Koreagate Scandal
Though it's clear the church did collaborate with the KCIA during the 1960s and '70s, it's murkier whether Moon was using the KCIA or it was using him. In many ways, the agendas of the two organizations overlapped: the alliance gave Moon political protection and business opportunities, while the KCIA got a cover for promoting South Korean interests inside the United States, the country responsible for South Korea's defense.
But the South Korean scheme backfired in the late 1970s with the explosion of a scandal dubbed "Koreagate." Rep. Donald Fraser, D-Minn., led a congressional probe which tracked Tongsun Park's influence-buying campaign and exposed the KCIA links to the Unification Church.
Moon and his new U.S. conservative allies mounted a strong defense, however. In pro-Moon publications, Fraser and his staff were pilloried as leftists. Anti-Moon witnesses were assailed as unstable liars. Minor bookkeeping problems inside the investigation, such as Fraser's salary advances to some staff members, were seized upon to justify demands for an ethics probe of the congressman.
One of those ethics letters, dated June 30, 1978, came from John T. "Terry" Dolan of the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC). Dolan's group was pioneering the strategy of "independent" TV attack ads which smeared liberal Democrats. In turn, Moon's CAUSA International helped Dolan by contributing $500,000 to a Dolan group, known as the Conservative Alliance or CALL. < Washington Post, Sept. 17, 1984>
With support from Dolan and others, Moon weathered the Koreagate political storm. Fraser lost a Senate bid in 1978 and was out of Congress. Then, in 1980, Reagan won the White House and extended a VIP invitation for Moon to attend the presidential inaugural. The theocrat had arrived.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon4.html'Koreagate' Figure Tied To Oil-for-Food Scandal
Businessman Allegedly Received $2 Million From Iraq
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 15, 2005; Page A19
"An American success story" was how Tongsun Park described himself when he first came to the attention of the media and the FBI, in 1977, with gifts of hundreds of thousands of dollars to prominent politicians in an influence-peddling scandal that came to be known as "Koreagate."
More than a quarter of a century later, the South Korean businessman is back in the news, the subject of a federal arrest warrant that alleges he acted as an intermediary with corrupt U.N. officials in an oil-for-food conspiracy orchestrated by then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The criminal complaint charges that Park received at least $2 million from Iraq, much of it in cash delivered by diplomatic pouch from Baghdad.
Dubbed the "Oriental Gatsby" by the media because of his lavish Georgetown parties, Park put together an impressive list of friends and clients over the years, including former Panamanian strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega, U.S. Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards. His charm was legendary, as was his habit of disbursing white envelopes stuffed with as much as $20,000 in cash to congressmen as part of a lobbying campaign financed by South Korean intelligence.
"Washington is a marvelous city for someone like me," he told the House ethics committee in April 1978. "Where else could a foreigner, an outsider like myself, do the things I was able to do?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54646-2005Apr14.htmlOne of the indictments announced Thursday charges a Texas oil company owner and two oil traders with paying millions in secret kickbacks to Saddam's regime to secure oil deals, thus cheating the program out of money for humanitarian aid.
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NEW YORK - A Texas businessman, along with a Bulgarian and a British citizen, were indicted in a scheme to pay millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime as part of the United Nations' scandal-ridden oil-for-food program, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
David B. Chalmers, the businessman, and Ludmil Dionissiev, a Bulgarian citizen and permanent U.S. resident, were arrested Thursday morning at their homes in Houston. U.S. Attorney David N. Kelley said he will seek the extradition from England of a third defendant, John Irving.
In an indictment unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court, the defendants were accused of participating in a scheme to pay millions of dollars in secret kickbacks so that oil companies owned by Chalmers could continue to sell Iraqi oil under the oil-for-food program.
The kickbacks involved funds otherwise intended for humanitarian relief, Kelley said in a statement.
A criminal complaint also unsealed Thursday charged Tongsun Park, a South Korean citizen, with conspiracy to act in the United States as an unregistered government agent for the Iraqi government's effort to create the oil-for-food program.
If convicted of the charges, Chalmers, Irving and Dionissiev each could face a maximum of 62 years in prison and a maximum fine of $1 million. The defendants could also be forced to make restitution.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20050414/ap_on_re_us/oil_for_foodMr. Strong flatly denies any involvement with oil-for-food, and he says Mr. Park invested on a "normal commercial basis" with Cordex. But the optics are awful. The charges have tightened the screws even harder on Kofi Annan and the battered UN, where the oil-for-food scandal has already reached the very top. Even Kofi's son Kojo is caught in the net.
Mr. Strong, no surprise, knows Kojo. They briefly sat together on the board of Air Harbour Technologies, a company owned by the son of a former Saudi oil minister, which won a controversial contract to build an airport in Zimbabwe. Mr. Strong recently referred to Kojo as "a very pleasant person."
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