Former WH officials headline along dictator at event hosted by a group House Intelligence report says was started by Korean CIA
Former White House leadership headlines an event hosted by a group known for its coercive behavior, sex abuse, connections to foreign intel, fraud, spreading disinformation, and extremist ideology.
The Moon Behind the Meeting
Former White House officials headlined alongside a dictator known for “egregious human rights abuses” at an event held by a religious cult with a history of coercive behavior, sex abuse, links to foreign intelligence, fraud, spreading disinformation, and extremist ideology. Former Vice President Pence, former Representative Gingrich, former Secretary of State Pompeo, and the Former Secretary of Defense Esper headlined an event—called the “Rally of Hope.
The group’s founder once famously “donned a crown in a Senate office building and declared himself the Messiah while members of Congress watched.”
In the 70s, there were concerns about Moon’s potential ties to the Korean CIA. The New York Times reported in 1979 on a House Investigation that the group’s origins were less than organic. “Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church was founded by a director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, Kim Chong Pil, as a political tool in 1961.”
Vague press releases from 1977 indicate that the House intelligence committee believed that the “South Korean government may have been involved in Moon's efforts in 1974 to arouse U. S. public opinion against the proposed impeachment of President Nixon.”
It begs the question: What are American leaders doing there?
The Unification Church, sometimes called the “Moonies” after founder Sun Myung Moon, has long sought to make inroads with American politicians and the public. The efforts date back to the 1960s.
“‘Plenty of Republicans have sought [the late] Rev. Moon’s endorsement,’ said Catherine Wessinger, a professor of religious history at Loyola University New Orleans.'“
—Esack, 2018
Rev. Hyung “Sean” Jin Moon, a son of the “Moonies” founder, appears willing to give that endorsement. Exposition of Divine Principle, the group’s religious text, roughly reiterates the genesis account but differs in that it regards Christ as having failed. Sun Myung Moon held that a second coming was necessary. He also believed he was that second coming.
The children of Sun Myung Moon
Justin Moon opened a manufacturing factory in Pennsylvania for his firearms company Kahr in 2014. “Half the population are NRA members,” Moon stated when asked why he chose the location. The firearms factory is handy, given one of the foundational tenants of the faith: gun ownership.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the church includes a “Peace Police Peace Militia,” a militia trained in martial arts, hand-to-hand knife combat, and assault weapons. The Moonies are known for carrying AK- or AR-style rifles in religious ceremonies like the one in 2018.
The Moon cult seeks favor mostly from conservatives. A key mechanism of influence was the paper founded by the Moonies in 1982: Washington Times.
The idea came to Moon while he served a sentence for tax fraud.
In the mid-1980s Moon served 13 months in prison for failure to declare $162,000 in taxable income. Ever the entrepreneur, he made arrangements in prison to start the conservative Washington Times, saying he did it “to fulfill God’s desperate desire to save this world.”
By 1985, Ronald Reagan was reading the Washington Times every morning, giving the theocratic Moon cult leader a direct line of influence to, arguably, the most consequential world leader.
Wielding Unholy Influence
Pence, Gingrich, Pompeo, and Esper did not comment on their appearances at the event. Whether they received payment and what motivated them to associate with the group are questions that should be asked if they should seek to return to public office again.
Former Vice President Pence, known for his strict adherence to evangelical Christianity, was the most puzzling of the four former officials to appear.
“Mike Pence is the 24-karat-gold model of what we want in an evangelical politician,” Richard Land, the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary and one of Trump’s faith advisers, told me. “I don’t know anyone who’s more consistent in bringing his evangelical-Christian worldview to public policy.”
Why would the man described in the previous passage appear for a group that claimed Christ’s death was insufficient and God wished the Moon’s leader to take over the world? Diverse though Christianity may be, the idea that Christ was insufficient constitutes heresy to most Christians.
In the 1970s, the National Council of Churches rejected Moon’s theology as “incompatible with Christian teaching and belief.”
The former Secretary of Defense and former Vice President could be seen as having indirectly lent credibility to these ideas and legitimacy to the group. Still more worrisome was the men presented alongside the leader of the other CCP—the Cambodian People’s Party.
Other speakers had been implicated in serious crimes or human rights violations before the event, but Hun Sen has a decades-long, documented history. Under Hun Sen, officials seized land from Cambodian citizens, increasing their wealth, and feared little thanks to judiciary capture. When the Cambodian
People’s Party lost in a fair election in 1993, he refused the results and threatened violence using a fake succession movement, according to human rights reports.
Given what occurred in the United States in January 2021, the association with Hun Sen is blood-chilling.
Appendix
An FBI memorandum on Moon organization’s beliefs:
Moon’s political influence efforts in Washington go much farther back, decades. The FBI memorandum details that Moon’s defense of Nixon may have been related to his belief that powerful friends would help him “conquer and subjugate the world.”
The Moon cult’s courting of the conservative establishment did not go unnoticed. An article from 1984 outlines the worrisome fusion of the Unification Church to conservatives in politics. The considerable wealth accumulated by the Moon family was included in that relationship.
"The Unification Church is trying to buy its way into the conservative movement," charged Neal B. Blair, president of Free the Eagle, a Washington-based conservative lobbying group.
"Moon says he's the son of God and the savior of the world. . . . It's frightening. Seldom have we had a group come into this country before and have this much money to spend." This is not the first time that the church's political activities have generated controversy.
In the 1970s, church officials organized prayer breakfasts and rallies in support of President Richard M. Nixon, dispatched young female members to infiltrate congressional offices and had extensive "operational ties" with the Korean Central Intelligence Agency as part of the agency's efforts to influence U.S. officials, according to a 1978 report by a House subcommittee.
The historical record suggests that Moon significantly influenced both Nixon and Reagan. Records show he was also a generous benefactor to President George Bush Senior. The Moon cult’s participation in American politics did not end in the 80s or 90s. See AR-Trump above.
Member demographics
Nearly 40% of members studied reported “serious emotional problems,” and they scored highly on “neurotic distress.” A quarter reported substance use disorders before joining. The data suggest that the church may have been exploiting people who were more vulnerable than average, perhaps those seeking a sense of belonging.
Report
Investigation of Korean-American relations: report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, U.S. House of Representatives. (1978). United States: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Federal investigations of Sun Myung Moon - documents 7 to 15