#parapolitical

Declassified documents reveal that the Unification Church was attempting to form formal connections to CORU (Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations), a CIA-backed anti-Castroist terrorist organization known for bombings and assassinations, including on U.S. soil. A church representative shared with an agent or informant present in a meeting between Moonies and CORU in 1978 that Moon and his organization actively sought to fund “radical anti-communist groups,” and that WACL was 85% funded by the UC. WACL was one of the primary funders of anti-communist death squads all over the world.

Sources:  https://vault.fbi.gov/sun-myung-moon/sun-myung-moon-part-10-of-15 https://www.governmentattic.org/22docs/FBI_UnificationChurch_1967-1988updt.pdf *This meeting between CORU and the Moonies took place in 1978, prior to the publicly known UC-funding of the Contras. The US-funded Contras became active in 1979.

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▲ Pictured: Kim Jong-pil, and Japanese prime minister, Hayato Ikeda, in 1962 Read parts 1, 2 , and 4 Parts 1 and 2 traced how the Unification Church was reorganized in 1961–62 under Kim Jong Pil’s direction into a tool of the emerging U.S.–Japan–ROK anticommunist bloc. What began as a marginal Korean religious sect was pulled into the center of a complex political ecosystem linking the KCIA, CIA, and Japan’s postwar far-right. Kim’s 1962 trips to Tokyo and the U.S., arranged alongside KCIA staff who were themselves Moonies, revealed the intimate connections between intelligence agencies, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, Unification Church leadership, and criminal “fixers” and gangsters like Yoshio Kodama, who were together discretely coordinating normalization talks and anti-communist organizing. The same networks that produced the Kim–Ohira memorandum also oversaw the UC’s restructuring, integrating Moon’s religious movement into the international anti-communist networks that would surface in organizations like Asian Peoples' Anti-Communist League (APACL) and the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Together, these events make it clear that the UC’s later role in covert and violent right-wing operations were not simply opportunistic moments seized by church leadership, but the result of the covert arrangements made in 1962.

As mentioned before, KCIA director Kim Jong Pil met directly with UC members. John Lofland, who became a renowned sociologist, having his research into early American UC launch his career, was actually present at this meeting at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. He discusses the visit in Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith (1966, 1977). HWDYKYM identified the aliases Lofland used in the text below.

The most spectacular of these visits supported the feeling that UC political control of Korea was imminent. In November 1962, the mass media reported the official United States visit of a Korean political figure known as the “Director” [KCIA Director, Kim Jong-pil]. A feature story on Korea and the Director’s visit appearing in a national news magazine said he was the mastermind behind the then current Korean military junta [of Park Chung-hee]. He “provides the ideas, the drive, the plans. By his own immodest but unchallenged statement, [he] is the dominant figure of … [the] ‘revolution.’ ” After talks with high level officials in Washington, the Director spent two days in San Francisco before returning to Korea. He stayed in a luxurious hotel that flew the Korean flag over its main entrance in order to honor his presence. The day of his arrival, Miss Kim received a phone call from the Director’s aide and interpreter, a Korean army colonel and UC member. He told her that he had arranged an audience with the Director for Miss Kim and her followers. Miss Kim and five core converts appeared at the hotel the next afternoon, where they met another of the Director’s aides, who had only recently converted to the UC. Before entering the Director’s suite, the Koreans conversed excitedly in their native tongue, while American members stood around and giggled with joy. The audience with the Director himself consisted of Miss Kim telling him of her work for the UC in America, after which each local member gave a brief testimony to the UC/Divine Principle’s wonders and how it had changed their lives. The interpreter translated for the converts and for the Director, who continually smiled, nodded, and chain smoked. There were soft drinks, and toward the end of the hour the Director said that he was not a religious man but had great sympathy with UC. He could not help them publicly in Korea, but he would secretly give them a hand whenever possible. After the audience, the members assembled in the interpreter’s room, where pictures were taken and an air of family festivity reigned. Dinner talk back in the UC Center focussed on the audience. Miss Kim emphasized that such a meeting was unique and had occurred only because the Director had high regard for his two aides who were UC members. Note was made of the recently converted Colonel being related by marriage to the junta head and thus having direct access to him. The Director’s interpreter, Miss Kim reported, was also his speech writer. When assigned to write a speech, he always got help from a top-ranking person in Moon’s movement in order to give the speeches a Divine Principle slant. Church members had a strong suspicion that the two aides would eventually convert the Director, Kim Jong-pil. Since Sun Myung Moon was to control the world by 1967, control of his home base [Korea] would certainly come before that time. Although UC members in America were obscure and ignored, even the most skeptical had to agree that, for some months in 1962 at least, Korean control was not a fantasy. Members had access to the people whose conversion could have given them power, if only in a short-lived coup. In any event, after their meeting with the KCIA Director, Kim Jong-pil, members possessed an important sense of being secretly near the center of power in Korea. Was this not testimony to the Unification Church member’s truth [the Divine Principle]?”

The UC’s access to state power was not a fantasy of overzealous converts. By the end of 1962, Moon's movement had cemented its place at the hinge of the U.S.–Japan–ROK bloc’s shadow diplomacy, where unofficial statecraft converged with fascist and far-right political networks.

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▲ Pictured: Juan Ponce Enrile and former president Duterte, who is now being held by the ICC for charges of crimes against humanity

From Vigilantes in the Philippines: From Fanatical Cults To Citizens' Organizations by Ronald J. May:

While vigilantism is not a new phenomenon in Philippine society, the more recent wave of vigilante groups in the post-Marcos period was essentially directed against communists, in particular the New People’s Army (NPA). However, many of the victims of "vigilante justice" in recent years have been innocent civilians, poor farmers, human rights and church workers, lawyers, journalists, religious, and other individuals who have advocated such measures as land reform and the withdrawal of American bases from Philippine territory. Even more disturbing was the revelation of the fact-finding team headed by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark in May 1987 that certain foreign organizations like the Unification Church-affiliated CAUSA (Confederation of the Associations for the Unification of the Societies of the Americas) and WACL (World Anti-Communist League) were actively engaged in encouraging, if not organizing, these right-wing groups. The team also found evidence of sophisticated counter-insurgency work being undertaken in Mindanao areas by elements of the Philippine military with U.S. technical assistance.

Juan Ponce Enrile has died, leaving behind a legacy of the violent militarization of Philippine society. His death unfortunately does nothing to absolve the injustices committed under his hand.

Enrile was a chief architect and enforcer of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship. As Defense Minister and a top official under Ferdinand Marcos Sr., he oversaw the imprisonment, torture, and disappearance of farmers, workers, and activists, while defending the interests of landlords and oligarchs. He was deeply implicated in the coco levy scam, which stole millions from small coconut farmers. Though the JAKA corporation was established during the Marcos era, Enrile used it to perpetuate militarized extraction into the post‑Marcos era through land‑grab schemes like Lupang Kapdula in Cavite, shamelessly displacing farming communities.

Enrile also partnered with the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), a global network of rightwing paramilitaries and vigilante groups, which received upwards of 85% of its funding from the Unification Church. According to "Inside the League" by Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Marcos' cronies, which likely included Enrile, were already involved with WACL prior to his ousting. That said, after Marcos was ousted, Enrile attended high-level WACL-organized conferences, alongside U.S. and Philippine intelligence and military, to map out counterinsurgency strategies following the ousting of Marcos. In the Philippines, WACL and CAUSA funding helped death squads like Alsa Masa, which violently terrorized communities in the Philippine countryside. Enrile had a strong working relationship with retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub, leader of WACL and a former Phoenix Program officer responsible for the assassination of thousands of Vietnamese civilians. Not only did they discuss domestic security but Enrile also advised Singlaub on treasure-hunting. Singlaub was ostensibly in the Philippines to hunt for the Yamashita treasure, while simultaneously recruiting veterans of U.S. Special Forces to train Philippine troops and vigilantes in “unconventional warfare,” and helped fund rightwing paramilitary groups.

Enrile’s death does not erase the need for accountability. His death instead reminds us that the structures of elite rule, militarized repression, and foreign-backed counterinsurgency continue to operate in the Philippines. The farmers, workers, activists, and revolutionaries who suffered under his orchestration of violence and theft remain without justice, while the paramilitary machinery he helped sustain has evolved into modern incarnations such as the CAFGUs and other civilian militias, now coordinated under programs like NTF-ELCAC and the “whole-of-nation” approach to counterinsurgency, continuing to cast a shadow over the rural poor.

Juan Ponce Enrile is gone, but the fascistic systems he developed in the Philippines remain. Confonting his legacy is inseparable from confronting the continued imperialist, bureaucrat capitalist, and feudal interventions that shape Philippine life today.

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Below is an excerpt from Privatising’ Covert Action: The Case of the Unification Church by Jeffrey M. Bale that sheds some light on the alleged 1961-1962 reorganization of the Unification Church for the sake of it becoming a political tool of the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea). As a political tool of post-war ROK, this meant their national goals and strategies had to be subservient with the U.S. as well as Japan,  a U.S. ally (as of 1960) and their former colonizer who they continued to have a tense relationship with. Kim Jong Pil, head of Korean intelligence, decided to more deeply intervene in the Unification Church’s organization and activities as Park Chung Hee came to power. At this time, the the Unification Church substantially became a tool to not just the Korean government, but the U.S. and Japanese government. 

Park Chung Hee’s personal opinion on the Unification Church is hard to discern, and his relationship with the church was in no way progressively positive, but Park did not have a personal bias against the “new religion” controversy around the Unification Church, as he was mentored by the leader of the “Eternal Life Church,“ Choi Tae-min, who claimed to to be the Maitreya. The man who shot and assassinated Park, KCIA Director Kim Jae-gyu, admitted after his arrest that one of his motives for the killing was Park’s inability to rid himself of Choi Tae-min’s influence. 

As one of Park’s closest aides, Kim Jong Pil headed the negotiations with Japan on normalizing bilateral diplomatic relations in order to help the economic reconstruction of ROK. Kim Jong Pil continued to use Bo Hi Pak as a KCIA-CIA liaison in the DC area, and in 1962 made trips to the U.S. with KCIA agents and staff that were also Unification Church members. During this trip he also visited the Unification Church in San Francisco. Members from all over the region gathered for this meeting. The following passage outlines some of the events and figures that helped make this happen. You can read the full article here on the blog. 

▲ Pictured: Kim Jong Pil, left, and Masayoshi Ohira meet in Tokyo in 1962

The fall of Rhee thus represented a turning point in ROK-Japan interaction. The short-lived democratic government that succeeded him made overtures towards normalization of relations with Japan, an approach also adopted by the Park regime following the 1961 coup. Park and other junta leaders had good economic and political reasons for promoting normalization: they needed Japanese capital to help modernize their country’s economy and hoped to stablilize their strategic position by yielding to American pressure to reestablish better relations with Japan. The Japanese government headed by Kishi likewise sought to improve Japan’s investment opportunities and strategic position.  These official views were to a great extent catalyzed and reinforced by powerful business leaders in both countries, specifically the Korean Businessmen’s Association founded in 1961 by a dozen big businessmen and the ‘Korea Lobby’ in Japan, which included '15 top capitalists’ who had established the Japan- ROK Economic Cooperation Organization. It was these latter who financed 'key factional bosses’ in the LDP, and their political allies included Prime Minister Kishi and Dietman Bamboku Ono, among others - the very same rightist politicians supported behind the scenes by Kodama and Sasagama, who themselves had economic interests in South Korea. Of equal significance for our topic, the envoy selected by Park to open 'informal channels’ with these pro-normalization elements in Japan was none other than Jong-Pil Kim, who travelled to Japan in October of 1962 - immediately prior to his visit to the U.S., during which he promised Moonies in San Francisco that he would secretly support the UC - to meet with various Japanese leaders, including Kodama’s ally Ono. As a result of this visit and a second in November 1962, which Kim undertook on his way home from America, an important step in the normalization process was taken with the formulation of the 'Kim-Ohira Memorandum.' If all of this were not suggestive enough, Kodama himself was 'reputed to have been close to former ROK intelligence chief Kim-Chong-p'il and ha[d] been an important channel from Kim to the LDP and Japanese government’. Indeed, according to Japanese journalist Eisuke Otsuka, 'Kodama arranged a meeting inviting Korean representative Kim Chong-p’il and Kishi, Bamboku Ono, and Ichiro Kono and made them disentangle the trouble [regarding normalization] that had lasted for Jour years in short order’. Kim, Ono and Kodama were all later implicated in financial scandals involving both countries. However, one should not assume that the motives for these contacts were strictly economic. Both Kim and the Japanese kuromaku were concerned with countering communist expansionism, and all three sought to create rightist federations to facilitate this. I have already noted that Kim, Kodama and Sasagawa had worked to strengthen domestic anti-communist forces, and have also discussed some of Kim’s operations abroad. It remains only to show that the latter two men were also actively involved in creating and supporting regional or worldwide groupings like APACL and WACL, and that one of the instruments they made us of - probably at Kim’s urging - was Moon’s UC.

‘Privatizing’ covert action

The 1962 Kim–Ohira memorandum mentioned above wasn't simply for forging the road to ROK–Japan normalization. The text of the agreement itself was riddled with ambiguities and unresolved contradictions, especially over how “economic cooperation” funds were defined, controlled, and justified. Those tensions mattered because figures like Kim Jong Pil, Kodama Yoshio, and Bamboku Ono operated in this gray space, where intelligence networks, business lobbies, and anticommunist organizations, such as World Anti-Communist League, overlapped. It is no coincidence that the reorganization of the Unification Church in the 1961–62 period happened at the same time as ROK–Japan negotiations, which heavily depended on unofficial and covert channels. Kim Jong Pil’s direct dealings with Kodama, his trips to the U.S. with KCIA staff (a number of which were active Moonies), and the use of Bo Hi Pak as a KCIA–CIA conduit all reveal the political ecosystem in which the UC was folded into a broader international network of anticommunist coordination. The UC's financing of anti-communist death squads in the 70s is best understood as the long-term outgrowth of these early arrangements.

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On the UC links to intelligence - excerpted from “Cults, Anti-Cults, and the Cult of Intelligence” by Daniel Brandt, in the Alternative Press Review (Fall 1994)

Declassified FOIA documents confirm the high level of involvement of the Unification Church in terroristic anti-communist operations throughout the 70s. According to the documents, several representatives of the Unification Church were in 1978 meetings with CORU (Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations), a CIA-backed anti-Castroist terrorist organization known for assassinations and bombings, including in the U.S. One Unification Church member disclosed that the church had funded 85% of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), an anti-communist organization known for backing, organizing, and funding death squads throughout the world. This representative understood the violent and terrorist nature of such operations, stating (and reiterating) that "Rev. Moon desires to discreetly establish and finance a network of radical anti-communist groups around the world to fight the communists inasmuch as Moon fears the United States will withdraw from Korea and expose Korea to the North Korean communists."

Many have wondered who could this mysterious member be? Some have speculated it was Paul Perry (Paulo-Juarez Pereira) but the physical description (white male, 6', light brown hair, light brown eyes, light complexion, athletic build) does not match, as Perry is shorter, and Perry/Pereira was not in charge of any major organization in 1978. Though it is redacted and says "in charge of ______ affairs," the missing word is likely "political."

It's worth noting that this physical description does match one individual: Neil Salonen, who served as the President of Unification Church USA from 1972 to 1980, when he was succeeded by Mose Durst, and head of its primary political arm in the U.S. at the time, the Freedom Leadership Foundation.

▲ Neil Salonen He was also a member for eleven years at this point.

Salonen had also visited FBI HQ earlier that year, on January 26, 1978, to "explain for the record the activities and purpose of the [Unification Church of America] and to enlighten the FBI and provide a clear picture of that church for future reference." He explained various UC-connected organizations and provided the agents with church publications for reference. The agents noted that he was very courteous. He raised concern over the 250+ cases of adult members being forcibly taken by their parents or by hired “deprogrammers,” and noted that the FBI investigating such cases often didn't interview victims directly, instead trusting the parents’ assurances that their adult children were “safe at home.” Salonen argued that many of these individuals were being held under duress and he urged the FBI to ensure personal interviews in the future.

Salonen’s positions within the church put him at the heart of its political maneuvering, making it possible for him to go to the FBI HQ and be given ample time to thoroughly defend the UC. In the 70s, Salonen found himself leading the National Prayer and Fast Committee during the Watergate crisis, being invited by Bob Dole to his office in 1976 to discuss "concerned parents" and "former members" and the problems of deprogramming, as well as cooperating directly with the KCIA (including working with Moonie and KCIA officer Kim Sang Keun) in organizing anti-Japanese demonstrations in 1974 throughout the U.S. Former members who took part in this march "recalled that while the demonstrators were near the Korean Embassy, someone came out of the Embassy and spoke to Neil Salonen. Shortly afterwards Salonen called the demonstration off."

It has not been confirmed that this individual is Neil Salonen, but as somebody who directly coordinated church campaigns and efforts with the direction of the KCIA, it is likely that he knew of and affirmed the UC's funding of anti-communist death squads.

______________________________

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I appreciate all the open discussions on facebook groups, blogs, Twitter, of the Unification Church’s actual origin story and history, as well as unveiling their current role throughout the world’s governments. The Moonies own history has a lot to teach us about the world and how dominating countries maintain their positions in the global economy. Psychological warfare through the education system, media, social and cultural institutions (like CHURCHES), etc., is a major part of this, and how the UC made partnerships with governments (S. Korea, Japan, USA, Chile, etc.) shows how this is done in a very clear and expansive way. 

But I must say, there is something that seems a bit misguided to keep offering all this information without any kind of analysis. 

For those of us in developed capitalist countries, learning these things may only feed a kind of political paralysis... as we are somewhat assuaged by the spoils of our country’s exploitation of the world. 

We all know that how our economy works depends on the exploitation of the global south and, ultimately, the destruction of the climate. 

And yet... here we are. Ordering UberEats. Getting our monthly Amazon packages of skincare. Going to yoga, or happy hour. All fine things - there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, especially for us. But why do we think that we must find comfort and peace for ourselves as the world bursts in flame? Why are so many of us unwilling to explore real collective solutions to our real collective problems? Is it because, those solutions, may be uncomfortable... may require struggle... and for us ex-Moonies... may lead us to live for the sake of others...

This stumbling block makes sense. But individualism is a symptom of capitalist mode of production and how society molds us to think, especially for people living in the United States. It is not noble. It is not healthy. It is delusional, and quite literally killing the world.

Living for the sake of others is a refrain and notion that has left many of us unable to consider boundaries or how people’s behavior and actions are affecting us. It has left many of us accepting abuse. It has left many of us naive in some critical social ways. 

But what if instead of living for the sake of others, you lived a life where you recognized our undeniable interconnected nature as humans, and did what you could to honor and nurture that, so we can genuinely construct a society that makes it easy and natural to be a good (loving) neighbor...?

What would that mean for our governments? Our economies? Our day to day life? What would would it mean to get to that world where it is “easy and natural to be a good (loving) neighbor”? Especially when a few imperialist countries dominate the majority of the world and would never be actually willing to make semi-colonial countries “equal global partners.”

Recognize that people have been thinking and DOING something about these questions and contradictions for a long time. And many have made major sacrifices, even died for these solutions, and to their dying breath believed it was all worth it. Realize that this journey for a new and better road has and will be a winding path, and there are mistakes, there are errors, and many, many lessons to be learned. And that is scientific.

If we’re going to talk about how these imperial countries used the church we joined / grew up in, let’s talk not leave the conversation there. Let’s talk about the root problem, and let’s do something about it. 

People are doing something about that root problem all over the world. Look to their victories, look their lessons, look to their ongoing struggles... find hope and strength there... and do what you can to support them. We all need each other to overcome this root problem... in order to not just save people from cults, but to save the world from the worst of potential climate genocides, and to free billions into a new world, no longer bound to the violences of capitalism. 

Support anti-imperialist struggles all over the world. 

Do what you can to end our governments’ funding of bombings and state terrorism against Indigenous peoples, social activists, workers, peasants, and liberation movements.

Learn from these movements against imperialism and keep up with their asks from the international solidarity community.

Organization is KEY to achieving our goals. For those in the imperialist countries, join anti-imperialist solidarity organizations.

Most of the analysis by leftists in the US remains incomplete and completely lacks a comprehension of imperialism and counterinsurgency as a parapolitical reality--including in our daily lives. While the CIA and US government have long treated leftists in the Global South to a continuous barrage of deception and exploitation, US leftists have largely considered such operations as either a relic of the past or an extremely rare occurrence. This has led US leftists to be highly susceptible to psychological operations and sabotage.

It is about time that leftists also consider how historical narratives have been, and continue to be actively constructed and given to us through the news and media, schools/education system, religious and social institutions, etc.

As former Unification Church members, we know how religion and churches have been used for centuries as weapons for to perpetuate colonial and patriarchal violence, and how they have been used in and through the United States to further imperialist interests.

The work of the Freedom Leadership Foundation (FLF), World Anti-Communist League (WACL), CAUSA, CARP, UPF, among other Moonie orgs, illustrates this. Moonie counterinsurgency efforts broadly and widely sheds light on the history of anti-communist counterinsurgency.

While religion has also served as a conduit for progressive forces, one must not be blind to its usage for nefarious means most specifically through the US government with its tight ideological hold on much of the established Christian church in the US.

The recent rebranding of the "Asbury Revival" points to this-the right-wing evangelical revival.

As former Moonies, we have studied history and anti-imperialism and thus see how intense and extreme the US and other imperialist powers have been in their efforts to destroy socialist and communist movements and projects. These efforts were not done to combat "war crimes" but instead to combat movements that liberated communities from corporate and foreign exploitation, greedy landlords, and patriarchal oppression, and into collective care and support.

For only the people can defeat imperialism, and that has to be done. While imperialism continues to gut and terrorize the world, those who have nothing to lose but their chains will continue to rise up. After all, the masses are the makers of history. We can play a role in helping the people situate themselves in history, in understanding the UC's role in counterinsurgency efforts for the global imperialist project, and in molding the world around them. Though the UC’s role is minor, it is a microcosm in which we can see many of the imperialist’s tactics and strategies as they’re developing. 

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