LOL! While looking for 'Rummy's' corporation ...
...which I should know as a good friend who's done spectacularly well with DELL employee stock options since 1995, had a superior up the line who left this company (big defense contractor/conglom, as I recall) to join DELL during the mid-hey-day run-up (like, '97 or '98 or so) ... ANYBODY? What the hell is it?
More on 'Rummy,' ... GOODNESS GRACIOUS!! -g-
Published on Wednesday, January 3, 2001 in The Consortium News
Rev. Moon, the Bushes & Donald
Rumsfeld
by Robert Parry
George W. Bush’s choice of Donald Rumsfeld to be U.S. defense secretary could
put an unintended spotlight on the role of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon – a Bush
family benefactor – in funneling millions of dollars to communist North Korea in the
1990s as it was developing a missile and nuclear weapons program.
In 1998, Rumsfeld headed a special commission, appointed by the
Republican-controlled Congress, that warned that North Korea had made substantial
progress during the decade in building missiles that could pose a potential nuclear
threat to Japan and parts of the United States.
"The extraordinary level of resources North Korea and Iran are now devoting to
developing their own ballistic missile capabilities poses a substantial and immediate
danger to the U.S., its vital interests and its allies," said the report by Rumsfeld's
Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States.
"North Korea maintains an active WMD [weapons of mass destruction] program,
including a nuclear weapon program. It is known that North Korea diverted material
in the late 1980s for at least one or possibly two weapons," the report said.
Rumsfeld’s alarming assessment of North Korea’s war-making capabilities now is
being cited by Republicans as a justification for investing billions of taxpayer dollars
in an anti-missile defense system favored by Bush and Rumsfeld.
Yet, during the early-to-mid 1990s, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was
monitoring a series of clandestine payments from Sun Myung Moon's organization
to the North Korean communist leaders who were overseeing the country's military
strategies.
According to DIA documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act,
Moon’s payments to North Korean leaders included a $3 million “birthday present”
to current communist leader Kim Jong Il and offshore payments amounting to
“several tens of million dollars” to the previous communist dictator, Kim Il Sung.
The alleged payments – and broader Moon-North Korean business deals reported
by the DIA – came at a time of a strict U.S. government ban on financial
transactions between North Korea and any U.S. person or entity, to keep hard
currency out of North Korea's hands.
Legal experts say that ban would have applied to Moon given his status as a
permanent U.S. resident, even though he maintains South Korean citizenship.
Bush Speeches
While negotiating those business deals with North Korea in the 1990s, Moon’s
organization also hired former President George H.W. Bush and former First Lady
Barbara Bush to give speeches at Moon-sponsored events.
During one Moon-sponsored speech in Argentina in November 1996, former
President Bush declared, “I want to salute Reverend Moon,” whom Bush praised as
“the man with the vision.”
The father of the incoming U.S. president has refused to divulge how much Moon’s
organization paid for these speeches which were delivered in the United States,
Asia and South America.
Some press estimates have put the fees in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,
though one former leader of Moon’s Unification Church told me that the organization
had earmarked $10 million for the former president.
Ex-President Bush’s pro-Moon speeches came at a time, too, when Moon – now 80
– was expressing intensely anti-American views. In the mid-1990s, Moon
denounced the United States as “Satan’s harvest” and condemned American
women as having descended from a “line of prostitutes.”
In a speech to his followers on Aug. 4, 1996, Moon vowed to liquidate American
individuality, declaring that his movement would “swallow entire America.” Moon
said Americans who insisted on “their privacy and extreme individualism … will be
digested.”
Beyond these anti-Americanism diatribes, other questions have arisen about how
Moon finances his religious-business-political empire. Evidence has existed back to
the 1970s indicating that Moon’s organization has engaged in money-laundering
operations and has associated with right-wing organized-crime figures in Asia and
Latin America.
One of Moon's key early backers was Ryoichi Sasakawa, a leader of Japan's
Yakuza organized crime family, according to the authoritative book, Yakuza, by
David E. Kaplan & Alec Dubro.
In 1998, Moon’s ex-daughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, added first-hand testimony
about one of Moon's money-laundering methods when she described how cash was
smuggled illegally through U.S. Customs. Moon “demonstrated contempt for U.S.
law every time he accepted a paper bag full of untraceable, undeclared cash” carried
into the United States from overseas, she wrote in her book, In the Shadows of the
Moons.
Checkered Past
To many Americans, Moon is perhaps best known as a 1970s cult leader who
allegedly brainwashed young recruits into joining his Unification Church and then
paired up his followers in mass marriages where Moon would preside wearing lavish
costumes and crowns.
But Moon also understood the importance of political clout. In 1978, a congressional
investigation identified Moon as a part of a covert influence-buying scheme aimed at
American institutions and run by the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency, a
charge that Moon denied.
In 1982, Moon was convicted of tax fraud and served an 18-month sentence in
federal prison. Nevertheless, his political influence grew when he launched The
Washington Times, also in 1982.
In the years that followed, Moon developed a reputation for financing
all-expense-paid international conferences for conservative politicians, prominent
journalists and influential academics.
Moon’s conservative newspaper grew in importance in Washington through the
1980s and early 1990s, as it staunchly supported Republican presidents Ronald
Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
In 1991, President Bush expressed his gratitude to Moon’s newspaper by inviting its
editor, Wesley Pruden, to a private White House lunch “just to tell you how valuable
the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day.” [Washington
Times, May 17, 1992]
Moving North
At about the same time as that lunch, Moon was beginning another initiative –
establishing a business foothold in North Korea. The DIA, the Pentagon agency
responsible for monitoring possible military threats to the United States, started
keeping tabs on these developments.
Though historically an ardent anticommunist, Moon negotiated a sweeping business
deal with Kim Il Sung, the longtime communist leader, the DIA documents said. The
two men met face-to-face in North Korea from Nov. 30 to Dec. 8, 1991.
“These talks took place secretly, without the knowledge of the South Korean
government,” the DIA wrote on Feb. 2, 1994. “In the original deal with Kim [Il Sung],
Moon paid several tens of million dollars as a down-payment into an overseas
account,” the DIA said in another cable dated Aug. 14, 1994.
The DIA said Moon's organization also delivered money to Kim Il Sung's son and
successor, Kim Jong Il.
“In 1993, the Unification Church sold a piece of property located in Pennsylvania,”
the DIA reported on Sept. 9, 1994. “The profit on the sale, approximately $3 million
was sent through a bank in China to the Hong Kong branch of the KS [South
Korean] company ‘Samsung Group.’ The money was later presented to Kim Jung Il
[Kim Jong Il] as a birthday present.”
After Kim Il Sung's death in 1994 and his succession by his son, Kim Jong Il, Moon
dispatched his longtime aide, Bo Hi Pak, to ensure that the business deals were
still on track with Kim Jong Il “and his coterie,” the DIA reported.
“If necessary, Moon authorized Pak to deposit a second payment for Kim Jong Il,”
the DIA wrote.
As described by the DIA, Moon's deal with North Korea called for construction of a
hotel complex in Pyongyang as well as a new Holy Land at the site of Moon’s birth
in North Korea.
“There was an agreement regarding economic cooperation for the reconstruction of
KN's [North Korea's] economy which included establishment of a joint venture to
develop tourism at Kimkangsan, KN [North Korea]; investment in the Tumangang
River Development; and investment to construct the light industry base at Wonsan,
KN. It is believed that during their meeting Mun [Moon] donated 450 billion yen to
KN,” one DIA report said.
In late 1991, the Japanese yen traded at about 130 yen to the U.S. dollar, meaning
Moon's investment would have been about $3.5 billion, if the DIA information is
correct.
Pak's Response
Contacted in Seoul, South Korea, Bo Hi Pak, a former publisher of The Washington
Times, acknowledged that Moon met with North Korean officials and negotiated
business deals with them in the early 1990s.
But Bo Hi Pak denied that payments were made to individual North Korean leaders
and called “absolutely untrue” the DIA's description of the $3 million land sale
benefiting Kim Jong Il. Bo Hi Pak also said the North Korean business investments
were structured through South Korean entities.
“Rev. Moon is not doing this in his own name,” said Pak.
Pak said he did go to North Korea in 1994, after Kim Il Sung’s death, but only to
express “condolences” to Kim Jong Il on behalf of Moon and his wife. Pak denied
that another purpose of the trip was to pass money to Kim Jong Il or to his
associates.
In the phone interview, Bo Hi Pak also denied that Moon’s investments ever
approached $3.5 billion. Pak did not give a total figure for the investments, but said
the initial phase of an automobile factory was in the range of $3 million to $6 million.
The DIA depicted Moon's business plans in North Korea as much grander, however.
The DIA valued the agreement for hotels in Pyongyang and the resort in
Kumgang-san, alone, at $500 million. The plans also called for creation of a kind of
Vatican City covering Moon's birthplace.
“In consideration of Mun's [Moon's] economic cooperation, Kim [Il Sung] granted
Mun a 99-year lease on a 9 square kilometer parcel of land located in Chongchu,
Pyonganpukto, KN. Chongchu is Mun's birthplace and the property will be used as
a center for the Unification Church. It is being referred to as the Holy Land by
Unification Church believers and Mun [h]as been granted extraterritoriality during the
life of the lease.”
North Korean officials clearly valued their relationship with Moon, granting him small
but symbolic favors. Four months after Moon's 1991 meeting with Kim Il Sung, the
communist dictator granted a rare interview to editors from Moon's Washington
Times.
In February 2000, on Moon's 80th birthday, Kim Jong Il sent Moon a gift of rare wild
ginseng, an aromatic root used medicinally, Reuters reported.
Legal Issues
Because of the long-term U.S. embargo against North Korea – eased only last year
– Moon’s alleged payments to the communist leaders raise potential legal issues
for Moon, a South Korean citizen who is a U.S. permanent resident alien.
“Nobody in the United States was supposed to be providing funding to anybody in
North Korea, period, under the Treasury (Department's) sanction regime,” said
Jonathan Winer, former deputy assistant secretary of state handling international
crime.
The U.S. embargo of North Korea dates back to the Korean War. With a few
exceptions for humanitarian goods, the embargo barred trade and financial dealings
between North Korea and “all U.S. citizens and permanent residents wherever they
are located, … and all branches, subsidiaries and controlled affiliates of U.S.
organizations throughout the world.”
Moon became a permanent resident of the United States in 1973, according to
Justice Department records. Bo Hi Pak said Moon has kept his “green card” status.
Moon maintains a residence near Tarrytown, north of New York City, and controls
dozens of affiliated U.S. companies.
Direct payments to foreign leaders in connection with business deals also could
prompt questions about possible violations of the U.S. Corrupt Practices Act, a
prohibition against overseas bribery.
Political Fallout
Today, however, the potential political fallout might be a greater concern than any
legal action, especially once George W. Bush assumes the presidency.
For the past two years, Republicans have used Rumsfeld's report to club President
Clinton and Vice President Gore for alleged softness toward a recalcitrant
communist enemy.
In 1999, a House Republican task force followed up the work of Rumsfeld's
commission and declared that North Korea and its missile program had emerged as
a nuclear threat to Japan and possibly the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
"This threat has advanced considerably over the past five years, particularly with the
enhancement of North Korea's missile capabilities," said the Republican task force.
"Unlike five years ago, North Korea can now strike the United States with a missile
that could deliver high explosive, chemical, biological, or possibly nuclear weapons."
Ironically, Moon's newspaper joined in laying the blame for North Korea's progress
at the feet of the Clinton-Gore administration.
"To its list of missed opportunities, the Clinton-Gore administration can now add the
abdication of responsibility for national security," a Washington Times editorial
stated on Sept. 5, 2000.
Not surprisingly the Times did not mention that its founder and financial backer, Sun
Myung Moon, had lent a hand to North Korea by agreeing to multi-million-dollar
business deals and allegedly putting millions of dollars in the personal accounts of
the leaders masterminding the strategic weapons development.
Equally unsurprising, former President George H.W. Bush and his
about-to-be-president son have never explained the family's financial involvement
with Rev. Moon, a messianic leader who has vowed to build a movement powerful
enough to eliminate all individuality and freedom in the United States.
Those questions also aren't likely to come up at the confirmation hearings for
Donald Rumsfeld, who believes that the United States must now pursue an
expensive missile shield to counter the threat posed by North Korea.
Robert Parry is a veteran investigative reporter, who broke many of the Iran-contra
stories in the 1980s for The Associated Press and Newsweek.
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