One of the first well-wishers arriving in La Paz to congratulate the new government was Moon's top lieutenant, Bo Hi Pak. The Moon organization published a photo of Pak meeting with the new strongman, General Garcia Meza.
After the visit to the mountainous capital, Pak declared, "I have erected a throne for Father Moon in the world's highest city."
According to later Bolivian government and newspaper reports, a Moon representative invested about $4 million in preparations for the coup. Bolivia's WACL representatives also played key roles, and CAUSA, one of Moon's anti-communist organizations, listed as members nearly all the leading Bolivian coup-makers.
Soon, Colonel Luis Arce-Gomez, a coup organizer and the cousin of cocaine kingpin Roberto Suarez, went into partnership with big narco-traffickers, including Trafficante's Cuban-American smugglers. Nazi war criminal Barbie and his young neo-fascist followers found new work protecting Bolivia's major cocaine barons and transporting drugs to the border.
"The paramilitary units conceived by Barbie as a new type of SS sold themselves to the cocaine barons," German journalist Kai Hermann wrote. "The attraction of fast money in the cocaine trade was stronger than the idea of a national socialist revolution in Latin America."
A month after the coup, General Garcia Meza participated in the Fourth Congress of the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation, an arm of the World Anti-Communist League. Also attending that Fourth Congress was WACL president Woo Jae Sung, a leading Moon disciple.
As the drug lords consolidated their power in Bolivia, the Moon organization expanded its presence, too. Hermann reported that in early 1981, war criminal Barbie and Moon leader Thomas Ward were seen together in apparent prayer.
On May 31, 1981, Moon representatives sponsored a CAUSA reception at the Sheraton Hotel's Hall of Freedom in La Paz. Moon's lieutenant Bo Hi Pak and Bolivian strongman Garcia Meza led a prayer for President Reagan's recovery from an assassination attempt.
In his speech, Bo Hi Pak declared, "God had chosen the Bolivian people in the heart of South America as the ones to conquer communism." According to a later Bolivian intelligence report, the Moon organization sought to recruit an "armed church" of Bolivians, with about 7,000 Bolivians receiving some paramilitary training.
Moon's Escape
But by late 1981, the cocaine taint of Bolivia's military junta was so deep and the corruption so staggering that U.S.-Bolivian relations were stretched to the breaking point.
"The Moon sect disappeared overnight from
Bolivia as clandestinely as they had arrived," Hermann reported.
The Cocaine Coup leaders soon found themselves on the run, too.
Interior Minister Arce-Gomez was eventually extradited to Miami and
was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking. Drug lord
Roberto Suarez got a 15-year prison term. General Garcia Meza became a
fugitive from a 30-year sentence imposed on him in Bolivia for abuse of
power, corruption and murder.
Ex-Gestapo official Barbie, known as the
"butcher of Lyon," was returned to France to face a life sentence for
war crimes. He died in 1991.
But Moon's organization suffered few negative repercussions from the
Cocaine Coup. By the early 1980s, flush with seemingly unlimited funds,
Moon had moved on to promoting himself with the new Republican
administration in Washington.
Yet, where Moon got his cash remained one of Washington's deepest mysteries and one that few U.S. conservatives wanted to solve.
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