A guest at Ronald Reagan's Inauguration, Moon made his organization useful to the new President and to Vice President George H.W. Bush, who would later become a paid speaker for Moon's organization. Where Moon got his cash was a mystery that few American conservatives were eager to solve it.
"Some Moonie-watchers even believe that some of the business enterprises are actually covers for drug trafficking," wrote Scott and Jon Lee Anderson.
While Moon's representatives have refused to detail how they've sustained their far-flung activities -- including many businesses that insiders say lose money -- Moon's spokesmen have angrily denied recurring allegations about profiteering off illegal trafficking in weapons and drugs.
In a typical response to a gun-running question by the Argentine newspaper, Clarin, Moon's representative Ricardo DeSena responded, "I deny categorically these accusations and also the barbarities that are said about drugs and brainwashing." [Clarin, July 7, 1996]
Long Associations
Without doubt, however, Moon's organization has had a long record of association with organized crime figures, including fascists.
Besides collaborating with Sasakawa and the Japanese yakuza and the Cocaine Coup government of Bolivia, Moon's organization developed close ties with the Honduran military and the Nicaraguan contra movement, which were permeated with drug smugglers and human rights violators.
Moon's organization also used its political clout in Washington to intimidate or discredit government officials and journalists who tried to investigate these criminal activities. In the mid-1980s, for instance, when journalists and congressional investigators began probing the evidence of contra-connected drug trafficking, they came under attacks from Moon's Washington Times.
An Associated Press story that I co-wrote with Brian Barger about a Miami-based federal probe into gun- and drug-running by the contras was denigrated in an April 11, 1986, front-page Washington Times article with the headline: "Story on [contra] drug smuggling denounced as political ploy."
When Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, uncovered additional evidence of contra-drug trafficking, the Washington Times denounced him, too. The newspaper published articles depicting Kerry's probe as a wasteful political witch hunt. "Kerry's anti-contra efforts extensive, expensive, in vain," announced the headline of one Times article on Aug. 13, 1986.
Despite the attacks, Kerry's contra-drug investigation eventually concluded that a number of contra units were implicated in the cocaine trade.
"It is clear that individuals who provided support for the contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers," Kerry's investigation stated in a report issued April 13, 1989.
Beyond the drug connections, Moon's organization protected Nazi-like practices of right-wing militaries in Latin America. When journalists and human rights organizations reported on atrocities, the Washington Times rallied to the defense of the alleged torturers and "death squads." [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
Despite this grisly history, Moon's Washington Times is now leading the right-wing pack in associating President Obama and his health-care reform with the Nazis. It is a measure of how little most Americans know about the Washington Times' own Nazi and neo-Nazi connections that this strange propaganda theme can work so well.
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