Covert Action
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• 'Privatising' covert action: the case of the Unification Church • Wallace on Pincher on Wallace • Western Goals (UK) • Publications: • Books: The Dirty War and The SAS in Ireland : • The Terrorism Industry • Miscellaneous Publications Lobster is Robin Ramsay (0482 447558) and Steven Dorril (0484 681388). All written correspondence should be sent to Lobster 214 Westbourne Avenune, Hull, HU5 3JB. UK Lobster receives no subsidy other than the occasional generosity of its readers. Contributors to this Lobster are • Jeffrey Bale, who used to edit Maximum Rock and Roll and is currently finishing a PhD at the University of California; • Mike Hughes, who is a Leeds-based free-lance journalist and researcher; • David Teacher, a translator, researcher, author of a study of Tolstoy, and Lobster's European correspondent; • and Colin Wallace, who is in management eduacation. The photograph on the front cover is the copyright of the Unificationm Church and has been lifted from Covert Action Information Bulletin Previous Lobsters • 9, 10, 13, 14 are £1.25 each (UK); $3.00 (US/Canada); £2.00 (Europe, Australia, New Zealand) • 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18 are £2.25 each (UK); $4.50 (US/Canada); £3.50 (Europe, Australia, New Zealand) • 19 is £4.50 (UK); $9.00 (US/Canada); £3.50 (Europe, Australasia) • The Special Issue is £5.50 (UK); $10.00 (US/Canada); £6.50 (Europe, Australasia) These prices incude postage -- airmail to overseas. NB. Outside the UK please send either International Money Orders, or cheques drawn on UK banks or cash. Orders to Lobster 214 Westbourne Avenune, Hull, HU5 3JB. UK 'Privatising' covert action: the case of the Unification Church Jeffrey M. Bale 'You don't investigate people for why they think but for what they do.' - former Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti (1) Introduction If nothing else, the Iran-Contra scandal temporarily illuminated the extent to which ostensibly private organizations have been helping secretive elements within the American government -- in this case the core of the executive branch's national security bureaucracy -- to circumvent Congressional restrictions regarding the conduct of certain important aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Information that has surfaced in the course of both official and unofficial investigations of this affair has not only revealed the widespread use of 'proprietaries' and dummmy companies by U.S. intelligence and military personnel -- a long-standing practice -- but also the fact that numerous formally independent organizations have willingly engaged in operations that were blatantly illegal, not to mention immoral. (2) In a few instances this aid may have been provided solely for financial or narrow political gain, but in most cases it also resulted from a convergence of the rightist political aims of both the 'private' groups and factions within the national security apparatus created by President Ronald Reagan and his advisors. Among the groups that have participated in these activities are the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), the Air Commando Association (ACA), the National Defense Council (NDC), Refugee Relief International (RRI), Civilian Military/Material Assistance (CMA), and Sun-Myung Moon's cultic Unification Church (UC), to name only a few. (3) Herein I examine some of the covert and clandestine political connections of the last of the above-named organizations. The vast majority of the existing literature on 'cults' falls into one of four categories: journalistic exposes; personal accounts by former members, their relatives, or their friends; social science analyses; or theological assessments. In all of these categories save the last, attention is normally focussed on the techniques used by particular cults to recruit new members and subsequently control their behaviour, if not their very thoughts. This focus is somewhat understandable, for it is precisely the systematic use of these techniques -- selective recruitment of vulnerable targets, initial deception concerning group affiliation and purposes, extreme forms of peer-group pressure, isolation from mainstream society, sensory overload, sleep and protein deprivation, constant surveillance, enforced lack of privacy, and ideological indoctrination -- that serve to set cults apart from more ordinary organizations in modern industrialized societies. (4) And it is precisely because they are so extraordinary that they elicit such widespread personal and professional fascination. Yet this almost exclusive focus tends to distract attention from other potentially significant aspects of cult behaviour, including their political interaction with the outside world. This is especially unfortunate in the case of the Unification Church, or 'Moonie' cult. While most cults both engage in disreputable political activities (at least on the local level) and have noticeable totalitarian propensities and ramifications,(5) the UC has long had an explicitly political agenda. As Moon, the Korean evangelist who founded the church, has said, 'we cannot separate the political field from the religious.....segregation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most.' (6) Given such an orientation, it is clearly necessary to consider Moon's political activities in order to properly evaluate the role and functioning of the UC. Many people have examined aspects of Moon's political work; but they have often done so from an overly traditional political perspective, one which narrowly concerns itself with explicating the Church's overt attempts to influence political decisions and policies in the countries within which it operates. Thus, for example, Moon's attempts to support Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate crisis, raise money for a variety of anti-communist causes, and influence Congressional votes through lobbying are reasonably well known; (7) and due to the extraordinary efforts of the House Subcommittee chaired by former Minnesota Representative Donald Fraser (Democrat), some of the more sordid activities of the 'Moon Organizations' have also been exposed to public view.(8) Nevertheless, despite these suggestive and important findings, the general view of the Moonies remains one of either bemused distaste for a bunch of 'religious kooks', or, at most, fear of the UC's purported 'brainwashing' abilities. (9) The degree to which Moon has been able to mislead the public and conceal the UC's authoritarian political agenda behind a religious image -- however 'heretical' or unconventional -- is best exemplified by the amount of support he has garnered from mainstream church spokesmen in the wake of his prosecution for tax fraud. Even liberal and left-leaning ministers, as well as certain American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) officials, have adopted his view that his incarceration for illegal financial activities was a case of 'religious persecution'.(10) To counter this deceptive imagery, which is sutained by systematic and extensive propaganda of the most transparent sort, some of the lesser-known political activities of the organizational complex run by Moon and his right-hand man, 'former' Korean Army colonel Bo-Hi Pak, (11) must be sketched. It should then become clearer that Moon's actions geared towards external social control, backed as they are by extensive economic and political resources, constitute the most serious threat posed by the UC. When compared to this external danger, the internal social control mechanism of the 'Moonie' cult pale into insignificance -- except, of course, to the individuals it recruits and subjects to 'thought reform'.(12) In this study I will only cover two of Moon's many covert political operations. First, the links between the UC and the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) will be explored. This will necessarily involve a discussion of the early history and structural features of both organizations, particularly the establishment of joint front groups. Second, the intimate connection between the UC and the World Anti- Communist League, an international umbrella organization encompassing numerous extreme right and neo-Nazi groups, will be revealed. Both of these interconnections are indicative of Moon's authoritarian political agenda, but they by no means exhaust the range of UC covert and clandestine operations. The Unification Church-Korean Central Intelligence Agency connection Of the topics to be covered herein, the links between the UC and the repressive Chung-Hee Park regime in South Korea have received the most publicity. Congressional investigations of the so-called 'Korea-gate' scandal, which involved both overt and covert efforts by the Republic of Korea (ROK) government to manipulate U.S. policy toward Korea, generated hundreds of articles throughout the world. Yet depite all the media attentions and the thousands of pages of Congressional hearings, the precise nature of those links remains difficult to untangle. One reason for this is that the House Subcommittee's data are incomplete in some crucial areas; another is that sensationalized media accounts often suggested more than the evidence warranted. I do not pretend to definitively answer all of these questions below, but I hope to clear up some of the major misunderstandings that have arisen about Moon's relationship with the Park regime. Perhaps the best starting point is provided by the rash of eye-opening newspaper articles that appeared in mid-March of 1978, which the following headline in the 16 March Washington Star perfectly summarized: 'Moon's Church Founded by Korean CIA Chief as Political