More on Moon and Douglas Wead

Axis of logic mentions my comments about GOPUSA as a possible Moon front, but notes that I haven't...

...explored Moon's deeper connection to the Japanese fascists connected to moon, the fact that Moon has done over a year in prison for his white collar crimes, and the clear agenda he has.

Well, these matters certainly do deserve mention. If I may be allowed to begin on a personal note:

I first encountered street Moonies back in the early 1970s. In my wayward youth, I sometimes visited Hollywood Boulevard to see movies and buy old comics and books. The place wasn't as frightening in those days as it later became -- even though it was crawling with cultists, who provided a very entertaining freak show.

Hare Krishnas chanted daily. The Tony Alamo cult placed its choir near the Chinese theater. I caught a glimpse of a few robed holdovers from the Process Church of the Final Judgment. The Order of the Black Ram kept a very unnerving museum, later purchased by Faruiza Balk. The NOI representatives, looking sharp in their black suits, were surprisingly willing to debate a white kid. The Scientologists were annoying and frightening. A buxom lovely from the Children of God seemed downright desperate to de-virginize me; although tempted, I was flummoxed when she mixed Jesus into her proposition. (She remains one of the great "what ifs?" of my life. Wonder what happened to her?)

(Incidentally, the Children of God -- a cult notorious for permitting sex with children -- maintains a choir which was once invited to sing for the elder Bush at the White House!)

Returning to Hollywood in the early '70s: The only cultists more frightening than the Hubbardians were the Moonies. I talked to a few street representatives of the good Reverend -- one of them was a cute Asian who probably ended up entertaining VIPs at Tongsun Park's notorious little club. She looked a tad underfed, and seemed to waft through life in a state of perpetual hypnosis; I wanted to wave my hand in front of her face to see if she would blink.

One day, the Moonies covered every available space on the boulevard with posters of Moon announcing his rally for Nixon. This was during the doggiest of the dog days of Watergate, when nobody supported Nixon.

"What the hell?" I thought. Where did Moon get the money for so many expensively-produced full-color posters -- not to mention the up-front costs of a full-scale rally? That Asian cutie with the thousand-yard stare couldn't have sold that many flowers. And why the hell was Moon investing so much cash into so hopeless a cause as Dick Nixon?

Cut to: Many years later. I visit the Nixon library. Outside the main building is an ostentatious gold fountain. A plaque names the donor:

Ryoichi Sasakawa.

That was the Nixon connection to Moon.

Nobody knows the source of Moon's money, but much of it seems to have flowed into his coffers by way of Sasakawa, a businessman who was one of the most dangerous Japanese war criminals of World War II -- indeed, his was one of the primary voices in Japan calling for aggression against the United States. A close friend of Admiral Yamoto, Sasakawa represented the Mitsubishi firm, which built ships for the Imperial Navy of Japan. After the war, Sasakawa somehow gained a monopoly on motorboat race gambling, which is a massive industry in his country.

Substantial evidence links Sasakawa to the Yakuza. He also headed, for a time, the World Anti-Communist League. Moon himself called the League "fascist." Although the Korean messiah was heavily linked to the group, he once made a superficial show of severing his connections -- which continued in a subterranean fashion.

Moon's "church" is, in sum and in short, largely a mechanism for organizing and financing post-war fascism. Moon front groups have had economic and/or personal linkages to WACL, to the fascist National Front party of France, and to Western Goals -- itself linked to the National Front, to the John Birch Society, to death squad leaders, to apartheid South Africa, and to a host of similar unlovelies.

Moon funded the "cocaine coup" which briefly brought fascists (including Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie) to power in Bolivia.

Another key early figure in Moon's Unification Church was Japanese terrorist leader and war criminal Yoshio Kodama, who, after the war, became perhaps the most important power within the Yakuza.

In the 1970s, the Fraser Committee investigated Moon's role in the Tongsun Park blackmail/bribery scandal. The lead investigator was Robert Boettcher, who later wrote a book about Moon called Gifts of Deceit, which reveals in its opening pages that the Korean "messiah" would show Nazi films to his young followers to "instill discipline." He has loudly proclaimed America to be "satanic" in its individualism, and has praised Germany for training its citizens in "totalism."

These Nazified alliances did nothing to scare off the Bush family, which has been linked with Moon's group since the 1970s. As the Inside the Moonies site notes,

Several Congressmen were entertained in a Washington Hilton hotel suite rented by the Moonies. Everything the girls learned about Senators and Congressmen was to be entered into the Moonie's confidential file, including details of personal lives. Rev. Moon was Vice President George Bush's guest to the Reagan inaugural.

Moon is quoted in many publications as saying, "I will conquer and subjugate the world. I am your brain. The time will come, without my seeking it, when my words will almost serve as law. If I ask a certain thing, it will be done. If I don't want something, it will not be done."

The continuing Bush alliance no doubt stems in part from Moon's illimitable (and no doubt illicit) treasure house, which funds much of the conservative movement.

Where did he get this unending fortune? Much of it may stem from the astonishing amount of gold and other booty stolen by the Japanese during World War II. One of these caches was given the label "Golden Lily" and stashed in various hideaways in the Philippines. Sterling Seagrave's Gold Warriors avers that a substantial portion of this treasure was recovered by private efforts, led by WACL and its one-time leader, John K. Singlaub. Seagrave's book includes

handwritten letters and diagrams showing how a group of senior U.S. Government officials and Pentagon generals hoped to use Golden Lily treasure to create a new private FBI and a military-industrial complex controlled by them, in partnership with the John Birch Society, the Moonies and far-right tycoons. This is confirmed by tape recordings of a 1987 conference in Hong Kong that included retired U.S. Army General John Singlaub and General Robert Schweitzer of the National Security Council under President Reagan.

(My emphasis added.) In another place, I may explain why I believe that Rupert Murdoch is one of the afore-mentioned "far-right tycoons." Western Goals, interestingly enough, seems to have been born in the John Birch cauldron.

The explosive growth of right-wing media occurred directly the recovery of the Golden Lily treasure. Coincidence?

One can go say much more about the fascist tentacles of the self-proclaimed Lord of the Second Advent. For more data, see here and here and, of course, Robert Parry's must-read series.

One of Parry's pieces quotes moderate Republican Jim Leach as saying that the Unification Church

has "infiltrated the New Right and the party it wants to control, the Republican Party, and infiltrated the media as well." Leach's news conference was disrupted when then-college GOP leader Grover Norquist accused Leach of lying. (Norquist is now a prominent conservative leader in Washington with close ties to the highest levels of George W. Bush's administration.)

Norquist got his start as the leader of a group called College Republicans, which was funded by Moon. Of course, Norquist has since gone onto infamy in the current administration -- although he isn't nearly infamous enough for his role in founding the Islamic Institute, directed by one Abdurahman Alamoudi. Almoudi has made no secret of his support for Hamas and Hezbollah.

Yes, I have strayed somewhat from Moon. Suffice it to say that his money makes him the key figure linking the allegedly "respectable" Republican right and its evangelical confreres with that ghastly band who long for the days of Tojo and Adolf.

For now, let us return to Douglas Wead, a Bush family consigliere who specializes in wooing the fundamentalist vote, and recently made famous as the man who made embarrassing secret tape recordings of George W Bush. (The tapes have supposedly been turned over to Bush -- but if you think no copies were made, you're very naive.) In a previous post, I've noted that Wead has been connected to Moon.

Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty describes Wead as "an Assemblies of God minister for two decades, formerly associated with Amway, singer Pat Boone, and televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker." Amway is one of the greatest annoyances ever to afflict this nation, while the Bakkers were crooks of the lowest order. (The fact that Martha Stewart did time while Tammy Faye stayed free tells you much about what is wrong with our justice system.)

Wead was both a personal friend of the Bakkers and a chief fundraiser for their "PTL Club," which was largely a vehicle for theft. After the Jessica Hahn scandal (she has had some interesting things to say about Wead's political ambitions), Wead turned against his former friends and helped move their assets into the control of Jerry Falwell -- who has since become folded into Moon's empire.

In January 1991, Wead organized a prayer breakfast sponsored by the Reverend Moon, who spoke at the event, much to the consternation of some attendees. Another speaker was Anthony Evans, a leader in the Dominionist movement, devoted to replacing democracy with a Christian theocracy. As readers will recall, a key funder of this movement is the Ahmanson family -- which owns ES&S, the company that counts many of our votes.

Wead also has links to the American Freedom Coalition, funded and staffed by Moon's people.

Names, names, names...! The moment one attempts to track who works with whom in these circles, one soon finds oneself entangled in a vast web of associations. Wead is particularly well connected -- such, at least, is the purport of a terrific recent expose titled "Wead in the Rose Garden".

A few excerpts:

When you scratch beneath Doug Wead's surface you find an Assemblies of God minister who divorced his wife, a man involved with pyramid schemes, televangelizing faith healers and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

Here is more on the Amway connection:

Wead and another kingpin, Jean Godzich, eventually branched out and set up an Amway in France. In 1986, the French government began investigating it and decided the company was a dangerous mind-control cult, and a fraudulent business. Amway France terminated the distributorship of Godzich, from whose group most of the complaints had originated.

"So what do Wead and Godzich do next? They set up a new MLM in France, called Groupement or GEPM. Its product line consisted of Amway products, its business structure was identical to Amway France, and its cultic activities were just as blatant as they were in the first operation.

"After receiving numerous complaints about GEPM, French authorities moved in to shut it down, but this time it issued criminal arrest warrants, 13 for the company's distributors, and 2 for Godzich and Wead. Godzich took all the cash and fled the country and Wead never returned to France."

Wead is also on the board of an extremely lucrative "faith healing" church (some would use the word "racket") run by one Benny Hinn. This page offers a skeptical look at Hinn.

About those tapes:

Many on the left theorize that Wead's revelations were a Rovian ploy to distract from the emergent Gannon/Guckert scandal. As noted earlier, I am unconvinced by this argument.

The tapes highlighted the Bush family's disingenuous use of Christian "code words" designed to appeal to the evangelical voters. Many of these same voters long suspected that the elder Bush's embrace of fundamentalism was insincere. The White House cannot have wanted those fears re-awakened.

More importantly: The tapes highlighted W's stance on gay issues -- a stance which cannot have strengthened his standing among the religious rightists. Bush is quoted as saying that the Republican party should stay away from bashing gays, a view which coalesces with what we have heard from other sources. (I doubt that our President holds a personal grudge against homosexuals, although he is perfectly willing to side with gay-bashers for political gain.) His words may have pleased some Democrats, but they must have alienated many who voted for him.

Bush's secretly recorded comments may remind the more savvy evangelicals of the whispered relationship between the President and his former roommate, Victor Ashe. Many web sites describe Ashe as gay.

(Ashe and Bush were male cheerleaders at Yale. I never tire of mentioning that.)

Few have placed the recent controversy in the context of Wead's earlier association with Bush the elder. In 1990, Bush extended the Disabilities Act to AIDS sufferers, a move which angered Wead, who vehemently disagreed with the President's decision to invite gay representatives to the signing of the bill. Wead either left the White House voluntarily or was fired; accounts differ. He went on to denounce GHWB at a 1990 conference of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Some argue that Wead's public rift with Poppy led to weakened fundamentalist support in 1992. The lost election of that year may have had been, in some measure, Wead's revenge.

Given that history, and given the notorious vindictiveness of the Bush family, I cannot believe that Wead's later relationship with W was simply due to a confluence of religious values. Wead got a taste of power in 1988 and (especially) in 1992. I believe that he remains a manipulator, and I believe that the tapes represented an reminder of his power.

Wead has an agenda. But is it the same as Reverend Moon's agenda?

Moon's agenda remains the installation of a fascist theocracy.