Times officials sent a statement in reply, noting, "The complete editorial independence of the Washington Times is well-known, and envied, throughout the newspaper industry."
Throughout the Reagan years, the paper gained respect and influence by lending editorial support " and money -- to causes favored by the Administration. The contra forces battling the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, for example, received editorial support and money from the Times. Here's how it worked:
In March 1985, Oliver North wrote a top-secret memo proposing the formation of a private foundation called the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund. Its purpose was to circumvent a Congressional ban on aid to the contras. Less than two months later, the Times announced the birth of the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund in a front-page editorial. Editor de Borchgrave insisted he was "surprised" at the coincidence between his paper's initiative and North's secret project, but the Times contributed the first $100,000 to the Fund.
Another pet project of the Reagan Administration was the Strategic Defense Initiative " SDI, or "Star Wars." It too received support from the Times.
"Reverend Moon's organization has been very supportive of the Strategic Defense Initiative," former Defense and Central Intelligence official Daniel Graham told me. Graham had co-produced a pro-Star Wars video that was seen on four hundred televisions stations.
"It's called 'One Incoming,' Graham said, "And it includes a scenario that I got Tom Clancy to write for us, and I got Charlton Heston to do the voiceover. It cost a lot of money to produce it " $200,000 " and I'm sure that's where the money came from to produce that movie."
Moon's media tentacles also reached into book publishing, including one called Inquisition, a purportedly independent investigation of Moon's 1982 tax fraud prosecution, released by the right-wing publishing house Regnery-Gateway. Its author, Carlton Sherwood, was a reporter who once worked for the Washington Times. (Sherwood made headlines in 2004 when he produced the controversial video Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, which featured interviews with American POW's in North Vietnam who complained that they had been maltreated as a direct result of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Fulbright Hearing Testimony in 1971.
Inquisition had a curious history. An obscure publishing house called Andromeda had printed it once before. The phone number listed for Andromeda was the home phone of former Reagan National Security Council official Roger Fontaine " also an ex-reporter at the Washington Times. But when we called Fontaine's house, his wife Judy answered and told us that the company was bankrupt and that Inquisition was published by Regnery-Gateway. Alfred Regnery is the head of Regnery-Gateway.
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