Korean Evangelist Moon Funnels Millions To Bush Family Coffers

Church & State, Jul/Aug 2006

Controversial Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon continues his financial outreach to former President George H.W. Bush and his family.

Houston Chronicle columnist Rick Casey reported last month that the Moon-owned Washington Times Foundation gave $1 million to the Greater Houston Community Foundation in 2004 - funds that eventually found their way to Bush's presidential library.

As the paper reported, the Houston foundation took the Moon money and later made a grant in excess of $2 million to the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation at Texas A&M University. A spokesman for the Bush family confirmed that part of the money came from Moon's group.

That's not the only example of Moon throwing cash at Bush lately. In September of 2005, the Universal Peace Federation, yet another Moon front group, gave $1 million to Bush's Points of Light Foundation, ostensibly to fund Hurricane Katrina relief.

Moon's financial outreach extends to other members of the Bush family as well. The Washington Times Foundation recently purchased educational materials for public schools from Ignite! Learning, a company owned by Neil Bush, the current president's brother. The material is loaded into a purple box called "curriculum on wheels" (COW).

The Washington Times reported last month that the newspaper's foundation is currently offering the COW to D.C.-area schools. The foundation, the newspaper said, "is helping introduce the COW into school districts areawide as part of the company's commitment to assisting elementary, middle school and secondary school education."

In May, former First Lady Barbara Bush appeared at a pro-literacy fundraising event in Bethesda, Md., in support of her Foundation for Family Literacy. Among the event's corporate cosponsors was The Washington Times.

The newspaper's report of the event featured a picture of former president Bush hobnobbing with Washington Times President Douglas D. M. Joo and his wife Myung Mi Joo.

Why is Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah who seeks to unite the religious and political worlds under his reign, so interested in pumping cash into the Bush family coffers? Casey's source for the information believes Moon hopes the elder Bush will use his influence to persuade his son to give Moon a pardon.

Moon was convicted of tax evasion in 1982 and served 13 months of an 18-month sentence at a federal prison. A federal pardon could help clear his name. Moon submitted a pardon request during the tenure of the first President Bush but later withdrew it.

Jim McGrath, a spokesman for the former president, insisted Moon is wasting his money if he's trying to buy a pardon.

"That's not the way the Bushes operate," he insisted.

The latest overtures to the Bushes merely continue Moon's trend of targeting this powerful political dynasty. The elder Bush addressed Moon gatherings in Japan in 1996. British newspapers reported that he was compensated for this in the six figures. He also spoke at a Moon event in Argentina.

After George W. Bush was declared winner in the disputed election of 2000, Moon operatives pushed hard for his "faith-based" initiative and, in return, were richly rewarded. A Moon front group called Free Teens has received taxpayer money to run an "abstinence-based" sex education program for young people, and a separate Moon group. Service for Peace, got $80,000 from the Corporation for National and Community Service in December to support service projects in conjunction with the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. The Bush administration has also given tax money to Moon groups to run marriage-improvement seminars.