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How Rev. Moon's 'Snakes' Infested US

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Robert Parry
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"Some Moonie-watchers even believe that some of the business enterprises are actually covers for drug trafficking," wrote Scott and Jon Lee Anderson.

While Moon's representatives have refused to detail how they've sustained their far-flung activities, Moon's spokesmen have angrily denied recurring allegations about profiteering off illegal trafficking in weapons and drugs.

In a typical response to a gun-running question by the Argentine newspaper, Clarin, Moon's representative Ricardo DeSena responded, "I deny categorically these accusations and also the barbarities that are said about drugs and brainwashing. Our movement responds to the harmony of the races, nations and religions and proclaims that the family is the school of love." [Clarin, July 7, 1996]

Without doubt, however, Moon's organization has had a long record of association with organized crime figures, including ones implicated in the drug trade. Besides collaborating with leaders of the Japanese yakuza and the Cocaine Coup government of Bolivia, Moon's organization developed close ties with the Honduran military and the Nicaraguan contra movement, both permeated with drug smugglers. [See Robert Parry's Lost History.]

On the Offensive

Moon's organization also used the Washington Times and its political clout in the nation's capital to intimidate or discredit government officials and journalists who tried to investigate Moon-connected criminal activities.

In the mid-1980s, for instance, when journalists and congressional investigators began probing the evidence of contra-drug trafficking, they came under attack from the Times.

An Associated Press story that I co-wrote with Brian Barger about a Miami-based federal probe into gun- and drug-running by the contras was denigrated in an April 11, 1986, front-page Washington Times article with the headline: "Story on [contra] drug smuggling denounced as political ploy."

When Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, conducted a Senate probe and uncovered additional evidence of contra-drug trafficking, the Washington Times denounced him, too. The newspaper first published articles depicting Kerry's probe as a wasteful political witch hunt.

"Kerry's anti-contra efforts extensive, expensive, in vain," announced the headline of one Times article on Aug. 13, 1986.

But when Kerry exposed more contra wrongdoing, the Washington Times shifted tactics. In 1987 in front-page articles, it began accusing Kerry's staff of obstructing justice because their investigation was supposedly interfering with Reagan administration efforts to get at the truth.

"Kerry staffers damaged FBI probe," said a Jan. 21, 1987, Times article that opened with the assertion: "Congressional investigators for Sen. John Kerry severely damaged a federal drug investigation last summer by interfering with a witness while pursuing allegations of drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan resistance, federal law enforcement officials said."

Despite the attacks, Kerry's contra-drug investigation eventually concluded that a number of contra units both in Costa Rica and Honduras were implicated in the cocaine trade.

"It is clear that individuals who provided support for the contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers," Kerry's investigation stated in a report issued April 13, 1989.

"In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring or immediately thereafter."

Kerry's investigation also found that Honduras had become an important way station for cocaine shipments heading north during the contra war.
"Elements of the Honduran military were involved ... in the protection of drug traffickers from 1980 on," the report said. "These activities were reported to appropriate U.S. government officials throughout the period.

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
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