Sunday, June 10, 2001 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (APJP) -- If you're old enough to
 remember watching the Watergate hearings on TV, you're old enough to remember all
 those 1970s articles in conservative magazines like Reader's Digest on the shocking evil
 of brain-warping cults come to snatch up our kiddies.

 Most of the "cults" they attacked were relatively harmless, but one -- Sun Myung Moon's
 Unification Church -- was really and truly dangerous.

 All the classic brainwashing tactics were used, including the time-honored favorite of not
 letting the new recruits have any time alone to think, even when going to the bathroom.
 Reader's Digest detailed these Moonie tactics all throughout the 1970s, in articles such
 as "Rescue From A Fanatic Cult", which appeared in RD's April 1977 issue.

 And then, after the early 1980s, they stopped. Detailing the Moonies' tactics, that is.

 Why?

 Well, as always, one must follow the money.

 "Father", as Mr. Moon calls himself, got himself a newspaper in 1980 called The
 Washington Times, and proceeded to use it to mindlessly promote the Reagan-Bush
 agenda. He's lost over a billion dollars over the past twenty years on this and other media
 and business projects, but that's not a problem for a man whose business empire is built
 on the unpaid "volunteer" labor of his followers. And his getting in bed with his former
 enemies has paid him dividends: no longer will he have to worry about being jailed for tax
 evasion, much less what his former followers detail as crimes such as battery and
 holding persons against their will.

 "Father" is very good to his powerful friends. In exchange for Reagan and Bush keeping
 the DOJ and IRS at bay, he insured that both Dutch and Poppy got highly lucrative
 speaking engagements promoting the Moon agenda -- all of them well outside U.S.
 borders, and away from the eyes of the U.S. media -- after they left office.

 Reagan and Bush Senior racked up over ten million dollars in this manner.

 Now, if the Clintons had ties to a cult leader who makes Jim Jones look like the piker he
 was, you, I, and the dog all know that this would have been all over cable outlets like FOX
 News Channel, MSNBC and CNN -- not to mention the Big Three broadcast networks --
 24-7-365. But, since we're talking about the Republican Party's favorite cult leader, you
 don't see TV or radio news -- which is where most Americans get their news nowadays
 -- talking about the Beltway GOP's dependence on an evil meglaomaniac. Hell, Moon is
 so powerful nowadays that he's even propping up fellow pseudo-Christian Jerry Falwell's
 once-powerful empire.

 Because of "Father" Moon's power, when his former daughter-in-law, Nansook Hong,
 wrote a tell-all book that ripped the lid off of the corrupt and venal Moon Crime Family
 back in 1998, news of her book never quite penetrated the evening news. There was
 some print discussion of the work, most notably in Time magazine, but as far as TV
 and radio were concerned -- and again, TV and radio, NOT print media, are where most
 Americans get their news -- the book may as well have never existed.

 If you want proof, ask yourself why you'd never heard of this book before now.

 For some scary reading, check out this brief sample of Ms. Hong's book -- and then ask
 yourself how the GOP could consider Bill Clinton's trying to conceal getting hummers
 from a White House staffer to be worse than Moon's conduct.