but that was only half of what God wanted. Moon is taking up where Jesus left off by uniting the spiritual kingdom with a physical kingdom on earth. The trouble with Christians, he says, is that they have accepted the myth that the Messiah will return as a spirit “on the clouds.” To Moon it is obvious that if this were true, God would have made it happen long ago. The long delay was necessary because God intended for the Lord of the Second Advent to appear as a person who will complete Jesus’ mission on earth among the living. He sees Christian churches as furthering Satan’s cause by rejecting him.
Israel was God’s chosen nation, but the Jews, falling prey to Satan’s power, rejected Jesus. God punished them with centuries of suffering, and finally cleansed them by killing six million in World War II. But the Jews had missed their chance. God had to find a new Messiah and a new Adam nation because, Moon explains, it is God’s principle not to use the same people and the same territory twice. Korea was ideally suited for several reasons. It is a peninsula, physically resembling the male. Like the Italian peninsula, cultures of islands and continents can mingle there to form a unified civilization corresponding to the Roman Empire. Korea had maintained its own cultural identity through invasions by China and Japan over the centuries. And at Panmunjon, the military demarcation line represents the division between not only the Communist and non-Communist worlds, but God and Satan as well.
Japan is in the position of Eve. Being only an island country, it cannot be Adam. It yearns for male-like peninsular Korea on the mainland. Moon sees the Japanese generally as effeminate people who want to be dominated by stronger, manly powers. But as Eve prevailed over Adam in the Fall, Japan prevailed over Korea in the colonial period. And like Eve in the Fall, Japan became a Satanic power.
America is an archangel country. Its mother is England, another island country in the position of Eve. The archangel America helped the Adam country Korea by sending Christian missionaries, rescuing it from Japanese rule, and stopping the advance of Satan’s Adam—Communist North Korea. America is too arrogant and individualistic, however. It cannot remain the world’s leader, because God has destined America to serve Korea.
Korea’s mission, therefore, is to restore the Eve country Japan and the archangel America, and become the center of the new unified world civilization. This is to be accomplished through Moon and his Unification Church.
In Moon’s unification thought, politics cannot be separated from religion. His political views have been conditioned narrowly by South Korea’s two prevailing political phenomena during his lifetime—nationalism and anti-Communism. What he sees as politically imperative for Korea, he has applied to all of God’s universe. World history is now centered on Korea, he preaches, and what happens to Korea centers on him. He claims the Korean War could have been avoided had he been accepted as the Lord of the Second Advent. The archangel America had created the right conditions by making Korea independent from the Eve country Japan. But the Koreans, failing to rally around Moon, were divided between Communist and free-world forces. Though tragic, the division carried forward God’s plan that Korea be the flag bearer for the world. The battlefield for the showdown between God and Satan would be Korea. God’s chosen people would triumph through suffering. America, Japan, and all other nations could be restored by helping Korea’s anti-Communist cause. Only in Korea could the civilizations of East and West be unified. In the end, Moon declares, even North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung could be restored if he answered the call to follow the Divine Principle.
Details about Moon’s early life are not clear because of his efforts to tell the story himself only in terms of being the Son of God. He was born in 1920 in north Korea. He was raised as a Presbyterian in a middle-class family, was a good student, and studied engineering at a [Technical High School] in Japan during World War II. He was married in 1944 and divorced in [January 1957]. He was arrested twice by the Communist government in North Korea for activities as an evangelist and was sentenced to five years in prison in the [spring of 1948]. During the Korean War, when United Nations forces reached Heungnam prison, he was released halfway through his sentence. He resumed his evangelical activities in Busan on the southeastern coast. With a small handful of followers in Seoul, he founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, which became known as the Unification Church, in May 1954.
Rumors reached the American Embassy that Moon was a ritual womanizer. Reportedly, young girls [from the Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul and elsewhere] underwent sexual initiation into his cult; he would thus purge them of the Satanic spirits that inhabited Eve and lead them to the Divine Principle. In 1955 he was [found guilty and] jailed for [two years, but released late at night after] three months by South Korean authorities on charges reported by newspapers and government agencies as draft evasion, forgery, “pseudo-religion,” and false imprisonment of a university coed [Choi Soon-shil from Yonsei University who was] compelled to adopt his religion. The charges were [suddenly] dropped, and Moon’s followers hotly deny that Master was a fornicator.
Moon’s own account of his life is heavy on allegory supporting the Divine Principle. The episodes he relates to his cult are like parables, always with a direct tie-in to his teachings. He presents his life story as the unfolding revelation of the Divine Principle, with himself as the example to follow for what he preaches.
There was a minister named Kim [Kim Baek-moon in Seoul] who was Moon’s John the Baptist. [Moon started to follow Kim in October 1945.] According to Moon, after Kim received a revelation from God, he placed his hand on Moon’s head and blessed him as the heir to King Solomon and the glory of the whole world. Unfortunately for Kim, the women in Kim’s following—also responding to divine revelations—became attracted to Moon. The rivalry resulted in Moon’s leaving after a short time [in June 1946 when Moon moved to Pyongyang]. But Moon could not hold himself responsible for what happened. When Kim gave Moon his blessing, God rightfully transferred all that Kim had to Moon.
▲ Kim Baek-moon is standing at the back wearing glasses. This photo was taken in the summer of 1946, about the time that Moon was asked to leave. Moon used many ideas from Kim’s theology, including the parallels of history. LINK
God revealed Moon’s divine mission to his fellow prisoners in Heungnam, North Korea, Moon tells. They were in awe of him because he could do twice as much work as they, and on half the rice quota. He thought of half a bowl as his full quota and the other half as an extra gift from God, which he gave to the other prisoners. He disciplined himself to the most distasteful work: carrying 1,300 bags of fertilizer to the scale every day. For the Son of God no amount of labor was too much. Others needed rice for survival, but Moon was living on the spirit of God. While working he imagined he was the star of a movie being shown to his ancestors and descendants. He resolved to teach his followers to ignore the limitations of their physical bodies and be sustained by spiritual strength.
There was a woman named Ho Ho-Bin in prison with Moon the first time he was arrested [in August 1946 in Pyongyang]. Whenever she had divine revelations, her stomach muscles wobbled. This was God’s way of reminding her that the new Messiah would come as a real person from a mother’s womb. Several times Moon tried to contact her, but she refused to have anything to do with him. He wanted to tell her that if she put her faith in him and lied about her revelations, the Communists would release her. Finally he slipped her a note:
“The writer of this note is a man of heavenly mission, and you should pray to find what he is. If you deny everything you have received, you will be released.”
Mrs. Ho would have none of it. She wanted to destroy the note immediately, but the guard, tipped off by another prisoner, grabbed it. Moon was interrogated, accused of being an American spy, and tortured. But he denied her revelations and was released after less than three months in jail. He says Mrs. Ho and all her followers were killed by the Communists when the Korean War started in 1950.
Mrs. Ho’s fate dramatizes the peril of not accepting Moon as the Messiah. Disobeying him led to her death. She refused to follow the Lord of the Second Advent. By disregarding Moon’s counsel, she violated his Doctrine of Heavenly Deception.
Moon teaches that lying is necessary when one is doing God’s work, whether selling flowers in the street or testifying under oath. The truth is what the Son of God says it is. At the Garden of Eden, evil triumphed by deceiving goodness. To restore original perfection, goodness must now deceive evil. Even God lies very often, he says. God’s lies bring far greater gifts than man thinks are possible. If Mrs. Ho had believed in Moon and lied she would have been released. If released, she might have become Perfect Eve with Moon.
Moon claims to have found Perfect Eve in the seventeen-year-old girl he married in 1960, Han Hak Ja. He told the cult that her preparation for Bride to receive Moon began at the age of four; in 1947 she was blessed by Mrs. Ho. Being so young at the time, she did not remember the experience. But Moon was aware of it from the moment he met her. Once the vows of matrimony were exchanged, Moon as Perfect Adam could not let himself fall into the same trap as the first Adam. He “snatched her out of the Satanic world” and taught her to obey. Since Adam fell by being dominated by Eve, he had to reverse the precedent by achieving complete domination over his wife. Obedience training went from formation to growth and perfection, to the point where, after three years, he says, she would sacrifice her life if he so ordered.
Since Adam and Eve fell from grace and Jesus never married, it remained for the Third Adam to restore the Perfect Family. Moon and his wife became True Parents, known as True Father and True Mother.
Only True Parents can consecrate the heavenly marriage needed to create a heavenly home. Before Moon grants permission for Unification Church members to marry, they must serve him for at least three years, corresponding to Jesus’ ministry of three years. Mates are chosen by Moon, often at random in a large group, and couples are not supposed to consummate the marriage until they have Moon’s approval.
In order to rule the world, Moon had to start with Korea. It was essential that he have loyal cultists inside the government. They had to be well placed so they could sway powerful persons and become influential themselves. They must be skillful in portraying the Unification Church as a useful political tool for the government without revealing Moon’s power goals. By Moon’s serving the government, the government would be serving him. Avenues to more power could be opened. Recognition at higher and higher levels could come. His service could become indispensable. The government could come to need him so much that he would be able to take control of it.
Four of his early followers were young army officers close to Kim Jong-Pil, the chief planner for the Park regime and founding director of the KCIA: Kim Sang-In (Steve Kim), his interpreter, later to become KCIA station chief in Mexico City; Han Sang-Keuk (Bud Han), who became ambassador to Norway; Han Sang-Kil, who became Moon’s personal secretary after serving at the Korean Embassy in Washington; and Bo Hi Pak, Moon’s advance man in Washington during and after Pak’s service as assistant military attaché at the Korean Embassy.
Kim Jong-Pil made a two-week official visit to the United States as KCIA director in the fall of 1962. Included in his entourage was Steve Kim as interpreter. The Korean Embassy mobilized for the occasion, and the Kennedy administration rolled out the red carpet. Lieutenant Colonel Bo Hi Pak was the Embassy’s officer in charge for Kim’s meetings with CIA Director John McCone, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Defense Intelligence Agency head Lieutenant General J. E. Carroll.
En route home, Kim Jong-Pil met secretly in his room at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco with a small group of Moon’s early activists, who had been sent to proselytize on the West Coast, and some American converts. Kim Young-Oon, beginning in Eugene, Oregon, in 1959, had moved to Berkeley, California. Choi Sang-Ik [Papasan Choi], having established the church in Japan, had moved to San Francisco. Kim told them he sympathized with Moon’s goals and promised to help the Unification Church with political support from inside the government. He said he could not afford to do so openly, however, which fit Moon’s plans perfectly.
Kim Jong-Pil had learned from Moon’s followers in the KCIA that Moon was a zealous anti-Communist. That could be useful to the government. He was also aware of Moon’s ambition to build influence in Korea and beyond. That could create problems for the government if the influence were not properly channeled. Moon was anxious to increase church membership in cities and villages throughout the country. Fine, thought Kim, just as long as they don’t get out of bounds. The KCIA must be the one calling the shots. He decided the Unification Church should be organized satisfactorily to be utilized as a political tool whenever he and the KCIA needed it. Organizing and utilizing the Unification Church would be a simple matter anyhow. After the military coup overthrew the elected government in 1961, all organizations in Korea were required to apply for reregistration with the government. Undesirable elements were identified through a process of reevaluation and dealt with accordingly. Kim could maintain effective ties with Moon’s organization through the four army officers, but the Moonies had best not be told of Kim’s plans to manipulate them. It was a situation favorable both to Moon’s plans for expanding via the good graces of the government and to Kim Jong-Pil’s plans for building a personal power base.
Bo Hi Pak’s work for Moon in America was of crucial importance. Pak is a model Moonie. For him, Master always comes first. From the time he joined Moon in 1957, he endeavored to make everything he did contribute in some way to Moon’s divine mission. Assignment to the Embassy in Washington in 1961 was a precious opportunity to do missionary work in the United States. As a diplomat, he could foster Moon’s interests within the R.O.K. government and keep Moon apprised of important intelligence. It was God’s providence that he go to America, he believed, and he must make the most of it.
Pak “witnessed” tirelessly for Moon. Every new acquaintance was a potential convert. His home on North Utah Street in Arlington, Virginia, was a recruiting center. Every social gathering there was a potential study group. He was assisted in his ministry by his wife and another Moonie living with them, Jhoon Rhee [a cousin], who later became well known as the owner of a chain of Korean karate schools. In 1963, Pak established the Unification Church in Virginia. The incorporation papers declared the church to be totally independent from any other organization and affiliated with the original movement in Korea only on a doctrinal basis.
▲ Jhoon Rhee is standing on the left, and next to him is Bo Hi Pak.
Airline pilot Robert Roland and his wife were cultivated patiently by Pak over a period of several months without a hint about the connection with Moon. The Rolands and the Paks became close friends.
On one occasion, Roland asked what the duties of an assistant military attaché were. Pak was candid about his intelligence role at the Embassy. He explained that in addition to routine diplomatic work he was responsible for liaison between South Korean and American intelligence agencies, which often required his visiting the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA) located at Fort Meade, Maryland. Roland asked about the work the NSA did.
Pak volunteered that it dealt mainly with secret codes and monitoring of radio transmissions. Roland, a bit startled by the information, was finding his new friend to be an intriguing person.
One evening, the Rolands found that they were the only guests invited. Previously, others had always been present. As small talk wore on at the dinner table, Roland sensed his hosts were leading up to something carefully planned. When the meal was finished and they were settled comfortably in the living room, Pak revealed step by step how the destiny of mankind was in the hands of a Korean named Moon. Pak’s life was devoted to helping Moon fulfill his divine mission.
“You’ve noticed that I sometimes seem tired and overworked,” he said to Roland. “That is because I am so busy working for Master that I have time for only three or four hours of sleep. My boss at the Embassy criticizes me for neglecting my duties there, but I know the Korean Government favors our movement. If necessary, I would work twenty-four hours a day for Master.”
“What are you trying to accomplish in Washington?” Roland asked.
“I must lay a firm foundation for Master by making influential political and social contacts.”
Roland was curious to know if Moon had remained celibate until he married at the age of forty.
Pak’s expression became serene and he nodded with sincerity. “Yes, most pure virgin.”
It all sounded like fascinating hogwash to Roland, but his wife was taken in. Her devotion to Moon led to divorce years later and estrangement between Roland and their daughter after she, too, became a Moonie. But it was not until many months after that first talk that Roland became outwardly hostile to the movement. In the meantime Pak attempted to convert him, and Roland learned interesting details he was later to use during a thirteen-year effort to expose the Moon organization.
After attending a concert by the Vienna Boys Choir, Pak conceived the idea of organizing a troupe of young girls to perform traditional Korean songs and dances. The propaganda value could be enormous with the right kind of management. Moon could double what the Austrians had done with the Vienna Boys Choir: little girls as ambassadors of good will for Moon and Korea, dancing their way into the hearts of millions, including presidents, prime ministers, and kings. Moon liked the idea and founded the Little Angels in 1962.
▲ The Little Angels with President Park Chung-hee and his wife in 1971
The Little Angels were one of the first of hundreds of “front” groups designed to further Moon’s universal objectives. The groups follow a consistent pattern. Moon may be listed as the founder, but ties with the Unification Church are denied. Moon stays in the background while Moonies such as Bo Hi Pak promote the group for Moon’s ultimate benefit. The technique attracts large numbers of people who are uninterested in Moon’s religion. To the extent that they know Moon is affiliated, they see him as a man with varied worthwhile interests apart from religion. The fact that his religious interests encompass everything he does is artfully hidden from the public. But even while the Little Angels project was still in the planning stage, Pak stated the purpose clearly in the application for tax-exempt status for his Virginia branch of the Unification Church. He wrote in his statement to the Internal Revenue Service: “It is hoped that the future will allow sponsoring a Korean dancing group in various cities as a means of bringing the Divine Principles to more people and to thus further the unification of World Christianity.” As evidence that his organization was a bona fide church, he submitted a letter signed by Korean Ambassador Chung Il-Kwon, which Pak had drafted, certifying that the Unification Church “has been the recognized Christian religion in Korea since 1954.” At the time of the letter, 1963, most Koreans had not yet even heard of Moon’s church.
Added material
New Growth on Burnt-Over Ground by Jane Day Mook, article published in ‘A.D.’ May 1974 pages 30-36
“Both the theology and what are understood as the practices of the Unification Church have been anathema to main-line Christians in Korea. Moon himself was excommunicated by the Presbyterian Church in Korea as long ago as 1948.
His church has not been accepted as a member of either the National Council of Churches or the National Association of Evangelicals in Korea, both of whom state unequivocally that the Unification Church is not Christian.”
The Unification Church sex scandal which involved many female students from the prestigious Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul had been reported in dozens of newspaper articles during 1955. The Unification Church had become notorious and recruitment in the cities had become more difficult, so members were sent out to the countryside to witness. Children of farmers sometimes joined to escape a future of farm work. All the mainstream Korean Christian churches had rejected Moon and his heretical theology. These facts were well known at the American Embassy in Seoul which sent reports about Moon back to the United States.
FBI report dated October 6, 1975:
“He was accused in 1955 of conducting a group sex orgie…”
“A letter prepared by the Church of the Nazarene, Korean Mission, Seoul describes Moon’s official theology, and details what Moon’s church secretly believes and practices:
1) Founder Moon is the Second Advent Jesus.
2) A believer receives a spiritual body by participating in a ceremony known as blood cleansing which is for women to have sexual intercourse with Moon and for men to have intercourse with such a woman. This idea of blood cleansing comes from the teaching that Eve committed immorality with the Serpent and she passes on to all of us serpent blood.
3) Secretly observed doctrines are Holy covenant and are of more value than the Bible.
4) Members who have experienced blood cleansing can produce sinless generation [children].
5) Founder Moon is sinless.”
CIA intelligence reports were among a sheaf of intelligence summaries, diplomatic cables, governmental memorandums and other documents made public by the Fraser subcommittee as it opened four days of hearings on Korean efforts to influence American policy.
The first mention of the Unification Church came in a United States Central Intelligence Agency report dated Feb. 26, 1963…
On the Unification Church, an intelligence report said: “Members of the church are actively engaged in increasing membership in farming villages. The church apparently has considerable money, because it pays influential people in the villages a substantial sum for joining the church.”
The wife of the UC president at the time, Sa Gil-ja, explains further about the 1955 Ewha Womans University Sex Scandal.
She was one of the students who was expelled. Here are some extracts from her April 12, 1986 testimony.
“Most of the 124 Couples are from very poor families, and the reason for this is very important for our members to understand. At the time the Unification Church was established, Korea was a very poor country. There were many children of poor farmers who had very little education, because they had to help their family in the fields. Every day they had to go up the mountains to gather sticks for fuel and carry them back down on their backs.
“In 1955 Ewha [Womans] University and Yonsei University started heavy persecution. Because of this the Korean government, all established churches, and all educated people started to persecute the Unification Church. People even wanted the government to stop the movement, to wipe it out. At that time we could not reach any high-level or educated people, so Father sent us out to the countryside to educate these poor farmers’ children.
“We couldn’t say we were from the Unification Church because of our bad reputation, but we could teach them basic things, such as how to read and write Korean or Chinese or English. Through this they became connected to us and some of these young people eventually joined. They went to 7-day workshop, 21-day workshop, and 40-day workshop. Then they left their parents and their farms and became pioneers for the church.
“Of course, their parents were very angry with them because they needed their children to do the farm labor. The children more or less escaped from their families. As pioneers they were very poor, so sometimes they would try to go back to their parents and beg them for a little rice or some money, in order to be able to continue their mission on the front line. But often their parents wouldn’t give them anything.
“When other church members established companies these members could work there, but because of their lack of education and skill they could take positions only as unskilled laborers at very low wages. Most have only a primary school education, and because of the urgency of the providence, they never had a chance to continue their schooling after they joined. All they had was faith in the Principle.”
http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Eu/Eu-860412a.htm
In Korea, the Little Angels were getting organized. Instructors were hired, girls were recruited, and the government provided a building free of charge for the training center. But a great deal of money would be needed to elevate the scheme to the level intended by Pak and Moon. Pak hit upon the idea of an American-based foundation to sponsor not only the Little Angels but other Moon projects as well. The foundation should have broad-based appeal, so it could not be identified openly with the Unification Church. Promoting people-to-people relations with Korea and opposing Communism seemed lucrative themes. Americans would contribute money to those causes, especially if recommended by distinguished leaders. Unknowingly, they would be serving Moon, but in the long run they would be rewarded by Moon’s establishing the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
Thus was born the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation (KCFF) in 1964. Unlike some other front groups, the KCFF acknowledged no affiliation with Moon. Bo Hi Pak would pretend his practice of Moon’s religion and his work for KCFF were unrelated. Moon’s founding of the Little Angels would be downplayed so that Pak and the KCFF could get the maximum advantage of appearing independently successful. However, KCFF money would be used to help make the Unification Church strong in America.
The foundation would require more of Pak’s time than was allowed by moonlighting; he could no longer afford to waste his work days at the Embassy. His position there had opened the right doors in Washington, but had outlived its usefulness. The moment had arrived to start working full time for Master. With the church’s government connections in Seoul, he arranged for early retirement from the army. Although now a private citizen, he was able to return to the United States on a diplomatic visa, backed by a letter from the Ministry of National Defense saying he was performing an unspecified special diplomatic mission.
The key to successful fund raising and propaganda was endorsement by influential people. It was essential, therefore, to have the right names in the top positions, although Pak would see to it that he alone ran the foundation. He found a useful figurehead in the person of Yang You-Chan, R.O.K. Ambassador to the United States during the Korean War. Retired and settled in Washington, Yang was known and respected by American government leaders from the fifties and still carried the title of Ambassador-at-Large. He was especially noted for his staunch anti-Communism. Yang agreed to be executive vice-president and persuaded retired Admiral Arleigh Burke to accept the presidency. Bo Hi Pak was vice-president. Burke and Yang gathered an impressive list of names for the KCFF letterhead: former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower as honorary presidents; Kim Jong-Pil as honorary chairman; the directors and advisers included Richard Nixon, George Meany, Perle Mesta, Senator Hugh Scott, Senator Homer Capehart, General Matthew Ridgway, and Congressman Clement Zablocki.
The foundation’s first annual dinner was a formidable event held in the Washington Hilton’s International Ballroom. It featured speeches by Admiral Burke, Korean Ambassador Kim Hyun-Chul, and Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy. Bo Hi Pak was master of ceremonies for the evening’s entertainment: the “Gala National Premiere” of the Little Angels, presented by noted Washington impresario Patrick Hayes.
Moon, like Tongsun Park, is skillful at transforming the illusion of power into real power. Both seized every opportunity to be seen with influential persons and especially to be photographed with them. This technique helped increase their power in Korea by convincing government leaders that they were close to the most important people in America. Likewise, in the United States they exaggerated their actual importance in Korea, which opened more doors to American influence.
During Moon’s first visit to the United States in 1965, Bo Hi Pak arranged through Ambassador Yang for him to meet Dwight Eisenhower at Gettysburg. There was the customary picture-taking. A contingent of Little Angels was brought along to charm the Eisenhowers with a private performance. By receiving Moon, the former President was doing what was expected of him. Moon commented that Eisenhower “paid his bill in full” by opening doors to further recognition by national and international leaders. The pictures from Gettysburg also were put to effective use for recruiting church members.
Admiral Burke resigned in 1965 after about a year as KCFF president. He had originally accepted the position with the understanding that it would be temporary, but in the meantime he had developed misgivings about the organization. Robert Roland had sent him material on the Unification Church describing Pak’s ties with Moon and the hidden purposes of the Little Angels. Also, Bo Hi Pak’s explanations about where the money was going had seemed unconvincing to Burke. Apparently, Burke was never sufficiently alarmed to warn the other prominent persons whose names were being used. Despite the resignation, Pak persisted in using Burke’s name, both on the letterhead and in lobbying for the foundation. Burke, too, had “paid his bill” by acquiring high-level respectability for KCFF.
It was intended that the Little Angels gain prestige for Korea and Moon, and in this they succeeded admirably. Acclaimed by critics for their artistry and charm, they were a hit in the world’s leading concert halls during the sixties and early seventies. They performed before audiences of dignitaries, including an appearance before Queen Elizabeth, and a rare performance at the United Nations, where Secretary General Kurt Waldheim and Governor Nelson Rockefeller were listed as patrons. It was during the United Nations appearance that, for the first time, Moon was publicly acknowledged as the founder. Characteristically, deception was employed for hard-sell effect. In Las Vegas, the Moonie managers conned Liberace, with whom the troupe was performing, into announcing falsely that an invitation had just come from President and Mrs. Ford for a White House performance.
The Korean government took full advantage of the propaganda opportunities afforded by the Little Angels. They were billed as “unofficial ambassadors of good will,” and Korean embassies all over the world eagerly promoted visits by the troupe. KCIA Director Kim Hyung-Wook expedited the issuing of passports (which are hard for Koreans to get and must be re-issued for each trip) for the girls whenever Pak requested them. The government financed overseas tours and donated choice land outside Seoul for a multimillion-dollar school and performing center.
Pak peddled the widely believed story that the girls were orphans, when actually most came from upper-middle-class families who competed to get their daughters in. He discovered the Little Angels could be convenient vehicles for bringing cash for the KCFF into the United States from Japan, where the Moon organization had abundant sources of money. Large amounts could be divided among members of the company before passing through Customs. They could then be divested of the money at Pak’s home, which he maintained as a logistics center whenever the Angels were in the United States. In 1972, a Little Angels traveling group delivered 18 million yen ($58,000).
Moon always regarded the Little Angels as an instrument for exerting influence over social and political institutions. After a successful appearance by them in Japan, he told his followers that “we have laid the foundation to win the embassy personnel stationed in Japan to our side—and through them we can influence their respective nations.” In Korea, where rumors about ties to Moon were becoming a problem because of his growing notoriety, Pak ran a newspaper ad denying that the Little Angels had anything to do with the Unification Church. The troupe’s booking agent, fearful that links with Moon would harm their otherwise excellent reputation, asked for official reassurance. The KCFF board chairman informed him that Moon was merely a friend and supporter of the Little Angels, not unlike millions of others. American Moonies were ordered not to promote them too openly or else “Satan will attack by saying that Reverend Moon is exploiting these children for his own glory.”
For more than ten years the truth about Moon’s scheme was kept from non-Moonies on the KCFF board and from the many thousands of Americans who gave money to the foundation.
The next project for KCFF was Radio of Free Asia (ROFA), launched in 1966. The idea, modeled on Radio Free Europe, was to broadcast anti-Communist programs from South Korea to North Korea, China, and North Vietnam. Moon and Pak gave it a special twist, however. They would conduct mass mailings to Americans asking for money to pay for broadcast facilities in Korea but arrange for free use of transmitters and studios through the KCIA. The money could be pumped into the Unification Church or other Moon activities, as needed. KCFF’s list of American luminaries could be used for promoting ROFA, since the radio was a KCFF project. It was another multipurpose Moonie venture with benefits above and below the surface: promoting anti-Communism, becoming more valuable to the Korean government, gaining greater prominence in the United States, and making money for Moon. Bo Hi Pak was thrilled by it. It was described to prospective contributors as “one of the most daring undertakings against the Communists on the mainland of Asia in the last thirty years.”
Larry Mays was someone Pak thought could be useful without getting in the way. Mays was a mortgage broker in Baltimore when Pak met him in 1965. He was uninterested in Unification Church theology but was drawn to Pak through a shared devotion to anti-Communism. They became good friends. During lunch at the Washington Hilton in June 1966, Mays was surprised to hear Pak suggest to Ambassador Yang that Mays become the first international chairman of Radio of Free Asia. Flattered, Mays accepted immediately. A few weeks later, Pak had him elected to the KCFF Board of Directors.
Bo Hi Pak found Mays a genial, malleable sort. He was enthusiastic and didn’t ask questions about where the money came from or went. He was a good anti-Communist. Though he had no power himself, he had a few moderately influential connections. He could provide a joint Korean-American veneer to the ROFA leadership. Pak could run things easily with Larry Mays around.
The target date for ROFA’s first broadcast was only two months off. The immediate business at hand was for Pak, Yang, and Mays to go to Korea to negotiate with the government for approval to begin operating. Pak expected to use a 500,000-kilo-watt transmitter belonging to the government-owned KBS network, and Mays thought ROFA money would be used to pay for it. Pak told Mays that as international chairman, Mays’s presence in Korea would be important at meetings with President Park, the Prime Minister, and other notables. But before leaving, Pak said, there was one matter that had to be taken care of. He needed approval from the Korean Ambassador to the United States, Kim Hyun-Chul, to go to Korea to complete the ROFA negotiations. Mays asked why. Pak explained that Ambassador Kim had complained that since the Little Angels had come to the United States the previous year without adequate financing, he didn’t believe KCFF had enough money to take on a new project.
Actually, Pak had put KCFF in the red by more than $20,000 with the Little Angels’ visit. Ambassador Kim was worried about the Korean image in Washington if KCFF got into serious financial trouble. He thought the Little Angels project was basically good for Korea, but he was leery about the way Bo Hi Pak handled money. Since Pak had connections at the top of the government in Seoul, Kim’s ability to control him was limited. He did not want to be caught in the middle getting the blame if Pak got into hot water in Washington.
Mays thought ROFA had plenty of money. “Didn’t you tell me we already have more than forty thousand dollars in contributions?” he asked Pak. Mays had never asked to see the financial records. He just assumed everything was in order after reading the brochure.
“Yes, that’s true,” Pak assured him. Mays recalls Pak then saying it would be more convincing to Ambassador Kim if Mays were to tell him ROFA was Mays’s idea and that Mays was paying for the trip with a check made out to Pak, which Pak would show to the Ambassador. Mays agreed to write a $10,000 check for Pak to take to their meeting at the Embassy the next day.
As planned, Mays told the Ambassador it was he who had conceived the idea for ROFA and proposed it to former Ambassador Yang, who in turn informed Pak and obtained approval from the KCFF directors. Ambassador Kim was convinced. The trip to Korea was on.
In Seoul, Pak orchestrated a program to keep Mays busy with trivia while Pak and Yang handled the real work. Mays was assigned a protocol secretary and a chauffeur. He presented an engraved trophy (furnished by Pak) to Prime Minister Chung Il-Kwon. In a call on KCIA Director Kim Hyung-Wook, Mays received a plaque inscribed: “To Lawrence L. Mays—Behind the scenes toward the goal.” He had arrived in Korea with only superficial knowledge of the ROFA project, but even that was of little use at meetings because most of the conversation was in Korean. He did pick up an important piece of information in English though: Pak told the government broadcasting director that $70,000 had been received in contributions from Americans. Back at the Bando Hotel, Mays mentioned the difference between this figure and the $40,000 Pak had told him about in Washington.
“Yes, we received about seventy thousand dollars altogether,” Pak said matter-of-factly.
Mays spoke sternly for the first time. “You will have to account for the difference, then.”
“No need to worry. I had to use the additional money for other expenses.”
“For what?” Mays pressed.
Pak explained that the money had gone to the Unification Church, Mays recalls. The church had been helped by Jhoon Rhee, he said, who had turned over all the profits from the karate schools for Pak to use for upkeep of the church headquarters on S Street in Washington. But more money was needed to feed and house church members.
Mays wondered where Pak drew the line between KCFF and the Unification Church—indeed, whether there was a line at all.
The target date for ROFA’s first broadcast was August 15, the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan. The date had been set by Pak many months in advance, and he placed symbolic importance on meeting the deadline. That seemed impossible. August 15 arrived after three days of negotiations with the government and there was no approval yet. Mays went to the President’s Independence Day reception assuming it would take considerably more time to get ROFA going. Much to his surprise, he was greeted by the Minister of Public Information with a big handshake and “Congratulations! President Park has just given word that Radio of Free Asia will go on the air tonight at eleven o’clock.”
Bo Hi Pak really delivers, Mays said to himself. He felt very satisfied that night when he heard the first broadcast, although he had no idea what the announcer was saying. Nor did he know that Pak had delivered via the friendly intervention of Kim Hyung-Wook, the director of the KCIA.
It was not until the morning of August 16 that Mays deviated from Pak’s carefully planned schedule. He called at the American Embassy to talk to Ambassador Winthrop Brown and his staff. They had many questions about ROFA: its affiliation with KCFF, the amount of advance preparation, and how it was that approval was obtained so quickly from the R.O.K. government. Mays, of course, was unable to provide details, but he assured the Embassy the project was well funded with contributions from Americans and that he, as international chairman, would control the content of all programs. Ambassador Brown then came to the point. He had information that the man KCFF had hired to be ROFA’s operations director in Seoul, Kim Kyong-Eup, was working for the KCIA. Mays was astonished and promised to look for a replacement. It was clear Ambassador Brown distrusted Bo Hi Pak and felt the prominent Americans on KCFF’s letterhead were being drawn into something they knew nothing about.
It was important to Mays that the U.S. government look favorably on ROFA. He was hoping that the Voice of America and ROFA could work together in support of anti-Communist goals. He never dreamed the operations director was a KCIA man, but he did remember Ambassador Yang’s saying that the R.O.K. Minister of Public Information had sent him a message in Washington asking KCFF to hire Kim Kyong-Eup.
Bo Hi Pak was at the hotel when Mays returned from the Embassy. Ambassador Yang came immediately at Mays’s request. Mays told them Ambassador Brown was not satisfied with Kim Kyong-Eup and wanted him replaced, not mentioning the KCIA connection. Pak and Yang spent most of the day on the telephone and finally found that Kim Dong-Sung, a former Minister of Public Information, was available for the job. The Embassy told Mays there was no objection. The KCIA connection was still there, however. Kim Dong-Sung previously had been an aide to former KCIA Director Kim Jong-Pil.
The following morning Mays and Pak drove to the outskirts of Seoul to visit the Little Angels school. They were treated to a performance of new dances being prepared for the next American tour. They then went back downtown for lunch with Moon and Kim Jong-Pil, at that time the chairman of President Park’s Democratic Republican party. Lunch was a cheerful affair, with most of the talk in Korean. Moon was happy that ROFA was now on the air, and he presented Mays with a pair of silver chopsticks. Kim Jong-Pil, the silent “Godfather” of Moon’s special relationship with the R.O.K. government, said very little.
Mays returned to Washington alone. Pak and ROFA were not what he had thought. He viewed himself as an American patriot who wanted to do something about Communism; ROFA was to have been a noble undertaking for this cause. But Pak’s overriding loyalty to Moon was diverting ROFA’s money into the Unification Church. The KCIA was involved, too, apparently working with Pak and Moon behind his back and getting ROFA into trouble with the U.S. government. Then there was the $10,000 check. He didn’t mind going along with the little game to get the Korean Ambassador off Pak’s back, but the check was supposed to have been destroyed or returned to him. When he asked about it as they were departing for Seoul, Pak said he would return it when they arrived back in Washington. But Pak’s secretary had telephoned them in Seoul to report that the check had bounced after it was deposited. Pak apologized casually, explaining that his secretary must have deposited the check by mistake. Mays didn’t like being duped.
He was through with Pak, but he still wanted to salvage ROFA. This might be done by incorporating ROFA as an entity separate from KCFF, as should have been done in the first place and as Ambassador Brown had suggested. He gave the whole story to General John Coulter, the president of KCFF. They both resigned from KCFF. On the same day they incorporated ROFA as a separate entity in Baltimore.
The second ROFA was a futile paper exercise. Bo Hi Pak had the organization, the facilities in Korea, and by far the greater determination. He kept ROFA going for nine years. Americans continued to mail in contributions, thinking their money was paying for a privately owned and operated project. Pak was spending at least some of the money on the Unification Church, according to what he had told Mays. And he was using Korean government transmitters free of charge, and leaving the broadcasts under the control of the KCIA.
The Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation reaped large benefits for Moon. By the end of the sixties his designs on America had shaped up nicely. Bo Hi Pak had been remarkably effective cultivating the American elite. Nixon, Eisenhower, Truman, and others were working for Moon without even knowing it. He could have his picture taken with almost anyone. The Little Angels—secretly his “Divine Principles children”—were winning the hearts of millions. Radio of Free Asia had paid off with money to nourish the young Unification Church in the United States and free air time for anti-Communist broadcasts. Kim Jong-Pil’s early support of the Unification Church had been justified for the Korean government many times over in the successes of the Little Angels, the attention to Korea from KCFF’s influential supporters, and the church’s anti-Communism and loyalty to the Park regime. There was a mutually advantageous relationship wherein the Moon organization and the Korean government served each other. There was little mutual trust though; each side was suspicious of the other’s designs on it. But both made maximum use of the indulgence of Americans. Moon and the Korean government had done well indeed by Bo Hi Pak’s diligent labor.
Until he and Korea take over the world, Moon says, it is God’s will that America have custody of all the world’s land that is not Communist. As an archangel, it had been vested with stewardship over all of God’s property. But America had failed. The first failure was at the end of World War II when the Communists were allowed to join the United Nations. The decline continued: not enough was done to fight Communism, especially in Korea, so America was punished with the death of President Kennedy. Drug problems, free sex, crime in the streets, and family disunity were all grim evidence of Satan’s undermining power. Among American leaders, Moon saw not a single true patriot, but only small men obsessed with authority. Moon resolved that he alone would train future leaders. Into the moral void the Lord of the Second Advent would go so that “someday they will realize that I am truly the most noble and precious VIP that ever came to America.”
In 1969, Moon decided it was time to get his rank and file in America busy combating Communism. He had been waging extensive anti-Communist campaigns in Korea and Japan under the aegis of his International Federation for the Extermination of Communism, with political and financial support from Ryoichi Sasakawa and Yoshio Kodama and other powerful Japanese right-wing figures. He organized the Freedom Leadership Foundation (FLF), the American branch of his international federation. Its president, Allen Tate Wood, mobilized Moonie groups throughout the country to lobby for the hawk position in Vietnam and to try to diffuse the peace movement.
▲ Allen Tate Wood
Wood and eight other American Moonie leaders attended the annual conference of the World Anti-Communist League in Kyoto, Japan, in September 1970. The conference was the biggest ever held by the world league, largely because the sponsoring organization that year was a Moon group, Shokyo Rengo, the Japanese branch of his international anti-Communist federation. Master ordered the Japanese Moonies to prepare for the event with a massive fund raising drive, which reportedly yielded $1.4 million brought in by selling flowers in the streets. Through KCFF, the Moon organization was able to engage Senator Strom Thurmond as guest speaker.
Allen Tate Wood then proceeded to Korea to meet Master. The fall of 1970 was an opportune time for briefing the head of the Moonies’ American political organ. The Korean government was just then making plans for an influence campaign in the United States. Wood had several private audiences with Moon. It was clear that Master was preparing for a major expansion into the political field in the United States with a new sense of urgency. According to Tate, Moon said:
“FLF will probably win first the academic community. Once we can control two or three universities, then we will be on the way to controlling the reins of the certification for the major professions in the United States. That is what we want to do because universities are the crucible in which young Americans are formed. So if we can get hold of those, then we can move out into politics, into economics, and so on.”
But above all, Master stressed, “We must guarantee unlimited military assistance to South Korea and prevent further withdrawal of American forces.” Those were exactly the two objectives of the Korean government’s campaign to influence United States policy. It had been approved in secret by President Park only a few weeks before, and the Moon organization had been assigned a key role.
NOTES Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Sources
KI Report: Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, Oct. 31, 1978, 447 pages.
SIO-I: Activities of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, Part I, Hearings before the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, March 17 and 25, 1976, 110 pages.
SIO-II: Activities of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, Part II, Hearings before the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, June 22, Sept. 27 and 30, 1976, 87 pages.
KI Part 1: Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Part 1, Hearings before the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, June 22, 1977, 75 pages.
KI Part 3: Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Part 3, Hearings before the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, Nov. 29 and 30, 1977, 209 pages.
KI Part 4: Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Part 4, Hearings before the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, March 15, 16, 21, 22, April 11, 20, and June 20, 1978, 721 pages.
KI Part 5: Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Part 5, Hearings before the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, June 1, 6, and 7, 1978, 227 pages.
KI Part 7: Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Part 7, Hearings before the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, June 22, 1977, July 20, 1978, Aug. 15, 1978, 92 pages.
KI Appendix: Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Appendixes to the Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, Oct. 31, 1978, 2 volumes, 1,523 pages.
House Ethics Report: Korean Influence Investigation, Report of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, Dec. 1978, 218 pages.
House Ethics Part 1: Korean Influence Investigation, Part 1, Hearings before the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, Oct. 19, 20, and 21, 1977, 581 pages.
House Ethics Part 2: Korean Influence Investigation, Part 2, Hearings before the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, April 3, 4, 5, 10, and 11, 1978, 1,157 pages.
Senate Ethics Report: Korean Influence Inquiry, Report of the Select Committee on Ethics, U.S. Senate, Washington, Nov. 1978.
Senate Ethics Part 1: Korean Influence Inquiry, Executive Session Hearings before the Select Committee on Ethics, U.S. Senate, Washington, March 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, and April 10, 11, 27, 1978, 857 pages.
Senate Ethics Part 2: Korean Influence Inquiry, Hearings before the Select Committee on Ethics, U.S. Senate, Washington, May 1978, 1,273 pages.
NOTES for Chapter 2 THE LORD OF THE SECOND ADVENT
Commentary on Moon’s theology was derived from The Divine Principle (a publication of the Unification Church), Moon’s speeches to his followers published for internal use by the cult under the title of Master Speaks, and interviews with former Moonies, including some who were instructors in the Divine Principle.
31 “You are the son I have been seeking”: Master Speaks, Feb. 23, 1977 (KI Appendix C-227).
32 “The reason why Jesus died was because he couldn’t have a bride”: Master Speaks, Dec. 27, 1971 (KI Appendix C-207).
35 “Rumors reached the American Embassy”: Interview with officer of the U.S. Embassy, Seoul, during the late fifties.
35 Moon’s arrest by South Korean police in 1955: KI Report, p. 353. Also, a leading Seoul newspaper reported that, “According to the investigative reports, he did not follow military conscription procedure and also overstated his age at 43 rather than 36. [The reports said] it was found that he illegally imprisoned [a 22-year-old female student from Yonsei University, Choi Soon-shil] for three days and forced her to adopt the new religion.” (Dong-A Ilbo, July 6, 1955.) A week later, the newspaper said “evidence of some seven incidents of adultery with female adherents has come to light” but that prosecution could not proceed unless husbands filed complaints. Five followers of Moon were also reported to have been arrested (Dong-A Ilbo, July 14, 1955). “On September 20th … As soon as the court session began the prosecution read the list of indictments and then the investigation into the facts proceeded. Defendant Moon did admit that he had raised his age. … Prosecutor Kang, in the bill of indictment, pointed out that defendant Moon “had raised his age to avoid the draft (military service) …” (Dong-A Ilbo, September 20, 1955). Moon was released after dark, at 9:40pm on October 4, 1955. There had been a brief hearing earlier that day where, according to the diary of Eu Hyo-won, “Chief Judge Yoon Hak-no proclaimed that Teacher was innocent” in spite of the fact that Moon had admitted his guilt in court on September 20. A Korean criminal court record shows that on November 21, 1955, Moon was found “not guilty” of violating the military draft law.
36 “The writer of this note is a man of heavenly mission”: Master Speaks, Dec. 27, 1971 (KI Appendix C-207).
37 “Moon teaches that lying is necessary”: Master Speaks, March 16, 1972.
37 “snatched her out of the Satanic world”: Master Speaks, Sept. 22, 1974 (KI Appendix C-221).
38 “Before Moon grants permission … to marry”: Master Speaks, Nov. 17, 1974 (KI Appendix C-223).
38 “Four of his early followers”: U.S. government intelligence and confidential interviews (KI Report, pp. 354, 363).
38-40 Kim Jong-Pil and the Unification Church: interviews with former Korean and American government officials; The Doomsday Cult, by John Lofland, Irvington Publishers, New York, 1977, pp. 227-229; Kim’s 1962 U.S. itinerary (KI Part 4, pp. 687-695); CIA report dated Feb. 23, 1963 (KI Part 4 Supplement, pp. 458-459); KI Report, pp. 354-355. University of California sociologist John Lofland, who was a confidant of the San Francisco Moonies during the early 1960s, described the meeting with Kim Jong-Pil in his book, referring to Kim as “the Director” and the Moonies as “the DP’s,” meaning “Divine Principle.” At the meeting, according to Lofland, Kim said he had “great sympathy” with the Moonies. “He could not help them openly in Korea, but he would secretly give them a hand whenever possible. … In any event, after the meeting with the Director, the DP’s possessed an important sense of being secretly near the center of power in Korea.” Three months after the San Francisco meeting, the CIA filed an “unevaluated” intelligence report from Seoul that said Kim Jong-Pil had “organized” the Unification Church and “has been using the church … as a political tool.” When the report was published by the Fraser Subcommittee in 1978, it was denounced by the Moonies as inaccurate, since Moon founded the Unification Church in 1954. The subcommittee recognized that “the term ‘organized’ as used in the report is inaccurate to the extent that it is equivalent to ‘founded’ or suggests that Kim Jong-Pil began the Moon movement.” However, the subcommittee found “a great deal of independent corroboration for the suggestion in this and later intelligence reports that Kim Jong-Pil and the Moon Organization carried on a mutually supportive relationship, as well as for the statement that Kim used the UC for political purposes.” Also, the Fraser investigators learned that a Korean-speaking U.S. official had heard Kim use the words “organize” and “utilize” in reference to the Unification Church.
40 Bo Hi Pak’s devotion to Moon: Pak’s testimony (KI Part 4, pp. 156, 436); Robert Roland’s testimony (SIO-II, pp. 14-16).
40-42 Relations between Robert Roland and Bo Hi Pak: interviews with Roland; Roland’s testimony before the Fraser Subcommittee (SIO-II; pp. 14-16).
42 The Little Angels as one of hundreds of Moon front groups: Neil Salonen, president of the U.S. Unification Church, testified that the Little Angels and the church “may share the same founder, but otherwise there is no connection.” The Fraser subcommittee concluded, however, that “there is essentially one ‘Moon Organization,’ ” based on evidence that Moon exercises control over the many entities with which his name is affiliated (KI Report, pp. 332-334). For further details about the Little Angels, see KI Report, pp. 324, 359-361.
42-43 Pak’s application for tax-exempt status for the Virginia Unification Church, April 1963, and Ambassador Chung’s letter: KI Part 4, pp. 697-719.
43 The Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation as a Moon front group: findings of the Fraser investigation (KI Report, pp. 355-359, 361-362; SIO-II, p. 16).
43-44 Bo Hi Pak’s release from the South Korean army to head Moon’s foundation: Pak’s testimony (KI Part 4, p. 471).
44 Bo Hi Pak’s use of former Korean Ambassador Yang You Chan and influential Americans: KI Report, pp. 357-359.
44 Program of the first annual banquet of KCFF: KI Supplement to Part 4, pp. 420-423.
45 “Eisenhower ‘paid his bill in full’ ”: KI Report, p. 348.
46 “KCIA Director Kim Hyung-Wook expedited the issuing of passports”: testimony of Kim Hyung-Wook (KI Part 1, pp. 27-28).
46 South Korean government favors to the Little Angels: KI Report, pp. 359-361.
46 Using the Little Angels to bring money into the U.S.: Pak testified that the 18 million yen was brought to him by the “Little Angels Co., on travelling tour…. Whether they divided the money, many people brought it in as individuals, I do not know…. Probably (the company manager) reported it or not reported it. .. . So it can be regarded he thought that was perfectly all right because so many people coming.” (KI Part 4, pp. 297-298.)
46 “we have laid the foundation to win the embassy personnel”: Master Speaks, Jan. 30, 1973 (KI Appendix C-211).
47 The Little Angels’ booking agent was Daniel Ben Av of Los Angeles (KI Report, p. 360). The foundation’s board chairman was Charles Fairchild, who left the organization in 1977 after discovering Bo Hi Pak’s unauthorized borrowing of money and that the foundation was controlled by the Moon organization (KI Report, pp. 361-362).
47 “Satan will attack by saying that Reverend Moon is exploiting these children for his own glory”: The Director’s Newsletter, a Moon publication, Oct. 17, 1973 (KI Report, pp. 360-361).
47 “one of the most daring undertakings against the communists”: Radio of Free Asia fund-raising letter, March 18, 1966 (KI Supplement to Part 4, p. 454).
47-53 Radio of Free Asia: Bo Hi Pak’s testimony (KI Part 4, pp. 183-187); Lawrence Mays’s sworn deposition (KI Part 4, pp. 598-635); unpublished sworn deposition of Kim Chong-Hoon, former executive director of ROFA; interviews with former Korean and American government officials; documents in KI Supplement to Part 4; and KI Report, pp. 357-359. Of additional interest is Lawrence Mays’s account of an approach to him by Bo Hi Pak in the spring of 1978, when Pak was compelled to testify before the Fraser Subcommittee. He said Pak asked him to keep quiet about Radio of Free Asia, first offering a contribution to Mays’s planned congressional election campaign, and then threatening to use the story about the $10,000 bad check against Mays in public.
53 Radio of Free Asia and the KCIA: According to a U.S. intelligence report of Aug. 10, 1966, the KCIA had been given the task of “working out proposal for reestablishment of Radio Free Asia,” partly as a result of a request from Yang You Chan in Washington (KI Part 4 Supplement, p. 461). An intelligence report dated March 14, 1967, stated, “ROK CIA pushed it strongly behind the scenes. The Seventh (Psywar) Bureau of ROK CIA monitors the programs and activities of ROFA.” (KI Part 4 Supplement, p. 462).
53 “secretly his ‘Divine Principles children’ ”: New Age Frontiers, a Moon publication, June 15, 1965 (KI Report, pp. 324-325).
54 “someday they will realize that I am truly the most noble and precious VIP that ever came to America”: Master Speaks, Feb. 16, 1975 (KI Appendix C-224).
54-55 The 1970 World Anti-Communist League conference in Japan and former Moonie Allen Tate Wood’s meetings with Moon in Seoul: Wood’s testimony before the Fraser Subcommittee (SIO-II, pp. 20-21); interview with Wood; subsequent investigation by the Fraser Subcommittee.
Chapter 6 Minions and Master
pages 144-186
▲ Richard Nixon with Sun Myung Moon during the Watergate crisis
An army of obedient servants would have to be recruited and trained to restore the Kingdom of Heaven to earth under Sun Myung Moon. They would have to work as people had never before worked because there had never been such a great mission. They would have to go wherever Moon sent them to raise the $300 million he needed for making his project worldwide and the billions more he needed to control the wealth of the planet. But Moon did not have shiploads of chained tribal people at his disposal when he arrived in America in 1971. Involuntary servitude was against the law. Could he make people think they were actually willing to be slaves?
He got the answer he wanted from idealistic American youth. He and they were ready for each other. They were people in the age group eighteen to twenty-four, in transition from adolescence to adulthood, student to professional, getting in or getting out of school, family life to life alone. For one in search of a coherent view of the world, college had the effect of making things more confusing by presenting so many different approaches to life without identifying one as altogether right. In the “real” world, problems abounded, from family disunity to the threat of nuclear destruction. At best, things were in disarray; at worst, life was chaotic, depressing. Such minds were fertile soil. Their idealism was the key. Describe how happy people would be if discord could be turned into harmony. Show how this can be done through unified love for God. Then play on the distance between what a person thinks he is and what he wants to be. Hold up ideals and make him ashamed of not living up to his own standards. Instill ideas of self-worthlessness. Make him feel guilty about putting concern for himself above group unity. The burden of guilt could be lightened by working as a family with others who believe the ideals can be attained here on earth. The family has a father who will lead the way. The harder one works for Father, the closer one gets to achieving the goal. Follow Father. God has shown him alone the path to perfection because he is the Messiah.
Moon taught a clear strategy for attracting prospective converts. Until the prospect is converted, he must not know that a strategy is being used. Later he will appreciate being deceived because the motive was his own salvation. First, all church members must make as many new acquaintances as possible. Befriend them by taking a personal interest; do not disagree with their views, whether right or wrong. Do favors. Find the right style to use on each kind of person. Classify his personality. Introduce him to a church member with a similar personality, but don’t reveal that he is a church member. Meet together like that two or three times. Get into conversations on current issues, ethics, or morality. Then say, “I know where there are many serious young people talking about things like this,” or “I have heard of some lectures about a new philosophy, very sincere, very interesting, talking about the problems of life. I would appreciate it if you would go with me so I can get your opinion on it.” The prospect will pay attention to the lecture because he has been asked for criticism. When he says it was wonderful, say, “Oh, I don’t know. Not necessarily so.” But suggest going again in order to learn more about it.
Chris Elkins was president of his fraternity at the University of Arizona when John Shea, a recent acquaintance, invited him to attend a lecture about something called the One World Crusade. What he heard was philosophical, nonreligious, and interesting. So he went again each week for a month or more. The One World Crusade was explained as a movement encompassing all aspects of life. He was impressed by the magnetism of the lecturer, Dr. Joseph Sheftick. He and his fifteen or twenty followers had an aura of confidence, friendliness, and sincerity. They related well to his own interests and seemed warmly concerned about him. As the lectures progressed, a Korean named Sun Myung Moon was mentioned as a great teacher, but the main stress was on the coming of a Messiah to build heaven on earth. It dawned on Elkins that Sun Myung Moon must be the Messiah in question, although no one had said he was. During dinner with the group one night, he stated that observation. Dr. Sheftick raised his head, sat up straight, and announced, “We have a new brother: Chris Elkins.”
Elkins did not affirm Sheftick’s declaration, nor did he deny it. He simply went along for the time being. In fact, he was seriously considering joining. The goals were so noble: peace and brotherhood at all levels. Fund-raising didn’t appeal to him, but he could swallow it because he felt he and the movement really belonged together. And the people gave him so much love and attention that he couldn’t just say no. His best friend tried to dissuade him. When his family protested, Dr. Sheftick warned that Satanic forces work best through those most loved.
Euphoria prevailed during his honeymoon period with the Moon cult. Then the atmosphere became more serious. Elkins didn’t like fasting and staying up all night praying aloud with the others. After a couple of weeks, it all seemed too heavy. Driving back to Illinois to visit his mother in the hospital, he was in a daze. He tried to think things out. What had he got into? Was this the life for him, separated from the rest of the world? The love . . . the concern . . . heaven on earth. . . . What if Moon was really what they said he was? Could he risk losing what they offered? From Illinois, he called the group. It felt good to hear their voices. He would return.
He resigned as president of the fraternity. The Moonies sent him to Phoenix to fund-raise by selling peanuts on the street. He was still restless because Satanic spirits were at work inside him, so he was grateful that another member was by his side at all times. His parents wanted the car back, but a leader chided him: “Who needs it more? Your parents or the movement?”
He was learning. The great crusade required everything he had. The attachment to Father must be total, as Father said:
“Your whole body, every cell of your body, every movement, every facial motion, even every piece of hair, every ounce of energy must be directed to this one point.”
Just as other members were always with him physically, Father was always with him too:
“You must live with me spiritually all the time—while you are eating, while you are sleeping, while you are in the bathroom, while you are taking a bath, taking a rest, even in dreams you can be sitting with me and discussing with me. That’s the only way. This is the secret of our movement. Whoever has that basic, fundamental attitude and that spiritual power will perform miracles.”
Spiritual regeneration required mental somersaults. What once seemed true was now false. What once seemed unreal was now real. The world Elkins had known since birth was the product of original sin. The fall of Adam opened the floodgates to Satanic spirits, which had inundated the lives of Elkins’s ancestors. If he gave himself to Moon completely, he could rid himself of that awful heritage and be restored:
“You will rearrange the mechanism within yourself in good order so that you will feel in the right way, think in that way, say things in that way, and act out in that way. So you are your body, but your mind is my mind.”
Chris Elkins had sung in choirs before, so he was told that joining the New Hope Singers was something he might like to do. Rehearsals were held at the Belvedere training center in Tarrytown, New York, purchased after a nationwide candle-selling blitz had yielded about $800,000.
▲ Belvedere from above
The schedule at Belvedere was rigorous: get up out of the bunkbed at 6:00; exercise at 6:05; clean up and get dressed at 6:15; pray at 6:35; eat oatmeal and water at 7:00; do chores at 8:00; attend training sessions at 8:45; eat bread, butter, and jelly sandwiches at 1:00; tend the grounds at 1:45; shower at 3:30; attend training sessions at 4:00; eat casserole with flecks of meat at 7:00; attend training sessions at 8:00; go to team meetings at 11:00; do individual study at midnight; go to bed at 1:30. There was no free time, and everything was done in groups supervised by a leader.
The three functions in the life of a Moonie—to be indoctrinated, to fund-raise, to recruit new members—required so much time that only a few hours were left for sleep. Working with limited rest was a purifying act of self-sacrifice that proved one’s allegiance to Moon. The timetable for achieving his goals was short. In three years’ time he had to have thousands of servants “marching the main streets of the capital of each nation.” And by 1981, Communism was to be defeated. To keep down individual dissatisfaction about sleep, he whipped up group thinking in his training speeches:
MOON: Would you prefer to sleep seven hours instead of six hours?
CULT: NO!
MOON: Would you prefer to sleep for seven hours or five hours?
CULT: FIVE!
MOON: Would you prefer to sleep five hours or four hours?
CULT: FOUR!
MOON: Would you prefer to go to work without sleeping or sleeping?
CULT: WITHOUT SLEEPING!
MOON: I don’t want you to die, so I will let you sleep barely enough to sustain your life. What I’m thinking is that although you get thin like ghosts, with big eyeballs, skinny all over and stooped down like this in walking, stuttering—but if by your doing that, by your being like that, we are successful in God’s providence, I would prefer to have you do that.
Commitment was total. Cult members should commit suicide rather than fail in their duty to Master. They were even made to practice wrist-slashing techniques.
And there have been suicides.
April 3, 1975: Bill Daly went down to the railroad tracks near Moon’s seminary, took off all his clothes, placed his neck over a track, and was decapitated by an oncoming train. Friends, ex-Moonies, say the cult’s constant hammering about guilt had gotten to him.
June 6, 1976: Allen Staggs fell twenty stories down an elevator shaft to his death in the old New Yorker Hotel, which, under Moon’s ownership, was renamed the “World Mission Center.” The Moonies said it was an accident. A policeman who investigated the incident was surprised that Staggs’s fellow church members acted as if they didn’t know him and appeared “annoyed that their schedule was being interrupted by the whole thing”; “they didn’t seem to care.” The police closed the case without ruling whether the death was an accident or suicide.
August 23, 1976: Kiyomi Ogata, a Japanese Moonie, plunged from the twenty-second floor of the New Yorker.
August 23, 1979: Junette Bayne, again the New Yorker Hotel, from the twenty-first floor. Her estranged husband, not a Moonie, said, “If she wasn’t pushed physically, she was pushed psychologically out that window.”
Health problems were a nuisance Moon could not be bothered with. If the spirit was strong, the body would follow. If the body was weak, there must be spiritual problems. A girl with a broken ankle was told to pray and drink ginseng tea. She fund-raised for three days before getting treatment at a free clinic on her own. Another girl was left with permanently impaired eyesight after an emergency operation for a detached retina. The doctors said she would have been all right had they been able to treat her months earlier when she skipped the appointments her father had made. Listening to lectures on the Divine Principle was more important, cult leaders had said. She almost went blind. A Moonie from Kansas suffered a nervous breakdown. When Chris Edwards finally went to a hospital and was told his infected hand might have to be amputated, he felt ready to welcome the loss as justifiable “indemnity” for his sins.
Across the road from the training center, Moon and his family lived at a $600,000 estate—East Garden. Master had fresh sheets put on his bed every day and his clothes were washed three times before wearing. He told the cult his estate and fine car were necessary in order to show the world something other than the miserable side of life.
With the New Hope Singers, Chris Elkins accompanied Moon on the twenty-one city “Day of Hope” speaking tour during the fall of 1973. The tour began with three nights of lectures at Carnegie Hall in New York City. An advance team of one hundred to two hundred spent two weeks in each city at fund-raising, putting up posters announcing Moon’s appearance, luring dignitaries to a banquet for Moon, and saturating the local media with press releases. Among Moon’s tour trophies were appointments with governors and mayors (always with a Moonie cameraman in tow), keys to cities, and many “Day of Hope” proclamations and telegrams from unsuspecting officials—including New York Mayor John Lindsay, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Washington Mayor Walter Washington, Ohio Governor John Gilligan, and Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia.
Chris Elkins had become an accomplished fund-raiser. He had learned to vary his sales pitch. Depending on the kind of person being solicited, he asked for money for drug rehabilitation, a youth center, or a new choir called the New Hope Singers. Connection with Moon or the Unification Church was not revealed. All the money was turned over to church leaders.
Elkins made a good impression on Neil Salonen, the president of the Unification Church in the United States. Salonen also headed the Freedom Leadership Foundation, one of the political arms of the Moon organization, and he thought Elkins was suitable for use in the movement’s expanding political activities in Washington. Elkins welcomed the transfer. It would relieve him of what he liked least—fund-raising—and involve him in Father’s exciting new campaign to save Richard Nixon: Project Watergate. When Nixon’s image was rehabilitated with Moon’s help, Elkins was told, Nixon would be forever indebted to Moon.
Moon was standing on a mountainside in Korea one day in November 1973 when he and God agreed it was up to him to rescue Nixon from Watergate. No one else could do it. Moon, in the position of Adam, must help Nixon the archangel. On the lower level of America rather than the universe, Nixon was an Adam, to be supported by his wife in the position of Eve and by the American people in the position of servant archangels. Since the people did not perceive this divine relationship, it was Moon’s responsibility to show them. In the 1972 election, God chose Nixon to be President for four years. Since God had not given the people a different message in the meantime, they had no right to impeach him. God’s command to America, through Moon, was “Forgive! Love! Unite!”
The day after returning from Korea, Moon began publishing full-page Watergate statements, featuring his picture, in fifty-one major newspapers. It was his first personal political act in the United States. Until that time, Americans had known him only as a vigorous evangelist with an unorthodox theology. Now, he initiated a forty-day prayer and fast period under his newly formed National Prayer and Fast Committee headed by Dan Fefferman (whom he had also designated to be Prime Minister of Israel when the time came). Moonies handed out leaflets, marched to state capital buildings dressed as Americana figures, prayed in public places, and collected 75,000 signatures for Moon’s Watergate declaration. The drive was geared for maximum news coverage. Praying on camera was stressed, with “medium prayer” recommended as most effective (although one girl got high marks for being filmed crying as she prayed because she pulled it off with an appearance of sincerity).
Wherever Nixon traveled, a contingent of Moonies was sent to rally for him. Elkins was a point man, making sure the Moonies were up front with pro-Nixon signs so bystanders and spectators would appear to be a crowd of enthusiastic Nixon backers. Father had said they must act to make ten seem like ten thousand. Sometimes it was too much even for Nixon’s White House. When Elkins went to Nashville for the President’s visit to the Grand Ole Opry, the secret service asked the Moonies to tone it down since it was Pat Nixon’s birthday.
They planned a big splash for the 1973 National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. The D.C. Armory was rented for a closed rehearsal to turn the tree lighting into a Nixon support rally. Salonen divided 1,200 people into twelve “tribes” and choreographed them to lunge forward with a “spontaneous” cheer for the President. In a side room at the Armory, six hefty Moonies, dubbed the “Horse Team,” were organized for an additional plan, kept secret from the others. On Salonen’s cue, the six were to converge on Nixon and hoist him up on their shoulders. The stunt was rehearsed several times with Salonen playing Nixon’s part.
A White House aide called the Christmas Tree Lighting “a fiasco.” Traditionally, it was a quiet, quasi-religious event. Nixon had no desire to inject Watergate into it, pro or con. It was to be one of those cherished occasions when he could just be President. A choir sang, a minister offered a prayer, and the President read a little statement about Christmas. Just as Nixon—along with a Boy Scout—moved to press the button to light the trees, a large crowd of people tore down the fence and came rushing forward to the edge of the platform cheering and waving banners that read God loves Nixon! and support the president! News cameras flashed. Nixon hurriedly exited by the rear of the platform. The Horse Team was unable to get to Nixon because he did not leave in the direction Salonen had expected. The Moonies recongregated in Lafayette Square across from the White House, still cheering and waving banners in the bitter cold. Salonen told his flock he had faith the President would appear.
Inside the White House, Nixon was furious over the Moonies’ conduct at the tree lighting. On the other hand, he thought, they were a well-organized group supporting him all the way. He would need them in the coming months. He decided to go outside and shake a few hands. When Nixon crossed Pennsylvania Avenue, they rushed him again. The Horse Team—still obsessed with hoisting Nixon—tried to get close enough to grab him, but he was surrounded tightly by secret service men. The “horses” were disappointed that the secret service stood in God’s way.
When the President was ready to leave, the Moonies joined hands in two lines across Pennsylvania Avenue to block traffic. One Moonie said, “We stopped the world for him and he passed between us.”
Paradoxically, Moon’s effort to save the President of the United States was run by Koreans and Japanese. The same was true of all activities of the Moon organization. Salonen was a figurehead and legworker, rarely brought into important policy discussions. The Japanese handled the money and the Koreans made the big strategy decisions. Moon’s word was final on any matter, and he involved himself to a surprising degree in details. Above the Americans was a power clique consisting of Bo Hi Pak, David S. C. Kim, Choi Sang-Ik (Papasan Choi), Takeru Kamiyama, and Osami Kuboki. It was in accordance with the Divine Principle. America was only an archangel while Korea was Adam and Japan was Eve.
As nationality dictated one’s function in the cult, so did race. Orientals were to make “spiritual” contributions. Whites should put their “analytical” abilities to work. “The talented area of black people is in (the) physical aspect,” said Moon, mentioning basketball as an example.
The man behind the scenes in Moon’s pro-Nixon drive was Dr. Joseph Kennedy. Kennedy had been hired by the Moon organization as a consultant to help with the “Day of Hope” program in Atlanta. He also had good connections in the White House. Whatever the exchange between Moon and God on that mountain in Korea, it was Kennedy who planted the basic ideas in Bo Hi Pak’s head. In Atlanta in early November 1973, he had expressed concern to Pak over Nixon’s Watergate problems, mentioning an essay by Lincoln about praying and fasting in times of national crisis.
Splendid, thought Pak. Moon thought so, too. This was what they had been waiting for. Moon could make his American political debut with the hottest issue in the country by giving it a religious slant. Unity of religion and politics was what the Divine Principle was all about. When Lincoln wrote that essay, God had tucked it away so He could bring it out for Moon a hundred years later. Moon and Pak picked up the ball and ran with it.
Dr. Kennedy, pleased with the activity for Nixon, had complied with Pak’s request to have the cult admitted at the Christmas tree ceremony. He had also obtained a seat for Moon at the President’s National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton to be held in January 1974. Moon’s planned presence drew criticism from Congress and the clergy, so the White House stressed that he would not be sitting at the head table. Moon had to be content merely with attending alone, although he had wanted to bring along an entourage and have hundreds of his followers flood the hotel switchboard during the breakfast with calls to Forgive, Love, and Unite.
Dr. Kennedy was able to set up a meeting between Nixon and Moon the day after the prayer breakfast. The White House handled the matter quietly. The appointment did not appear on the President’s published schedule for the day. Moon was ushered into the Oval Office. He shook hands with Nixon, prayed aloud in Korean, then urged the President “not to knuckle under to the pressure.” Nixon thanked him for the support and gave him a pair of cuff links and a tie pin. Moon told his followers the meeting was absolute proof that Nixon would survive Watergate.
Why?
“This is the equivalent to the Roman Emperor having invited Jesus and welcomed Jesus in the past.”
It was no accident of history. It was a dramatic event of the highest importance, an act of God. And Nixon realized it, said Father. When they bowed their heads and prayed together, Moon was sure Nixon knew there was only one person on earth who could save him: Sun Myung Moon. Nixon and Moon achieved spiritual unification.
From that moment forward “the Unification Church and the White House where Nixon resides can be very close places.”
At the Freedom Leadership Foundation, life for Chris Elkins was less arduous than before. His days were not as regimented as they had been when he was on the streets or in training. At first he felt uneasy about not having someone keeping a close watch over him. But now he was able to read newspapers and sometimes even watch television. Religious indoctrination continued. Salonen made sure he spent a couple of hours each day studying the Divine Principle in a group. At work he stayed busy with Watergate and foreign affairs on Capitol Hill. The Moonies were doing a lot of lobbying to drum up support for South Vietnam, the Lon Nol government in Cambodia, and, most important, South Korea. Using phony letterheads of ad hoc committees fabricated for the occasion, Elkins worked all night sending letters to Congressmen.
Inside Congress, they were helped by unsuspecting people in the cause of anti-Communism. David Martin of the Senate Internal Security Committee staff furnished names of Senators and Congressmen to be lobbied, obtained the Senate Caucus Room for a Moonie political meeting with the press, and expedited Moon’s permanent resident visa. (It was issued by virtue of his wife’s permanent visa. Hers had been obtained by Bo Hi Pak’s listing her as an employee of the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation.) Congressman Richard Ichord obtained the House Caucus Room for a Moon meeting, and Senator Strom Thurmond continued to help the Moonies on the Hill. When Moon was having trouble getting into the country in 1971, Thurmond had intervened and Moon was admitted.
Congress was a keen concern to both Moon and the Korean government. This was particularly true in 1974 because of Watergate and the $93 million cut in military aid to South Korea resulting from Congressman Fraser’s hearings. Moon and the Korean government lobbied intensively, separately but coordinately. As early as 1971, Moon had organized teams called “PR sisters” under Mitsuko Matsuda. She was Japanese, as it should be, since the archangel Americans could return to their original position only though Eve. The duties of the “PR sisters” were to cultivate friendships with members of Congress and staffs, explain the Unification Church and dispel negative attitudes, and urge full support for South Korea. Moon would thus be able to impress the R.O.K. government with his influence in the United States. Later, he issued a call for “many good-looking girls,” planning to assign three to each Senator: “One is for the election, one is for the diplomat, and one is for the party. If our girls are superior to the Senators in many ways, then the Senators will just be taken in.” (In fact, several Congressmen were entertained in a Washington Hilton hotel suite rented by the cult.) Everything they learned about Senators and Congressmen was to be entered in the cult’s confidential file, including details of personal lives.
One such girl was Susan Bergman, a regular morning visitor to Speaker Carl Albert for two years. She prepared ginseng tea for the Speaker and his secretaries when they arrived for work. The Speaker wasn’t interested in her talk about religion, but he did find her pleasant and attractive. She liked to impress others with her close relationship with him. Showing a fellow Moonie around the Capitol one day, she picked up a telephone, dialed a number, and said, “Hello, Carl, how are you? I wanted to know if you got my flowers.” On another occasion, she got a long-distance call from Albert while she was at Moon’s training center in Barrytown.
President Park Chung Hee did not have to ask Moon to take up Nixon’s cause, although he favored it. Moon didn’t need the encouragement. Like Tongsun Park, he was self-propelling for his own purposes as well as for those of the government. Park Chung Hee viewed him as an asset for Korean influence in the United States. The Moon organization remained a key element in the influence campaign (as intended ever since the original plans were developed at the meetings in the Blue House in 1970).
While the Blue House meetings were still going on, Bo Hi Pak had rushed to Seoul with an appealing project: a letter to be signed by President Park for 60,000 Americans who had contributed to Radio of Free Asia (ROFA). The mailing served the purposes of both the influence campaign and the Moon organization. In it, the R.O.K. government personally reminded Americans that the Communists were “increasing the hostilities” against South Korea; ROFA was endorsed and the contributors thanked; and Bo Hi Pak was credited by name with having informed the President about the contributors’ service to anti-Communism. Without asking for money, the letters generated more contributions.
A few months later, Pak was ready with another project. A public relations man for ROFA, Donald Miller, was writing a biography of President Park. Visiting Seoul with Bo Hi Pak, manuscript in hand, Miller received the President’s approval during a personal appointment. The book was never published, but no matter; the Moon organization was making the right impressions on the Blue House.
Like Tongsun Park, Moon had developed extensive contacts on Capitol Hill and was using them to support the Korean government position. Like Tongsun Park, Moon had successful businesses in Korea and the United States, with operations in a number of other countries. Both Moon and Tongsun cleverly cultivated powerful and wealthy Americans. Both were strong supporters of Park Chung Hee, cooperating closely with his senior officials, including the KCIA director. Bo Hi Pak had been the willing conduit for Prime Minister Chung Il-Kwon to transfer money into his personal bank account in the United States, and other government officials had been so favored as well.
While Tongsun Park’s service was both profitable for Korean officials and helpful with important members of Congress, Moon beamed his activities to a mass audience. The Little Angels were a propaganda bonanza for the government. Moon’s anticommunist campaigns, such as the 1970 conference of the World Anticommunist League and Radio of Free Asia, helped keep the world mindful of the North Korean menace at a time when the United States was more interested in negotiation than confrontation with the Communists. The attraction of American youth to Moon was seen as a welcome offset to the disturbing leftist student activities of the late sixties.
In Korea, Moon was providing anti-Communist indoctrination to government personnel at his training center at Sutaek-ri outside Seoul.
▲ Sutaek-ri Training Center
Each year the government sent thousands of officials to Moon’s school from local, provincial, and national agencies. Moon was permitted to stage large demonstrations in Seoul—pro-government, anti-Communist, and pro-Nixon—in the tightly controlled climate of the Park dictatorship. Industrial components of the Moon organization were awarded lucrative government contracts, including the manufacture of military weapons. KCIA Director Kim Jong-Pil’s decision in 1962 to utilize Moon’s fledgling church had stood the test of time.
For Moon, that was fine as far as it went. But he was bigger than the KCIA and Park Chung Hee, as he often told his cult. As he saw it, he was organizing and utilizing the R.O.K. government, not the other way around. The government officials indoctrinated at his school would be led to the Divine Principle by way of anti-Communism. Building military hardware under government contract would make the government dependent on him while providing funds for him to expand worldwide. The government was indebted to him for the cultural propaganda he had generated through his Little Angels. If he could save Nixon, his power would overshadow Park Chung Hee, and ruling the Adam country would be only a step away. He could assume his rightful position. He reminded the cult that what he was doing in Project Watergate was far more significant for its impact in Korea than in the United States.
On Capitol Hill, Project Watergate brought some early results. In January 1974, a two-day lobbying blitz for signatures on Moon’s Watergate declaration yielded about a hundred Congressmen and some ten Senators. The lobbyists concealed their affiliation with the Unification Church from legislators.
Several months later, anti-impeachment leader Rabbi Korff and Nixon aide Bruce Herschenson appealed for another Moonie display of mass support for Nixon. They valued Moon’s help because he could mobilize large numbers of people anywhere on short notice and with good results. Moon was cool to the request. He said no. Korff and Herschenson asked again and again, but Moon kept turning them down. The Lord of the Second Advent wanted homage from the President. Nixon should repent to Moon for his failure of leadership; then Moon would rally the troops. Salonen was caught awkwardly in the middle. He had no decision-making power. All he could do was transmit messages back and forth between the White House and Moon’s Korean-Japanese, Adam-Eve hierarchy. Korff and Herschenson offered no possibility of Nixon’s kneeling before Moon. Ultimately, Moon decided to hold a three-day fast on the Capitol steps—independent of White House appeals, he insisted.
It was July of 1974. Things were grim for Nixon. It was time for a miracle. If anyone could deliver, Moon said, it was he.
Chris Elkins helped staff the fast on the Capitol steps. Placards and posters were designed; literature was prepared and distributed; a press corps was set up. They hoped to get Nixon to address the fasters in person. Six hundred Moonies were shipped to Washington to do the fasting and praying. That number was chosen so as to have each Moonie pray for one Senator, Congressman, and cabinet member, with Salonen and his wife taking President and Mrs. Nixon. They prayed for releasing God’s power to turn the heart of America toward forgiveness for Nixon. Nixon did not appear: he sent a telegram instead. At the end of the third day, Moon came, accompanied by Rabbi Korff. He addressed the fasters, telling them they had completed their mission successfully. It was the only time Chris Elkins ever heard Father bestowing full approval on his followers.
On the day Nixon resigned, a small group of Moonies went to the White House. Bruce Herschenson talked to them at the gate briefly. After the resignation, the members of the Horse Team from the Christmas Tree Lighting felt a heavy burden of guilt. Failure to lift Nixon up on their shoulders, Father had said, had doomed him to decline and fall.
Neil Salonen had an unusual assignment for Chris Elkins. Around breakfast time on the morning of September 14, 1974, he was told that he and four other Moonies were to throw eggs at the Japanese Embassy. A car would take them there at noon. If possible they were to hit the car carrying the Japanese ambassador to lunch. If the ambassador did not appear within thirty minutes or so, they would pelt the Embassy building and run to a car waiting to take them back to Unification Church headquarters. It was important, Salonen explained, that the timing of the incident coincide with a street demonstration by the Freedom Leadership Foundation (FLF), which was to divert police attention from the area around the Japanese Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. A large group of Moonies, representing FLF, were to march with placards from Dupont Circle to the White House protesting the Japanese government’s position on the assassination of President Park’s wife in Seoul the previous month. The assassin was a Korean resident of Japan with pro-North Korean sympathies. A major crisis in Korean-Japanese relations had resulted because the Japanese government refused to take responsibility for the killing as demanded by Korea. President Ford was scheduled to visit Tokyo in November with no plans to go to Seoul. The South Korean government and the Moonies saw Ford’s itinerary as an indication that the United States was siding with Japan in the dispute with Korea. The Moonies’ anti-Japanese demonstration and egg-throwing were designed to show the support of the American people for Korea’s position and convince Ford to visit Seoul.
The eggs were bought. Elkins and his colleagues were ready to go. He had never been told to do anything like this before. But many of the things he did for Father were new. Father worked in new and different ways and there had never been anyone like him before.
About 11:00 a.m. Salonen went into his office to call Moon for the final approval before dispatching the egg team. Fifteen minutes later he reappeared downstairs where they were waiting. Father had learned that President Ford had decided to make a stop in Seoul between Tokyo and Vladivostok, he said. That would show more than enough American support for South Korea, so the egg attack would not be necessary.
What Elkins did not know was that the KCIA had initiated the whole thing. According to U.S. intelligence reports, the KCIA had paid Moon thousands of dollars and used him to stage demonstrations at the United Nations and elsewhere to show American support for the aims of the Korean government. Moon was willing when others were not. In September 1974, KCIA headquarters in Seoul ordered anti-Japanese demonstrations in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco on the occasion of a visit that month by Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. Kim Sang-Keun, a KCIA officer in the Korean Embassy, had been unable to find local Korean residents who were willing to demonstrate, so his chief, Kim Yung-Hwan, arranged for Moon to stage demonstrations at the White House and the Japanese Embassy. At the last minute, the U.S. government learned of the plans through intelligence sources and objected. Kim Yung-Hwan told the Moonies to cancel the operation.
With an eye on protecting its tax-exempt status, the Unification Church insisted it never engaged in politics, especially election campaigning and lobbying for legislation. After Chris Elkins spent almost a year lobbying Congress, he was sent to Westchester County, New York, to campaign for Charlie Stephens, who was running for Congress against Richard Ottinger in the fall of 1974. The entire staff of the Freedom Leadership Foundation was mobilized. In order to keep the Washington office running, pairs of persons were rotated in and out of the campaign. Stephens was a close ally of the Moonies, having organized American Youth for a Just Peace with Allen Tate Wood in 1970. While Elkins was busy electioneering for Stephens, the New Hampshire Moonies were fully engaged in Louis Wyman’s Senate campaign. Success in these two states was important because with one more state, Moon would be on his way to taking over:
“If we can turn three states of the United States around, or if we can turn seven states of the United States to our side, then the whole United States of America will turn. Let’s say there are five hundred sons and daughters like you in each state. Then we could control the government. You could determine who became Senators and who the Congressmen would be.”
He was disappointed that there were only fifty states. With seventy, it would be easier to divide and conquer.
Chris Elkins liked politics, and he was looking forward to a job in Wyman’s Senate office. Wyman had promised to give a church member a job if he won the election. Salonen and Dan Fefferman picked Elkins because he had more political experience than the Moonies in Wyman’s campaign. The prospect of a congressional staff job was exciting. He would be serving Father and fully enjoying it for a change. Events were holding promise for Father’s prophecy that:
“Some day, in the near future, when I walk into the Congressman’s or the Senator’s offices without notice or appointment, the aides will jump out of their seats, and go to get the Senator. They will get their Senator or Congressman, saying he must see Reverend Moon.”
When Wyman lost the election, Elkins was transferred to the Columbia University campus to work in Moon’s college front organization, the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP). Father had said the Communists were stirring up trouble at Columbia.
It was unfortunate for Joe Tully that Takeru Kamiyama didn’t happen to like him. Being on the wrong side of Kamiyama meant trouble for a Moonie. Kamiyama was part of the Korean-Japanese power clique close to Moon. Although Tully held the position of state director of the Unification Church in New York, no one questioned Kamiyama’s seniority. Tully was only an archangel.
Kamiyama set up a meeting with Moon to dispose of the problem. It was a kangaroo court. All of the New York leaders were there except Tully. Kamiyama accused him of not being able to unite with church members. Tully was arrogant and individualistic, he explained. The New York leaders gave automatic agreement. No one but Father could dispute Kamiyama. If Tully couldn’t unite with members, that meant he couldn’t unite with Father.
Moon asked Kamiyama what he proposed to do about it.
▲ Sun Myung Moon and Takeru Kamiyama in the 1970s.
“Joe Tully is a good lecturer, so you could send him to Barrytown,” suggested Kamiyama.
Moon laughed. “Great! That’s what we’ll do. We’ll give him to Ken Sudo in Barrytown.” Everyone joined in Father’s hearty laugh over pawning off the state director.
Tully, trying not to show disappointment, was shipped off to the training center. His final humiliation was Moon’s choice of a wife for him: a Japanese girl who even Kamiyama thought was “a crazy fanatic.” (Moon often warned cult members he might marry them off to someone ugly or unlikely.) Moon needed to marry his foreign cult members to Americans to avoid deportation. The Immigration and Naturalization Service was bearing down on them. Tully’s punishment was his “indemnity” for arrogance and individuality: he would pay a price in work and suffering.
Obedient leaders were essential to Moon’s totalist system. If leaders had a slave mentality themselves, they would be better slaves to Moon. All the brainwashing notwithstanding, Moon had serious doubts that more than a few hundred of his cultists would really be willing to die for him. He saw America as the land of greatest opportunity for scaling the heights of the power he craved. If he could do it here he could do it anywhere. It would be difficult, though, because Americans had a disturbing tendency to go their own way.
When Moon moved to the United States in 1971 he was appalled by the individuality he saw. During the first months he said he was sorry he had come to America because he found no one prepared to do his work. He thought of relocating in Germany, where people “were trained in totalism,” so it would be easier for his mission. He launched a crash program to tighten organization, instill discipline, recruit more members, and raise money. It was successful. Some former members recall that Nazi films on organizing Hitler Youth were shown as examples to Moonie leaders. Nothing was more important than developing a cadre of strong leaders totally subservient to his will.
Steve Hassan was such a leader. He was not only prepared to die for Moon; he felt capable of killing his own father for Moon. Bright, energetic, young, and, most important, idealistic, Hassan was perfect Moonie material. He was drawn into the cult at nineteen while a student at Queens College, having concluded that all college had to offer was memorization by rote. The Unification Church offered an ideology for bettering the world with a clear-cut path straight to eternity. After successfully completing forty days of isolation and indoctrination, Hassan was put to work. He started the Queens College chapter of the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles, served as assistant director of the Unification Church in Flushing, lectured on the Divine Principle, managed transportation to the Moonie demonstrations in support of South Korea at the United Nations, prayed and fasted for Nixon on the steps of the Capitol, and fund-raised. He had worked loyally and hard, and he became one of Kamiyama’s favorites. Kamiyama adored him so much that when Moon moved the national headquarters of the church to Manhattan from Washington, Hassan was placed in a newly formed church unit inside the national headquarters for the purpose of setting an example for Salonen and the others to follow. Kamiyama wanted them to demonstrate “the Japanese standard of sacrifice and devotion.”
Hassan experienced feelings of great achievement. His life had a new worthwhile purpose. In less than a year he had come so far, yet he was still so young. And it was recognized by those he had come to respect most.
Hence, he never expected to hear what Kamiyama said to him at a meeting with all the regional commanders assembled: “You are having spiritual problems now. It’s better you go out fund raising.”
Spiritual problems? What had he done wrong? He lived by the Divine Principle. It was his guide for every thought, word, and deed. All questions left his mind after not more than a split second. As he bowed his head in reverent obedience, his only remaining thought was, “Dear God, not as I will, but as You will.” “It’s all right,” Kamiyama said. “You don’t have to fund raise.” He then turned to the regional commanders and stated, “This is your model for sacrifice and devotion.”
It was a test like God’s test of Abraham’s faith when He had ordered him to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Hassan had passed— and he felt joy, not relief. Kamiyama was right. Hassan was a model. The cult had fully conquered his mind.
When Hassan did go out fund raising again several months later, it was a promotion, not indemnity for spiritual problems. He worked in Manhattan, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore as head of a model fund raising team whose proceeds went to special projects picked by Moon exclusively. As always, a special Japanese “team mother” was sent to live with the group, to cook, sew, clean house, and encourage cohesion. Her real purpose was to spy for Kamiyama by writing him detailed reports regularly. Hassan’s fund raisers were out hawking flowers or candy from dawn until midnight, or later if quotas were not met. They worked the streets, supermarkets, parking lots, offices, airports, gay bars, straight bars, discotheques, factories, and house-to-house. They identified themselves as whatever seemed likely to elicit cash from a person’s pocket. Sometimes a more direct approach was used by crawling along the floor in a bar or restaurant, popping up at a table to pin a flower on a woman’s dress, and saying to her escort, “That will be two dollars, please.” A surprising number of people paid. If the man became angry and called a waiter, Hassan made a quick dash across the floor to a far corner so he could keep working if not caught and ejected. If thrown out, he tried to slip in again and take up where he left off.
Change was sometimes hard to get once money was in a Moonie’s hand. If a Moonie was handed a $10 bill, it could be a $10 contribution even if unintended. Ancestors, acting through the contributor, were paying indemnity.
At the airport, one Moonie got a dollar for pinning a flower on a nun. Discovering the solicitor was a Moonie, the nun’s niece returned the flower and demanded the dollar back. There was no refund. The niece had another twenty minutes before her plane departed so she followed the Moonie around the airport, telling people: “Don’t buy anything from this girl; she just stole a dollar from a nun!”
Hassan’s team took in about $1,000 a day. Twice each week he took the cash to a bank and wired it directly to a Unification Church account at Chemical Bank in New York. He was never told what the money was used for, or how much was raised nationwide. He has since estimated conservatively that on the basis of a thousand Moonies collecting $75 a day per person, the annual gross would be about $28 million. A thousand fund raisers and $75 per day are low base figures, however; $100 was the minimum expected per fund raiser per day, and one-third of the Moonie membership is supposed to be out fund raising all the time.
Money is important to Moon but only as a necessary means for achieving what he wants most: power. The cult’s businesses in Korea had made him a millionaire before he began his American mission. Moon enterprises were worth at least $15 million in the early seventies from manufacturing and selling ginseng tea products (Il Hwa Pharmaceutical Company), stone vases (Il Shin Stoneworks), titanium dioxide (Hankook Titanium and Dong Hwa Titanium), lathes, boilers, air rifles, and parts for military weapons (Tong Il Industries). Members of his cult were directed to set up “missions” to sell ginseng tea and stone vases in 120 countries by April 1975. One of his first American companies, Tong Il Enterprises, began marketing his tea and vases in 1973, and later became involved in his tuna fishing businesses. When the first shipments of tea arrived in America, he told his followers he planned “to explore a worldwide market for this heavenly product, along with the worldwide spread of unification principles for mankind.”
Il Hwa ginseng tea, made and marketed by Moon, is on sale at most health food stores in the United States.
By 1979, Moon’s world business empire included weapons, newspapers, banking, tea, chemicals, candles, vases, folk ballet, candy, fishing, movies, shipbuilding, sound recording, food processing, travel agencies, furs, jewelry, restaurants, and large real estate holdings.
In order to ensure “that the currency will be freely coming back and forth,” Moon informed the cult he would establish “an international bank” by pooling the money made from his businesses. An opportunity came within a few months when the Diplomat National Bank was being organized by Charles Kim, a Korean-American businessman in Washington who was not a Moonie. Kim approached a number of Asian-Americans, including Bo Hi Pak, about buying shares in the new bank. It was another godsend. Pak arranged for Kim to meet Moon, who invested $80,000 from a $555,000 time deposit (transferred to a personal checking account at Chase Manhattan). Kamiyama put in $75,000, coming mostly from Moon’s time deposit, stated as loans to Kamiyama from the Unification Church. Neil Salonen’s $30,000 investment also came from persons in the church. Jhoon Rhee, the wealthy karate master who turned over all his earnings to the cult in the early sixties, invested $100,000. Bo Hi Pak bought $75,000 of stock for himself, $18,000 for his housekeeper, and $738,000 in the names of thirteen Moonies. He arranged loans for investments of $5,000 each for two of his employees at the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation, Judith Lejeune and Gisela Rodriguez, instructing them to make their monthly loan payments by taking money from cash donations to the foundation. Pak even furnished the funds for bank chairman Kim’s own investment of $100,000, again from cult money. Moonie money thus bought 53 percent of the bank’s total stock, an investment of $1.28 million. The Diplomat National Bank had been organized under a requirement by the U.S. Controller of the Currency that no individual stockholder have an interest in more than 5 percent of the bank’s total stock. Also, banking laws prohibit any organization from owning more than 25 percent of the stock in an American bank.
The day after opening for business, the bank approved two loans totaling $250,000 for Bo Hi Pak without a meeting of the loan committee, a violation of the bank’s own rules. Two months later, the Controller of the Currency told the bank the loans were “in contravention of the intent of the law.” Pak’s two loans then had to be considered as one, with the amount reduced so as not to exceed the bank’s lending ceiling.
The Moon organization was one of the bank’s largest depositors, with over $7 million going into the account of the Unification Church International between December 1975 and March 1977.
Getting into the media business was important to Moon in order “to guide the academic world, including professors, the communications world and then the economic world.” He told the cult it was time to start a newspaper with mass appeal. The News World, published in New York, began operating in December 1976. Running a deficit of over $200,000 per month, it was supported by $2,700,000 from the Unification Church International account at the Diplomat National Bank. A conscious effort was made to make it appear to be an objective, legitimate newspaper like the Christian Science Monitor. Some non-Moonies were included on the staff and actually paid salaries, and the paper printed material from the major wire services. The editorial board, however, consisted almost entirely of cult members and prominent coverage was given to issues of importance to Moon, such as accusing Congressman Fraser of being a Soviet agent and suggesting that the Internal Revenue Service was harassing the Unification Church. The New York newspaper strike in 1978 was seen by the Moonies as an act of God: it shut down the competition in order to bring the Divine Principle into the homes of New Yorkers, many of whom—thanks to Heavenly Deception— did not know at first that the paper was an organ of the Moon cult.
Besides newspapers, Moon’s media business included movies. He told the cult in 1974 he was forming a movie company in Japan. He was looking for the right script for a film on the life of Jesus, but was open to other subjects also. He could produce films to serve his unified three-pronged purpose: religious propaganda, political propaganda, and business profit. Mitsuharu Ishii, a Japanese Moonie, became president of One Way Productions with offices in Tokyo and Los Angeles. One Way’s main project was to make an anti-Communist war spectacle on General MacArthur’s landing at Inchon in the Korean War. Money and actors were to come from Korea, Japan, and the United States.
At Times Square in July 1979, New Yorkers were treated to neon lights advertising the News World and a movie being filmed in Korea, Inchon!, starring Laurence Olivier, Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, David Jansen, and Toshiro Mifune.
Moon’s drive to dominate the American fishing industry was perhaps his most ambitious business undertaking. International Oceanic Enterprises was incorporated in Virginia in November 1976, along with a subsidiary, International Seafood Corporation, located in Norfolk. Bo Hi Pak was president. The company engaged in operating fishing boats and processing and selling seafood products. With the Unification Church International pumping millions into the business, International Seafood was able within a few weeks of its incorporation to disburse monies to other components of the Moon organization, including $200,000 to Tong Il Enterprises, and $400,000 to U.S. Marine Corporation for buying 700 acres of waterfront property in Bayou LeBatre, Alabama. U.S. Marine Corporation was yet another Moonie concern. Its shipbuilding affiliate was appropriately named Master Marine. In Richmond, Virginia, housewives could buy fresh seafood at a store named Father’s Fish. Moon’s fishing and seafood tentacles spread to San Francisco; Gloucester, Massachusetts; and Kodiak, Alaska. He had a built-in competitive advantage—abundant capital flow from church sources and negligible labor costs using cult manpower. He envisioned a food crisis in the future when the world would come begging to him.
Making and selling M-16 rifles made sense both economically and politically. In public, Moon and the cult denied being involved with the M-16, the basic infantry weapon of the South Korean army. Moon conceded to Newsweek magazine that Tong Il Industries produced armaments for the Korean government but would not say which weapons, claiming the information was classified by his government. However, information from the U.S. State Department and American and Korean businessmen in the arms field shows that Tong Il Industries makes parts for the Vulcan anti-aircraft gun, the M-79 grenade launcher, the M-60 machine gun, and the M-16 rifle. One American businessman was shown the machinery used to make the weapons during a tour of Tong Il’s plant near Busan.
▲ Vulcan M61 pod anti-aircraft gun
H. P. Stone, vice-president of Colt Industries of Hartford, Connecticut, learned how close the operational ties are between Moon and the Park regime. His experience left the impression that with respect to the M-16 rifle, the Moon organization and the Korean government were one and the same. Colt holds the patent for the M-16 and has a co-production agreement with the R.O.K. government approved by the American government. The agreement allows the R.O.K. Ministry of National Defense to make the rifle in Korea for the R.O.K. army. Stone got a letter from Tong Il Industries in September 1977 asking for approval for Tong Il to produce the M-16 for export. Stone answered in the negative, saying his company did not have authority to approve and he was certain the U.S. government would be against the Koreans’ exporting the rifles.
In October, Stone cabled the Ministry of National Defense on another matter. Since the U.S. State Department had approved Korea’s request to make another 300,000 M-16s, Stone offered the Ministry a new extended contract. For several weeks there was no reply. Then, to his surprise, an answer came not from the Korean government but from Tong Il Industries. Tong Il said it would send representatives to Hartford in December to discuss the extension of the M-16 production contract. The discussions took place as scheduled, with the president of Tong Il, Moon Sung-Kyun (Master’s cousin), negotiating for a contract between the R.O.K. government and Colt Industries. When Stone asked if Tong Il was formally representing the Korean government, Moon Sung-Kyun smiled and said, “If you ask the Ministry of National Defense, they will say no.”
Father has also promised to buy Pan American World Airways and the Ford Motor Company. When the time comes, he intends to buy the Empire State Building to commemorate the restoration of Manhattan Island under him.
The manpower in Moon’s business, political, and religious enterprises has been interchangeable and unified, perfectly reflecting the totalism of his ideology. Just as money flowed freely among the various parts of his empire, so did people, whether leaders or laborers. A sample of the interlocking leadership:
Sun Myung Moon: chairman, International Cultural Foundation; director, International Oceanic Enterprises; chairman, Tong Il Enterprises; investor, Diplomat National Bank; director, One Up Enterprises; founder and chairman, Unification Church International; founder and director, News World.
Mrs. Sun Myung Moon (Hak Ja Han): director, Tong Il Enterprises; director, Unification Church International.
Bo Hi Pak: president, Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation; president, Little Angels; president, International Oceanic Enterprises; president, Unification Church International; director, International Cultural Foundation; investor, Diplomat National Bank; director, One Up Enterprises; president, U.S. Foods Corporation.
Neil Salonen: president, Unification Church of the U.S.A.; secretary general, Freedom Leadership Foundation; director, International Oceanic Enterprises; director, Tong Il Enterprises; investor, Diplomat National Bank; director, International Cultural Foundation; director, One Up Enterprises.
Michael Young Warder: director, Tong Il Enterprises; secretary general, International Conference for the Unity of the Sciences; director, International Oceanic Enterprises; director, Unification Church; director, One Up Enterprises; president and publisher, News World.
Takeru Kamiyama: director, New York Unification Church; investor, Diplomat National Bank; director, Tong Il Enterprises; director, International Oceanic Enterprises; director, One Up Enterprises.
Osami Kuboki: president, Japan Unification Church; director, International Cultural Foundation.
Judith Lejeune: secretary, International Oceanic Enterprises; director, Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation; incorporator, Unification Church International; secretary to Bo Hi Pak; investor, Diplomat National Bank.
Mitsuharu Ishii: president, Toitsu Industries (Japan); president, One Way Productions; officer, International Cultural Foundation; president, Sekai Nippo (World Daily News) of Japan; financier for investments in Diplomat National Bank.
R. Michael Runyon: president, One Up Enterprises; president, U.S. Marine Corporation; vice president, International Oceanic Enterprises.
Kim Won-Pil: president, Korea Unification Church; director, Unification Church International; director, International Cultural Foundation; president, Il Hwa Pharmaceutical Company (Korea).
Moon himself acknowledges his system as totalist. Oneness pervades, even in nomenclature: Unification Church, One World Crusade, Unified Family, One Up Enterprises, Tong Il (“unification”) Enterprises, One Way Productions. To members of the cult, this is perfectly natural. They are reminded every day that there is only one way and that is Father’s way. Father had all the answers straight from God and they covered everything.
He has promised to accomplish what the saints and sages have failed to do for six thousand years. In his lifetime, he will bring total heaven to earth at last. Adam had failed. Jesus had failed. Even God had failed.
And when Moon succeeds, God will say: “ ‘Reverend Moon is far better than me, the Heavenly Father.’ ”
In dealings with the outside world, however, the cult has denied the unity of Moon’s family. The non-Moon world was in the position of Cain. The Family was in the position of Abel. Abel the good must deceive Cain the evil to reverse the sin of original deception and restore perfect goodness. The “petty” laws of the United States were the laws of Cain, so they must not interfere with Father’s mission. Heavenly Deception was the way to get around them.
Accordingly, the Unification Church was granted exemption from taxes because the Moonies swore it did not engage in political or business activities. Cain’s government could not be permitted to take more than a bare minimum in tax money from the Family. Hundreds of foreign Moonies were imported to work in the Family businesses, entering the United States on short-term visas as “students” or “religious trainees” and then staying for years. Millions of dollars were transferred from tax-exempt church accounts to Family business accounts and vice versa. Money moved freely from country to country. Moonie investigators gained access to the legitimate press corps by posing as journalists. Moonie money from foreign countries bought a controlling interest in an American bank without regard for banking laws and securities regulations. The Moonies lobbied for the South Korean influence campaign in Congress and staged political demonstrations, ordered and reportedly paid for by the KCIA, without registering as agents of the Korean government.
The Family not only denied any wrongdoing, it insisted defiantly that to question any of the cult’s activities was an infringement of First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. From that point of view, it made perfect sense. In Moon’s totalist system, everything can be religion: owning a bank, working for the KCIA, selling weapons of war, brainwashing, destroying families, buying the Empire State Building, taking over the world.
The press, the Fraser Subcommittee, and federal, state, and local investigators began exposing illegal and deceptive activities of the Moon cult in 1976. Salonen and Bo Hi Pak, as the chief spokesmen, were models of Heavenly Deception. Fund raisers in the street would have done well to emulate them: Moon “never received KCIA money, not one red cent”; Moon had nothing to do with running the Unification Church in the United States; the components of the Moon organization were completely independent of one another; the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation and the Unification Church had nothing to do with each other; the Little Angels and the Unification Church had the same founder but nothing else in common; the money for the Diplomat National Bank stock came from a long-established “Unification Church Pension Fund International” for family assistance to elderly church members; there was never any plan to throw eggs at the Japanese ambassador; Bo Hi Pak was a private citizen who had nothing to do with the Korean government; listing Moon as “chairman” or “founder” of corporations and having him sign corporate checks were merely symbolic gestures. (Concerning this claim, a New York judge wrote, “Such contentions strain the credulity of this Court.”)
In the North Korean prison thirty years earlier, Mrs. Ho had ignored Moon when he told her she would be set free if she denied her revelations from God. She was killed instead. Salonen and Pak would not make the same mistake.
Moon was not cowed by the bad publicity. He welcomed it. It was part of his strategy to shake the world. He needed opponents besieging him from all directions so he could be “a lightning rod.” That would be “the quickest strategy to take over the rest of the world.” His opponents—the established churches, the Frasers—were striking out at him because they feared him, he said. He saw the negative press as a definite plus. Without it, he would get only an inch or two of coverage now and then; with it, the world knew who the Reverend Moon was.
With all the controversy over Moon in the United States, President Park Chung Hee felt it best to give the outward appearance of putting himself at a distance from the New Messiah. Park’s own image was at an all-time low in America and was still sinking. Ambassador Hahm issued a statement in Washington saying the R.O.K. government and Moon had nothing to do with each other. It was similar to statements made about relations with Tongsun Park, except for the inclusion of some emphasis on freedom for all religions in Korea.
Moon understood. Both he and the government had to conceal their close working ties in the influence campaign. It came easy to him. Whatever Park Chung Hee and Ambassador Hahm had to do for the sake of appearance, Moon and the government continued to work hand in hand. And he told the cult the Korean government was strongly on his side, “begging for our opinion and actions.” The banquet held in his honor in Seoul in 1975 was a good sign, he said. It was attended by a host of dignitaries including Chung Il-Kwon, Speaker of the National Assembly and former Prime Minister. Other things, not told to cult members, revealed even closer ties, such as Bo Hi Pak’s reported access to the secret telecommunications facilities at the South Korean Embassy.
Thomas Scharff wanted to know what had happened to his son’s life. It had been a year since Gary dropped out of Princeton and moved in with the Moonies in Louisville. Increasingly, Gary had become a stranger to his father and mother, especially after three months of indoctrination at Belvedere. He was living in Philadelphia as the Pennsylvania state director of the Unification Church, apparently not at all interested in going back to college. W. Farley Jones, then president of the Unification Church, had assured the elder Scharff that Gary would return to Princeton in the fall. If his son could just get back in school away from the cult’s controlled environment, Scharff thought, maybe he would begin to lead his own life again. Scharff wrote to Moon demanding to know what had been done to his son.
Moon couldn’t be bothered with parents. Who were they to question the Lord of the Second Advent? He ignored the letter and had it returned unopened. When another letter came, it got the same treatment. Scharff then angrily threatened to “expose Moon to the world.” David S. C. Kim of Moon’s inner circle moved to head off a possible problem by talking to Gary.
“What would it take to appease your parents?” Kim asked. “Oh, they’d be satisfied if I went back to school, even though I’ve made it clear that’s not what I want.” Gary had important work to do for Father.
“Well, you had better go, then. They could cause trouble if you don’t. But they will burn in Hell for insulting the Messiah.” Gary graduated from Princeton the following spring after writing his senior thesis on the Divine Principle. Every spare moment during the school year was spent with the cult, working at the Philadelphia center, demonstrating for Nixon at the Christmas Tree Lighting, lecturing, and setting up a speaking engagement for Moon at Princeton.
Parents had no right to resist Moon’s control over their children. They were only “physical” parents anyhow. Moon and his wife were True Parents, to be revered and obeyed absolutely as Father and Mother. The members of the cult were their children, all brothers and sisters in the Unified Family. There was no question of choice between the Unified Family and the physical family. Moonies had a divine duty to deny parents, brothers, and sisters. Hold fast to Father. Cling to him. If parents try to drag you back to the outside world of Cain, stand against them firmly and say: “ ‘I’m the son of God before being your son.’ ”
If they insist you are a member of their family, tell them: “ ‘I want to be a member of the Unified Family, rather than of this small family.’ ”
Ties with enemies must be severed and, said Moon, “Your utmost enemy is in your family.”
Steve Hassan lay helpless on the sofa at his sister’s house with his leg in a heavy cast. His father had taken away his crutches. People kept coming in saying terrible things about the Family, and there was no way for him to escape to the nearest Moonie haven. He would still be fund raising in Baltimore if he hadn’t fallen asleep at the wheel of a church van and run into a truck after three days with no sleep. Now he was captive to his father’s conspiracy to turn him away from Master. He wanted to strangle his father, but decided it wasn’t necessary since he was determined to get away somehow soon. He told his parents they were wasting their time with him. He was Kamiyama’s model of sacrifice and devotion. This was another test of his faith and he was sure he would pass just as he always had. Father had taught him to withstand the temptations of the Satanic world. The deprogrammers’ arguments seemed feeble. They tried to prove faults in the Divine Principle, but he knew Father’s teachings better than they. After eight hours of talk the first day, he went to sleep contentedly. This was going to be easy, he thought.
After breakfast the next morning, he was moved to an unfamiliar apartment in Queens because the deprogrammers had learned the Moonies were on their way to rescue him from his sister’s house. Disabled with a broken leg, and his family having eluded his brethren, he agreed to stay for a week, no more.
As the harangues continued he was told he had been suckered, manipulated, and used by the cult. Impossible. How could he believe he was exploited by someone he had committed everything to? At first he refused to let himself think about it. Each night he went to bed repeating to himself, “I cannot leave! … I cannot leave! … I cannot leave! . ..” He remembered a showing of The Exorcist, held on Moon’s orders, and Moon’s stern admonition that the movie was a prophecy of what would happen to those who did not stand firmly with him. But after three or four days Hassan was saying, “I cannot leave! … I cannot leave. … Why can’t I leave?” He was forced to consider the possibility that Moon might not be the Messiah. As he listened to each negative point raised about the cult, worse points entered his mind that he could not counter.
By the fifth day, he had found himself again. He realized the cult had robbed him of all reference points. Having been manipulated to believe Moon’s goals were desirable, he had had to believe they were true also. If they were true, then all the degradation and deceit had to be desirable. He felt he had been riding on a slave train that never stopped.
Free from the cult, Steve Hassan began to think for himself again. In the absence of mind control, he was unsure of himself at first and had to rely heavily on his family and friends for help. It took about a year for him to fully regain his former confidence.
Chris Elkins left the cult, too, in a rare instance of voluntary departure after two years as Moon’s slave. Gary Scharff also got out, having been rescued by his parents.
There were others not so fortunate. Moon’s devastation of Wendy Helander and her family still continues after more than five years. She was taken by the cult suddenly during her first semester at the University of New Hampshire, a month after her eighteenth birthday. Spending the 1974 Christmas holidays reluctantly with the family in Guilford, Connecticut, she said she was happy being a member of the Unification Church. But she cried every day. Her parents wanted to know more about the movement that had caused her to drop out of school and move in with other members only a few days after she had been invited on a weekend “camping trip” with them. It was so unlike Wendy. She had always excelled in class and a variety of activities. In high school she had been a cheerleader, played flute in the band, and loved arts and crafts. A fluent speaker of French, she had visited France twice. Her only answer to her parents’ questions about the Unification Church was to invite them to a three-day training workshop at Barrytown.
▲ UTS Barrytown
Elton and Carolyn Helander found a strange world at Barrytown. When they arrived, Wendy and about forty others were in a pandemonium of frenzied prayer, shouting over and over out of unison: “Dear Heavenly Father, forgive my sins! You have suffered so much for me; now I will sacrifice everything for you!” In another ritual, a group faced toward Korea with hands in the air and cheered for Master and the Fatherland: “Mansei! Mansei!” When the Helanders felt the urge to get up and leave a training session, the lecturer’s eyes locked on theirs and they stayed in their seats. One young man left his seat and attempted to walk out. They were shocked to see him dragged back, yelling and kicking, by five leaders. Later they were to learn that another trainee, Bill Giannastasio, was able to escape from a weekend workshop only by jumping out of a second-floor window.
The lecturer for the weekend was one of the cult’s best, Gary Scharff. Skillfully weaving Moon’s convoluted logic, he emphasized points by gliding his open hands outward, repeating, “This is true. . .. This is true. . . . This is true . .. ,” softening each repetition until the last was a whisper. He was like a hypnotist.
The Helanders were the only parents among the seventy-two trainees that weekend. On the one occasion when they were allowed to have a meal with Wendy, Gary Scharff was there to chaperon. She was happy, she said, and would stay.
Elton and Carolyn Helander were horrified by everything about the cult. The inexorable “love” bombardment was overbearing and phony. There was no such thing as free will at Barrytown.
The cult had taken control of Wendy’s mind. The Helanders were determined to give her the chance to make choices for herself again. An opportunity came when they heard about deprogrammer Ted Patrick a few days later. The following Sunday, Wendy was allowed to spend the day with her parents. She remained with them and was then “deprogrammed.” She seemed happy to be free after two months of enslavement. Her sense of humor began to return, and she busied herself redecorating her room. But the cult would not leave the family alone. Wendy’s sister Holly was frightened by a Moonie who entered her college apartment, set his suitcase inside the door, and threatened to spend the night unless she put him in contact with Wendy. Vans were seen cruising slowly past the Helanders’ house. Moonies wrote letters and came to the door. They appeared in town fund raising on the chance of meeting Wendy to intimidate her with the warning that she would die within a year unless she returned to the cult. Wendy was worried about her own vulnerability, so she made a sworn statement. It requested “immediate action by the authorities to come and physically remove me from the cult” if she were retaken because “regardless of what I may say or do, I will not be acting of my own free will.”
Wendy went out to do some shopping one afternoon, saying she would be back in a few minutes. That evening her brother found the family car abandoned on the Connecticut Turnpike. The cult had enticed her back after only a month.
The FBI reported she was in Washington. With the authority granted by Wendy’s affidavit, the Helanders expected no serious problem in freeing her. They were wrong. She did not appear in court when ordered by a writ of habeas corpus. Instead, Moonie lawyers played a tape of Wendy’s voice: speaking in a monotone, she said she was acting on her own free will and wanted to stay in the Unification Church. The judge dismissed the case on September 23, 1975, for lack of evidence. The cult touted the decision as legal proof that there was no brainwashing. For Wendy and her family, the nightmare continued.
The family heard nothing from Wendy for weeks. Then in November she invited them for a visit to Barrytown. Her parents managed to walk alone with her to the edge of Moon’s vast estate. There they were met by their two sons with a car in which to rescue her.
For the next three months the entire family lived away from the house in Guilford. The harassment had been so heavy before that they feared for their own safety this time. Elton Helander and son Joel moved in with a relative. Forrest, Wendy’s younger brother in high school, lived with a neighbor. Carolyn Helander and Wendy moved around through seven states trying to elude the cult’s searchers. In the meantime, the neighborhood in Guilford was again harassed. Vans cruised regularly and neighbors got phone calls asking probing questions about the Helanders. When some Moonies were apprehended by police in Warwick, Rhode Island, for prowling around the house of another ex-member, they were found to be carrying photographs of Wendy and her parents, a Japanese wooden sword, a can of Mace, and a Bible containing a devil mask used to frighten defectors into returning. The same van had been seen in the Helanders’ neighborhood a few hours earlier.
After three months the Helanders received a summons to appear in court. Wendy was the plaintiff in a suit charging them with false imprisonment. She knew nothing about it but recalled having signed something at one time or another; she now realized it had probably been power of attorney for the cult.
Numerous ex-Moonies had been helping to rehabilitate Wendy. It was therefore not unusual when Richard Conrad visited the home where she was staying in Ohio in February 1976. He seemed such a nice young man, so Mrs. Helander did not object to his suggestion that he could help best by talking to Wendy alone. He reported good progress and after three days took Wendy out for a walk. They never returned.
Six days later Michael Runyon, an official of the Moon organization, proudly announced to the press that “a young man from the Unification Church pretended to undergo the deprogramming, and after gaining the confidence of the deprogrammers, brought about the escape.” Now that the cult had her back, the false imprisonment suit against her parents was dropped.
For ten months the Helanders tried in vain to contact Wendy. In September they journeyed to Washington, hoping to see her at the big “God Bless America” rally Moon was mounting. They plied through the mass of Moonies with no sign of their daughter. Then they caught sight of Richard Conrad among uniformed cult members in white jumpsuits emblazoned with Moon’s emblem.
“What happened on the short walk?” asked Carolyn Helander, controlling her anxiety.
“It was extended,” Conrad replied casually.
“How could you do such a thing?” cried Wendy’s mother.
Conrad pointed skyward and smiled. “Only one person knows.” He turned to walk away.
“Don’t back off!” exclaimed Mr. Helander. “Where’s Wendy? How is she?”
“I don’t know.” Conrad shrugged and walked away to tend to Master’s work.
Former Moonies had reported that Wendy was in poor condition emotionally and physically. Because of her parents’ previous efforts to get her out of the cult, she was being kept from sight, held like a prisoner. The Helanders were contacted by a stranger who told them Wendy wanted to escape but was afraid to try. They went to New York to meet her at a hotel where she was to have been brought by someone in the cult supposedly concerned about her. She did not appear.
In May 1977, Wendy Helander filed a $9 million lawsuit against her parents and the deprogrammers for kidnapping and forcibly violating her right to freedom of religion. Her parents countersued the cult for abducting their daughter. The suits were dropped in September 1978 by mutual agreement. Wendy agreed to restore close relations with her family; her parents agreed not to interfere with their daughter’s “religion.”
The Helanders have had no personal contact with Wendy since February 1976 when she was enticed back to the cult by Richard Conrad. She and her parents have seen each other in courtrooms, where she appeared sad and frightened, her chin quivering, seated between the cult’s lawyers, Richard Ben-Veniste and Jeremiah Gutman. She seemed a robot in her movements and statements. The Helanders well remember, in the courtroom, the lawyers coaching Wendy constantly and even insisting successfully that a United States marshal be positioned, as Gutman said, “so the parents will not kidnap her again.”
The Moon cult has controlled Wendy from the age of eighteen well into her twenty-fourth year. She has become a national cause célèbre in the cult’s drive to use freedom of religion to serve Moon’s megalomania. The Moonies have paraded her out as a “show” witness at hearings in state legislatures, flanked on either side by her leaders, where she mouths the cult’s position in a lifeless tone that seems alien to the person she used to be. Having performed her public function, she is then returned to isolation from non-Moonies. Neil Salonen, Unification Church president, explained the purpose for using her: “The Wendy Helander lawsuit is designed to set a legal precedent against deprogramming.” Normal life has become an illusion for the Helanders. Carefree relaxation at home is a thing of the distant past. In terms of money alone they have been hit with more than $60,000 in legal bills. With the cooperation of their church, a group of friends started “The Wendy Fund” to help pay. Far worse than the financial drain are the feelings of anguish and frustration. If money could save their daughter, Elton and Carolyn Helander say, they would be willing to give up their house. Although they know money can never restore the free will of Wendy’s former self, they do not know what can.
NOTES for Chapter 6 MINIONS AND MASTER
144 “$300 million”: Master Speaks, Nov. 17, 1974 (KI Appendix C-223).
144-145 Description of the kind of person Moon succeeds in taking in: interviews with former Moonie leaders, including Steve Hassan.
145-146 “Moon taught a clear strategy for attracting prospective converts”: Master Speaks, “On Witnessing,” Jan. 3, 1972.
146-148, 151-153, 156, 161-164, 181 Chris Elkins: interviews with Elkins.
147 “Your whole body”: Master Speaks, April 14, 1974 (KI Appendix C-216).
147 “You must live with me spiritually”: ibid.
148 “You will rearrange the mechanisms within yourself”: Master Speaks, Jan. 1, 1973.
148 “your mind is my mind”: Master Speaks, April 14, 1974 (KI Appendix C-216).
148 “$800,000”: interview with ex-Moonie leader Allen Tate Wood, who ran the candle factory in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
148 “The three functions”: interview with ex-Moonie leader Gary Scharff.
149 “Moon: Would you prefer to sleep seven hours”: Master Speaks, Sept. 22, 1974 (KI Appendix C-221).
149 “Cult members should commit suicide”: Allen Tate Wood’s testimony, June 22, 1976 (SIO-II, p. 21); interviews with former Moonies; “Mass Suicide Possible in Moon Church, 3 Say,” New York Times, Feb. 20, 1979, p. D-14.
149-150 Deaths of Moonies: New York Daily News, June 7, 1976; New York Times, August 24, 1976; Detroit News, August 16, 1979; New West magazine, January 29, 1979, p. 63; interviews with police officials and former Moonies.
150 Health problems: interviews with ex-Moonies; Crazy for God, by Christopher Edwards, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1979, pp. 82-92.
151 “Among Moon’s tour trophies”: Day of Hope in Review, Part 1, published by the Unification Church, 1974.
151-152 “Moon was standing on a mountainside in Korea”: interviews with ex-Moonies giving Moon’s story of the origins of the support campaign for President Nixon.
152 “full-page Watergate statements”: Day of Hope in Review, Part 1, published by the Unification Church, 1974.
153 Moonie preparation for the Christmas Tree Lighting: interview with Gary Scharff who was a member of the “Horse Team.”
153 “A White House aide”: John Nidecker, in testimony before the Fraser Subcommittee, June 1978 (KI Part 5, pp. 15-16).
154 “We stopped the world for him”: “From Korea with Love,” by John D. Marks, in the Washington Monthly, Feb. 1974.
154 “power clique”: interviews with ex-Moonies identifying the core of Moonie leadership.
154 Moon’s comments on racial talents: Master Speaks, July 29, 1974 (KI Appendix C-218).
154-155 “Dr. Joseph Kennedy”: KI Report, pp. 340-341.
155 “He . . . urged the President ‘not to knuckle under to the pressure’ ”: Day of Hope in Review, Part 1, published by the Unification Church, 1974.
156 “This is the equivalent of the Roman Emperor”: Master Speaks, Feb. 14, 1974 (KI Appendix C-214).
156 “the Unification Church and the White House … can be very close places”: Ibid., Feb. 14, 1974.
156 “David Martin”: interview with Chris Elkins.
156 “his wife’s permanent visa”: KI Report, p. 402.
157 “Congressman Richard Ichord”: interview with former House Speaker Carl Albert.
157 “Senator Strom Thurmond”: KI Report, p. 402.
157 “PR Sisters” and “many good-looking girls”: KI Report, p. 342; Master Speaks, Dec. 29, 1971 (KI Appendix C-209); untitled speech by Moon, May 7, 1973 (KI Appendix C-321); interviews with ex-Moonies, one of whom reported having visited the Washington Hilton suite and being shown photos of Congressmen and Moonie girls with their arms around each other.
157 “She was Japanese, as it should be”: In Master Speaks, July 26, 1974, Moon said, “Eve has been working really hard in places like this, and in the future everybody will follow this pattern.”
157 “one for the diplomat” presumably means one to function as a diplomatic persuader in a Senator’s office.
157 “The Speaker wasn’t interested”: interview with former House Speaker Carl Albert.
157 Susan Bergman’s telephone conversations with Albert: interview with an ex-Moonie who was present on both occasions.
158 Barrytown: Not to be confused with Tarrytown; Moon has large facilities for training at both villages on the Hudson.
158 “Park Chung Hee viewed him as an asset”: interviews with former Korean and American government officials.
158 President Park’s letter to ROFA contributors: KI Part 4, p. 185. After American officials complained about the letter, Bo Hi Pak obtained a letter from Senator Strom Thurmond to the effect that the State Department had no objection to “courtesy contacts” by heads of foreign states with American citizens. Although this letter did not say whether the State Department was referring to the ROFA mailing, Bo Hi Pak claimed the letter vindicated his role in the mailing (KI Report, p. 365, KI Part 4, pp. 187-188).
158 Donald Miller’s book: KI Part 4 Supplement, p. 468; KI Report, p. 365.
159 Bo Hi Pak as a conduit for Prime Minister Chung Il-Kwon to send money to the United States: KI Report, p. 366.
159 Moon’s anti-Communist training center: KI Report, p. 352.
159 Manufacture of military weapons: KI Report, pp. 83, 326, 352.
160 “He reminded the cult”: New Hope News, a Moon publication, April 21, 1975; KI Report, p. 342.
160-161 Project Watergate, activities in Congress, role of Rabbi Korff and Bruce Herschenson in the three-day prayer fast: interviews with former Moonies.
161 “Failure to lift Nixon up”: interview with Gary Scharff.
161-162 Chris Elkins and the egg-throwing plot: KI Report, pp. 343-345; Elkins’s testimony before the Fraser Subcommittee, Sept. 27, 1976 (SIO-II, pp. 44-49).
162-163 “According to intelligence reports”: declassified summaries of intelligence reports and testimony by Kim Sang-Keun (KI Part 5, pp. 71-72). The intelligence summary, approved for public release by the originating agency, said, in part: “The head of the Washington KCIA arranged with Reverend Moon’s group for demonstrations in front of the Japanese Embassy and the White House. The KCIA had used Moon and members of the Unification Church to stage rallies in the United States in support of Korean government policies and aims, and on at least one occasion Moon received KCIA funds for that purpose. Due to State Department objections, the planned anti-Japanese rallies had to be called off at the last minute by the KCIA chief through one of Reverend Moon’s subordinates. The thousands of dollars already expended on the aborted demonstrations had to be written off to good will.”
163-164 Chris Elkins’s political activities while a Moonie: testimony of Chris Elkins (SIO-II, pp. 45, 46, 51-53).
163-164 “If we can turn three states of the United States around”: Master Speaks, Mar. 24, 1974 (KI Appendix C-215).
164 “Some day, in the near future”: Ibid.
164-168 Based on interviews with ex-Moonies, including Steve Hassan.
165 Tully’s wife: ex-Moonie Steve Hassan recalled Moonie leader Takeru Kamiyama having described her as “a crazy fanatic.”
165 “if leaders had a slave mentality themselves”: Elaborating on this point, ex-Moonie Steve Hassan said that by taxing leaders with impossible goals, Moon endeavored to suppress the ego that might emerge if goals were accomplished. Early in 1975, Moon levied a requirement on Kamiyama to recruit three thousand new members. Hassan’s quota for the Flushing, New York, center was four hundred. Neither goal came near being met. After an all-out effort, Hassan’s group was able to bring in only about thirty.
166 “appalled by the individuality he saw” and “Germany, where people ‘were trained in totalisin’ ”: Master Speaks, Jan. 3, 1972.
166 Showing Hitler Youth films: interviews with ex-Moonies.
168 Annual gross from street fund raising: Former Moonie leader Allen Tate Wood gave a higher estimate than Steve Hassan. After testifying in the Manhattan Supreme Court in connection with a case involving the Unification Church’s tax-exempt status, Wood said on the basis of 2,000 Moonies fund raising every day, the average per person is $150 to $300, for an annual gross of $109.5 to $219 million (New York Post, May 16, 1979).
168-175 Moon’s business activities: KI Report, pp. 325-332, 372-376; confidential interviews.
169-170 Moonie interest in the Diplomat National Bank: Findings regarding stock purchased with Moonie money are based on sworn testimony and subpoenaed bank records (KI Report, pp. 377-378); loans to Bo Hi Pak (KI Report, p. 382); ruling by Controller of the Currency (letter at KI Appendix C-252); $7 million in Moonie transactions (KI Report, p. 382).
169 “that the currency will be freely coming back and forth” and “an international bank”: Master Speaks, Feb. 16, 1975 (KI Appendix C-224).
170 “to guide the academic world”: Master Speaks, Feb. 16, 1975 (KI Appendix C-224).
172-173 M-16 rifle negotiations: KI Report, pp. 367-368, 83; KI Appendix C-34-39, 41-45.
173 Moon’s plans to buy the Empire State Building, Ford Motor Company, and Pan American World Airways: Master Speaks, Nov. 22, 1974; interview with a former Moonie leader.
175 “ ‘Reverend Moon is far better than me, the Heavenly Father’ Master Speaks, July 31, 1974 (KI Appendix C-219).
175 The “petty” laws of the United States: notes taken by a Unification Church member at a meeting with Moon in Barrytown, N.Y., June 1, 1977. The subject of the discussion was the newspaper, News World.
176 International movement of Moonie funds: KI Report, p. 337; the Fraser Subcommittee said “there was massive evidence that (the Moon organization) had systematically violated” U.S. currency laws (KI Report, p. 388).
176 Visas: KI Report, pp. 335-336; summary of Immigration and Naturalization Service investigations of Moon (KI Appendix C-212).
176 “never received KCIA money”: testimony of Bo Hi Pak (KI Part 4, p. 666).
177 “Unification Church Pension Fund International”: Pak’s testimony (KI Part 4, p. 308); KI Report, pp. 380-381.
177 “a New York judge”: George D. Burchell, Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, Westchester County, in a ruling on a tax dispute between the Village of Tarrytown and the Unification Church, August 14, 1979.
177 Bad press as a “lightning rod,” and “the quickest strategy to take over the rest of the world”: Master Speaks, Feb. 23, 1977 (KI Appendix C-227).
178 Moon organization’s closeness to the R.O.K. government: KI Report, pp. 351-355; interviews with government officials, present and former. An unexplained hint of ties with the KCIA came, surprisingly, from an attorney for the Unification Church, Michael Golden. During a conversation with one of Congressman Fraser’s investigators on Nov. 4, 1977, Golden said in response to a question about his client, “You know who makes the decision. It’s made in the Korean CIA office.”
178 “begging for our opinion and actions”: Master Speaks, Sept. 22, 1974 (KI Appendix C-221).
178 Gary Scharff: interviews with Scharff.
179 “ ‘I’m the son of God before being your son,’ ” and “ ‘I want to be a member of the Unified Family’ Master Speaks, Nov. 17, 1974 (KI Appendix C-223).
179 “Your utmost enemy is in your family”: Master Speaks, Feb. 14, 1974 (KI Appendix C-214).
179-181 Steve Hassan: based on interviews with Hassan.
181-186 Wendy Helander: confidential interviews.
184 “a young man from the Unification Church”: New Haven Journal-Courier, Feb. 23, 1976.
186 Neil Salonen’s comment on the lawsuit: New Haven Register, June 20, 1978.
Chapter 12 Dueling with the Moonies
pages 307-324
▲ Donald M. Fraser, US House of Representatives (1963-1979), Mayor of Minneapolis (1980-1993)
“He’s white, Baptist, and from Georgia. Does that make President Carter a member of the KKK?” blared the heavy boldface type at the top of Bo Hi Pak’s signed full-page ad in the June 30, 1977, Washington Post. Of course that didn’t make the President a Klansman, the statement went on, any more than the Reverend Moon should be considered a KCIA agent just because he is yellow, anti-Communist, and from Korea. The Koreagate scandal had created a national climate of guilt by association wherein all things Korean had become suspect, Pak wrote. Moon was the most victimized man in America. And the main victimizer was Congressman Fraser, who was trampling on Moon’s right to religious freedom.
It didn’t seem that way to Fraser. He had started out by investigating KCIA activities in the United States and found evidence that the Moonies had been paid by the KCIA to stage an anti-Japanese demonstration in Washington. He broadened his investigation to cover all relations between the United States and South Korea and found evidence that Pak had collected money for Unification Church activities by telling American contributors it was for Radio of Free Asia. He was astonished by the extent of swindling and illegality suggested by the evidence. It seemed as if there was a Moon front group for every purpose. Because one of Moon’s groups was a church, he stipulated that religious beliefs were to be left alone. He told his staff and the public that the investigation was looking into political and business activities only, in search of ties with the Korean government; freedom of religion was inviolable under the First Amendment.
What Fraser failed to take into account was that to Moon there was no distinction between political, business, and religious activities. It was all religion. Fraser should have studied the Divine Principle.
To assert Master’s position authoritatively, the Moon organization hired outstanding legal talent. Moon’s own attorney was Charles Stillman of New York. Bo Hi Pak retained John Bray and Frank Lilly of one of Washington’s largest firms: Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin and Kahn. The Unification Church was represented by the firm of Melrod, Redman and Gartlan. Former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, along with Michael Golden, handled most of Melrod, Redman and Gartlan’s work for the church.
For a time, the church had a very important defender in the media: columnist Jack Anderson. Anderson was on the board of the Diplomat National Bank and served as its chief spokesman. In two very angry letters, he called Fraser’s probe of the $1 million Moonie investment in the bank “a witch hunt.” His association with the bank, he stated, had come as a result of his interest in the Asian-American community. After discovering what the Moonies were up to, Anderson resigned in November 1976 and expressed regret over attacking Fraser. His correspondence with Fraser had been “intemperate,” he now said.
Fraser was subjected to a nationwide propaganda barrage during the summer and fall of 1977. The Moonies were determined to stop the investigation. Letters went out to thousands of lawyers, clergymen, and politicians—including every Senator and Congressman. Unification Church president Neil Salonen made personal calls on Congressmen. He and others held press conferences and appeared on local television. They even went after Fraser’s wife and children. His wife, Arvonne, was described as a fanatical left-wing feminist whose job at the State Department put her in a conflict of interest with her husband in Congress. They tried to make something sinister out of Fraser’s daughter’s participation in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration at the University of Minnesota.
Not surprisingly, the smear campaign was counterproductive. Fraser’s office received hundreds of letters backing him up in response to Moonie pleas to stop him.
Getting Moonies to testify at hearings required more than a subpoena. It took a lot of legwork as well.
Neil Salonen called on Fraser unexpectedly in May 1976, the day after the New York Times reported for the first time that the subcommittee was investigating Unification Church activities. The Times story had it all wrong about links with the Korean government, he said, so he wanted to clear up any misunderstanding Fraser might have had about the church.
Fraser said he was concerned about apparent illegal KCIA activities in the United States and had received information that the Unification Church might be involved.
The information could not be true, Salonen assured him, because the church did not engage in political activities.
“What about the Freedom Leadership Foundation?” Fraser asked.
Salonen explained that the Freedom Leadership Foundation and the Unification Church were two different organizations. He was president of both, but neither was political in any way. The church was religious and the foundation was educational. To avoid further misunderstanding, he wanted to leave some reading material for the Congressman. One of his colleagues stacked books on the table.
Fraser thanked him and asked, “Would you be willing to appear as a witness at one of our subcommittee hearings?”
Salonen said he would.
The subcommittee staff sent a letter formalizing the request. A different Salonen replied. He reiterated his “earnest willingness” to provide information about the Freedom Leadership Foundation but professed surprise at being invited to testify at a hearing on KCIA activities. “I am quite certain that I would be unable to contribute anything to such a hearing.” Two days earlier, Bo Hi Pak had made a similar reply to a similar letter.
It was about a month later that the International Relations Committee granted Fraser the authority to subpoena witnesses. With an authorized subpoena in hand compelling Salonen to testify, two Fraser investigators went to the Moonie office on Connecticut Avenue in mid-September. They had tried to schedule an appointment, but Salonen and Unification Church lawyer Richard Ben-Veniste had given them the runaround for several days. They identified themselves at the door and climbed the stairs to the lobby on the second floor. No, Mr. Salonen wasn’t in. No one could say when he would return, since he was very busy preparing for the church’s “God Bless America” rally to be held at the Washington Monument the next night. The investigators said they would wait. No, they would have to leave because the office was private property. They left, although they were aware that Salonen was in his office at that moment talking to a newspaper reporter. They had timed their visit to coincide with an appointment the reporter had told them was scheduled.
There was a possibility Salonen would go to Pershing Square, where there was to be a gathering to promote the rally. They waited there for over an hour among Moonies gaily costumed to look like Betsy Ross and George Washington. They were getting exasperated and decided to try the office once more. This time, they took along a United States marshal. The Moonies were adamant. The marshal couldn’t even get inside the front door. The subpoena for Salonen was served on the doorman.
Later that day, Ben-Veniste called Fraser to say that Salonen was now willing to testify voluntarily. Fraser agreed to regard the subpoena as not having been served.
For church people, the Moonies had some strange allies. One was a man calling himself Walter Riley; his real name was Clyde Wallace. Riley was a convicted felon who had been in and out of jail several times over a period of more than twenty years. He ran a business in the National Press Building called The Spy Shop; it specialized in selling electronic bugging equipment. But he described himself primarily as a journalist. His acquaintance with Bo Hi Pak was through his Korean wife, who had known Pak while both were working at the Embassy in the early sixties.
Riley was a trader in information. Until he realized there was no gain in it for him, information flowed freely to Fraser’s investigators. Some of his stories were far-fetched, like the one about a nationwide ring of Korean call girls run by the KCIA. He also claimed the Moonies held him in high esteem, often soliciting his views on decisions affecting church policy.
On some matters, what Riley said was backed up by evidence found later. He was correct in his observation that Bo Hi Pak and Neil Salonen were often at odds with each other and that although Salonen had the title of church president, it was Pak who had the power.
On June 18, 1976, CBS News reported that Moonies owned about half of the total stock in the Diplomat National Bank. The following day, Bo Hi Pak met in his office with Riley and church leaders Neil Salonen, Michael Runyon, and Cha Han-Joo. According to Riley, Pak said he was worried because a lot of cash had been brought in from Japan, Germany, and Korea for him to use to buy bank stock in the names of thirteen low-ranking Moonies. If Fraser brought out their names, his role, and the source of the money there could be trouble over possible violations of law.
Salonen was described by Riley as concerned about the potential for embarrassment to the church but without Pak’s personal dilemma, since he considered his own investment to be legitimate.
Draw up some phony promissory notes, Riley suggested; at least that would make it seem the thirteen people were genuine investors in their own right. It wouldn’t solve the problem of the foreign source of the funds though. The meeting ended with no decision.
After passing Moonie secrets to the Fraser investigators for a while, Riley saw that switching sides could be more to his advantage. Fraser’s people had nothing to offer him and, besides, Fraser wasn’t tough enough on Communism. Riley wrote an article for publication that claimed a defector from Polish intelligence told him the Russians had identified Fraser as “an agent of influence in the Soviet intelligence network.” Although Riley concedes the Moonies had asked him to do such a story to offset the Congressman’s theme of ties between Moon and the KCIA, he insists it was not written for them. However, the only American paper known to have carried his story was Moon’s News World. In the Korean press, it was a front-page item during a visit to Seoul by Fraser’s investigators in December 1977.
Riley’s appetite was whetted. He was getting some attention as a journalist. So he bore in on Fraser. Going through several years of staff pay records, he discovered a Fraser employee had been paid for several months’ work in a lump sum instead of once a month for each month. He played it up as a major payroll scandal. Then he came up with what he called “reverse Korean payoffs.” The five outside consultants for the investigation were said to have been paid off by Fraser, through their contracts with the subcommittee, for appearing as witnesses at hearings in previous years—a kind of bribe with a deferred payment. Riley continued to make phone calls to Fraser’s investigators, asserting that since he was a reporter they should talk to him. At one point he even told them he was thinking about writing that Fred Rayano, a former New York police official on the Fraser staff, had tapped his telephone. Riley thought he had made the big time as an investigative reporter, but it was only a moment in the sun, courtesy of the Moonies.
If Congress were to make a list of the ten all-time most difficult hearing witnesses, Bo Hi Pak’s name would probably be on it. He declined to testify voluntarily in 1976. The following year he refused even an informal staff interview. A subpoena was authorized and served after protests from his lawyer. He then appeared before the subcommittee in a closed session and answered only two questions: What is your name? What is your address? The rest he refused, invoking freedom of religion, freedom from self incrimination, and diplomatic immunity (having been a Korean Embassy official in the early sixties). The subcommittee obtained a federal court order conferring immunity from prosecution on Pak and compelling him to answer the subcommittee’s questions.
Then Bo Hi Pak began to perform.
▲ Bo Hi Pak speaking at the Fraser investigation
His forty-page opening statement at the first hearing on March 22, 1978, consumed more than an hour. The Reverend Moon’s divine work had been severely damaged by Fraser’s “unfounded, vicious attack,” he declared.
You nailed Reverend Moon’s name and the Unification Church to the cross. You crucified us. Reverend Moon and I prayed as Jesus prayed: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
But even Jesus did not have to deal with the New York Times. Today our job is infinitely more difficult because of papers like the New York Times who have crucified Reverend Moon on a worldwide level.
His answers to questions were as indirect as his opening statement was direct. In the course of two hours, though, he did acknowledge paying $3,000 in KCIA money to a Japanese Moonie who made some anti-Communist speeches in Korea. The KCIA gave him the cash in Washington. He took it to Korea, the woman came from Japan to meet him there, and he paid her.
At the first public hearing, Fraser allowed Pak four times the customary fifteen minutes for opening statements. No other witness had consumed so much of the subcommittee’s time in that way. The opening statements were critically important to Pak, however. They were the only saving grace in an otherwise intolerable humiliation of the Unification Church. At the second hearing, three weeks later, Fraser announced that the questioning would begin at the outset. Pak’s attorney, John Bray, asked that Pak be given fifteen minutes for another opening statement. Fraser agreed. Pak launched a tirade of righteous indignation, heedless of the time limit.
Pak: I myself cannot tolerate any longer this outrageous action.
Mr. Chairman, in my last testimony I brought to—
Fraser: Colonel—
Pak: (continuing)—your attention the innocent suffering of members of the Unification Church throughout the world.
Fraser: Colonel, we have run well past the 15 minutes.
Pak: Yes, Mr. Chairman. I plead with you. Let me finish. There are just a few more pages to go. I definitely would like to finish and speak to the American people.
Fraser: How many pages are you referring to?
Pak: I am talking about six pages.
Fraser: Colonel, I am sorry. That would take another 12 minutes. At our last hearing, in checking the record, half of the time was taken up by your opening statement.
Pak: Particularly—
Fraser: I know that you have made copies available to the press, and we will put the entire statement in the record.
Pak: I would like to stay here longer, Mr. Chairman, even up to midnight. Let me have 5 more minutes to continue and finish my statement. Particularly, it is very important for me emotionally, the last part of this statement, because it involves the character assassination on my moral character and on my leader, Reverend Moon. I cannot go on without telling you and the American people and let me have 5 or 6 minutes.
Fraser: Colonel, we will give you time at the end to finish reading the statement if you like, but I think now we do need to proceed with the questions. I had hoped that in the more than 15 minutes you had picked out the most important parts, and I hope that is what you have done.
Pak: The most important is coming from this time on.
If Fraser started asking questions, Pak vowed, he would answer by continuing to read his statement. Bray implored Fraser to let him go on. All right, Fraser said, six more minutes.
The time pressure and the fervor of the prepared text made Pak emotionally supercharged. Fraser was “an instrument of the Devil” for spreading lies about Moon.
Pak: Have you ever been interested in the truth?
Fraser: Colonel, I think under our arrangement now we have come to the end of your time.
Pak: I would like to finish just the conclusion, sir.
Fraser: What are you proposing now?
Pak: Give me one minute, sir.
Nonstop, he went on with the diatribe at accelerated speed. His voice became louder and louder. How did history remember Nero and Julian the Apostate? As the great persecutors. “And so history might remember Donald Fraser, if it remembers him at all.”
He waved his arms vehemently. Near the breaking point, his voice trembled as he shouted with tears in his eyes: “You may get my scalp, Mr. Chairman, but never my heart and soul! My heart and soul belong to God! The Lord is my shepherd. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for Thou art with me!”
Finished at last, he buried his head in his arms on the table and sobbed loudly. The audience sat in shocked silence. Fraser said nothing. The sound of Pak’s crying echoed in the hearing room. Bray consoled him.
After about two minutes, Pak raised his head and calmly announced, “Mr. Chairman, I am ready sir. Thank you.”
Fraser questioned with patience that to his staff seemed almost as exasperating as Pak’s answers. A simple question like “When did you first get to know the Japanese woman?” Fraser quietly rephrased no less than seven times, each time getting a different indefinite answer. (The woman in question was a Moonie, Fumiko Ikeda (whose real name is Yasue Erikawa), to whom Pak had admitted paying the $3,000 in KCIA money).
▲ Yasue Erikawa
But few committee chairmen had ever had to deal with someone like Bo Hi Pak, forever contradicting, evading, and prolonging point after point. The process of getting information out of him seemed interminable.
Pak said the money he used for buying stock in the Diplomat National Bank came from the “Unification Church Pension Fund International,” which, according to his prepared statement, had been formally established by him in 1971 because Moon wanted to set up a family assistance program for elderly church members. Under questioning, Pak did not know how much money was in the fund, where it was kept, whether it was ever deposited in a bank, or what happened to it. He then retreated by saying the fund was set up informally and loosely and he wasn’t sure how it got its name. Using subpoenaed financial records, Fraser showed that Pak had brought $223,000 in cash from Japan to the United States in the early 1970s. Pak said he borrowed the money in several installments from a Japanese church member, Mitsuharu Ishii, but was not sure when or where, or how many loans there were. He could not recall any written records. At a subsequent hearing, he produced three promissory notes he had drawn up a few weeks before.
Pak’s denunciation of Fraser reached its peak at the third hearing, on April 20. Walter Riley’s fable about Fraser and the Soviet KGB was the springboard for a string of insults. Fraser was “a traitor, a second Benedict Arnold, an enemy of this Nation and all free nations.” He was an enemy of Korea and America for giving aid and comfort to the Communist cause.
“Worse, you have become God’s enemy because God is counting on Korea and America and leaders like Reverend Moon to turn the tide against the Satanic forces of communism.”
There was hope even for Fraser, though. Pak admonished: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”
Fraser proceeded with questions as if nothing had happened.
The Moonies were enraged by the media coverage of Fraser’s investigation. Pak lodged a written complaint that television cameras were present at the hearings without his consent. Yet he declined to exercise his right not to be photographed. The reason was that some of the cameras were all right, while others were not. Fraser allowed Moonie cameramen from One Way Productions to film the hearings even though they were not accredited to the House TV gallery.
▲ Bo Hi Pak in Korea giving an anti-Fraser presentation.
Pak made good use of the films. He put together an anti-Fraser TV documentary, starring himself. It was shown in Korea during prime time, making Pak a national hero. Among the viewers was Tongsun Park, who said he was repulsed.
With the benefit of hindsight, Fraser investigators Ed Gragert and Marty Lewin wish they had driven past the Unification Church building without stopping that afternoon in February 1978.
They were on their way back to Capitol Hill after the person with whom they had scheduled an interview had failed to show up. At 16th Street and Columbia Road they noticed the Unification Church emblem atop a building where some construction work appeared to be under way. Lewin remembered reading somewhere that the Unification Church had purchased what was formerly a Mormon Church building. Why not go in and ask for a tour? They weren’t expected back at the office for a while anyway. Inside, the receptionist, a young woman, greeted them. What a lovely building, they commented, and Lewin mentioned his interest in church architecture. Would they like to have a tour of the building? Sure, if possible. They signed the guest register, as requested by the receptionist, giving names and addresses. After a few minutes, a man appeared to show them around. An adjoining meeting hall and the sanctuary were in the process of renovation. They commented on the interesting stained-glass windows depicting Mormon theology. The guide offered to show the downstairs area and invited them to a meeting that night, but they declined, thanked him, and left.
Two months later, after one of Bo Hi Pak’s performances before the subcommittee, Gragert and Lewin were standing together chatting with spectators in the hearing room. A man approached Lewin and asked if he had said he was an architect when he visited the Unification Church.
No, answered Lewin.
At the same time, a woman was asking Gragert if he remembered her. No, he didn’t. “I’m the receptionist at the Unification Church,” she said smiling. “Hello again.”
Lewin, recognizing the woman, greeted her.
The man asked Lewin, “Didn’t you just tell me you had never been to the Unification Church building?”
“No,” replied Lewin. “You asked if I had said I was an architect and I said no.”
The woman invited them to come back again for a full tour of the church at their convenience. They thanked her.
After two more months, on June 22, Bo Hi Pak held a press conference. He had just given his final testimony for Fraser on the preceding day.
“Today, I would like to announce that the Unification Church and I have jointly filed a massive lawsuit for $30,000,000 against Congressman Donald M. Fraser and his investigators, Mr. Edwin H. Gragert and Mr. Martin Lewin, on the grounds of conspiracy to violate and deprive the Unification Church and me of our constitutional rights.”
The suit charged Fraser with attempting to “deceive and trick” Bo Hi Pak with questions at hearings, and for making illegal payments to other witnesses for testimony adverse to the church, Pak, and the Korean government. The effect of Fraser’s action, the suit stated, was to impede Pak’s projects and cause a severe reduction in financial contributions to the church. Gragert and Lewin were accused of conducting an illegal search of the church building at Fraser’s direction, posing as architects. The suit demanded $30 million in damages and a court injunction to halt the investigation.
For Pak, the legal action marked “a day of vindication for all the powerless, all the unpopular, and all the oppressed.” The Moonie newspaper, the News World, editorialized indignantly: “How many other surreptitious entries were attempted? Would the subcommittee go so far as to use illegal wiretaps, electronic surveillance, and other deceptive techniques?”
Fraser, Gragert, and Lewin were in good company. The Unification Church also filed against the New York Times for $45 million, the New York State Board of Regents for $28 million, and the Times of London for $20 million. The Moonies made a practice of frivolous lawsuits. Although dismissal was generally a foregone conclusion, lawsuits could and sometimes did have the effect of tying up defendants’ time or intimidating persons from taking on the Moonies. Fraser’s staff found many opponents of the Moon organization reluctant to cooperate with the investigation out of fear of lawsuits or other personal harassment.
Bo Hi Pak, as ever the quintessential Moonie, intended to serve as a shield for Moon. Fraser’s volumes of interviews, KCFF files, financial records, and intelligence reports were highly damaging to Moon’s image. But he must not allow Fraser to drag Master into the hearing room as he had been. If necessary, he would be the sacrificial animal at Fraser’s pagan rite. That would be his ultimate act of service to God and Moon. Pak would lay down his very life to avoid having Master degraded by public interrogation.
With so much evidence pointing to Moon, however, Fraser reluctantly concluded he should be questioned. After the ordeal with Bo Hi Pak, he dreaded the prospect of going through something worse with Moon. Moonie intransigence had caused the investigation to spend much more time on the Moon organization than planned. Other important matters were not getting the attention they deserved.
Moon’s lawyer, Charles Stillman, turned down Fraser’s request that Moon be questioned informally by the staff. Stillman then made a counteroffer. Moon would consider a request to meet informally with Fraser and the other Congressmen on the condition they come to his estate on the Hudson, and that they conduct the meeting “in a manner befitting the dignity of a spiritual leader.” Fraser was not at all interested in making a pilgrimage to Belvedere for an audience with the new Messiah. The subcommittee had already issued a subpoena for Moon, and Fraser was prepared to use it. He informed Stillman that Moon had two weeks to agree to answer questions voluntarily. If he still refused, Fraser intended to serve the subpoena. Moon would then be required to appear as a witness at a hearing scheduled for June 13.
Two days before the two weeks were up, on May 13, 1978, Moon flew to London on the Concorde using a false name. Like Tongsun Park two years before, he skipped the country when things got hot.
Bo Hi Pak was furious over Fraser’s suggestion that Moon’s exit had anything to do with the subpoena deadline. The Reverend Moon had long planned to carry his personal missionary work to Europe, Pak insisted. The reason for going at that time was to officiate at a mass marriage of 180 church couples in England. As for the subpoena, Master would fight it in the courts when he returned. Moon might consider accepting the subpoena under one condition: that Fraser also subpoena Pope Paul, Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and the heads of the Baptists, Jews, Methodists, and others. Moon never returned for the announced battle. He remained abroad, in England and Korea, until November 1978, one week after Fraser’s investigation ended.
Fraser was not the only one closing in on the Moonies. The Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation had been barred from soliciting contributions in New York after 1976. The State Social Welfare Board had discovered that less than 7 percent of the funds collected by KCFF for the Children’s Relief Fund could have been used for that purpose. The public was told that money was needed urgently to save the lives of 350,000 children who were facing “terminal forms of malnutrition” in Southeast Asia. Contributions were to be used to buy emergency supplies of blood plasma and food. The Children’s Relief Fund appears to have been more an exercise in image-building than a drive to raise funds for the cult’s coffers. An audit showed that Bo Hi Pak himself got $26,000 each year, while the bulk of contributions in 1975, $920,000, was paid to the Richard A. Viguerie Company, a professional fund-raising firm, for handling the mail solicitations. Another $58,000 went to the Associated Public Relations Council of Washington, owned by Donald Miller, who was also the executive director of KCFF
In September 1977 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Bo Hi Pak with securities violations for having bought 43 percent of the stock of the Diplomat National Bank in the names of eighteen persons. Pak had, by that time, gotten rid of most of the stock. He was able to have the SEC complaint settled by consent decree whereby he was enjoined from committing future violations of the kind he had been charged with. But by 1979 the SEC had found more evidence of lawbreaking. This time, the Unification Church International, whose president was Bo Hi Pak, was charged with violating anti-fraud laws in a scheme to gain control of the bank. The Moonies, true to form, retaliated with a motion to dismiss the charges, accusing the SEC of “selective prosecution.” It was rejected by the judge. As before, the charges were settled by consent decree: no finding of guilt, no public disclosure of the evidence; rather, a promise not to acquire bank stock “by means of untrue statements of material facts or omissions.” In a statement to the press on July 6, Pak, claiming he had countersued the SEC, said he was pleased to have a settlement out of court because, “It is certainly not the desire of the Unification Church International to cause the SEC to spend further public monies to pursue or defend this case.”
Pressure from the Immigration and Naturalization Service between 1973 and 1978 forced more than three hundred foreign Moonies to leave the United States. They had violated the terms of their visitor visas both by overstaying and by working in profit-making businesses, which was consistent with Moon’s plan to use missionaries to “open avenues of commerce” around the world. Because of the fund raising, immigration authorities turned down the cult’s petitions to reclassify the aliens as religious trainees so they could stay much longer. That position was upheld by the courts, though the process dragged on for more than five years while the cult’s lawyers took advantage of every opportunity for delay.
In 1978 the New York State Board of Regents denied accreditation to Moon’s theological seminary in Barrytown after finding numerous administrative irregularities.
▲ Unification Theological Seminary, Barrytown
At least two local governments have refused to give the Moonies a free ride on taxes. New York City and the village of Tarrytown, New York, rescinded tax exemption for certain properties. The cult, insisting its buildings were used solely for religious purposes, fought back with appeals that were still pending in 1979.
A well-used theme of the Moonies was that Fraser was persecuting them in order to boost his chances of becoming a United States Senator. Actually, Minnesota voters cared little about his Korean investigation. They were concerned about issues like inflation and the boundary waters canoe area in northern Minnesota. All through his career, Fraser knew foreign affairs activities didn’t get him elected. If anything, the investigation made him stay in Washington while he could have been in Minnesota facing his aggressive and well-financed primary opponent. The Moonies made a point of not absenting themselves from the primary campaign, though. Michael Smith of the Freedom Leadership Foundation went to Minnesota and organized a group of Moonies to help his opponent. Every poll predicted Fraser would win the Democratic primary hands down. He lost by a narrow margin of votes, which the press attributed to a large Republican crossover for his opponent.
Hearing the news in Korea, Moon was jubilant. He preached a sermon declaring that God made Fraser lose the election because he had defied the will of Heaven and tried to turn Korea into another Vietnam.
American Moonies had been indoctrinated to believe everything that happened to Fraser “was instructed by Father.” Now Father’s prophecy was being fulfilled. God’s enemy was being punished. They were mindful of Moon’s vows of vengeance, like the one in a sermon on “Indemnity and Unification”:
So far the world can be against us and nothing has happened. Now when they are against us then they are going to get the punishment. So from this time . . . every people or every organization that goes against the Unification Church will gradually come down or drastically come down and die. Many people will die—those who go against our movement.
The instrument of the Devil was drastically coming down. Five days after the election, Fraser’s house was set on fire. It is not known who was responsible.
NOTES for Chapter 12 DUELING WITH THE MOONIES
307 “He’s White, Baptist, and from Georgia”: full-page newspaper advertisement (Washington Post, June 30, 1977).
308 “It was all religion”: In a memorandum to the Fraser Subcommittee, Moon’s lawyer, Charles Stillman, stated, “The members of the Unification Church view everything which Rev. Moon thinks, says and does as a step toward fulfilling his religious mission. All aspects of his life are bound up with, and dominated by, his theology” (Our Response, published by the Unification Church, New York, 1979, p. 175). Preaching to his followers, Moon said, “We must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world. So, we cannot separate the political field from the religious. … Separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most” (Master Speaks, May 17, 1973, at KI Report, p. 314, and KI Appendix C-212). On economic matters, Moon said, “This system should eventually prevail so overwhelmingly, that . .. people … will buy according to centralized instructions. What kind of system of thought or economy can function to give these centralized instructions? Religion is the only system that can do that” (Master Speaks, Jan. 2, 1972, at KI Report, p. 315, and KI Appendix C-210).
309 “the New York Times reported .. . the subcommittee was investigating”: “Moon’s Sect Pushes Pro-Seoul Activities,” by Ann Crittenden, New York Times, May 25, 1976; also published in Science, Sin, and Scholarship: The Politics of Reverend Moon and the Unification Church, Irving Louis Horowitz, editor, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1978, pp. 176-191.
310 “A different Salonen replied”: Salonen’s letter to the author, June 17, 1976 (SIO-II, p. 620); Bo Hi Pak’s letter to Congressman Fraser, June 15, 1976 (SIO-II, p. 61).
310 “Two Fraser investigators went to the Moonie office”: the two were Richard Mauzy and the author.
311 Criminal background of Clyde Wallace, also known as Walter Riley: KI Report, p. 371; FBI records.
311-312 Meeting about the source of investment funds for the Diplomat National Bank, June 19, 1976: Salonen and Pak both testified that a meeting took place in Pak’s office. Salonen said there was a discussion about the money for the bank investments having come from foreign countries; he refused to give further details because, he said, a lawyer was also present, which established the protection of attorney-client privilege. Pak said the source of the investment money was not discussed, although he acknowledged Riley was there “trying to make some useful suggestion to deal with the press” (KI Report, pp. 383-384; KI Part 4, p. 338).
312 Walter Riley’s story labeling Fraser a Communist agent: KI Report, p. 371; Pak’s testimony, April 20, 1978 (KI Part 4, pp. 256-257).
312 “a Fraser employee had been paid … in a lump sum”: Fraser said one year’s salary ($7,400) was paid in two lump sums in February and March 1978, in order that one of his eighteen authorized staff positions could be kept open for a summer intern. Paying employees in advance is prohibited by a federal statute, but the prohibition had not been included in the administrative regulations of the House of Representatives. When Fraser discovered his error after Riley’s research of staff pay records, he refunded the advance money to the House and put the employee on a regular monthly pay basis (Washington Post, June 27, 1978).
313 “reverse Korean payoffs”: column written by Walter Riley (Our Response, published by the Unification Church, New York, 1979, p. 189); a Seoul newspaper headline read, “Rep. Fraser Bribed Five For Anti-Moonies Data” (Korea Herald, June 22, 1979); Pak’s statement to the press, June 22, 1978 (Our Response, pp. 192-193).
313-314 Exchanges between Fraser and Pak during hearings: Pak’s testimony (KI Part 4, pp. 160, 202-203, 207-208).
316 “When did you first get to know the Japanese woman?” Pak’s testimony, April 11, 1978 (KI Part 4, pp. 210-211). According to Pak, Yang Doo Won of KCIA headquarters sent him $3,000 in Washington with a request that he pay the full amount to Mrs. Ikeda (whose real name is Yasue Erikawa) in consideration of travel and other expenses she incurred while speaking at some rallies in South Korea in 1975. Pak claimed he then went to Korea in February 1976 and asked Mrs. Ikeda to come from Japan to meet him there, whereupon he persuaded her to accept the money. A Unification Church publication later said, “Mr. Pak had simply done a personal favor for an old army friend; that is all,” referring to General Yang, Assistant Director of the KCIA (Our Response, p. 103). Describing the transaction in his testimony, Pak said, “It is a beautiful story” (KI Part 4, p. 212).
316 “Unification Church Pension Fund International”: Pak’s testimony, June 20, 1978 (KI Part 4, pp. 308-315). After investigating the Moonie investments in the Diplomat National Bank, the Fraser Subcommittee “was unconvinced that such a fund was ever established or used for that purpose” (KI Report, p. 385). The Securities Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve Board tried to question the thirteen persons in whose names Pak had purchased bank shares. Some could not be found, while others refused to testify on Fifth Amendment grounds. “Those who did respond did not support Pak’s testimony before the subcommittee” (KI Report, p. 381).
317 “$223,000 in cash from Japan”: Pak’s testimony, April 20, 1978 (KI Part 4, p. 295).
317 “three promissory notes drawn up a few weeks before”: Pak’s testimony, June 20, 1978 (KI Part 4, pp. 321-323, 325, 327-328).
317 “a traitor,” “a second Benedict Arnold,” “Repent”: Pak’s testimony, April 20, 1978 (KI Part 4, pp. 255-260).
318 “Among the viewers was Tongsun Park, who said he was repulsed”: interview with Tongsun.
318-319 Visit to the Unification Church by Ed Gragert and Martin Lewin: interviews with Gragert and Lewin. For the Moonie version, see Our Response, pp. 29-30, 137-140.
319 Announcement of Moonie lawsuit against Fraser: Pak’s statement to the press, June 22, 1978 (Our Response, pp. 190-198).
319-320 “How many other surreptitious entries were attempted?”: editorial (News World, May 18, 1978).
321 “in a manner befitting the dignity of a spiritual leader”: from conversations with Moon’s attorneys.
321 “Moon might consider accepting the subpoena”: Pak’s statement to the press, June 22, 1978 (Our Response, pp. 196-197).
321-322 Barring the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation from solicitation in the State of New York: Washington Post, Feb. 21, 1977.
322 Bo Hi Pak and the Securities and Exchange Commission: KI Report, p. 385; Washington Post, July 7, 1979.
323 Moonie immigration problems: summary of investigations by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (KI Appendix C-212).
323 “open avenues of commerce”: Master Speaks, Feb. 16, 1975 (KI Appendix C-224).
324 “was instructed by Father”: 1978 lecture notes by a Moonie who left the cult in 1979.
324 “So far the world can be against us and nothing has happened”: KI Report, pp. 315-316; Master Speaks, Feb. 14, 1974 (KI Appendix C-214).
324 The fire at Congressman Fraser’s home in Washington: Mrs. Fraser and her daughter, Jeanne, left the back door unlocked when they went next door for dinner with friends. Returning home within about thirty minutes to do her schoolwork, Jeanne discovered a fire raging from the bottom of the three-story unencased stairwell. An investigation by the fire department concluded that the fire had been set with solvent poured on the floor, and that had it gone undiscovered for another fifteen minutes, the house could not have been saved.
Chapter 13 The Menace
pages 325-350
▲ During the Korean War, a Korean carries his aged father across the icy Han River at Chungju, Korea in their flight to the South to escape the onrushing Communist Forces.
Date: January 14, 1951. Photo Credit: US Army by Cpl. J.J. McGinty
America was an ideal place for Park, Moon, and Tongsun to operate. As an ally, South Korea was not suspected of subversion. The U.S. government was watching the Soviet KGB, not the Korean CIA. All three men were able to manipulate at will.
American institutions are vulnerable to such people. In an open society such as this, any view can be expressed. If it sounds convincing, people will believe it. The halls of Congress are open to foreign government officials, businessmen, or evangelists from whatever country. If the country was Korea, they were always welcome because of the long friendship with the United States. Throughout this country, the agents of the Korean influence campaign could come and go as they pleased. Some people believed what they said. Some accepted money from them. Some were intimidated by them. Some became controlled by them.
President Park’s KCIA forced unsubmissive Koreans out of business in the United States. His political party extorted money for him from American businessmen in Korea. Money was offered to get Park’s picture on the front page of Time or Newsweek. The KCIA’s written plans targeted about a hundred American leaders for “manipulation” or “co-opting.” Agents such as Moon and Tongsun bribed Congressmen or prepared Americans to die for Korea. It was a great boondoggle for Moon and Tongsun. In the land of big money and big power, they made both.
President Park benefited less from the influence campaign than did Tongsun and Moon. That is ironic, since the objective of the Blue House planning meetings in 1970 was to get more American support for the R.O.K. government. At that time, Park and his advisers were overreacting to changes in U.S. policy, as usual. Nixon and Kissinger were absolutely determined to protect South Korea from another war with the North. Park knew that. He had nothing to worry about on that score, if that was his main concern.
There had to be another reason for Park’s extreme anxiety. It can be seen in the thrust of his personal political maneuvers. In 1969 he railroaded a change in the constitution to allow him to run for another term. After he was reelected, Park declared martial law for several months. Then, in 1972, he dumped the old constitution and replaced it with a new one giving him unlimited powers. Under the Yushin system, he can remain President as long as he wishes without being bothered by elections.
The influence campaign was designed to get maximum American support to help keep Park Chung Hee in power.
American Presidents did support Park’s government, but not as a result of the influence campaign. They did it for the traditional reason: to ensure stability for U.S. strategic interests. The many visits of Congressmen to Korea, however, yielded Park some benefits. In Korea, the regime’s propaganda created public impressions that the Americans were with him all the way. In the United States, some of the opposition in Congress to the Carter troop withdrawal plan undoubtedly could be traced to the Park regime’s expert orchestration of congressional visits in the past.
The failures of the influence campaign outweigh the successes, though. The campaign gained Park nothing he could not have gotten without all the skulduggery. His country was one that Americans were quite willing to support under normal circumstances. Exposing the campaign in 1976 brought two years of the most strained relations the two allies ever had. As for military aid, the campaign seems not to have had a positive effect during its heyday. Except in 1974 and 1976, Congress did not even make a separate decision on how much aid Korea would get. That was done by the State Department and the Pentagon after Congress had approved an overall amount for all countries together, which included the extra aid Nixon had promised the Koreans. Each year Congress had cut the overall figure, but this was not aimed at Korea, though Korea got less than planned as a result. Congress just wanted to trim military aid in general. The lobbying and payoffs had been virtually irrelevant.
In 1974, when Congress did vote on aid for Korea separately, Park lost. Fraser’s amendment denied $93 million for the most humiliating reason: suppression of human rights. Phase two of the influence campaign—enhancing Park’s image in the United States—clearly had not succeeded.
Fraser tried for another cut in 1976, but the House defeated his amendment. The State Department and the Korean Embassy had argued strongly against a second cut. There was no evidence of improper persuasion. Tongsun and the KCIA apparently were not instrumental in the lobbying.
The end of the scandal afforded a chance for re-warming relations between Seoul and Washington. Two years had gone by without Park having a meeting with the new President of the United States. That had never happened before. Park had never had a face-to-face talk with the man who intended to take all American ground troops out of Korea. He had wanted to meet Jimmy Carter from the beginning. If a summit meeting was held during Koreagate, Park could say it was proof of what he had been maintaining all along: that the “so-called Tongsun Park case” really was not a serious problem with Washington.
Carter did not fall for that. He had an extra reason for holding Park off anyhow. He wanted Kim Dae-Jung freed. Park resisted. Not only did he resent Carter trying to force him to let a political prisoner go; it was also important to him that his most influential political prisoner stay in jail. After Koreagate had quieted down, he yielded. On December 27, 1978, Kim was released. The release opened the way for a Carter-Park meeting. It was set for the end of June when Carter was to be in the area for the Tokyo summit meeting of the heads of the industrial powers.
It worried Park that his visitor was a President known to be a human rights advocate. The regime prepared for Carter’s coming by announcing that human rights was not expected to be on the agenda, placing Kim Dae-Jung under house arrest, and threatening to prosecute persons who made “disrespectful statements” about President Park to the Carter party.
Human rights was on Carter’s agenda, nonetheless. In his only public statement while in Seoul, which was televised live with translation into Korean, he said he believed South Korea’s economic progress “can be matched by similar progress through the realization of basic human aspirations in political and human rights.” He had talks with rights leaders Cardinal Kim and the Reverend Kim Kwan-Suk, and the president of the opposition New Democratic Party, Kim Young-Sam. There was a line about human rights in Carter’s and Park’s concluding joint communique, a first for any meeting between an American President and the head of a repressive government. Before leaving, Carter had Secretary of State Vance inform the press that he had requested the release of over one hundred political prisoners by name. Although Carter’s human rights initiatives surpassed anything done by his predecessors during visits, the results were not encouraging. The Korean press was not allowed to report the American call for release of prisoners, and the newspapers downplayed the talks with religious and opposition figures as no more than “shooting the breeze.” Park’s release of eighty-six prisoners on July 17, hardly a sign of liberalization, seemed designed only to placate Carter. For Koreans, he promised the full force of Emergency Measure Number 9, the catch-all edict for throwing people in jail. Two days after freeing the eighty-six, Park issued a stern warning to those who favored changing the constitution “by demanding what is called ‘the restoration of democracy’.” Ready, as ever, with a list of perils to justify prolonging the dictatorship, he added a new item, “the national security problem following the recent Korea-U.S. summit conference.” In every other context, the regime was hailing the Carter visit as a major triumph for Park Chung Hee.
The new “security problem” Park cited was the rejection by North Korea of his and Carter’s proposal to convene three-way talks aimed at reducing tensions and reunifying the Korean peninsula. A hostile North Korea proved once again to be the best thing Park had going for himself. By joining Carter in the proposal, he appeared reasonable to the Americans. Rejection of the proposal strengthened his case for staying firmly in power and insisting on full support from the United States. No time was lost in taking advantage of North Korea’s intransigence. The day after Park’s warning, National Assembly Speaker Paik Too-Chin said North Korea’s response was “unmistakable evidence that it is seeking to invade South Korea.” Therefore, there could be no freedom for dissent, which he equated with “communistic activities,” because “anti-Communism is the blood vessel of our survival.”
To Park’s further satisfaction, on July 21 Carter ordered a halt to the planned withdrawal of American troops because U.S. intelligence had discovered a sizable buildup of ground forces by North Korea. Although troop withdrawal, with a delay until 1981 at the earliest, remained an American policy goal, the Korean government called the halt a “virtual nullification” of the policy.
With American military support holding firm no matter how he ruled, Park’s crackdowns grew bolder. The headquarters of the opposition New Democratic party was raided at 2:00 a.m. on August 11 by some one thousand policemen and KCIA plainclothes agents; 172 unemployed women textile workers and 26 New Democratic party legislators were forced out of the building with tear gas and clubs. Many were injured and one woman was killed. The U.S. State Department called the action “excessive and brutal.”
Park’s next target was the president of the New Democratic party, Kim Young-Sam, who had been criticizing Park regularly since winning his post in May. After some court maneuvers to deprive Kim of the party position, Park had him expelled from the National Assembly on October 4. The method was, by now, a characteristic one: Members of Park’s party convened not in the Assembly chamber but in an underground conference room with a heavy police guard to keep the opposition out. In protest, Washington immediately recalled Ambassador Gleysteen from Seoul, an unprecedented move that shocked Korean leaders. The remaining opposition Assembly members, newly galvanized, then resigned their seats en masse on October 13. By the 18th, the government had imposed martial law on Busan, South Korea’s second largest city and Kim Young-Sam’s home district, in an attempt to quell anti-government demonstrations. In 1960, Busan had been a starting point for the demonstrations that brought down Syngman Rhee’s government.
Within the establishment there were those who began to feel Park Chung Hee had gone too far. Some of the generals and members of the ruling party privately viewed the expulsion of Kim Young-Sam as a great blunder. With apparently no thought of getting rid of the President or overhauling the regime, they did favor somehow pulling back at least to the way things were before Kim was ousted.
From an unexpected quarter came the most extreme measure. On October 26, Park Chung Hee was shot to death across a dinner table by his host, KCIA Director Kim Jae-Kyu.
That the assassin should be, of all people, the director of the KCIA, was astonishing. So was Kim Jae-Kyu’s reported motive: disagreement with Park’s heavy-handed treatment of dissenters. The KCIA had always been Park’s personal instrument of control. The death of the President at the hands of the director threw the agency into a demoralized state, its future uncertain. Whatever Kim Jae-Kyu’s power goals, they came to naught. The generals refused to join him and he was jailed along with his alleged accomplice, Blue House aide Kim Kye-Won (himself a former KCIA director). That the leaders of the establishment now seemed to favor liberalization was encouraging, since they had so long supported Park’s president-for-life drive. There emerged an immediate consensus among them that the Yushin constitution would not be suitable for the post-Park era. The government of Acting President Choi Kyu-Ha, who had been Park’s figurehead Prime Minister, spoke in support of revising the constitution, releasing persons imprisoned under Emergency Measure Number 9, and holding a presidential election under a new constitution.
Kim Jong-Pil, founding director of the KCIA and early ally of Sun Myung Moon, reappeared as a major power contender. Two weeks after the assassination, he was chosen unanimously to succeed Park as head of the Democratic Republican party (of which he was also the founder). In a public show of conciliation, he paid a courtesy call on opposition party chief Kim Young-Sam. Both men aspired to the presidency, as did former Prime Minister Chung Il-Kwon and Kim Dae-Jung, who was released from house arrest. Opposition leaders, suspecting attempts by Park’s clique to rig the future system for its own benefit, denounced the government plan to retain the Yushin system for the interim.
Hard-line generals moved to shut the opening political door just six weeks after Park was killed. In what looked very much like a military coup, sixteen army leaders were arrested and replaced with men trusted by Major General Chon Too-Hwan, head of the Army Security Command and his power-behind-the throne, Major General Roh Tae-Woo. With Chon in control, the United States could find itself thrown back to a situation not unlike 1961 when Park Chung Hee seized power: takeover by an autocratic general backed by a Kim Jong-Pil-type mastermind, neither of whom was noted for close ties or sympathies with America.
A poll conducted by the Gallup institute in 1979 showed the American people’s support for South Korea was at its lowest point ever. Only 21 percent said they believed U.S. forces should be sent to Korea in the event of another war there. In a 1978 survey, conducted by Potomac Associates, South Korea ranked low on a list of which countries Americans considered it was important to get along with, and was regarded as less reliable a friend of the United States than Japan or India among Asian nations.
Americans who have soured on Korea because of the scandal should reconsider. Deceitful men like Park Chung Hee, Sun Myung Moon, and Tongsun Park are not all Korea has to offer. The Korean people have proved themselves among the most capable in the world. They have achieved an economic miracle in only a few years. South Korea is far too important a country for the United States to reject. It is no longer the pitiful poverty case it was in the 1950s. It is a growing industrial nation and an important trading partner with the United States. Growth of democracy could have a chance with Park gone. South Korea still has a belligerent foe in North Korea. Park Chung Hee’s self-serving exaggerations aside, Americans can believe their own leaders’ assessment that North Korea is dangerous. And it should not be forgotten that the United States bears a very large responsibility for what has happened in Korea for the past thirty-five years, both good and bad.
The kind of government South Korea has had makes many Americans reluctant to give support. Park Chung Hee betrayed his American ally by setting up the Yushin dictatorship. It has caused suffering for Koreans and trouble with the United States without strengthening South Korea’s security. On one point Yushin was completely successful: it kept Park in power, safe from all opponents, until he was struck down by one of his own men.
Tongsun did extremely well by the influence campaign while it lasted. Korea’s interests may have been poorly served, but not his own.
When it was all over, he had some regrets. The scandal had caused so much notoriety and taken so much of his time, he said, it kept him from making about $20 million more from his businesses. And he had missed the Washington social life. Tongsun remained undaunted, though. His enterprises in Korea and the Middle East were still flourishing. He thought a political career in Korea should be the next step for him. Preposterous as that seems after the disaster he brought the South Korean government, it is not unlike Tongsun. He never says “never.”
With the dismissal of his indictment in August 1979 under the immunity agreement, Tongsun was once again free to come and go in this country.
The charmed circle, no longer charmed, is out of Congress. Hanna chose not to run for reelection in 1974 and went to prison in 1978 for conspiracy to defraud the United States. Repentant, he entered the federal penitentiary at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. There, the former Democratic Congressman made friends with a Republican with whom he had been at odds during another scandal, John Mitchell.
Comparing Watergate and Koreagate, Mitchell insisted there was nothing similar between the two.
“Oh yes, there is, John,” Hanna rejoined. “Down here, we’re both in the same camp!” Mitchell let out with a gutsy laugh of the kind Watergate TV viewers never heard.
Passman, after being indicted, had asked not be tried at all because of advanced age and failing health. A judge turned down the request after a court-appointed doctor examined Passman. Awaiting trial, he steadfastly insisted he never accepted money from Tongsun.
“Seventy-eight years down the drain.” Passman lamented, viewing the charges as the ruination of his life. “I stood for everything good. I was a Grand Mason. Only a hundred were ever chosen. Now the only thing I have to look forward to is the grave.”
As things turned out, he had a great deal to look forward to. On April 1, 1979, Passman was acquitted on all charges after a hometown jury deliberated only 90 minutes.
While his trial was going on, Passman was seen each morning arriving for breakfast in a Cadillac, walking briskly in and out of a hotel without a cane. For the courthouse arrival, he traveled by Chevrolet and made his way inside by leaning on his lawyers and a cane. Central to his defense was a claim that he had been an unwitting tool in a plan devised by Governor Edwards, Gordon Dore, and Tongsun. After the favorable verdict was announced, the defense team joined together in song and dance for all to behold, chanting, “The Governor made me do it! The Governor made me do it!” Passman, in equally high spirits and having abandoned the cane, said the next day, “I’ve made an amazing recovery since last night.”
Grover Connell, Tongsun’s rice dealer and sometime ally with Passman behind the scenes against Tongsun, was indicted in April 1978 for lying to a grand jury about his dealings with Tongsun. After Tongsun had proved to be an unconvincing witness in the Passman trial, the charges against Connell were dropped in April 1979.
No convictions resulted from Tongsun’s testimony. Hanna, the only Congressman to go to jail, had pleaded guilty. Comparing his plight to Passman’s happy ending, he said his guilty plea looked foolish in retrospect. In May 1979 he was released from prison for good behavior after serving one year of a two-year sentence.
Two members of the charmed circle emerged from Koreagate with no legal problems to worry about. By the time Tongsun came back to testify in 1978, it was too late to do anything to Gallagher and Minshall. They could not be prosecuted because the five-year statute of limitations had run out. Leaving Congress in 1974, Minshall was working in Washington in 1979 as head of a lobbying concern, Congressional Associates. After Gallagher served his sentence for income tax evasion, he went back to New Jersey to be a middleman for sales between American and foreign companies. In late 1976, before the statute of limitations had expired, Paul Michel of the Justice Department had backed off even from having Gallagher questioned by the grand jury. That was shortly after Michel had let Tongsun slip through his fingers and at at time when he had quite a bit of material on Gallagher.
Michel became Associate Deputy Attorney General in 1978.
Hancho Kim, supposedly intended as the KCIA’s successor to Tongsun, was convicted in May 1978 for conspiracy and lying to a grand jury. He never paid Congressmen a penny of the $600,000 the KCIA gave him. In July 1979, he began serving a six-month sentence after being placed on probation for a separate tax conviction and obtaining dismissal of an indictment for contempt of Congress.
Congressmen Joseph Addabbo and Robert Leggett, whom the Justice Department began investigating in early 1976, were not indicted. Only three months after Assistant Secretary of State Habib had succeeded in getting a Justice probe under way, their names were the first to surface in public as being suspected of receiving Korean payments. The Koreagate investigations came up with no admissible evidence, and intelligence reports were insufficient. In 1979, Addabbo became chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Leggett survived his 1976 election contest in spite of public revelations about his tripartite love life, which included Suzi Park Thomson. Ending his congressional career in 1978, he became president of the Joint Maritime Congress, which lobbies the government.
There were no job offers in Congress for Suzi Park Thomson after Speaker Albert retired. In 1977, she announced she was opening a catering service in Washington, explaining that since giving parties was what she was best known for, she might as well try to make a living out of it.
In the Senate, where Tongsun had been less active, the Select Committee on Ethics found substantial contributions to the election campaigns of “at least seven Senators,” but that none had been guilty of violating the ethics code. Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana was criticized for “neglect” of his duties by stating in writing twice that he had neither received nor been offered more than $35 from Tongsun. There was “substantial credible evidence” of a $1,000 contribution. Also, Tongsun had given a party in Bayh’s honor that cost $3,800. One Senator, the late Allen El-lender of Louisiana, had himself credited Tongsun, along with Passman and Governor Edwards, with convincing him to change his vote to favor an amendment for military aid to Korea in 1972. But there was no evidence that Ellender did so as a result of any contribution, actual or promised.
For all the fuss about a scandal big enough to rival Watergate, the results were meager indeed.
In the spring of 1979, less than six months after the bribery investigations, it appeared as if Koreagate might have a successor. The House Ethics Committee began a preliminary probe into allegations of influence-buying by South Africa and Iran.
The furor over congressional bribery obscured the menace of Moon in the United States. That, too, was a tragedy.
That Moon was a part of the Korean government’s influence campaign is a point well established. He was one of its three main elements along with the KCIA and Tongsun’s operation in Congress. His Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation and his Washington minion, Bo Hi Pak, were listed for lobbying at President Park’s Blue House planning meetings in 1970. He planted “PR sisters” in Congressmen’s offices. His agents promoted Korean interests in Congress. He organized a political demonstration for the KCIA in 1974. A component of the Moon organization was included in the KCIA’s written plan for operations in the United States for 1976. In that year, President Park himself still considered Moon useful.
Even without the documented ties to the influence campaign, common sense says the Korean government would consider it more than a little helpful that Moon had thousands of obedient American youths cheering and praying for Korea every day and believing Korea was God’s chosen nation. Quite an investment in future American support for Korea.
It was Moon’s good fortune and America’s misfortune that no evidence was found that Moon bribed a Congressman. Petty as payments would be compared to the damage Moon has actually done to society, the Justice Department and the newspapers might then have thought he was a major problem. Bribery is not Moon’s racket, though. To bribe is to give money. Moon takes money. He takes it by the millions every month.
The Korean scandal missed the mark by a mile. Most people who followed the scandal did not even know Moon had anything to do with the Korean influence campaign. It was all about payoffs to Congressmen. That made news. Tongsun’s little escapade is over. But Moon is still riding high.
Exposing the influence campaign brought down some Korean agents and Congressmen, perhaps including Speaker Carl Albert. But not Moon. He always told the cult he was bigger than the KCIA, Korea, the United States, even “better” than God. So far, his record on those points is pretty good.
He needed the KCIA’s blessing to get going in Korea. He got it by way of cult members close to Director Kim Jong-Pil. The Korean government became indebted to him because of the Little Angels’ propaganda bonanza. The doors to big business were therefore opened to him. Contracts for manufacturing weapons followed. Moon became a multimillionaire in Korea. In the meantime, Bo Hi Pak was lining things up for Master on the American end. He got powerful Americans to support Moon’s front, the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation, pretending it had no connection with Moon. The cult needed money, so Pak ripped off- Americans with Radio of Free Asia, helped by KCIA Director Kim Hyung-Wook.
President Park and his influence planners may have thought they were using Moon for Korea. What they may not have realized was how much Moon was using Korea for himself. Korea was the Adam country but only because it gave birth to him. He treats all governments, just as he treats all people, with contempt. People are mere stepping stones to the throne he claims God promised him. The path he treaded to power must be paved with important people. Dwight Eisenhower “paid his bill” by having his picture taken with Moon, and lending his name, unsuspectingly, to the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation. The annual “International Conference for the Unity of Sciences” is important enough for Moon to spend half a million dollars bringing scientists from all over the world. The subsidized scholars’ mission is to make Moon look good and develop unified thinking that “will be the leading ideology of the world.” Back in their home countries, scholars are supposed to do things “which will enable us to direct the world policies toward the same goals.” Well paid, many scholars return to Moon’s jamboree year after year, unaffected by public exposure of his hidden purposes.
When skeptics suggest something less than noble motives behind the science conferences, the cult answers with one of Moon’s ready-made turnabout questions: “Do they really think that such eminent scientists and scholars are so foolish as to allow themselves to be so used?”
Moon’s track record suggests either the world is dumb enough, or he is smart enough, to get what he wants. Certainly he is contemptuous enough to believe both.
For Moon, President Park’s influence campaign was just a part of his own influence campaign. Tongsun’s idea was similar, but he was successful on a much smaller scale. Moon was not as dependent on the government as Tongsun and Suzi Park Thomson. By the time the government’s campaign collapsed in scandal, it had already served him well. He no longer needed it. He was firmly established in the United States, the land of big money and big power.
He did not come through Koreagate unscathed by bad publicity. The controversy over Moon in America led the Park regime to make some unfriendly gestures for appearance’s sake. As late as the end of 1977, however, one of Moon’s companies was negotiating over a Korean government weapons contract in the United States.
Politically, Moon was in a weaker position than before Koreagate. He still had his cult, though, with plenty of money and members. He concentrated on expanding the business empire and tightening discipline.
The business empire afforded Moon more direct control than the unwieldy arena of politics. The companies belong to the Family. Father runs the Family. There is no such thing as dissent against Father in the cult. In some ways, the business empire is like a huge, multinational corporation. Its scope extends from selling flowers to making antiaircraft guns. Profits could be shifted from place to place for tax advantages or new investment: among companies, among countries, or between taxable and tax-exempt components of the Moon organization. People could be shifted in the same way, whenever it suited Father.
Moving people around the business empire has another advantage. It offers great training for the all-purpose militant society Moon is preparing for. He is developing highly skilled slaves. Not surprisingly, the quality of work is quite high. Opportunities for advancement are there, too. A capable member of the cult can graduate from peddling candy in supermarket parking lots to being a shipbuilding executive. There is no salary incentive, though, since the money goes back into the cult. But that is no big problem. Moon knows how to use the money best for building a better world. It all has its appeal to bright people in their twenties under Moon’s control.
Where Moonies go into business, they are formidable. Fishermen in Gloucester, Massachusetts, have tasted the stiff competition. Things have not been the same since the Moonies came to town with apparently unlimited money and almost unpaid manpower from the cult.
The cult has answers to criticisms of its business involvement. Members of the Unification Church are getting “spiritual training” working in church businesses. To single out the Unification Church for criticism is unfair, says Bo Hi Pak. He and other leaders of the cult like to claim what they are doing is no different from the business dealings of the established churches. Their favorite analogy is the Catholic Church and its huge holdings.
The analogy crumbles in the most cursory comparison of the Pope and Catholic businessmen with Moon and the Unification Church. When young girls have not met the day’s fund-raising quota, the Pope does not leave them at bars at 3:00 a.m. to hawk for money. Moon does. Catholic businessmen are not required to turn over almost all their earnings to the church. Moonies are. The Pope does not directly control church investments. Moon does. The Pope does not tell Catholics to lie in order to make money for the church. Moon does. There are many different Catholic views about business in the world. There is only one Moonie view.
Deprogramming, the ritual death of over 900 members of the People’s Temple in Guyana, and the report of the Fraser Subcommittee have resulted in tighter discipline inside Moon’s cult and more militancy toward the non-Moon world. Deprogramming is the process of talking someone out of cult control. Past associations are reawakened and the person begins to think for himself again. Obviously, this is the most serious kind of subversive threat to Moon. Many hundreds of persons have been deprogrammed. The success rate is about 95 percent. Using those retaken by Moon, the cult has succeeded in legal action against some of the deprogrammers. The reason is that cult members are at first held against their will by parents and deprogrammers.
The large number of members lost through deprogramming is a big concern to Moon. Not only has he lost them; many of them are working actively against him now. Preventive measures have been taken. Deprogrammers are described as depraved persons. Moonies are being told that deprogrammers will rape them or beat them, or that parents will put them in an insane asylum. Cult leaders have given instructions that if a member knows he is being led to a deprogramming, he should try to commit suicide by being run over by the car. That way, Moon would be served with double justice: the member would not have failed Father, and the parents or deprogrammers would be charged with killing. If there is no chance for a car suicide before the member is taken home, he should go into the bathroom and slash his wrists.
Moonie phobia over defectors spawns actual violence, as Brett Blaze learned when he returned to pick up his clothes and van after leaving the cult in August 1979. The Moonies, one of them holding a gun, refused to let him have his van. Blaze and his five companions got into their car, vowing to go to the police. As they pulled away from the curb, Scott Powell, Virginia state director of the Unification Church, ordered Mark Boitano to shoot. One bullet hit a front tire. Another pierced a door, but no one was injured. Powell and Boitano were arrested and charged with both shooting into an occupied vehicle and using Blaze’s van without authorization. A Moonie official told reporters that the occupants of the car were to blame: Powell and Boitano only wanted to flatten the tires so “the criminals could not get away.”
The Guyana mass deaths horrified the nation into greater cult consciousness. The Moonies downplayed the connection. They insisted they are a church, not a cult. Massachusetts Moonie chief Aidan Barry pooh-poohed the whole thing, saying, “It’s like crying ‘Wolf, Wolf’. . . when the real wolf is Communism.” The Moonies were helped by apparently well-meaning established church leaders such as Dr. James E. Wood, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. At Senator Robert Dole’s public congressional meeting on the cults on February 5, 1979, Wood objected to any use of “pejorative” words like “cult” because they are not nice.
The Fraser Report of October 31, 1978, gave detailed evidence of lawbreaking by the Moon organization. Also included was a description of Moon’s involvement in the influence campaign. Moon and Pak have never conceded a Korean influence campaign existed, much less their own participation in it. Instead, they mirrored the Park regime’s position that the whole thing was a matter of Tongsun Park acting all on his own. The Moonies published a response to the Fraser Report. It did not even refer to many of the findings.
Before the report, cult members had already been programmed to believe Fraser was a Communist and an instrument of the Devil. It was easy, then, to program responses to outsiders who mentioned the report. Fund raising at the Newark Airport, Kathy Brown knew what she was supposed to say. She was beautiful except for the zombielike, glassy look in her eyes. Softly and sweetly, she said, “They have no proof. It’s all lies.”
She was asked about Fraser’s house being set on fire. “We don’t have to do things like that,” she replied. “God punishes those who go against him. Why waste your life thinking negative thoughts? We are doing beautiful things for the world.”
Thinking for oneself is a very painful thing for a Moonie to do. Father removes pain by removing thought.
At Senator Dole’s hearing there was testimony about the physical condition of Moonies. Joe Alexander was affiliated with a rehabilitation center for former cult members in Tucson, Arizona, until lawsuits forced it to close down. He said: “We have seen and helped, during rehabilitation, girls having their menstrual cycles for the first time in months and years. We have seen and helped young men whose beards have stopped growing while in the cults.”
Those statements brought laughter from the hundred or so Moonies packed into the hearing room. At other times and with other speakers, they yelled, “Garbage!” or “Liar!”
Shelley Turner remembers what Moonie leaders told girls like herself who missed their period for many months. They said it was fine; it meant being “pregnant with God.” It was a good enough explanation for Shelley while she was in the cult. Four years after leaving, though, she still had the problem.
There is a Moonie explanation for everything.
Lying. One of the central tenets of the faith is the Doctrine of Heavenly Deception. Good must deceive evil. The non-Moon world is evil. It must be lied to so it can help Moon take over. Then it can become good under Moon’s control. In the Bible, Jacob lied to Isaac. God rewarded Jacob by making him the father of the nation of Israel. Closer to home, you lie to little children about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny until they are old enough to understand, don’t you?
“Zombie” eyes. A sign of deep spirituality, unity with Father. Members are encouraged to use mirrors so they can watch the transfixed gaze develop.
Lack of sleep and food. If the spirit is strong, the body will be strong. If the body is weak, it is because of “spiritual problems.”
Killing parents. They might try to destroy Master. There is no choice between the life of a “flesh” father and Moon; Master’s work must go on. Anyway, parents who don’t believe in Moon belong to Satan and must die.
Suicide. Better to die faithful to Father than be a living “Judas.”
All these things are taught in the name of religion, a belief in God according to the gospel of the “Reverend” Moon. Inside the cult, mind control is used to make it convincing. Outside, free-thinking people balk. Moon has an explanation for that, too: the power of Satan. Again, the cult believes him, but it isn’t enough for dissenters in the non-Moon world.
The non-Moon world, being of Satan, lives under the laws of Cain. Constantly, they get in Moon’s way. One law, however, is very useful. It makes it possible to try to get around all the others. The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. As long as Moon says everything the cult does is religious, he can claim the protection of the First Amendment.
The advantages of using the First Amendment were seen early. Before Moon moved to the United States in 1971, he and his small band of followers realized the operation would have the most flexibility if it was called a church. Businesses, political activities, and tax-exempt status could be protected. Moon was dubbed “Reverend” in 1969. In 1970 the name “Unified Family” was changed to “Unification Church.” Organization and goals stayed the same. Only the name was changed, for its “effect on the institutions of society.” A cult publication explained, “The name implies respectability and stability.”
Since Moon’s invasion of America began, he has marched forward steadily behind the First Amendment shield. Calling himself “Reverend” and his operation a church early enough, Moon put the burden of contrary proof on the non-Moon world. His beliefs are protected fully by the First Amendment. He insists his actions are, too. His beliefs cover everything. No matter what the cult does, therefore, it is claimed to be an exercise of religious belief.
In the non-Moon world, Fraser conducts an investigation. He wants to find out if the Moon organization’s political and business activities are part of the Korean influence campaign. At first, he has only allegations that the Moonies acted as unregistered agents of a foreign intelligence service, the KCIA. The Moonies can believe in God as they choose, but they ought not to violate the law in the process, he thinks. He is amazed at what he finds: evidence that the Moon organization has violated laws on banking, immigration, taxes, currency control, charity fraud, arms export control, and foreign agents registration.
To the Moonies, everything Fraser did from start to finish violated their freedom of religion. Since they claim everything they do is religious, Fraser had no right to question what they do. The cult’s published comment on the Fraser Report says it well: “Its objections to the activities of the followers of Rev. Moon are fundamentally objections to their religious beliefs.”
Moon apparently thinks his “religious beliefs” are a special license to break laws. The new Messiah is above the laws of Cain. Whatever contempt Moon has for the laws of the United States, he sees fit to hide behind the First Amendment to the Constitution. That raises questions for the non-Moon world about the meaning of freedom of religion:
Does freedom of religion give Moon the right to violate the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which outlaws slavery?
Did freedom of religion give Moon the right to be paid secretly by the KCIA to carry out a plot to throw eggs at the Japanese ambassador and disrupt an official visit of the Prime Minister of Japan?
Does freedom of religion give Moon the right to smuggle large amounts of money into the United States?
Did freedom of religion give Moon the right to try to take over an American bank in violation of banking laws by buying half the bank’s stock secretly with cult money?
Did freedom of religion give Moon the right to smuggle hundreds of aliens into this country under the guise of “students” or “religious trainees” so he could put them to work full-time in his businesses?
Does freedom of religion give Moon the right to evade taxes by transferring large amounts of money from one cult member to another, calling it a loan?
Did freedom of religion give Moon’s minion, Bo Hi Pak, the right to collect $1 million from Americans under the guise of a “Children’s Relief Fund,” and then use 93 percent of the money to pay public relations men?
Did freedom of religion give Moon and his cult the right to negotiate, as an unregistered agent of the Korean government, for the manufacture and export of M-16 rifles?
Does freedom of religion give Moon the right to infiltrate the offices of Senators and Congressmen with covert agents who report details of personal lives to the cult for its special card file?
Did freedom of religion give Moon the right to refuse to answer questions about these activities before a subcommittee of Congress?
The Fraser Report recommended a federal task force to investigate the Moon organization for lawbreaking. Evidence of systematic violation of laws appears in the report. But a subcommittee of Congress is neither a law enforcement agency nor a court. It can only investigate and legislate. The Fraser Subcommittee did not recommend making any new laws to deal with the Moonies in the areas investigated. It found evidence that the Moon organization had violated many existing laws. What the subcommittee called for was for law enforcement and regulatory agencies to do their jobs, specifically the Department of Justice (including the FBI, the Antitrust Division, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service), the Treasury Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Internal Revenue Service.
Past attempts at investigating Moon activities by each of those agencies alone had been piecemeal, inconclusive, and without the benefit of pooled information. That worked to Moon’s advantage every time. It is one of the pitfalls of Washington bureaucracy. That was why the Fraser Subcommittee recommended a coordinated effort by an interagency task force.
After the Fraser Report and the Guyana tragedy, there was still no indication that any such investigation would begin.
The American system is ill-equipped to deal with Moon. He knows this and benefits from it. He can break some laws and use others for protection. By perverting freedom of religion, he can keep thousands of people in brainwashed captivity while he intimidates and manipulates the non-Moon world. He hurls lawsuits at those who offend him, whether parents of cult members or the New York Times. He has Nobel laureates feeding his ego and prestige by attending his conferences. He has high-principled civil libertarians and churchmen rallying to his defense.
Moon also has held the Department of Justice cautiously at bay for years. In 1976, Undersecretary of State Habib had asked for an investigation of the Moonies under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Justice refused even to take a look, since the Moonies called themselves a church.
It was still hands off in 1977. On July 29, Assistant Attorney General Civiletti, in a letter to a Congressman, wrote, “It has been our experience that members of these religious sects are apparently competent, consenting adults.” He decided to do nothing because to take brainwashing seriously “would seem to require a finding that the members’ religious beliefs were false.” The United States government believed brainwashing was real enough in the Korean War. Apparently that was different because Communists were doing it to American soldiers. When Moon does it in the name of God he gets away with it.
Attorney General Griffin Bell added confusion to his Department’s caution. After the deaths in Guyana, he said, “I don’t know what a cult is. I’m a Baptist. Maybe that makes me a member of a cult.” Then two months later, on February 2, 1979, he said he believed Patty Hearst had been brainwashed.
An open society must let totalitarian have their say. If the Nazis are able to march down the street, and the Communists can publish their Daily World, then Moon has the right to tell people God wants him to take over the world. Likewise, others are entitled to criticize what he says. Not so, says Moon.
Hundreds from his cult were shipped to Washington to protest Senator Dole’s information meeting on the cult phenomenon. Outside the Senate Office Building, they waved signs proclaiming “Senator Dole, this is a witch hunt.” Inside, Neil Salonen took the stand and told the Senators and Congressmen what the Moonies thought about the meeting.
This very proceeding itself violates the spirit of the First Amendment and violates the rights of believers which the First Amendment was designed to protect. It will have a chilling effect on the free exercise of those beliefs.
George Swope, a Baptist minister, gave a different view of congressional inquiry into church activities:-
Members of the Congress, I tell you frankly, if you receive hundreds of accusing letters from parents of young adults who have joined the Baptist denomination, and if you receive hundreds of statements from young adults who have left the Baptists alleging mind control, the potential for suicide and murder, illegal immigration and financial practices, and other destructive physical and psychological activities, I feel it would be your duty to establish a task force to investigate those allegations against my own denomination.
President Park Chung Hee’s illegal Korean influence campaign was waged for almost six years before it was stopped. Henry Kissinger knew bribery and espionage were going on in 1971. It was four years before he did anything. House Speaker Carl Albert learned Suzi Park Thomson was connected with the KCIA in 1971. He kept her on his staff for five more years. In 1971 the FBI knew Congressmen Hanna and Gallagher were in Tongsun’s pay. They were left alone. That same year, the Justice Department and the FBI ignored the evidence that the Moon organization was working for the Korean government. Eight years later, they still had done nothing about Moon.
Sun Myung Moon is the flourishing survivor of the scandal. The Attorney General continues to be deceived by Moon’s perversion of religious freedom, even after the horror of the People’s Temple. Some civil libertarians and leaders of established churches likewise play into Moon’s hands. As for the major newspapers, they have yet to take the offensive with the kind of investigative reporting that uncovered so much in Watergate and the payoffs in Koreagate.
What will it take to bring the menace of Moon into account with the law? The dictatorship and slavery he is building cannot survive in this country. But too often justice moves slowly.
The People’s Temple had its retreat at Jonestown in the Guyana jungle. Off the coast of South Korea, Moon is said to have an island. Members of the cult are told that is where Father will take them when the world moves against him.
There is no central lesson to be learned from Koreagate, no one deficiency that can be identified and corrected to safeguard the future. The elements were too diverse for that. The influence campaign fed on neglect by leaders of our government, inadequate law enforcement, the greed of politicians, gullibility to con men, the alienation of youth, and family disunity. These are foibles all too familiar to Americans.
NOTES for Chapter 13 THE MENACE
328 “disrespectful statements”: Dong-A Ilbo, Seoul, June 27, 1979.
328 “can be matched by similar progress”: Korea Herald, July 1, 1979.
329 Carter-Park communique: New York Times, July 2, 1979.
329 “shooting the breeze”: New York Times, July 3, 1979.
329 “by demanding . . . ‘the restoration of democracy’ ”: Korea Herald, July 20, 1979.
329 Remarks of Speaker Paik Too Chin: Korea Herald, July 21, 1979.
330 Details on the assassination of Park Chung Hee: New York Times, Oct. 30, 1979.
332 “A poll conducted by the Gallup institute”: Korea Herald, July 15, 1979. The poll had been done by Gallup for American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1979, John E. Reilly, editor, Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, Chicago, 1979.
332 “a 1978 survey”: The United States and Korea: American Attitudes and Policies by Ralph N. Clough and William Watts, Potomac Associates, Washington, 1978.
333 “When it was all over, he had some regrets”: interview with Tongsun Park, July 1978.
334 “Oh, yes there is, John”: interview with Richard Hanna and John Mitchell, December 1978.
334 “Seventy-eight years down the drain”: interview with Otto Passman, December 1978.
334 Behavior and tactics of Passman and his lawyers during the trial: interview with a reporter who covered the trial.
335 Hanna’s comment after the Passman trial: Washington Post, Mar. 29, 1979.
336 Suzi Park Thomson announces the opening of a catering service: Washington Star, Dec. 9, 1977.
336 Findings of the Senate Ethics Committee: Senate Ethics Report, pp. 2, 77, 124.
337 “A component of the Moon organization was included in the KCIA’s written plan”: The component is the Freedom Leadership Foundation. The KCIA Plan was published in English and Korean by the Fraser Subcommittee (KI Part 3, pp. 107-138).
338 Moon’s International Conference for the Unity of the Sciences: As soon as the Fraser investigation was over, thus terminating its subpoena power, Moon returned to the United States in time to appear at his seventh “Unity of the Sciences” conference, held in Boston, Nov. 24-26, 1978.
338 “will be the leading ideology of the world,” “which will enable us to direct the world policies toward the same goals”: Master Speaks, Jan. 30, 1973 (KI Appendix C-211). For further description of the science conference as a Moon tool, see KI Report, pp. 321-322.
339 “Do they really think that such eminent scientists”: Our Response, published by the Unification Church, New York, 1979, p. 55.
339 “one of Moon’s companies was negotiating over a Korean government weapons contract”: KI Report, pp. 326-328, 371, 366-369; KI Appendix C-34-39, 41-45.
341 “The success rate is about 95 percent”: interviews with deprogrammers.
341 “he should try to commit suicide by being run over by the car”: interviews with former Moonies.
341-342 Shooting incident in Norfolk, Va.: Washington Post, Aug. 22, 1979.
342 “It’s like crying ‘Wolf ”: comment to Boston television reporters by Aidan Barry, Nov. 22, 1978.
342 “Cult” as a pejorative word: testimony of James Wood at an information meeting, “The Cult Phenomenon in the United States,” U.S. Senate, Washington, Feb. 5, 1979.
343 Kathy Brown: conversation with the author, Newark Airport, Feb. 6, 1979.
343 Joe Alexander: testimony at Senate meeting on the cult phenomenon, Washington, Feb. 5, 1979.
343-344 “There is a Moonie explanation for everything”: interviews with former Moonies, including Shelley Turner and Steve Hassan.
345 “A cult publication explained”: New Age Frontiers, Jan. 1971 (KI Report, p. 318).
345 “Its objections to the activities”: Our Response, published by the Unification Church, New York, 1979, p. 123.
346-347 The Fraser Subcommittee’s recommendations are in KI Report, pp. 390-392.
348 “It has been our experience”: the full text of Assistant Attorney General Civiletti’s letter is in Our Response, pp. 270-271.
348 “I don’t know what a cult is”: Attorney General Bell at a press conference in Los Angeles, Dec. 7, 1978.
348 “he said he believed Patty Hearst had been brainwashed”: appearance by Attorney General Bell on ABC’s Good Morning, America, Feb. 2, 1979.
348-349 Neil Salonen and George Swope: testimony at Senate meeting on the cult phenomenon, Washington, Feb. 5, 1979.
350 An island off the coast of South Korea for Moon’s last stand: interviews with former Moonies. [“An entire island on the Jeju Island chain was sold” by FFWPU, probably in 2018. The FFWPU also own land and a palace, opened in September 2011, on Geomun Island.]
United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization
The Unification Church and the KCIA – ‘Privatizing’ covert action: the case of the UC
Robert Parry’s investigations into Sun Myung Moon
The Fall of the House of Moon – New Republic
Politics and religion interwoven
FBI and other reports on Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon: The Emperor of the Universe
The six ‘wives’ of Sun Myung Moon
Sun Myung Moon and the United Nations
How Moon bought protection in Japan
Sun Myung Moon organization activities in Central and South America
The six ‘wives’ of Sun Myung Moon
FFWPU human trafficking is despicable