COVERT ACTION: SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT

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INFORMATION BULLETIN
Number 27 $5.00
Special Issue on the Religious Right
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This double issue of CAIB focuses on the growing power
of the Religious Right in American politics. It is an enormous
subject, and in the articles which follow we highlight only a
few of the more significant elements of this movement and its
domestic and international networks. Its powerful lobbying for
a far-right foreign policy, its profound connections to the
military-industrial complex, and its rapidly growing inter-
national operations make the Religious Right a world-wide
concern.
The Religious Right fulfills a specific purpose for the most
regressive sectors of the ruling class, and its operations
supplement the work of the government agencies, think tanks,
lobbies, private intelligence, and other institutions created,
funded, and protected by the same ruling circles. During recent
years it has demonstrated to those interests its ability to
recruit and mobilize large numbers of persons around an ex-
tremely reactionary agenda.
The leadership of the Religious Right has a significant con-
nection to the secular, political world-the reason it is of such
significance to the progressive movement. Backers of the
World Anti-Communist League sit on the board of the Campus
Crusade for Christ; rightwing business magnates and military
brass fund the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship Inter-
Table of Contents
Editorial
Samora Machel
By Ellen Ray
Holy Spooks
By Larry Kickham
Theology of Nuclear War
By Larry Kickham
Shepherding
By Sara Diamond
Christian Underground
By Michael O'Brien
Moon's Law
By Fred Clarkson
Editorial
national. Reverend Moon gives Arnaud de Borchgrave a
newspaper. Pat Robertson outpolls Jesse Helms, and Ronald
Reagan sends his regards to the America Needs Fatima Cam-
paign.
While we recognize and support the struggles of the pro-
gressive religious community for social justice at home and
abroad, most of our readers know little of the activities of its
opposite numbers in the Religious Right. We hope that this
issue will help people begin to understand the scope of their
empire.
Contragate and All That Jazz
Although the Iran-hostage-contra scandal burgeoned as we
were preparing this special issue to go to press, we could not
let these propitious developments go unsung. While we hope
in later issues to analyze in detail some of the interesting
ramifications of the scandal, we cover here the interesting
career of Frank Carlucci, the strange operations of Southern
Air Transport, and the shuttle diplomacy of Michael Ledeen.
Finally, we are pleased to present Edward Herman's de-
finitive analysis of the New York Times's unending dis-
information about the Bulgarian Connection. ?
Fatima
By Walter Sampson
The Religious Right and
the Black Community
By Clarence Lusane
The New York Times and
the Bulgarian Connection
By Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead 53
Frank Carlucci
By Louis Wolf and William Vornberger 61
Southern Air Transport
By David Truong D. H.
Disinformationgate
By Fred Landis
Cover: Pat Robertson reviews contra troops in Honduras during "Operation Blessing," a scene from "A Su Nombre," a half-hour
video about the penetration of the religious Right in Central America. For rental or purchase information, write to: Karen Ranucci,
87 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10013.
CovertAction Information Bulletin, Number 27, Spring 1987: published by Covert Action Publications, Inc., a District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation; Post
Office Box 50272, Washington DC 20004; [phone], and c/o Institute for Media Analysis, Inc., 145 West 4th Street, New York NY 10012, [phone].
Typeset by CAIB; printed by Faculty Press, Brooklyn NY. Staff: Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Louis Wolf, and William Vornberger. Indexed in the Alternative
Press Index. ISSN 0275-309X.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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In Memoriam:
Samora Moises Machel
By Ellen Ray
On the same day-October 19-just three years apart, two
great Third World leaders, Samara Moises Machel of Mo-
zanmbique and Maurice Bishop of Grenada, were murdered by
the same forces of imperialism, neo-colonialism. and racism.
Maurice Bishop's Murder
In the case of Prime Minister Bishop, U.S. intelligence
worked incessantly for the tour years of the Grenadian revolu-
tionary experience to divide and conquer the New Jewel
Movement, in order to justify the coming invasion. Their
machinations came to a head on October 19, 1983: Bishop had
been arrested and held for several day's by members of his own
party when a march to secure his release was led by pro-
vocateurs just before a scheduled meeting to resolve the con-
flict. He was taken to a military garrison rather than to the town
square, where he had wanted to address his people. In the
horror which ensued at Fort Rupert, Bishop and five other high
government officials were murdered, along with an unknown
number of Grenadians mowed down by soldiers' bullets.
Despite a sham trial in Grenada, held under the watchful eye
of the U.S., which ended recently with the conviction of
seventeen people for murder and manslaughter, the events of
that bloody October 19 will never be known. Just who killed
Maurice Bishop and his comrades. and under whose orders'!
The Plane Crash
The forces behind the killing of President Samora Machel
may have a better chance of surfacing, although the South
African police had nearly twenty-tour hours to destroy
evidence before Mozambican authorities arrived at the site of
the plane crash.
On that equally bloody October 19 last year, Machel and a
planeload of his advisers and staff were returning from a meet-
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
ing in Zambia between three frontline leaders and Zaire's
President Mobutu. The meeting followed two weeks of es-
calating South African threats against Mozambique. The Pres-
ident's twin-engine Soviet TU-131 was about to land at
Maputo airport when suddenly, according to the cockpit voice
recorder found in the wreckage. the automatic pilot was given
instructions by a VOR signal (very high frequency om-
nidirectional radio), on the Maputo airport Frequency, to turn
sharply to the right, a course which took the plane into the
mountains of the South African border with Mozambique,
where it crashed at an altitude of ?,187 feet. 'hhirtv-five people,
including Machel's closest advisers, were killed: ten people
survived.
There are numerous discrepancies in the South African au-
thorities' story. Pretoria admits that it had tracked the plane
from the time it left Zambia and that their police arrived at the
scene of the crash within two hours, although they did nothing
to help the survivors, nor did they inform the Mouunbican au-
thorities for more than nine hours. The plane went down in a
closed South African military border zone, just 300 meters
from Mozambique. Witnesses at the site report that a large tent
had been set up several days before the crash 150 meters
away, and that it was mysteriously taken down the day after the
crash. The obvious conclusion is that it housed a portable
VOR beacon which lured the plane to its fatal destination.
There is no question about the false VOR signal. The black
box, which South Africa refused for over a month to return to
Mozambique, is clear on that.
But were foul play to be proved in the future, the South
Africans and the U.S. have a ready alibi. The U.S.-South
African hacked Mozambique National Resistance (MNR or
Renamo), a vicious group of insurgents who have been waging
a terrorist war in that region, has spread the story that it
downed the plane with a captured Soviet-built SAM missile. If
necessary, it will be easy for all concerned to blame the action
on them. Even more convenient is the fact that there are two
MNRs, both backed by the U.S. (see sidehar in "God Is Phas-
ing Out Democracy," in this issue), so that if one is blamed,
the other can continue to receive "covert" U.S. aid to continue
the war against Mozambique.
All of this underscores how complicated U.S. strategic
planning can be. The Reagan Doctrine was not averse to woo-
ing Machel when he was alive, which they did in brokering the
short-lived Nkomati accord between Mozambique and South
Africa. When he was killed, so much the better in their grand
plan for southern Africa.
Conclusion
CAIB had many friends who died in both of these
bloodbaths, victims of betrayal, treachery, and cold-blooded
murder. If there is a lesson to he learned from either ex-
perience, it is the further confirmation that the U.S., South
Africa, and their allies will not shrink from the most heinous
acts to accomplish their ends. ?
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Holy Spirit or Holy Spook?
By Larry Kickham*
Sometimes religion and covert action, like religion and
politics, get mixed together. Televangelist Pat Robertson,
head of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and CBN
University, and a presidential candidate, has gone so far as to
liken the presence of CIA agents to divine protection (see
sidebar). A religious leader who can confuse God with the CIA
is capable of almost anything.
Robertson's CBN funneled aid to the Efrain Rios Montt
junta in Guatemala and to the contra armies in Honduras and
Costa Rica. Robertson told the New York Times' that CBN
would send missionaries and "more than a billion dollars" to
Guatemala. The promise wasn't fully met but the Guatemalan
dictator used the pledges of support from U.S. evangelicals to
convince Congress that he would not seek massive sums of
U.S. government aid. The State Department briefed Christian
Right leaders on the need for "private" support for the Rios
Montt regime. Such "private" aid was funneled through Rios
Montt's Eureka, California-based sect, Gospel Outreach,
which helped the Guatemalan army administer the refugee
camps created by Rios Montt's brutal counterinsurgency
massacres of Mayan Quiche Indians.' Robertson is still
deeply involved in counterinsurgency efforts in Central Ame-
rica. CBN now supplies chaplains and Bibles to the contras.;
Unfortunately, Robertson's CBN, unlike some other televi-
sion evangelists including Billy Graham and Jim Bakker, does
not voluntarily issue annual audited financial statements.
An international organization like CBN, active in 65 foreign
countries including Israel, Argentina, Bophuthatswana-a
South African "home-land," El Salvador, Guatemala, and
Honduras, would be of obvious use to an intelligence agency
like the CIA. Such organizations can be used as conduits of
funds and can help administer counterinsurgency programs,
and even help keep up military morale by providing chaplains.
Counterinsurgency is a dirty business involving a lot of kill-
ing. The killers need assurance that they are pursuing a godly
crusade to continue their work with a good conscience.
The Bid For Power
Now, after two terms of Ronald Reagan, a television
evangelist is making a bid for the White House. Pat Robert-
son, backed by elements of the same evangelical coalition
Reagan reintroduced to politics, has been running hard for the
presidency since 1985. Robertson unofficially launched his
campaign at the February 1986 national convention of the
National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). Staff members and
1. May 20, 1982.
2. See Sara Diamond, "Candidate Robertson's Central American Policy,"
Daily CahJbrnian, September 3, 1986. And see "Shepherding," in this issue.
3. See John Dillon and Jon Lee Anderson, "Who's Behind the Aid to the
Contras," The Nation, October 6, 1984, and Vicki Kemper, "In the Name of
Relief: A look at private U.S. aid in contra territory," Sojourners, October
1985. Robertson told a press conference at the National Religious Broad-
casters convention in Washington, D.C. (February 4. 1986) that he supplied
chaplains and Bibles to the contra troops.
* Larry Kickham is a freelance journalist in New York who has studied the
religious Right intensively.
students of CBN University passed out buttons proclaiming:
"PAT ROBERTSON '88, CHRISTIANS FOR ROBERT-
SON." At the conclusion of Robertson's keynote address (an
attack on the Democratic party chief and a call for "Christian"
activism in politics) CBN staff and students lifted a Robertson
for President banner. But whether Robertson can actually get
the Republican nomination may not be as important in the long
run as the success of evangelical organizations and in-
dividuals in local and regional politics.
Conservative evangelicals became major players in the
political arena when their champion Ronald Reagan was
elected President in 1980. The political action groups behind
Reagan, like Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, the California-
based Christian Voice, and Tim LaHaye's American Coalition
for Traditional Values (ACTV) organized many independent
fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches across the country
into effective voting blocs. In 1984, thanks to their efforts,
Reagan won about 80 percent of what had become a white
evangelical voting bloc.
The "Religious Right" is a complex coalition of independent
organizations ranging from the well-known and wealthy
national and international television networks like CBN,
through smaller but more numerous regional TV and radio
ministries, to a multitude of small "mom and pop" operations.
Many of these organizations are now actively involved in
coalition politics. Most of them aggressively backed Reagan
and have supported controversial Reagan administration pro-
grams with letter-writing campaigns to influence a reluctant
Congress. Reagan returned the favor by recruiting evangelical
activists into government service and symbolically champion-
ing their pet issues. Having tasted power, and after eight years
of appointments and hirings under Reagan, conservative
evangelicals will be credentialed players in national politics
well into the next century. The leaders of the evangelical bloc,
having tasted power, are now planing to win elections to come
and are sure to continue to play a significant role in American
politics in the years ahead.
Pat Robertson, a star of religious television who has been
"praying" about running for president, surprised observers by
the success of his organization, the Freedom Council, in the
initial contests for state presidential delegates in Michigan.
The Freedom Council filed as many delegate candidates as
Vice President George Bush. According to Robertson's
numbers he came in a dead heat with Bush in the actual delegate
count. The exit polls, however, had Robertson trailing behind
Bush, though, in such a delegate election many voters proba-
bly didn't actually know which presidential candidates the
candidates for delegates favored.
Robertson's organization may prove to be even stronger in
the South than in Michigan. Because the Christian Right has
become an organized bloc, Robertson could well surprise
everyone by becoming a serious contender in the Republican
presidential primaries of 1987-8. Robertson founded the Free-
dom Council in 1981 as a tax-deductible, non-profit, "educa-
tional" organization. It trained evangelicals in party politics to
4. A CBS News poll published in the New York TOnes. November 8, 1984.
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win "the battle of souls taking place in government," and ran
voter registration drives in churches throughout the country,
training conservative evangelicals, mostly Republicans, to
run for local, state, and federal elective offices. In October
1986, in the midst of an IRS investigation, the Freedom
Council was dissolved.
In spite of his organizational power and recent success,
Robertson does have a problem with his public acceptability
and with a possible backlash among old-line Republicans.
According to a 1986 New York Times/CBS poll, 79 percent of
the public surveyed had no opinion of Robertson. Nine percent
had an favorable opinion, and 12 percent an unfavorable one.5
Whether or not Pat Robertson succeeds in his bid for the
presidency, organizations like the Freedom Council will have a
significant impact on American politics. One Freedom Council
staffer boasted that in a few years in some states a "non-
Christian" won't be able to be elected dogcatcher.
Robertson also has his international television network,
CBN. It is said that televangelists like Robertson are watched,
they say, by some 40 percent of the viewing public' CBN
currently collects in excess of $200 million a year from its
financial supporters. The revenue is partly based on a
hierarchy of "clubs" for CBN contributors. "700 Club"
members are expected to contribute $20 a month. Other club
members, like the members of the "founders club", annually
contribute thousands of dollars to CBN. The $230 million
Robertson's CBN gathered in 1985, however, according to
CBN's public affairs director, comes largely from "sym-
pathetic corporations,' 7 and not from viewers. CBN is the
fourth largest television network in the U.S.
CBN's flagship program, the 700 Club, is one of the more
popular religious shows and reportedly reaches about 4.4 mil-
lion Americans.' Other Robertson projects like Operation
Blessing and Heads Up are administered through independent
Pentecostal and charismatic churches around the country.
Heads Up is a phonics-based literacy program for children.
Operation Blessing provides material aid through local
churches to the poor in North America and abroad, supplying
aid to refugees in Honduras and the contras (see cover).
Pat Robertson is attempting to organize a potentially sig-
nificant voting bloc in the Pentecostal and charismatic church-
es. The inherent drama of healings, possession, speaking in
tongues, and prophecy are attractive to a large public. Accord-
ing to Christianity Today, a 1980 Gallup poll done for it in-
dicated that some 29 million adult Americans (19 percent of the
adult population of the country) considered themselves char-
ismatic Christians. 10 Like Pentecostals they pray in tongues
or "in the Spirit" and lay on hands for healings, financial
blessings, and prophecy. Pentecostal styles of worship have
spread widely among both Blacks and whites in north Ameri-
ca. Charismatic/Pentecostal behaviors like talking in tongues,
praying for physical healings, and spontaneous prophecies
5. Not York Times, August 5, 1986.
6. David Clark and Paul Virts, "Religious Television Audience: A New
Development in Measuring Audience Size," paper presented at the Society for
the Scientific Study of Religion. Savannah, Georgia, October 25. 1985. The
paper's authors are both associated with Robertson's CBN organizations.
Their data comes from a Nielsen study contracted by CBN.
7. Sara Diamond, "Preacher Pat for Prcz2" Mother Jones. January 1986. p
8. Clark and Virts, op. cit., n. 6.
9. Dillon and Anderson, op. cit., n. 3.
10. Clark and Virts, op. cit., n. 6, citing Kenneth S. Kantzer, "The
Charismatics Among Us." Christianitv Toduc, February 22, 1980, p. 25.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
have spread among Catholics, so-called mainstream Protes-
tants, and throughout many of the thousands of small in-
dependent churches.
Churches, if well organized, can become decisive voting
blocs during the usually light turnout of primary elections.
Many fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches are already
organized as blocs. Falwell's Moral Majority helped organize
the fundamentalists, while other groups, like Christian Voice.
helped organize the Pentecostals and charismatics.
In 1984 Christian Voice, a political action group made up
largely of Pentecostal Christians, trained local ministers in the
mechanics of registering, educating their flocks about the
"right" political choices, and getting their congregations out to
the polls on election day. Many churches voted in blocs for
candidates identified by Christian Voice as "moral." Christian
Voice supplied churches with congressional "Report Cards"
and a "Presidential Biblical Scoreboard" that rated the candi-
dates. Their rating system was heavily slanted in favor of the
"pro-family" Republicans who favored increased defense
spending and an aggressive anti-communist foreign policy.
The Democratic candidates in 1984 were portrayed in the
"Presidential Biblical Scoreboard" as pro-abortion ''ba-
by-killers" who favored "kiddie-porn," and were mired in the
moral relativism of "New Age Globalism." A headline in the
Christian Voice "Presidential Scoreboard" stated that "Mans
"serial killers are homosexuals." The "Scoreboard" blasted
the Democrats for favoring bills to protect gays' civil rights.
No, Pat, The CIA is Not
a Company of Angels
In 1981, at the 28th Annual World Convention of the
Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International in
Philadelphia, keynote speaker Pat Robertson told his
audience how the Pakistani intelligence service had once
confiscated film taken by a CBN camera crew on the
Afghanistan border. Robertson prayed tier divine inter-
vention. That night, he claims, the Lord answered him at
3:45 AM. He got down on his knees and began to praise
God, speaking in tongues. God had intervened, Rob-
ertson explained, acting through the CIA:
[TJhose folks in Pakistan let every hit of our film ex-
cept for the little bit they damaged come out of
Pakistan. I might add that the Lord took care of that.
And the Ambassador personally, the United States
Ambassador, sent one of his men to personally walk
our people through the customs...
And, you know, God did that too. After we got hack to
this country, it's kind of cute, we learned that some of
our drivers were working for the United States CIA
Robertson told his fellow believers that God was
watching out for them. Angels, like those CIA agents in
Pakistan, were guarding them all.
You and I are surrounded by a company of angels.
I've talked about a couple of potential CIA agents
watching after me over in Pakistan. ?
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Pat Robertson in classic pose.
The Politics of Armageddon
A Robertson candidacy is likely to mobilize many of the
Pentecostal and charismatic churches. They will be driven by
an apocalyptic vision of Christian triumphalism. (See "The
Theology of Nuclear War" in this issue.) Robertson believes
that "Christians" will take over state power during the coming
last days just before the Millennial Kingdom emerges. At the
same time, Robertson believes, there will be a huge harvest of
souls and then global catastrophe-the prophecied Soviet in-
vasion of Israel that many evangelicals see as inevitable. They
believe the U.S.S.R. will be destroyed by great earthquakes or
by U.S. nuclear weapons, tools in hands of an angry God.''
Robertson has told audiences that he believes he will see the
destruction of the Soviet Union in his lifetime.12
The History of the "Old Time Religion"
Despite their political clout, evangelicals in politics have
been poorly understood by the majority of Americans. After
the presidency of Jimmy Carter, "born-again" and "con-
servative evangelicals" fully captured the attention of a puzzled
national press in 1979 when Jerry Falwell launched the Moral
Majority and entered the political arena. But the religious
movement that spawned the winning political coalition which
swept Reagan into office has a history going back into the
Nineteenth Century. For a long time evangelicals were
I I. Robertson, unlike Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Falwell, is a post-
tribulationist. He believes that instead of being raptured, Christians will have
to go through a seven-year tribulation period before the Millennial Kingdom is
finally realized. Robertson believes the Kingdom will gradually emerge as
Christians take high office during the tribulation period and a last huge revival
sweeps the world. At one point, Robertson believed nuclear war was inevi-
table. But at different points in his career he has believed variously, that the
mechanism by which "Magog" (the U.S.S.R.) will be destroyed would be
nuclear weapons or earthquakes, etc. In his book about his "Kingdom"
theology, Robertson left the question of the mechanism ambiguous: "...God,
who is even in control of the invading horde from the north [the U.S.S.R.!, will
intervene in Israel's behalf with a great shaking-earthquakes, volcanic activ-
ity, fire, confusion, and even fighting among the alliea invaders." lie also
speaks of fire falling upon Magog, the homeland of the leaders of the force. and
upon "those who inhabit the coastlands in safety." This could, 01 course, be a
vision of nuclear bombing. Pat Robertson (with Bob Slosser). The Secret
Kingdom (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), p. 214.
12. Robertson made this remark, for example, in a speech to an audience of
Full Gospel Businessmen at their 28th annual world convention in Philadel-
phia in 1981.
6 CovertAction
politically dormant, having withdrawn into a ghetto of their
own making. They became almost invisible to other Ameri-
cans. 13
Dispensationalism
The present political-religious community that forms
Reagan's white evangelical voting bloc is made up largely of
fundamentalists and Pentecostals who are influenced by dis-
pensationalism, the theology of fundamentalism. Dispensa-
tionalism was first preached to Americans in the years fol-
lowing the civil war by an Anglo-Irish sectarian named John
Nelson Darby. Darby expected the Second Coming of Christ at
any moment. He believed in a secret Rapture, when Christians
would be swept up to meet Jesus in the air just before a period
of terrible tribulation occurred, at the end of which time Jesus
would return triumphant with his raptured saints to establish
the Millennial Kingdom. Since the Rapture was ever im-
minent, dispensationalists tend to be driven by apocalyptic
expectation. They are futurists, though classic dispensa-
tionalism insists on a balance between the eager expectation of
ever imminent Rapture and the sobering realization that the
Rapture might not occur until far into the future. Darby's
theories about the Bible caught on in the United States.
American dispensationalists began to organize prophecy con-
ferences. The dispensationalist notes in the popular Scofield
Reference Bible helped to spread and to legitimize dispensa-
tionalist interpretations of prophecy.
Dispensationalism takes its name from the periods, or
"dispensations," into which Darby and his followers divided
Bible and world history. Dispensationalists claim to be literal
interpreters of the Bible and mark out their systems of cosmic
history with time-lines. They characteristically make a sharp
division between Israel and the church, tracing the separate
cosmic careers of each throughout biblical history. Many
American dispensationalists saw the establishment of Israel
in 194814 and the Israeli capture of Jerusalem in 1967 as sure
signs that they were living in the last generation before the
Second Coming of Christ. They see Israel, or "the Jew" as
they sometimes say, as a kind of cosmic clock that shows
what time it is on their biblical time-line.
Always looking towards the Second Coming of Christ, dis-
pensationalists took on the "Great Commission" to preach the
gospel to all peoples before Jesus returns.'5 They became
aggressive evangelists and pioneered the use of modern
means of mass communications like radio and television.
Now there are several international radio and television
networks broadcasting dispensational ist doctrine around the
world.
13. For further reading see E. R. Sandeen, The Roots q/ Fundamentalism
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1978), G.M. Marsden,
Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980), and T. P. Weber, Living in the Shadow oldie Second Coming (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1979).
14. Dispensationalists interpret Israel as the fig tree in Matthew 24:32-34:
"Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth
forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see
all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you,
This generation shall not pass, till all these things he fulfilled." They interpret
the establishment of Israel in 1948 as the budding fig tree, and draw the con-
clusion that the generation that saw 1948 is the last generation.
15. The "Great Commission" is based on Matthew 24:14: And this gospel
of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations;
and then shall the end come." Many dispensationalists believe that television
and radio can "literally" fulfill the "Great Commission" by covering the earth
with electronic preaching.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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Fundamentalists and Pentecostals
Fundamentalists and Pentecostals, the two large groups of
dispensationalist believers in the United States, have a con-
tentious history. Fundamentalists believe that the age of
miracles, of speaking in tongues, faith-healing, etc., ended
with the apostolic times. The Pentecostals who are "dis-
pensationalist" in their beliefs about prophecy interpret speak-
ing in tongues, healings, and "prophesying in the Spirit," as
signs that these are the last days. Some Pentecostals believe
they have or are capable of receiving supernatural powers over
natural processes. It is well publicized that Pat Robertson
claimed the power to divert a hurricane from his Virginia Beach
headquarters. "
Though Pentecostals borrowed from fundamentalist the-
ology, the two groups were often bitterly divided. Fundamen-
talists have sometimes even denounced Pentecostals for being
possessed by Satan. Pentecostal inroads into the Catholic
community since the mid-1960s and the so-called "mainline"
Protestant denominations have tended to distance Pentecos-
tals from their more exclusive fundamentalist brethren. Dis-
pensationalists, fundamentalist and Pentecostal alike, have
Christian Voice
Christian Voice is best known for distributing "biblical"
report cards rating political candidates. In 1984 and 1986
Christian Voice distributed millions of full-color maga-
zines, "Candidates Biblical Scoreboard," rating the candi-
dates in state and national political contests. Their "bibli-
cal" scorecards were distributed freely in fundamentalist
and Pentecostal churches throughout the United States.
During the 1984 campaigns Christian Voice trained local
ministers through video presentations and seminars in
techniques for getting out the "right" vote without violating
the law.
Colonel Doner (Colonel is his first name, not a military
rank), one of the executive board members of Christian
Voice, lectured during the 1984 campaign to ministers ex-
plaining how they could use their churches to "achieve
political victory" by starting voter registration drives,
"educating" their flocks, and making sure they went to the
polls on election day. Doner suggested to pastors that
they find out if their flocks are registered to vote by asking
their congregations to fill out information cards or asking
them during the service "to raise their hands and be honest
before God" about their registration status. Doner aimed
to register 20 million evangelicals. As Doner portrayed the
1984 election, the issue was "God versus Antichrist." He
recommended that fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches
hold several "voter registration Sundays." Pastors would
distribute copies of a Christian Voice pamphlet entitled
"Your Five Duties As A Christian Citizen" by Bill Bright,
and set up voter registration tables in the rear of the church
for the exiting congregation. Bright's pamphlet lists "elect-
ing godly people" as an important Christian political duty.
Doner also counseled pastors to educate their con-
gregations with the Christian Voice report cards on "key
moral issues." Christian Voice provided local churches
individual report cards on local Congress members. He
urged pastors to organize 30 or 40 members of their con-
gregation to go out and distribute report cards to other
churches (as Doner put it "everybody but Christian Sci-
ence and Unitarians are okay" to go to). Finally pastors
were trained by Christian Voice to run a voter turnout cam-
paign. A week before election day pastors distributed more
report cards. Then pastors tracked their people and organ-
ized telephone committees to call up parishioners to remind
them to go out and vote.
Christian Voice was founded in California in 1976 under
the name Citizens United and changed its name to Christian
Voice in 1978. From its beginnings Christian Voice was
tied to the presidential ambitions of Ronald Reagan. In 1980
George Otis was the honorary chairman of ''Christians for
Reagan," a Christian Voice political project. Otis had inter-
viewed Reagan on his High Adventure "IV show and
allowed Christian Voice to use quotations from Reagan",
interview. Reagan had told Otis that, yes, he had had a
"born again" experience. Reagan had met Otis and his
friend Harald Bredesen in the early 1960s when he au-
ditioned to read from the Bible for Otis and Bredesen's tape
company.
Even now the national advisory hoard of Christian Voice
includes W. S. McBirnie, a California radio evangelist,
who was one of Reagan's advisors in his first campaign for
political office in 1965.' Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHave are
currently on the executive hoard of Christian Voice. Both
Lindsey and LaHaye are dispensationalists who have
written books about the imminent end of the world. In their
books they foresee a coming Soviet invasion in the Middle
East that sparks a terrible nuclear war that leaves the
U.S.S.R. destroyed. They believe, though, that ''Chris-
tians" like themselves will be "raptured" before the worst
occurs-they will simply disappear and he translated to
heaven to "the marriage feast of the Lamh'' during a period
of nuclear chaos on earth.
The organization has used some of the most vile and
hateful political rhetoric in American politics and has spe-
cialized in gay-bashing and gay-baiting the Democratic
Party. Christian Voice sent out promotional letters to
supporters announcing an "EMERGENCY DISEASE A-
LERT" warning that AIDS might strike them down through
an innocent goodnight kiss or from contamination of res-
taurant food. Christian Voice alluded in its hate literature to
an enormous cover-up of the ''imminent threat of the AIDS
plague" that was threatening the lives of Americans.
Among several draconian remedies, Christian Voice urged
that gays he outlawed from working "in close contact with
children, in the food service industry, in hospitals and
clinics." Though legally "non-partisan" Christian Voice
has been consistently opposed to Democratic candidates,
portraying the Democratic Party as the party of "kiddie-
porn" and "secular humanism."
Besides "report cards" and hate literature, Christian
Voice has aired television specials, one, "America Betrays
Her Children" featuring Ronald Reagan. Christian Voice
has worked closely in cooperation with other new ri.!ht or-
ganizations like Tim LaHayc's American Coalition for
Traditional Values (ACTV). ?
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also been divided since Darby's day over the question of the
timing of the Rapture. Some think it will occur before the
"tribulation" period, others in the midst of it, still others do not
think it will occur until after the "tribulation." These disputes
have led to schisms in the past.
Pentecostalism spread among both Blacks and whites
around the turn of the century and began as a lower-class, bi-
racial movement characterized more by religious behavior than
by theology. The fundamentalist movement, however, was a
reaction of white Protestants against modernist criticism of
scripture, and an apology for traditional theological positions.
Fundamentalism was formulated as a reaction to liberal Pro-
testantism, especially the acceptance of evolution in some in-
terpretations of the biblical accounts of creation and new his-
torical studies of the various books of the Bible. Dis-
pensationalism evolved into the theology of fundamentalism
during the course of the liberal/fundamentalist conflict around
the turn of the century that came to a showdown in the mid-
1920s.
Fundamentalists first became politically oriented after
World World I. During the war years Christianity was
identified with patriotism. After the Red Scare of 1919-21
fundamentalists became fiercely anti-communist. They saw
revolution in Russia as another piece to their apocalyptic
puzzle, and identified Russia with Magog, the invader of
Israel prophesied by Ezekiel to appear in the latter days. Dis-
pensationalist politics are still marked by their apocalyptic
dualism and fierce anti-communism.'?
After the fundamentalists' Pyrrhic victory at the famous
"Monkey trial," where John Scopes was found guilty of teach-
ing evolution in Tennessee (though later acquitted on appeal),
the fundamentalist movement lost the battle of public opinion.
In the late 1920s and during the early 1930s, many fundamen-
talists withdrew from the "mainstream" of American culture in
an effort to maintain their religious purity and to construct a
"godly" subculture of their own. Subjected to ridicule in the
press by writers like H. L. Mencken and successfully
stereotyped in Sinclair Lewis's novel Elsner Gantry, funda-
mentalists were abandoned by moderates and were taken less
seriously by the wider public.
Fundamentalists turned their contentious politics inward
and their coalition began to split up into competing groups lead
by religious entrepreneurs and independent operators. Once
they began to feud among themselves, fundamentalists lost
the political influence they enjoyed after the Red Scare."
Fundamentalism, sheltered in its evangelical ghetto, began
to venture into the outside world just as the U.S. was entering
17. See Dwight Wilson, Armageddon Now! The Premillenarian Response
to Russia and Israel Since 1917 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House,
1977).
18. There are signs now of increasing tensions within the evangelical
coalition that makes up the new Christian Right. One of the points of conten-
tion is the Rapture. Jimmy Swaggart recently attacked Pat Robertson's "New
Kingdom" teaching as similar to "the secular humanist philosophy," univer-
sally despised by Christian rightists. Post-cribbers like Robertson think of the
"pre-trib" Rapture as an "escape theory" and preach instead that Christians
working together can help usher in the Kingdom by taking political power and
by organizing the last great revival. Swaggart preaches the pre-trib Rapture as
doctrine. A recent book by David Hunt called The Seduction of Christianity has
raised a furor in evangelical circles by accusing famous television evangelists
like Robertson of dabbling in "New Age Movement" techniques. See The
Evangelist: The Voice of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, September 1986. In spite
of Swaggart's initial misgivings, he has endorsed the presidential aspirations
of Pat Robertson. See "Swaggart, in Reversal, Backs Robertson's Bid," New
York Times, September 10, 1986.
the panic years of the Cold War. In the early 1950s,
fundamentalist ideas, championed by Billy Graham, enjoyed a
revival. The idea of the Rapture was a comfort to many
Americans afraid nuclear war was imminent. The religious
dualism of dispensationalism appealed to Americans en-
couraged by their government to see political realities in terms
of a stark dualism between communism and anti-communism.
Dispensationalist preachers promised that Christians would
be raptured before the outbreak of nuclear tribulation. Many of
them interpreted the invention of the bomb as a possible means
by which the fiery destruction prophesied in Revelations might
be "literally" fulfilled. They look forward to a cosmic show-
down in the Middle East. Eventually, they believe, the Soviet
Union will attempt to invade Israel but will be destroyed either
by U.S. nuclear weapons or by God's direct intervention.
The new fundamentalist political coalition that emerged in
the late 1970s grew out of the resentment conservative
evangelicals felt over the outcome of the Vietnam war both in
Vietnam and in the U.S. Eager to see signs of the end of the
world around them, they interpreted the rash of open dis-
respect for authority, the drug use and counter-culture, as
harbingers of the coming Antichrist. So-called "Jesus people"
carried signs announcing imminent judgment. Dispensa-
tionalists interpreted the Israeli capture of Jerusalem in 1967
as the end of the times of the Gentiles.'" While they were busy
expectantly reading "the signs of the times," they were also
growing increasingly resentful and bitter over the consequen-
ces of the Vietnam war. Those feelings of resentment were
deeply felt and festered throughout the 1970s. Finally in 1979
conservative evangelicals found a champion in Ronald Rea-
gan. Organized by rightwing campaigners like Richard Vi-
guerie, a new fundamentalist coalition was built.
By Their Fruits You Will Know Them
The Christian Right has become a mass movement,
effectively organized and experienced in government. Their
ambitions have grown with their growth as a movement. Pat
Robertson toys with a presidential run while on the grass-
roots level his political cadre are busily organizing local and
state takeovers. Now the stakes are especially high. Presi-
dent Reagan has extended the arms race into the heavens. The
weapons build-up threatens to slip out of control as all the
treaties limiting weapons are abandoned. War in Central
America seems ever more likely.
Nuclear weapons do not worry dispensationalists. Many
believe they will be raptured before a nuclear war breaks out.
Others, like Robertson, believe they will be especially pro-
tected by God during the "tribulation." War with the Evil
Empire, globally or regionally in places like Central America,
seems logical and even inevitable to their dualist mentality.
Realpolitik for them can become an acting out of a cosmic battle
between symbolic entities, the Evil Empire and godly Ameri-
ca. Religiously inspired wars in the past were very bloody but
modern weapons promise to make such wars even more ter-
rible. A wild nuclear arms race, if not nuclear war, and spread-
ing "low intensity warfare" in Central America and Southern
Africa may become the bitter fruit of the apocalyptic mentality
of the Christian Right. ?
19. Their interpretation is based on Luke 21:24: "And they shall fall by the
edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem
shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles he
fulfilled."
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The Theology of Nuclear War
By Larry Kickham
Dispensationalists think they are living at the very end of
the "Church Age" which they believe will culminate in the
Rapture, when the members of the "true" church will be
removed from the planet. After the seven-year tribulation peri-
od prophesied in the Bible, dispensationalists expect a one-
thousand-year reign during which they will rule and reign with
Jesus, the Millennium Kingdom.
Like many millenarians, dispensationalists are dualist in
the way they look at the world and at history. They readily
adopted a fierce anti-communism during the political scares of
1919-21 and the early 1950s. An old idea left over from John
Cumming, a British apocalyptic writer during the Crimean
war,] that Russia was Magog, the prophesied invader of
Israel in the last days, spread among dispensationalists after
the Russian Revolution in 1917. It seemed plausible to them
that the officially atheist Soviet State could be "Magog," the
prophesied invader of Israel in the last days (Ezekiel, chapters
38-39). "Gog" is the prince of Magog. In their interpretation of
Ezekiel 38:2-3, "thus saith the Lord Jehovah; Behold, I am
against thee, 0 Gog, Prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal,"
they identify "Rosh" as Russia, '`Meshech" as Moscow and
"Tubal" as the Soviet province of Tobolsk. Equating the Soviet
Union with "Magog," dispensationalists became convinced
that the Soviet Union was an evil empire that had a special mis-
sion in the last days.
Since Darby's time dispensationalists have also believed
that Israel would be restored in the last days. Many dis-
pensationalist believers interpreted the creation of the State of
Israel in 1948 as a literal fulfillment of prophecy and an "infal-
lible" sign that "this" was the last generation before the Second
Coming of Christ. Believers have long interpreted events,
especially in the Middle East, as pieces of prophecy coming
together. The British capture of Jerusalem in World War I as
well as the Israeli capture of old Jerusalem in 1967 were inter-
preted as signs of the last days.
Fond of reading the Bible as a key to current events, dis-
pensationalists also read the invention of nuclear weapons in
1945 as a means of "literally" fulfilling Bible prophecy. The
bomb, many thought, might be the device by which the
elements will melt in the fiery apocalyptic vision of Revela-
tion. Country and western songs like "Jesus Hits Like An
Atom Bomb, and popular books like Hal Lindsey's The Late
Great Planet Earth helped spread the notion that nuclear
weapons are somehow related to the Second Coming of Christ.
In 1983 Jerry Falwell attacked the nuclear freeze movement
with a "prophecy packet" (two tapes and a pamphlet) entitled
1. Cumming, a preacher of the Scottish National Church. published two
apocalyptic hooks in 1855. Signs of the Times: Or the Present, Past, and
Future, published in Philadelphia, and The Elul: The Proximate Signs of the
Close of This Dispensation, published in London. Cumming's hooks are cited
and discussed in Dwight Wilson, Armageddon Nose! The Premillenarian Re-
sponse to Russia and Israel Since 1917 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book
House, 1977).
2. See the discussion in Charles Wolfe, "Nuclear Country: The Atomic
Bomb in Country Music," The Journal of Country Music, Vol. IV (1978),
Number 4. pp. 4-22.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
"Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Christ." As Falwell
states in his pamphlet, "the one brings thoughts of fear, de-
struction, and death while the other brings thoughts of joy.
hope, and life. They almost seem inconsistent with one an-
other. Yet, they are indelibly intertwined." Falwell, like many
of his fellow dispensational ists, believes he will be raptured
before nuclear war breaks out.
Tribulationism
Dispensational ists, however, are not all agreed as to the
timing of the Rapture. There are three main positions on the
question that cut across the greater division between funda-
mentalists and Pentecostals. Probably the majority, like
Falwell, a fundamentalist, and Jimmy Swag-art, a Pentecos-
tal, believe in a Rapture that will take place before the pro-
phesied seven-year period of tribulation, the popular "pre-
tribulationist" ("pre-trib") position. Others believe in a "mid-
trib" Rapture that will rescue Christians from the worst of the
tribulation, snatching them away before the nuclear "Gug-
Magog" war which is supposed to occur sometime in the mid-
dle of the seven-year tribulation period. Others, like Pat
Robertson, believe in a "post-trib" Rapture: Christians will
have to go through the entire seven-year period of tribulation
but will be especially protected by God, and at the end of the
tribulation the Christians would be raptured to return with
Jesus at the final battle of Armageddon. Adherents of all three
positions agree that they, as the triumphant saints, will rule
and reign with Jesus for a thousand years in the Millennial
Kingdom they envision emerging in the near future. The nu-
clear war many of them foresee will not he the end of the world,
but the prelude to a glorious one-thousand-year kingdom.
The divisions between pre-trib, mid-trio, and post-trib
believers can sometimes influence views on matters of public
policy and national defense and make for strange bedfellows.
Mid-and post-tribbers who believe "Christians" will have to
live through all or part of a seven-year "tribulation" are
naturally more interested in survivalist skills, food coopera-
tives, and other forms of mutual aid, popular ''end-tints" eco-
nomic theories, and civil defense schemes than are the pre-
tribbers who think they will magically disappear before the
prophesied bad times. Post-tribbers like Robertson believe
that "Christians" should prepare for the tribulation by organiz-
ing food and other cooperative organii.ations. Mid- and post-
tribbers share an interest in survivalism with racist "Identity"
believers, the devotees of a rival theory of biblical prophecy
who are training in paramilitary tactics, preparing for the racial
"purging" they foresee after the inevitable nuclear war.
Rightwing groups of rival persuasions can find a common
bond in anticommunism and even work together on counter-
insurgency projects. Paramilitary groups like Civilian Mate-
riel Assistance (formerly Civilian Military Assistance) and
those associated with Soldier of Forma' magazine. along with
Robertson's CBN, support the contras in Honduras and have
supplied aid to refugee groups on the Honduran border.
There has been friction between the various dispensation-
alist factions. Mid- and post-tribbers like Mary Relfc and Gary
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Jimmy Swaggart and Augusto Pinochet praise one
another.
North have denounced the pre-trib theory as "defeatist." The
post-trib theory, long considered pessimistic by old-line pre-
-tribbers, has won new followers. The upbeat "Kingdom
Agers" believe that they will be especially protected by God
during the "tribulation." The "Kingdom Age" theology Rob-
ertson presents in his book, The Secret Kingdom, emphasizes
the gradual emergence of the Millennial Kingdom and a new
theocratic world order. Robertson seems to believe that a
Christian takeover of the American government may be part of
that process and that Christians like Robertson will learn the
skills they will need to manage the Kingdom "on the job" in
positions of national responsibility.
One point all the tribbers can agree on is the need for a
"strong defense"-even a first-strike capability. Most dis-
persationalists in the government probably do not take the
debate between the "theologians" very seriously. All agree
that these are the last days. And, for the most part, they agree
to disagree. Most hope for a pre-trib Rapture, but many see the
mid- and post-trib position as more "realistic." They leave the
fine points of the dispute to the theologians.
What Does President Reagan Believe?
President Reagan has displayed a long-time interest, even a
fascination, with biblical prophecies of the last days. 3 Reagan
believes that "this may be the last generation" before a nuclear
war destroys the Soviet Union (the so-called Gog and Magog
war) and before the Second Coming of Christ. Reagan, like
many of his religious supporters, seems to be a dispensa-
tionalist. For Reagan, as for many other dispensationalists,
the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was a
fulfillment of prophecy and a sign that Armageddon is not far
off. Evidence of Reagan's interest in dispensationalist proph-
ecy first appeared in print in 1968. Reagan told a reporter from
a Christian magazine about a conversation he had had with his
pastor Donn Moomaw about the "signs of the times." Reagan
said:
We [the President and Billy Graham] got into a conversation
about how many of the prophecies concerning the Second
.3. See Lawrence Jones, "Reagan's Religion," Journal of Arnerii an
Culture, Vol. 8 (1985), pp. 59-70, for a summary of the evidence concerning
Reagan's apocalyptic beliefs.
10 CovertAction
Coming seemed to be having their fulfillment at this particu-
lar time. Graham told me how world leaders who are
students of the Bible and others who have studied it have
come to this same conclusion-that apparently never in
history have so many of the prophecies come true in such a
relatively short time.
After the conversation I asked Donn to send me more mate-
rial on prophecy so I could check them out in the Bible for
myself. You know I was raised on the Bible. I also taught it
for a long time in Sunday School.'
Reagan again referred to biblical prophecy in a radio program
entitled "Palestine," broadcast during the weeks of April 9-27,
1979. He mentioned prophecy only in passing, saying:
4. W. Rose, "The Reagans and their Pastor," Christian Li/i', May 1968.
Reagan taught Sunday School at the First Christian Church of Dixon, Illinois
while he was in high school.
Some Definitions
An "evangelical" actively seeks to proselytize and
convert others to his or her brand of Christianity, which
may or may not be fundamentalist or Pentecostal.
"Fundamentalism' refers to a literal interpretation of
the Bible and the application of that interpretation to all
mundane matters. Fundamentalists can belong to a vari-
ety of denominations, including those originating in the
"Pentecostal-Holiness" sects of the nineteenth century.
The word "Pentecostal" conies from the Greek name
for a harvest celebration following the gathering of the
wheat crop. It was one of the most joyous holidays on
the ancient Jewish calendar. In the New Testament book
of Acts, Chapter 2, the "Day of Pentecost" was when the
disciples of Jesus received the "gifts of the Holy Spirit"
as a promise that Christ would return to earth.
Modern-day Pentecostals, in contrast to Baptist
fundamentalists, believe that these "gifts"-the ability
to prophesy, perform healing miracles, and speak in
tongues-were intended for all Christians, not just for
those living during Christ's time on earth. The "gifts"
are also known as "charismata:" hence the term "char-
ismatic" is interchangeable with the terms "spirit-filled"
and "neo-Pentecostal," used to describe post-World
War II Pentecostals.
The practice of "speaking in tongues," also known as
glossolalia, is the most distinguishing feature of Pen-
tecostalism. In a state of fervent prayer, believers utter
strings of unintelligible syllables considered by char-
ismatics to have a deep spiritual significance. (Psy-
chologists and sociologists have described glossolalia
as a learned, cross-cultural psycholinguistic behavior to
which religious meaning is attached.)
Just as the word "Pentecostal" is derived from the
metaphor of the harvest, so is the term "Latter Rain."
The pre-Christian Israelites prayed for a "former rain" to
make their seeds germinate and a "latter rain" to make
their crops mature just before harvest time. Pentecostals
believe that in these "last days" before Christ's Second
Coming, God is symbolically pouring out this "latter
rain" in the form of miracles as a call for "His People" to
intensify their evangelistic efforts. ?
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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When Israel was created as a nation (carrying out a
centuries old Bible prophecy) its borders enclosed less than
20 percent of the area called Palestine.
Reagan also spoke about dispensationalist prophecies of
Armageddon with Jerry Falwell during the 1980 presidential
campaign. According to Falwell, they discussed prophecy
during a limousine ride in New Orleans:
He told me, back in New Orleans-we were riding together,
just the two of us, security officer up front, of course, with
the driver-we were riding and he said, "Jerry, I sometimes
believe we're heading very fast for Armageddon right now."
But he said, "1 am not a fatalist. I believe in human respon-
sibility. I believe that God will respect us for making all-out
efforts toward world peace, and that is where my com-
mitment lies."
That's where my commitment lies, too. The President is a
man of great faith. He's a man who knows what the Bible
has to say. That is why I trust him so implicitly.5
Reagan brought up the subject of biblical prophecy of the
end of the world again at a meeting with the Antiochian
Orthodox Metropolitan Philip in the White House on April 7,
1983. According to the report of the meeting, "The President
alluded to the Bible and the prophecies of Armageddon. He
mentioned the natural disasters that the entire world was suf-
fering and has suffered of late, and felt all these happenings
were warnings that should be heeded for the avoidance of that
doom." '
Reagan is not the only one in his administration who sees
current events in terms of end-time prophecies. Secretary of
Defense Weinberger has also been quoted on the subject:
I have read the Book of Revelation and, yes, I believe the
world is going to end-by an act of God, I hope--but every
day I think that time is running out.
Q: Are you scared'?
Weinberger: I worry that we will not have enough time to get
strong enough to prevent nuclear war. I think of World War
II and how long it took to prepare for it, to convince people
that rearmament for war was needed. I fear we will not be
ready. I think time is running out...hut I have faith.'
Senator Howell Heflin, Democrat from Alabama, reported a
conversation with Reagan about the end-times and an Arma-
geddon that involves the Soviet Union.
We got off into the Bible a little bit. We were talking about
the fact that the Middle East, according to the Bible, would
be the place where Armageddon would start. The President
was talking to me about the Scriptures and I was talking a
little to him about the Scriptures. He interprets the Bible and
Armageddon to mean that Russia is going to get involved in
5. From an interview Falwell had with Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times,
March 4, 1981 .
6. From The Word, Antiochian Orthodox Christian Diocese of North
America, June 1983.
7. "Washington Talk," New York Times. August 23, 1982.
8. New York Times. October 28, 1981.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Only days before American Marines were killed in a honih-
ing attack on their Beirut barracks Reagan told Tom Dine, ex-
ecutive director of the American-Israel Public Affairs Com-
mittee (AIPAC), that he saw the world situation in terms of
end-time prophecies:
You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old
Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find
myself wondering if-if we're the generation that's going to
see that come about. I don't know if you've noted any of
those prophecies lately, but believe me, they certainly de-
scribe the times we're going through."
Reagan's comments to Dine later inspired two reporters from
People magazine to ask the President to explain his remarks:
I've never done that publicly (talked about Armageddon,
etc.]. I have talked here, and then I wrote people, because
some theologians quite some time ago were telling me, call-
ing attention to the fact that theologians have been studying
the ancient prophecies-what would portend the coming of
Armageddon'?-and have said that never, in the time
between the prophecies up until now has there ever been a
time in which so many of the prophecies are coming
together. There have been times in the past when people
thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but
never anything like this.
And one of them, the first one who ever broached this to
me-and I won't use his name,'(' I don't have permission
to. He probably would give it, but I'm not going to ask-had
held a meeting with the then head of the German government,
years ago when the war was over, and did not know that his
hobby was theology. And he asked this theologian what did
he think was the next great news event, worldwide. And the
theologian, very wisely, said, "Well, I think that you're
asking that question in a case that you've had a thought
along that line." And he did. It was about the prophecies and
so forth.
So no. I've talked conversationally about that.
Q: You've mused on it. You've considered it.
THE PRESIDENT: (laughing) Not to the extent of throwing
up my hands and saying, "Well, it's all over." No. I think
whichever generation and at whatever time, when the time
comes, the generation that is there, I think will have it go on
doing what they believe is right.
Q: Even if it comes'?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.'
The prophecy issue surfaced during the 1980 campaign
debates when one of the reporters on the debate panel asked
Reagan to explain his statements about "nuclear Armaged-
don":
9. Jerusaletn Post, October 28, 1983. Reagan had this telephone conccr,a
tion with Dine on October 18. 1983.
10. The theologian Reagan here alludes to is Bills Graham and the German
leader is Konrad Adenauer. Reagan told the sane stow to the Boone,. this.
Bredesen, and Fllingwood during their conversation in 197)) about prophecy
and the soon Second Coming of Christ. See Jong. "p. rit.. n 3.
11. An interview with Garrv Clifford and Patricia Rsan of I''op/' macaiinc
on December 6. 1983. Transcript published in tt'cek/v ( I,nipi/ati11n n/ I'rrsi
dential Documents. 1983, pp. 1708-1713. An edited version of the inters iess
appeared in People, December 26, 1983. Sec Jones, op. rit . n. 3.
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Q: Mr. President, I'd like to pick up this Armageddon
theme. You've been quoted as saying that you believe deep
down that we are heading for some kind of biblical
Armageddon. Your Pentagon and your Secretary of Defense
have plans for the United States to fight and prevail in a nu-
clear war. Do you feel that we are heading, perhaps, for
some kind of nuclear Armageddon'? And do you feel that this
country and the world could survive that kind of calamity'?
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Kalb, I think what has been hailed
as something I'm supposedly, as President, discussing as
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ, now a world-wide organi-
zation with revenues over $100 million, began in 1951 in
Los Angeles on the U.C.L.A. campus. Founded by Bill
Bright, a dapper "fancy foods" businessman turned evan-
gelist, Campus Crusade grew up out of a circle of young
men who gathered around the dynamic Henrietta Mears of
Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Known as "Teacher" by
several generations of new leaders in the evangelical
movement, Mears had a powerful influence on Bright and
on Billy Graham.
Inspired by Mears and based at her palatial home in Bel
Air near the college campus, Campus Crusade was
launched among the fraternities and sororities and the
athletes of U.C.L.A. An early convert was all-American
linebacker Donn Moomaw, who later became Reagan's
pastor.
Mears, whose Sunday school numbered 6,000 mem-
bers, launched a revival in 1947 among her "college de-
partment" at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church. It was
one of many revivals which took place among American
evangelicals during the early years of the Cold War.'
Mears had travelled around the post-war world and told her
students that "there must be a Christian answer to the
growing menace of communism" and called for total com-
mitment from a new generation of evangelicals who would
become "expendables for Christ"2 in the struggle against
communism. Mears, a dispensationalist, was also con-
vinced the end of the world was near. A small group of
young men, including Bill Bright and Louis H. Evans, Jr.,
now pastor of the Presbyterian National Cathedral in Wash-
ington, met in Mears's cabin to pray, weep, and cry out to
the Lord. According to the accounts, God answered their
prayer with a vision: The college campuses were the key to
world leadership and world revival., A notice the little group
put up announced the last days, when "saith God, I will
pour out my Spirit upon all flesh."
In 1949 Mears helped launch Billy Graham's career. She
saw to it that some 5,000 of the 7,000 strong Hollywood
Presbyterian Church turned out to attend Graham's Los
Angeles crusade. Mears also organized a telephone cam-
paign with her student helpers to call everyone listed in the
L.A. telephone directory and invite them to the Graham
crusade. Only after Mears's efforts did William Randolph
Hearst send the famous telegram to his newspaper
reporters: "Puff Graham."
1. For an account of this one must go to a master's thesis by Richard M.
Riss, "The Latter Rain Movement of 1948 and the Mid-Twentieth Century
Evangelical Awakening," Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.. 1979.
2. E.M. Baldwin & D.V. Benson, Henrietta Mears and How She Did
it! (Glendale, California: Gospel Light Publications, 1966). p.231.
3. /bid., pp.232-3.
1
12 CovertAction
Although Mears was partly motivated by her dread of
communism, she self-consciously took over communist
methods of organization-"the cell-a small group of com-
mitted individuals working for the conversion of one other
person." Mears was a consummate organizer, as she ex-
plained, "We have in our department a system of triangles:
Two Christian students write their names on two sides of a
triangle. On the third side they write the name of a non-
Christian friend, for whom they pray. As they witness to
that friend and he accepts Christ, they bring him into the
triangle," etc. The system Mears organized was self-
generating. Each new convert became a member of a new
cell which began work on another "non-Christian friend."
Bright's Campus Crusade has continued the Mears tech-
niques and refined them.
Campus Crusade targeted the U.C.-Berkeley campus for
saturation evangelism in 1967 in an effort to break up the
anti-war movement there. From Berkeley, Campus Cru-
saders went on to hold "alternate" rallies in competition
with anti-war protests at other campuses. Bright first met
Ronald Reagan during the Vietnam war years when he was
governor of California. Reagan at the time called for a
"bloodbath" against anti-war protesters. Reagan and Bright
became personal friends. Bright had known Reagan's
deeply religious mother Nell when he was a member of
Henrietta Mears's group in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
It was Bright who asked Reagan to declare 1983 "The Year
of the Bible."
Bill Bright, like his teacher Mears, is a dispensational-
ist who believes that "this" may be the last generation
before the Second Coming of Christ. Bright's Campus
Crusade is committed to do no less than "fulfill the great
Commission in our generation"-that is. to evangelize the
world in one "last" generation. Hal Lindsey, who reads
nuclear war into the book of Revelation, started out work-
ing for Campus Crusade at Berkeley.'Campus Crusade has
always had a quasi-political cast, as its name suggests,
and has always been motivated by a fierce anti-commun-
ism. Though the organization claims to be interdenomina-
tional, dispensational ism is the basic ideology of Campus
Crusade. The global dualism which sees nothing at play in
world politics except the United States and a Communist
monolith fit easily into the apocalyptic dualism of dis-
pensationalism and is a key element of Campus Crusade
ideology.
Today, Campus Crusade is international, having oper-
ations in 149 countries, but still is strongest on United
States college campuses with more than 700 campuses
involved and is expanding its outreach into high schools.
Campus Crusade includes a military ministry, an aggres-
sive high-school ministry, and many other projects here
and abroad.
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principle is the result of just some philosophical dis-
cussions with people who are interested in the same things.
And that is the prophecies down through the years, the
biblical prophecies of what would portend the coming of
Armageddon and so forth. And the fact is that a number of
Southern California for Jesus participants Pat
Robertson, John Gimenez, Bill Bright, and Demos
Shakarian.
From its beginning Campus Crusade has targeted
leaders and has now expanded its pursuit of leaders far
beyond the college campuses into Washington, D.C. and
the United Nations through "Christian Embassies."
Campus Crusade's Christian Embassy in Washington has
organized Bible studies in the Pentagon, including one for
generals and admirals, as well as Bible studies, meetings,
dinners, and conferences for administration appointees,
retreats for government and military leaders, and Bible study
groups for Senators and Members of Congress. Staffers of
Christian Embassy also hold weekly Bible study for the
wives of cabinet members.
Nelson Bunker Hunt has been a firm backer of the
organization.' Hunt serves on a Campus Crusade ex-
ecutive committee along with Roy Rogers, the millionaire
cowboy actor and restaurateur, and Wallace Johnson, co-
founder of Holiday Inns. Hunt's committee raised enor-
mous sums for Campus Crusade campaigns, training
centers, and religious broadcasting. One of Hunt's sons
underwrote the Campus Crusade movie "Jesus," which
Campus Crusade often broadcasts in villages in Central
America.
Campus Crusade is heavily invested in ministries in
Central America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, on the
front-lines of American global interests. In the 1980s
Campus Crusade began producing and broadcasting a num-
ber of radio and television programs in Central and South
America. In Honduras, Campus Crusade has had an out-
reach to the Miskito Indians on the Atlantic coast since
1981. Campus Crusade has a training school for evangel-
ists in Cuernavaca, Mexico and smaller training centers
including one in Guatemala. The organization's campus
ministries are aggressively anti-communist and political in
tone. Sometimes Campus Crusaders launch "blitz earn-
theologians for the last decade or more have believed that
this was true, that the prophecies are coming together that
portend that. But no one knows whether Armaged-
don-those prophecies-mean that Armageddon is a
thousand years away or the day after tomorrow. So I have
paigns," putting up posters overnight and invading class-
rooms with evangelistic talks the next morning.'
Jimmy Hassan was the national director of Campus
Crusade in Nicaragua from 1982 until 1985. In November
1985 he was interrogated by Sandinista officials who sus-
pected him of working with the C.I.A. In particular, he was
accused of participating in a campaign to induce resistance
to Nicaragua's draft laws, of operating an illegal press, and
of entering the country with large. undeclared sums of
money. Hassan was detained for four hours, and, follow-
ing his release, fled to the United States, denying all the
charges.' Since then he has toured the United States
speaking to American evangelicals about religious repres-
sion in Nicaragua. serving as a showpiece for U.S.
evangelicals seeking to prove that Nicaragua is a "totalitar-
ian dungeon." Hassan has delivered his testimony on Pat
Robertson's -700 Club," at a joint Institute for Religion and
Democracy-National Association of Evangelicals press
conference in Washington D.C. February 3. 1986, and at
the annual convention of the Coalition on Revival, July 3,
1986.
Hassan's press agent and translator is lose Gonzalez
Souza, described by the IRD as a "Uruguayan labor
organizer." Gonzalez runs his own nominal organization,
Semilla (the Spanish word for seed) based in the Chesa-
peake, Virginia, office of Pat Robertson's National Per-
spectives Institute. Gonzalez, a former graduate student at
CBN University, says CBN has given him a small start-up
grant and free office space to "train and organize" Christian
leaders throughout the hemisphere.
Campus Crusade's corporate task is to fulfill the "Great
Commission" (Matthew 28:18-20)-to evangelize the
world in this, "the last" generation. The organization has
ambition plans for the year 2000. In 1984 Campus Crusade
announced a new project, Movement 2000. By 2000,
Campus Crusade is planning to expand to every one of the
3,200 college campuses, on all 200 U.S. military bases, at
3,900 high schools, in 50 inner city projects, in all 44 fed-
eral prisons, in 250 major cities, "and more." In 1985
Campus Crusade began experimenting with satellite video
"conferences." The event, Explo 85, linked up audiences in
54 countries. During the four day event Bright traveled to
South Korea, the Philippines, West Berlin, and Mexico
City to deliver keynote addresses. Campus Crusade is
planning an even larger satellite conference in 1990.
Campus Crusade, like other dispensationalist organiza-
tions, will work ever more feverishly as the year 2000
approaches because they believe the end is near. Bright
dreams of 5 million, then 50 million disciplined recruits
working under his direction to bring in the "last harvest
5. "1981 Annual Report: The Latin American Ministrv (':nnpus
Crusade for Christ."
6. See El Nuevo Didrio, November 29. 1985.
7. "Helping Reach the World for Christ." the 1984 annual report of
Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc.
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President Reagan ponders the world situation.
never seriously warned and said we must plan according to
Armageddon. '-
Reagan's remark that the prophecied events might not
happen "the day after tomorrow" or until long into the future is
characteristic of dispensational ism. Billy Graham has said
essentially the same thing in a copy of his magazine Decision.
There he wrote, "It seems like all the signs are pointing to
Armageddon. The storm clouds are gathering, the lightning
is flashing, the thunder is roaring. The great Armageddon
could be now or a hundred years from now. We don't know."
Falwell, too, is of the same opinion, as he says in his tape
Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Christ, "I am living as
though Jesus were coming today. But I am planning and labor-
ing and working as though I had another 25 or 50 years. I think
that is the proper posture for a believer."'3
Reagan's interest in end-time prophecies, as is clear from
his own remarks, goes back at least to 1968, when he dis-
cussed it with his pastor Donn Moomaw. Like Henrietta
Mears and Billy Graham in the 1950s, Reagan was disposed
to see Communism in religious terms. He also apparently
shared the dispensationalist beliefs about God's plan of un-
folding prophecy in the Middle East. In 1971 when Reagan was
still Governor of California he talked more about the end of the
world with the president pro tem of the California State Senate,
James Mills. Mills wrote up his notes and recollections of that
conversation in 1985. According to Mills, Reagan excitedly
told him that:
It can't be long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone
will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must
mean that they'll be destroyed by nuclear weapons. They
exist now, and they never did in the past."
According to Mills, Reagan went on to identify "the enemies
of God," the prophecied invader of Israel, "Gog," with the
Soviet Union:
12. From the debate held on October 21, 1984, transcript published in the
New York Times, October 22, 1984.
13. From Decision, April 1983. See Jones, op. cit., n. 3, at note 68.
14. James Mills, "The Serious Implications of a 1971 Conversation with
Ronald Reagan," San Diego Magazine, August 1985.
14 CovertAction
Ezekiel tells us that Gog [sic], the nation that will lead all of
the powers of darkness against Israel, will come out of the
north. Biblical scholars have been saying for generations
that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to
the north of Israel? None. But it didn't seem to make sense
before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Chris-
tian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become
communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself
against God.
Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly. is
Conclusion
In 1985, looking back on that conversation with Reagan,
Mills concluded that his "coolness to all proposals for nuclear
disarmament" are consistent with his apocalyptic views.
Certainly the arms race speeded up significantly under Reagan
and has threatened to run away out of control as the U.S.
begins to deploy a first-strike arsenal. The D-5 or Trident II
missiles to be deployed in 1989 are accurate enough to destroy
hard targets" and, like the MX (the so-called Peacekeeper),
these missiles can be used in a first strike against hardened
enemy missile silos. "Starwars" is not likely to work well as a
shield from a theoretical Soviet first-strike but may be ade-
quate to partially shield American targets from a Soviet second
strike.
Reagan has refused to agree to a nuclear test ban. No arms
control proposals were agreed to under the Reagan administra-
tion and the nuclear arms race has spread to space.
With first-strike arsenals in place, the balance of terror will
become unstable. Some American analysts fear that the Soviet
Union will adopt a launch-on-warning strategy and begin to
deploy its own versions of the "Peacekeeper" and Trident II
missiles. If both arsenals are set at launch on warning the two
war machines will be on a hair-trigger.
Apocalyptic ideas might be the wild-card in the nuclear
poker game. An American President who believes that nuclear
war with the Soviet Union is inevitable because of biblical
prophecy might make building a first-strike arsenal the chief
national priority. A severe crisis in the Middle East could be
interpreted by a dispensationalist President as the beginning of
the prophesied Gog and Magog war.
Reagan seems to see contemporary world events, es-
pecially those in the Middle East, through the lens of popular
dispensational ism. He has read Hal Lindsey's apocalyptic
best-seller The Late Great Planet Earth." Another Arab-
Israeli war could appear to a true believer as the opening salvos
of the Gog and Magog war. If Reagan is a true believer he might
respond to such a tense situation by launching a first strike
against the Soviet Union, especially if the Israelis seemed to
be in danger of suffering defeat on the battlefield. Would Pres-
ident Pat Robertson hear a voice telling him to act as the tool of
God's destruction and rain nuclear fire down on "Magog"? It
wouldn't be the first time that apocalyptic ideas led to war but it
could well be the last. ?
15. Ibid. Reagan means Magog, the empire, rather than Gog, the prince,
although dispensationalist writings often use the terms interchangeably.
16. "Trident Subs, Silent, Elusive and Deadly. Change Nuclear Game,"
Wall Street Journal, July 28, 1986.
17. According to Herb Ellingwood, who said he gave Reagan a copy of
Lindsey's book, among other material: from an interview with Ellingwood,
June 15, 1978, quoted in part in the radio documentary "Ronald Reagan and the
Prophecy of Armageddon." See Jones, op. cit., n. 3.
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The Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International (FGBMFI)
The seed money for several of the television evangelists
including Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network
(CBN), Jim Bakker's Praise The Lord (PTL), and Paul
Crouch's Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), has come
from members of the Full Gospel Business Men's Fel-
lowship International (FGBMFI), a Pentecostal organiza-
tion of business and military men. The FGBMFI began in
1952 with a small group of businessmen who met for
breakfast at Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles.
It was organized and initially funded by Demos Shakarian, a
prominent southern California dairyman whose father had
emigrated from Armenia to southern California in 1905.
Shakarian was motivated by a vision of world-wide revival
which he thought would herald the imminent return of Jesus
Christ.
MILITARY PRAYER BREAKFAST
33rd WORLD CONVENTION
FULL GOSPEL
BUSINESS MEN'S FELLOWSHIP INTERNATIONAL
SATURDAY JULY 12, 1986 at 0800
MARRIOTT
ORLANDO WORLD CENTER
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
The Clifton meeting included Oral Roberts, who spoke
for 20 minutes and closed with a prayer: "Lord Jesus, let
this fellowship grow in Your strength alone. Send it march-
ing across the world. We give You thanks right now that we
see a thousand chapters.` Since that day in 1952 the
FGBMFI has organized some 600,000 men worldwide into
local chapters in 92 countries. Full Gospel includes a num-
ber of right-wing activists like Joseph Coors, who is a
trustee of the Heritage Foundation and a member of CBN
University board of regents.
Full Gospel businessmen are enthusiastic worshipers,
pray in tongues, and practice faith-healing. The organisa-
tion is non-denominational and includes Catholic charis-
matics, who also pray in tongues, as well as Protestant
Pentecostal groups, and Protestant charismatics who are
members of historical Protestant churches. Besides their
common focus on Jesus and the "baptism of the Holy
Spirit"-when believers are said to he filled with the Holy
Spirit and begin to speak in tongues Full Gospel busi-
nessmen also generally agree that they now are living in the
last days. Many are dispensationalists. They believe that
the FGBMFI has been called to help organize the final harv-
est, the prelude to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The fellowship defines "businessmen" loosely and in-
cludes a large number of military men as well as business-
men, tradesmen, and their families. Besides the regular
local chapter meetings, FGBMFI holds regional conven-
tions, annual world conventions, and publishes hooks,
pamphlets and an international magazine, The I'm( c.
FGBMFI also airs "Good News!" programs over Christian
networks like Jim Bakker's PTL. network and the Califor-
nia-based TBN, and over independent radio and television
stations.
The FGBMFI men meet regularly to share their personal
"testimonies," and explaining how they "came to know
Jesus" and how they received "the Baptism in the Holy
Spirit." FGBMFI chapters meet for prayer breakfasts and
banquets where speakers give their testimonies, the group
prays in tongues and praises Jesus. In some parts of the
country, particularly in the sunbelt states, some FGBMFI
chapters are made up largely of the men who manage the
military-industrial complex.
President Reagan has close ties with the FGBMFI.
There have been a number of FGBMFI members in the
Reagan Administration. Among them are James Watt,
former Secretary of the Interior, and Herbert Fllingwood,
formerly the head of the federal Merit Systems Protection
Board, and an assistant to the Attorney General, now
working full time for Pat Robertson's presidential cam-
paign. Ten years before Reagan was elected President,
Ellingwood, along with four other Full Gospel activists,
prayed with him, then Governor of California, and wit-
nessed a dramatic prophecy that Reagan would become
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President ("reside in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue") if he
continued to walk in God's way. According to reports of
people close to Reagan, the President took that prophecy
and its subsequent fulfillment very seriously.
The prophecy took place on September 20, 1970 in
Reagan's Sacramento home. George Otis,2 a FGBMFI
leader and frequent speaker at Full Gospel events, and a
former Lear executive, (he worked on the climate control
systems for the Minute Man missiles at Vandenberg Air
Force base), and later head of his own aero-space contract-
ing business, pronounced the prophecy after he became
"filled with the Spirit." Reagan's friends Pat and Shirley
Boone, both active in FGBMFI, had flown to Sacramento
from a FGBMFI convention in Palm Springs. The Boones
introduced Reagan to their Full Gospel friends George Otis
and Harald Bredesen.
Bredesen had been a long-time activist in the so-called
charismatic movement, the spread of Pentecostal practices
into non-Pentecostal churches. He had a long association
with FGBMFI, and has been a frequent speaker at Full
Gospel meetings. A student pastor under Bredesen in the
early 1960s, Pat Robertson, was later to establish the
Christian Broadcasting Network by canvassing on the air
and by raising seed money among sympathetic Full Gospel
businessmen. Bredesen has been a member of the board of
directors of Robertson's CBN since its beginning in 1962.
Bredesen introduced Robertson at his September 1986
televised rally when the televangelist unofficially kicked off
his campaign for President.
Reagan, the Boones, Otis, and Bredesen spent that Sep-
tember afternoon in 1970 talking about biblical prophecy of
the last days and the Second Coming of Christ. After their
talk they formed a circle, held hands, and began to pray.
Otis was suddenly overcome "with the Spirit" and began to
speak in the voice of God, addressing Reagan as "My
son," and after comparing him with a king, Otis told him he
would "reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" if Reagan
continued to "walk in My ways."
Otis, like many Full Gospel businessmen, is fascinated
with prophecy and the Second Coming of Christ. He is sure
that we are living in the last days. Otis now operates a
short-wave radio ministry called High Adventure with the
four "Voice of Hope" stations in Israeli-occupied Lebanon
("broadcasting from the Armageddon bowl"), and another
in southern California, broadcasting in Spanish to the
western hemisphere. As a High Adventure brochure put it:
"Super Powered Christian Radio Station Can Push the
Communists From Our Back Door!" Otis also built Middle
East Television but gave his TV station in the "Armaged-
don bowl" to Pat Robertson's CBN. Both Middle East
2. Otis has written a number of books that document his career. His
religious autobiography, High Adventure (Van Nuys, California: Bible
Voice Books, 1971), describes the meeting with Reagan. Otis wrote an-
other book entitled Voice of Hope (Van Nuys, California: High Adventure
Ministries, 1983) which describes his radio stations in occupied Lebanon
and his close relationships with Phalange leaders like Sa'ad Haddad. Otis
has also written extensively about the dispensationalist scenario for the
end of the world which he believes will be touched off by a war in the Mid-
dle East. For his views on the end of the world see his books The Ghost of
Hagar (Van Nuys, California: Time-Light Books, 1974) and Millennium
Man (Van Nuys, California: Bible Voice, Inc., 1974). And see CRIB,
Number 18 (Winter 1983), pp. 64-65.
Television and Otis's Voice of Hope radio stations have
been targets of bombing attacks. Otis worked closely in
Lebanon with phalangist leader Major Sa'ad Haddad, his
successor General Antoine Lahad, and the Israeli military
authorities. Otis, like many American dispensationalists,
believes that a Soviet invasion of Israel is imminent. He
thinks the next Arab-Israeli war could touch off a nuclear
showdown between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. culminating in
the so-called Gog-Magog war prophesied in Ezekiel and
imagined by Otis and other dispensationalists as a super-
power nuclear war.
Many members of the FGBMFI hold responsible
positions in military industries and in the nuclear chain of
command. Some like Sanford McDonnell,; chairman of the
board of McDonnell Douglas Corporation, help control the
high-tech military industries that build the strategic arsenal
of the U.S. The FGBMFI has several military chapters and
holds regular military prayer breakfasts. General John
Vessey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke at a
San Antonio, Texas FGBMFI military breakfast in 1985.
Many active members of FGBMFI are involved with the
military, many are ex-officers, some with experience
working with nuclear weapons systems, who now work on
the civilian side of the military-industrial complex. Few
have any fear of nuclear war. Many believe they will he
raptured before war breaks out.
The idea that a network of key workers in the military-
industrial complex, along with others who are key decision
makers in the nuclear chain of command, may all be
apocalyptic in their expectations of the near future is un-
settling. No one wants to take it very seriously because no
one wants to believe it. But more and more evidence
suggests that prophecy and apocalyptic expectations are
rife within the nuclear weapons establishment. Such ideas
are popular among the people who assemble nuclear
weapons at the Pentax plant in Amarillo, Texas.5
During the Reagan years dispensationalist prayer
groups honeycombed Washington, D.C. Hundreds of
Bible study groups and prayer meetings were organized by
lay evangelists like Herbert Ellingwood, Reagan's friend
and long time aide, and by other religious activists in the
Reagan Administration. The Christian Embassy, an off-
shoot of Campus Crusade for Christ, organized bible study
groups for flag officers in the Pentagon, for Members of
Congress and their aides, for administration appointees,
and for the wives of cabinet members.'
The FGBMFI has three chapters in the Washington area,
one at the Navy Officers Club in the Navy Yard.7 Dis-
pensationalism, with its fascination with prophecies of the
Second Coming of Christ, is the dominant theology in many
of these Washington prayer groups.
The FGBMFI has held regular military prayer breakfasts
since 1964. Pat Robertson and his mentor Harald Bredesen
3. The Full Gospel Business Voice. August 1986.
4. Ibid.. August 1985.
5. See A.G. Mojtabai, Blessed Assurance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1986).
6. From The Christian Einba.ssv Update. Summer 1983.
7. From the 1986-87 FGBMFI World Chapter Directory. published by
the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International, P.O. Box
5050, Costa Mesa, CA 92628.
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have preached at FGBMFI military prayer breakfasts.' A
recent FGBMFI pamphlet outlines the scope of the in-
fluence the Full Gospel organization enjoys in Reagan's
Washington:
The Secretary of Defense who built us two prayer rooms
in the Pentagon; Lieutenant General Dick Shaefer, Col-
onel Speed Wilson, Colonel Hank Lackey: the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Commandant of the
Marine Corps; the Chief of Naval Operations; Major
General Jim Freeze, Major General Jerry Curry, Colonel
Andy Anderson; the Chief of Staff of the Army; the Chief
of Staff of the Air Force; Sergeant Major Bud Nairn and
First Lieutenant David Nairn, Brigadier General Charles
Duke... the lists of military men and women who have
been vitally affected by these Military Prayer Breakfasts
go on and on.'
Major General Jerry Curry was a featured participant at
the 1977 FGBMFI World Convention and is currently a
member of the board of regents of CBN University. Lt.
Gen. Dick Shaefer, who spoke at the FGBMFI regional
convention in Washington, D.C. in February 1986, served
for 35 years in the military, including 10 years as general.
He was the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force in Europe,
Chief of Plans in Vietnam, Deputy Director for Plans and
Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Operations for
NATO's Allied Command in Europe, and Deputy Chairman
of the NATO Military Committee.
Reagan himself, at the top of the nuclear chain of com-
mand, has given his "testimony" at Full Gospel meetings.
Reagan even credited a Full Gospel prayer group for "in-
stantly" healing his ulcers during his term as governor of
California. 1'
There is evidence from Reagan's own mouth that he
believes in the dispensationalist scenario of a superpower
nuclear war. (See "The Theology of Nuclear War," in this
issue.)
The influence of FGBMFI extends throughout the world.
Full Gospel businessmen regularly organize "air-
lifts"-members fly at their own expense to target countries
like Haiti or South Africa. There they organize breakfasts
and banquets and spread their version of the gospel to
national elites. As one FGBMFI pamphlet proclaims, "The
harvest is ready.. .and so are we!" FGBMFI members
believe the end is coming soon and the FGBMFI has been
called to help organize the last great revival before the
Second Coming of Christ. As John Carrette, a Guatemalan
businessman and FGBMFI member, prayed at the 1986
FGBMFI World Convention, addressing God:
8. Robertson and Bredesen have spoken at Full Gospel military prayer
breakfasts since 1972 when they attended one in Buffalo. New York. One
of the speakers at that meeting was General Ralph E. Haines, the Com-
manding General of the Continental Army Command, who received the
"Baptism of the Holy Spirit" at the meeting.
9. From the leaflet handed out at the Military Prayer Breakfast. July 12,
1986 at the 33rd World Convention of the FGBMFI.
10. "Reagan Was Healed of Ulcers by Prayer Group, Ex-Aide Says."
Los Angeles Tirnes, July 15, 1978. The L.A. Times confirmed the story
with Reagan. The ex-aide who reported the story was Herbert Ellingwood,
who later served the Reagan Administration in Washington. See Lawrence
Jones, "Reagan's Religion," Journal of American Culture, Winter 1985.
n. 37, for Ellingwood's description of the healing.
We know that you're bringing forth world-wide revival
even now as we speak and it's your will that that he. It's
your time that that be and this is the organization that you
have called to provoke the world-wide revival in these
end-times.
General Rios Montt, who became the president of
Guatemala in an army coup, is a member of it Pentecostal
church and was aided and supported by Full Gospel
businessmen like John Carrette, a former Army Ranger in
Vietnam. According to Carrette, the current presidents of'
Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are all Full Gospel.
Rios Montt, after he was deposed from the presidency in
another coup, toured the United States speaking to Pente-
costal and charismatic audiences. The former military dic-
tator addressed the FGBMFI world convention in 1984.
The FGBMFI has been very active in those parts of the
world where the U.S. has strong interests, or where the
U.S. is fearful of revolution or Soviet influence. In January
1986 the FGBMFI sent an "airlift" to the Philippines where
the Full Gospel businessmen toured schools, plants,
factories, and military bases. Other 1986 airlifts were
scheduled for El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexi-
co, and South Africa.
In view of the significant proportion ofnienihers from file
military-industrial establishment, some members of the
FGBMFI may have other motivations than their desire to
spread the gospel around the world. The Fellowship, like
many other evangelical organizations, has become highly
politicized. In 1986, at the FGBMFI world convention
canvassers collected the signatures and addresses of
potential supporters for Pat Robertson's presidential cam-
paign. As at many evangelical gatherings, rightwing politi-
cal causes are freely mixed with the gospel at FGBMFI
conventions. A political agenda may play a key role in some
FGBMFI work for "the last great revival." ?
General Ralph E. Haines, Jr., Honorary Chairman of
FGBMFI and "spiritual leader" of the Continental
Army ,
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Shock Troops of the Christian Right:
Shepherding
By Sara Diamond*
"You stop preaching the Gospel and nations fall."
-Dennis Peacocke, Oct. 12, 1983
These words, on a small scrap of paper, are pinned to the
entryway bulletin board at 740 Mendocino Ave. in Santa Rosa,
California, home of His Name Ministries. To an outside
observer, these words may seem meaningless-torn from the
pages of some unknown preacher's Sunday sermon notes. But
to thousands of Christians in "shepherding" churches, these
words from a leading Christian Right strategist, epitomize the
global vision of their secret, tightly structured movement. 1
As the name implies, "shepherding," or "discipleship," is
used to describe a broad range of charismatic churches headed
by strong leaders intent on building dedicated flocks around
themselves. The shepherding churches share some traditional
Pentecostal doctrines, particularly "the gifts of the Spirit,"
supernatural experiences like healing and speaking in tongues.
But it would be misleading to confuse shepherding groups
with fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches-even authori-
tarian ones-which do not subscribe to the doctrine of "cov-
enant relationships." What distinguishes the shepherding
churches are hierarchical pyramids of "cells" whose members
submit themselves to shepherds for worldly and spiritual di-
rection and doctrinal emphasis on Biblical references to au-
thority and obedience.
By conservative estimates, at least one million U.S.
Christians belong to shepherding churches.' Written accounts
of the movement's origins and precise inner workings are
scarce, and "sheep" are generally reticent about revealing de-
tails to outsiders.
What is clear is that the shepherding movement is diverse,
decentralized, web-like in its structure, and conservative
to radical right in its political orientations. Shepherding
churches are, with increasing frequency, mobilizing for
1. Shepherding churches do not generally use the term to describe
themselves, and consider it pejorative.
2. See Linda Blood, "Shepherding/Discipleship Theology and Practice of
Absolute Obedience," Cu/tic Studies Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2. 1986.
3. Most successful mass movements share these qualities. For an ex-
cellent comparative study of the neo-Pentecostal and the Black Power
movements of the 1960s, see Luther P. Gerlach and Virginia H. Hine, People.
Power, Change: Movements of Social Trcnts/'ormation (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill. 1970).
* Sara Diamond is a graduate student in sociology at the University of
California, Berkeley. and a contributing editor of Propaganda Analysis
Review, and produces a weekly program on rightwing politics for Pacifica
Radio.
political activism and the issues and positions are well de-
fined: opposition to abortion rights, agitation against "hu-
manist" thought in education, promotion of the arms race, and
support for U.S. administration counterinsurgency programs
abroad. The political potential of a secretive, readily mobilized
cadre system is obvious. In fact, it is safe to say that the
shepherding movement, with its rank-and-file cell structure
and the high-level activities of its leaders, constitutes the
activist vanguard of the Christian Right.
Origins
The origins of the shepherding movement may be traced to
Pentecostalism's Latter Rain movement of the late I 940s and
early 1950s when a number of prominent U.S. evangelists,
including Oral Roberts, William Branham, and Bill Bright,
postulated that theirs was the last generation and that,
therefore, an extraordinary revival was at hand.4 Fundamen-
talists and Pentecostals have always stressed the imminent
return of Jesus Christ, but the Latter Rain Pentecostals
believed that the Second Corning would occur when the
Church, which they call the Body of Christ, was perfected
through Christians' submission to the "five-told ministry" of
apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, as
described in Ephesians 4: I1. Latter Rain Pentecostals
stressed the need to prepare the material world for the installa-
tion of the Kingdom of God.
Out of the Latter Rain movement grew several politically
significant organizations, among them Demos Shakarian's
Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International (FG-
BMFI )5 and Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ.'
These and other groups were the forerunners of a second wave
of the post-World War 11 revival, the "charismatic renewal"
beginning in the early 1960s and reaching its peak with the rise
of the "Jesus Freak" movement. While the secular world took
notice of young fervent Jesus Freaks proselytizing on college
campuses, something even more significant was going on
within mainstream U.S. churches. Ministers of all denomi-
nations began incorporating "charismatic" practices into their
services; there was a new emphasis on singing, hand clap-
ping, dancing, healing, and speaking in tongues.
4. Much has been written on the post-World War 11 revivals. Sec especially
David Edwin Harrell, All Things are Possible: The Healing and Chari.cntatic
Revivals in Modern America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1975):
and Vinson Syrian, In the Latter Days: The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the
Twentieth Century (Ann Arbor. Michigan: Servant Books, 1984).
5. See "The Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International" in this
issue.
6. See "Campus Crusade for Christ" in this issue.
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Out of the "charismatic renewal" emerged key leaders,
some of whom drifted away from suburbia to create self-
contained Christian communes where believers could live their
faith 24 hours a day. Others focused on winning new converts
and developing "spiritual maturity" within their ranks. Out of
the latter grew the original shepherding churches.
Go Ye Therefore and Make Disciples
The official story of U.S. shepherding centers on the
"charismatic" ministries of five preachers who banded to-
gether in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the late 1960s. Bob
Mumford, Charles Simpson, Derek Prince, Ern Baxter, and
Don Basham, each with their own careers as Bible teachers
and evangelists, entered into a "covenant relationship" with
each other and formed Christian Growth Ministries and began
publishing New Wine magazine, with a current circulation of
about 250,000. A covenant relationship has been likened to
marriage: the five preachers took on a collective responsibility
for overseeing each other's personal and spiritual develop-
ment. Each of the "Fort Lauderdale Five" trained their own dis-
ciples to go out and start churches, organized in related
pyramidal networks that criss-crossed the country geograph-
ically.
Another part of the official story is the key role of
Assemblies of God preacher Juan Carlos Ortiz, an Argentinean
now residing in Cupertino, California. His book, Call to Dis-
cipleship, is considered a manual for shepherding pastors. In
the early 1970s Ortiz came to the United States and taught lead-
ing evangelicals to build churches using a cell group structure.
Emphasizing a radical form of spiritual imitation (not unlike
Eastern mysticism's traditional guru/disciple relationships),
Ortiz urged charismatic leaders to build networks of committed
disciples, not just buildings for neophytes to meet in once a
week. Ortiz's underlying principle is submission:
Here is the first law of discipleship: There will be no
formation of life without submission. The club-type mem-
bers don't submit. It's the other way. They want the pastor
to submit to them. They have the annual general assembly of
the club where they vote. In this way each year, the pastor
must be approved by the people. In the "new Bible" the
pastor is submitted to the members but my Bible says that
the people should be submitted to the pastor.
Submission means submission, nothing less. I can form
the life of my children because they submit to me. But if each
time I corrected them I knew they could run away, it would be
a different matter.'
About the same time that the Fort Lauderdale Christian
Growth Ministries preachers were reportedly influenced by
Ortiz, on the other side of the globe a South Korean pastor was
implementing cell group structure and submission to authority
in his church. Paul Yonggi Cho, pastor of Full Gospel Central
Church in Seoul (the largest Christian church in the world),
built his flock from 600 in 1965 to 500,000 members by 1986.
Cho says his secret lies in training cell group leaders to lead
weekly prayer and counselling sessions for no more than 15
families in urban residential areas. Members deemed "ma-
ture" split from their mother cells, recruit new members and
7. Juan Carlos Ortiz, Call to Discipleship (Plainfield. New Jersey: Logos
Press, 1975), p. 73. Ortiz currently lives in Northern California and keeps a
very low profile within the shepherding movement.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Four of the Fort Lauderdale Five shepherds: (left to
right) Charles Simpson, Ern Baxter, Bob Mumford, and
Don Basham (seated).
form new cells.'
According to exiles from South Korea's military regime
now living in the United States. Cho's real success secret is
his strong anticommunism and avowed support for the Chun
government. Exiles say Cho's brand of Christianity offers
weary South Koreans an escape from the psychological stress
of the Cold War against North Korea and a chance to associate
themselves with a prosperous, politically acceptable public
figure.
In fact, the home cell group structure had been developed by
a U.S. evangelist, Dr. John Hurston, who was it co-founder of
Cho's church. From 1958 to 1982 he trained South Korean and
South Vietnamese leaders in implementing cell group structure
to build their ranks, according to Charisma magazine, con-
sidered a leading publication of the shepherding movement."
Hurston currently trains U.S. pastors from his Word of Faith
Outreach Center in Dallas, Texas.
"What worked in South Korea is working in Dallas,"
Charisma reported in June 1986.1" Whether the flavor is
Argentinean, Southeast Asian, or American. the cell group
plan has two faces. On one side it looks like a standard busi-
ness management blueprint for church growth: the other side
looks like a model for building underground counterrevolu-
tionary movements.
It is from both perspectives the personal and the
political-that the shepherding movement needs to he ex-
amined. First, the personal.
The Kingdom of God is Not a Democracy
Since its beginnings within the United States, the shep-
herding movement has been steeped in controversy. Most
scandalous within evangelical ranks have been charges that
shepherds have infiltrated and taken over established Church-
es. In an in-depth investigative report, San Francisco L.r-
aminer religion writer Don Lattin described a Santa Rosa
church taken over by Northern California shepherding bishop
Dennis Peacocke after his "disciple" Loren Biggs became
8. Paul Yonggi Cho. Sit( eess/ul Home Cell Groups (Plainfield. New Jersey
Logos Press, 1981). Cho has toured the United States. and spoke at the recent
charismatic conference in New Orleans. See article in this issue
9. Charisma. August 1986. p. 42. This nwgaiinc is published nwnthh hs
Strang Communications, 190 N. Westnxrue Drive. Altamonte Springs, 1:1.
32714.
10. Chari.ona. June 1986. pp. 92-93.
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Bob Mumford says, "Christians must legislate
morality."
pastor and replaced the congregation's elected elders with
leaders loyal to the shepherding chain of command. The
Examiner obtained a tape recording of Peacocke's shepherd
Bob Mumford, in an address to pastors, advising them to:
Go into your church, look around, and get yourself four new
ones. Steal them out of your own congregation. Meet them
on the side and begin to disciple them. Then you put them
back in there, and they start making disciples. Very quietly.
Actually surreptitiously-sneaky."
One former "sheep" under Dennis Peacocke says that His
Name Ministries in Santa Rosa was gradually transformed
from a 1960s-style Jesus Freak church into a tightly knit au-
thoritarian flock when, sometime in the mid 1970s, Peacocke
announced that he had "submitted" himself to Alabama Bible
teacher Bob Mumford and began placing church members un-
der the authority of appointed leaders.
Most press coverage of shepherding has focused on the
movement's authoritarian abuse of individual members. By
the mid-1970s scores of "sheep" were reporting that their
shepherds were depriving them of their independent de-
cision-making powers, along with large sums of cash, called
"tithes." Members were required to perform household chores
for their shepherds and to consult their shepherds before buy-
ing a car, taking medicine, or applying for a job. Descriptions
of cell group meetings began to sound more like heavy-handed
"encounter sessions" where members were obliged to divulge
financial and sexual secrets.''-
Reports of abuse drew criticism from mainline Pentecos-
tals, most notably Pat Robertson,'- who called shepherding
an "unnatural and unscriptural domination of one man by an-
other." In August 1975, Robertson and other Pentecostal
leaders held a "secret summit" to challenge the Fort Lauder-
dale teachers they said were trying to found a new denomina-
tion based on "heretical" doctrines. '`r But according to the
Daystar Herald, by 1976 the "covenant/discipleship" leaders
had persuaded other charismatics to quell their public criticism
of shepherding. The Daystar Herald publishers went so far as
I I. San Francisco E.raminer, February 19, 1984, p. A-4.
12. The Davstar Herald, an independent Pentecostal bimonthly published
in Bothell, Washington, has devoted a series of issues to shepherding's
aberrant doctrines and abusive practices. (Daystar Herald, 19425 Filbert
Road, Bothell, WA 98011.) See especially "Nationwide Abuses in Shep-
herding Cult Reported," Da}star Herald, June/July 1981.
13. Christianity Today. April 4, 1980, p. 45.
14. Ibid.
to say that some within the hierarchy of the Assemblies of
God, the largest Pentecostal denomination" were "allowing
the good name of their organization to be used as a cover for
cultish discipleship teachings.""
While major Christian Right leaders have publicly kept their
distance from shepherds (Pat Robertson banned them from the
"700 Club" '7) there has been almost no public evangelical
criticism of the movement in recent years, in spite of the fact
that abuses of individuals' autonomy continue. Evangelicals'
silence may be a result of the movement's propensity to launch
huge lawsuits against its critics. Is
By the 1980s, it appeared, shepherding ministries had
gained near complete legitimacy within conservative Christian
circles. At the February 1986 convention of the 43-year-old
National Religious Broadcasters, NRB Executive Director
Ben Armstrong praised the publishers of Ne tr Wine magazine
which, jointly with NRB, produced convention packet materi-
als, including a special New Wine issue on Pat Robertson.'`'
By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them
Christian Growth Ministries, started by the Fort Lauder-
dale Five, with its California branch, Covenant Outreach
Ministries, is the largest grouping of shepherding churches,
but it would be erroneous to limit the scope of shepherding to
this one "expression".
In spite of its hierarchical structure, the shepherding
movement per se is noticeably decentralized. There are
numerous self-contained "streams" of the movement whose
chains of command do not necessarily intersect. What is clear
is that the streams are like mini-kingdoms, each with its own
history of political activity. Inevitable inter-movement factions
and conflicts are not readily apparent to the outside observer.
In fact, within the Christian Right as a whole, there is a current
effort to "unify" diverse groups and obscure theological rifts
alluded to in our discussion of pre-tribulationism vs. post-
tribulationism.20
The drive for unity has brought a variety of shepherding
streams together under one umbrella organization, the Cali-
fornia-based Coalition on Revival (COR)." The groups
represented in COR are the most politically active and,
therefore, the most worthy of our attention.
Many Are Called, Few Are Chosen: The Peacocke
Network
Northern California shepherding leader Dennis Peacocke is
destined to become one of the most important leaders of the
Christian Right in the next few years. As both a spiritual leader
and a nuts-and-bolts political strategist, Peacocke leads a
double life. Peacocke the pastor "oversees" hundreds, if not
15. New York Times, June 22, 1986, p. 12.
16. Davstor Herald, Vol. 4, No. 5. p. 3.
17. "False Cult Emerges from Charismatic Movement." Dav.star Herald.
Special Edition.
18, San Mateo [California] Times, July 19. 1980: July 29. 1980. The
California shepherding ministry Covenant Outreach Ministries (COM) sued
the Ohio-based Christian Standard publication for $5 million over an editorial
charging COM with attempting to "infiltrate and take over congregations." The
suit was dropped when the paper agreed to print a clarification. Nevertheless,
Jimmy Swaggart broadcast a series of programs during the week of September
22, 1986, expressing concern over the growing influence of shepherding
churches.
19. Sara Diamond, "Super Evangelists on the Rise," Pacific News Service,
June 18, 1986. And see "The Christian Underground" in this issue.
20. See "The Theology of Nuclear War" in this issue.
21. See below and "The Christian Underground," in this issue.
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thousands, of Christians in dozens of churches in California,
Hawaii, New York, and Mexico. Peacocke the politician
appears regularly on Christian TV and radio; belongs to
numerous rightwing organizations and-to put it mildly-has
a keen interest in the political affairs of foreign countries.
Peacocke, 44, describes himself as a "former Marxist" and
"veteran" of the Free Speech and civil rights movements. He
graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966
with a B.A. in political science, and went on to do some
Dennis Peacocke, self-described former 1960s radical, is
now a top shepherd.
graduate work in the same department." On the heels of San
Francisco's Summer of Love in 1967 Peacocke started a
flower shop in the Haight-Ashbury district.'; Sometime during
the late 1960s to early 1970s he also worked as a speech writer
for the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.'-'
In 1968 he had a "born-again" experience, and in 1969 met
shepherding leader Bob Mumford who became his pastor in
1977.'5 In 1972 Peacocke began a half-way house for Jesus
people in Santa Rosa'" and began teaching a Bible study class
that split off from an Assemblies of God church.27 "What was
unusual is that those who came were mostly young people who
were ready to trade in their rebellious lifestyle for a Kingdom of
God experience," wrote one of Peacocke's early followers."
Eventually, Peacocke and a few of his close subordinates
moved to San Mateo County, just south of San Francisco,
while others in his flock were stationed in Santa Rosa, Marin
County, Montana, New York, Hawaii, and Mexico."'
At some point Peacocke's vision of the Kingdom of God
took a sharp turn rightward. This was probably on his own ini-
tiative and not at the behest of his shepherd Bob Mumford
(who until recently was headquartered in Mobile, Alabama.)'('
By the early 1980s-when the Christian Right as a whole
22. University of California. Berkeley academic records.
23. San Francisco Examiner, February 19. 1984.
24. Taped interview with Dennis Peacocke. February 4, 1986.
25. San I ranei.cco Examiner, February 19, 1984.
26. Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Decemher 9, 1984, p. I
27. San Franrisro Eamriner. February 19, 1984.
28. Spring 1980 issue of The Servant" newsletter, published by
Peacocke's Christian Covenant Community.
29. According to a former member of Peacocke's Covenant Outreach
Ministries, the group operates an orphanage in Juarez, Mexico: what is
curious about this project is that it is not promoted publicly.
30. San Francis(o Examiner, July 11, 1986.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Dennis Peacocke and the Secular Right
"Taking dominion," Dennis Peacocke stvle. neces-
sitates liaisons with a variety of secular institutions.
Until recently, Peacocke and his associate Toni Jackson
also hosted a weekly radio program which they used to
organize on a variety of political causes. Topics and
guests ranged from "victims of child abuse legislation"
to labor/management relations to human rights in Nica-
ragua. On August 12, 1986 Peacocke interviewed
Vladimir Bukovsky, head of American Foundation for
Resistance International. Bukovsky left the Soviet
Union when he was traded for Chilean labor leader Luis
Corvalon, jailed at the time of the Pinochet coup. In
1983, Bukovsky addressed the annual convention of the
World Anti-Communist League in Luxeniboure.
On July 30, Toni Jackson interviewed Steve
Schwartz, research director for the San Francisco-based
thinktank, the Institute for Contemporary Studies. (As
expected, Schwartz and Jackson rehashed the litany of
anti-Nicaragua propaganda themes and, when ques-
tioned by a caller, defended Rios Montt as a "liberal.")
The ICS was founded in 1972 by Edwin Meese Ill. In
1984, the ICS published The Grenada Papers, an edited
collection of documents seized in the 1983 U.S. inva-
sion of Grenada. Herbert Romerstcin and Michael
Ledeen performed the first editing of the documents;
University of California, Berkeley professors Walter
McDougall and Paul Seabury (of the Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board and the Institute on Religion and
Democracy) worked with Steve Schwartz on the final
editing. (See Sara Diamond, "Grenada Papers: Propa-
ganda Coup," Dad.v Californian, November 4, 1984.)
Schwartz bragged to a former school chum in San
Francisco that throughout the project he was in constant
contact with Michael Ledeen and was treated to a special
Washington, D.C. lunch with CIA Director William
Casey. Currently, Schwartz is helping former contra
leader Eden Pastora author a book.
As for Dennis Peacocke, suffice it to say that politics
makes for interesting bedfellows! ?
ascended as a major U.S. political force Peacocke had
assembled around himself a tight coterie of business-minded,
politically conservative associates.
Out of Covenant Outreach Ministries, Peacocke and his
associates Toni Jackson, Will Pilcher, and Rod Wallace in-
corporated Alive and Free as if non-profit educational institu-
tion in December 1983. Since then, Alive and Free has main-
tained both a low profile and-according to its tax filings--- it
low budget. For the year 1984 Alive and Free claimed
$12,549.50 total revenue and an ending hank balance of just
$145.00.' However, a recent visit to its headquarters found a
well-furnished modern office with several computers. None of
the four officers draws a salary from the organization, the main
function of which appears to he networking with other Chris-
tian Right groups and sponsoring policy issue conferences.
31. The source of funding is unknotsn: in 1985 Alice and Free rcccited a
$I,000 grant from Christian Voice. according to a 1985 report to the Caliloinia
Attorney General.
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In December 1984 Alive and Free hosted a one-day con-
ference entitled "Marxism on the Doorstep: Conflict to the
South" with former Guatemalan dictator General Efrain Rios
Montt the featured speaker.32 Montt is a member of the
Guatemalan El Verbo church, part of the Eureka, California-
based shepherding stream Gospel Outreach (see below).
When asked about Rios Montt's brutal human rights record,
Alive and Free's Rod Wallace told a Bay Area journalist,
"He's a Sunday school teacher. We're interested in the per-
spectives of Sunday school teachers and instructors at Bible
schools."" When a local Guatemalan solidarity group organ-
ized a protest of the event, Alive and Free relocated the con-
ference to an undisclosed location and denied entrance to at
least one paid registrant.
"The Bottom Line"-Peacocke as Propagandist
Peacocke produces a 30-minute weekly television program
"The Bottom Line" at Family Christian Broadcasting Network
in Concord, California. The TV network, which broadcasts
throughout Northern and Central California, entirely under-
writes the production costs of the program. The show has a
monotonous format: Dennis Peacocke lectures his Christian
audience on their responsibility to "take dominion over all the
earth."
South Africa: "He Who Has the Gold Makes the Rules"
Peacocke constantly refers to himself as a "former
Marxist." The idea, of course, is that he has now recovered
from some terrible disease. His dubious credentials as a vet-
eran antiwar and civil rights activist are especially useful when
he talks about South Africa. Peacocke emphasizes the undeni-
able horrors of apartheid racism, while alerting his Christian
audience to the real "menace," Soviet domination of the African
National Congress.
The source of Peacocke's briefings on South Africa is no
mystery. Donald McAlvany, Alive and Free's foreign policy
advisor, is intimately involved in South Africa. McAlvany
edits the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, one of dozens of
high-priced financial newsletters: this one focuses on gold
investment and the threat of impending U.S. sanctions against
South Africa. McAlvany is also a contributor to the John Birch
Society biweekly The New American wherein he develops the
major themes of the current pro-Pretoria propaganda offen-
sive.;
The precise nature of McAlvany's relationship with the
South African government remains a mystery. In March 1986
McAlvany led a delegation of 60 U.S. business and political
leaders on a "high-level, intelligence/fact-finding mission" into
South Africa, Namibia, and the so-called Republic of Ciskei.
McAlvany and four of the delegates also flew into "Free An-
gola" for a two-day meeting with Jonas Savimbi and his UN-
ITA staff.
McAlvany's co-leaders on this mission were Howard
Phillips, head of Conservative Caucus, and Duncan Sellars,
editor of the now-defunct African Intelligence Digest. In 1984
Duncan Sellars was a plenary speaker at Dennis Peacocke's
conference on Central America. He shared the platform with
Rios Montt. Sellars was dubbed an "expert on Marxist ad-
vances in Central America," and is a board member of the
Council on National Policy.35
The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor is perhaps the only
publication in the United States that claims that ANC leaders,
after killing opponents with a burning rubber tire, sometimes
"eat of the burnt flesh, even before the victim has died.
Birds of a Feather
Some peculiar guests appear on Dennis Peacocke's 30-
minute weekly TV show, "The Bottom Line." In June 1986
(repeated in October) Peacocke broadcast one of a three-part
series on the Communist Menace in Central America. His
featured guest, identified simply as "Bob," was a U.S. citizen
who had lived in Costa Rica, described as an expert on Central
America. Clipboard in hand, Peacocke and "Bob" recited all of
the major disinformation themes against Nicaragua.
When asked about "Bob-'s true identity, Peacocke said he
couldn't say because "Bob" might have trouble with his
passport and lose his ability to slip in and out of Nicaragua."
It turns out that "Bob" is actually Rev. Michael Bresnan, one
of Peacocke's disciples, a former Peace Corps trainer in Costa
Rica, who appeared on "The Bottom Line" in February 1986
under his real name.
Bresnan lives in Marin County, California: from his home
and from an office in Virginia, he directs a strange outfit called
the International Church Relief Fund. Bresnan travels
frequently to Central America, and according to one of his
associates, his major activity is helping "settle" Nicaraguan
refugees who do not want to enter established refugee camps
in Honduras. In October 1986 "Bob" made an appearance on
Family Christian Broadcasting Network's "California To-
night" talk show under his real name: he said he had just
returned from a trip to Central America during which he de-
livered supplies to camps in Honduras.
Bresnan is also a key player in the Suriname-based
Caribbean Christian Ministries, headed by Rev. Geoff Don-
nan, and with Peacocke on its Board of Reference. The stated
purpose of the "ministry" is to impose a "biblical world and
life view" on Caribbean people:
The governments of Cuba, Nicaragua. Guyana, Suriname,
and formerly Grenada and Haiti are visible results of anti-
Christian influence seeking to dominate----often with the aid
of Christianity. If this trend continues, not only is the
political, military and economic stability of the region in
32. See CAIB Number 18 (Winter 1983), p. 34: Number 20 (Winter 1984),
p. 37.
33. San Francisco Bav Guardian, December 28, 1984.
34. In general, these include arguments that apartheid has already been
largely dismantled because pass laws are gone and mixed marriage is per-
mitted: that the West is manifesting a "death wish" by facilitating the ANC's
eventual seizure of power in South Africa: that the Soviets are building a mili-
tary base in South Africa, and Soviet operatives in the western media are
distorting the facts: that South Africa's state of emergency has restored order:
that the Zulus, led by Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, represent the true interests of
South African Blacks and, therefore, should be armed and turned loose on
Black revolutionaries: that the South African government will survive eco-
nomic sanctions, but thousands of Black workers will be displaced: and that
the ANC is not a true liberation movement.
35. The Council on National Policy is an umbrella organization of mostly
secular right-wing groups and millionaire financiers like Joseph Coors and
Nelson Bunker Hunt. See especially Flo Conway and Jim Sicgelnwn. Hole
Terror: The Fundamentalist War on Anieric a's Freedom.e in Religion, Politis,
and Our Private Lives (New York: Delta. 1982).
Sellars currently works with Howard Phillips at the Conservative Caucus in
Washington, D.C. According to a spokesperson with the McA/vanv In-
telligence Advisor. Sellars' newsletter had no relation to the haelligenee Digest
published during the 1970s by the South Africa Foundation, a South African
government front. Sellars' political newsletter was published jointly by
Donald McAlvany until it became no longer financially advantageous.
36. McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, April 1986, p. 4.
37. Taped interview with Pcacocke. July 3. 1986.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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The Israeli Connection
Rev. Michael Bresnan, under cover as "Bob Johnston,"
on Dennis Peacocke's TV program, "The Bottom Line."
In February 1986 he appeared as Mike Bresnan; in June
1986 he appeared as "Bob"; in October 1986 he
appeared on Ronn Haus's "California Tonight" program
with Dennis Peacocke, Jose Gonzalez (Jimmy Hassan's
translator and the head of Hispanic Studies at CBN
University), and Josue Lopez, who directs Peacocke's
orphanage in Juarez, Mexico.
jeopardy, but the free sharing of the Gospel and religious
freedom as well. "
Caribbean Christian Ministries runs Bible courses in Guy-
ana, Barbados, Grenada, Suriname, Curacao, Aruba, and
Bonaire, with the goal of countering "sinful philosophies" like
humanism and liberation theology. In the summer of 1986 the
ministry moved its headquarters to southern Florida to work
with Nicaraguan and Cuban refugee communities. The move
may have been related to Donnan's having been banned from
entering Guyana."
Another tentacle of the Peacocke/Bresnan network is the
U.S. Committee for the Defense of Christian Rights, also
known as "The Church in Persecution." The group's charter
was drafted by staffers at Pat Robertson's CBN University
Law School." The primary focus of the group is to develop
"the ideological and theological framework for the Church and
those who are working specifically on behalf of persecuted
Christians wherever they may be.""
Gospel Outreach
Though the Peacocke network has managed to keep a low
public profile, the same has not been true for Gospel Out-
reach, another California-based sect, which gained notoriety
when one of its "elders," Gen. Efrain Rios Montt.became presi-
dent of Guatemala during the 1982 military coup.` 2
38. Caribbean Christian Ministries tact sheet. June 1982.
39. The government of Desi Bouterse has been subjected to repeated de-
stabilization attempts. See CA/B. Number 18 (Winter 1983), p. 63. and Num-
her 20 (Winter 1984). p. 6.
40. Caribbean Christian Ministries newsletter, August 1986.
41 . /bid. The leading "persecuted Christian- is undoubtedly Jimmy
Hassan, exiled Nicaraguan director of the C.S.-hascd Campus Crusade for
Christ. See "Campus Crusade for Christ" in this issue.
42. See "Holy Spirit or Holy Spook?" in this issue. And see Robert Law-
rence, "Evangelicals Support Guatemalan Dictatorship,- CA/B. Number 18
(Winter 1983), p. 34.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Gospel Outreach's activities in Guatemala inevitahlv
raise the question of possible Israeli imvlvenment.
Israel was Guatemala's principal international hacker
between 1977, when the Carter administration cut off
U.S. aid to the infamous military government, and Jan-
uary 1986, when the installation of civilian president
Vintcio Cerezo restored Guatemala's public image.
Aside from its role as chief arms merchant. Israel also
installed computer surveillance equipment in Guatemala
and, under the pretext of providing agricultural assis-
tance, helped devise Rios Montt's "beans and bullets"
strategic hamlets, modeled after the CIA's Operation
Phoenix.
If there is an Israeli connection to Gospel Outreach, it
may be Richard Paradise, a long-tine evangelist/pastor
in the organization. In March and July 1986 interviews,
Paradise claimed to be intimately involved with the
Israeli government. He says he works under the au-
spices of the World Zionist Organization as it liaison
with U.S. evangelicals. with the assigned role of work-
ing against anti-Semitism within U.S. churches. Para-
dise claims to have gone on speaking tours with Israeli
Colonel Yehuda Levy following the raid on Entebbe. and
that the same Colonel notified him in the U.S. several
hours before the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
A spokesperson for the Israeli consulate in San Fran-
cisco says they have no knowledge of Rev. Paradise.
Paradise says he is currently developing it com-
puterized news service intended for distribution to
evangelical churches. The service will provide up-to-
the-minute reports from and about the Middle East, with
analysis of current events in light of Biblical prophecy
found in the book of Revelation. ?
1. "Links to Democracy?'' lsrurli /'orei,qu :I/lake. January 1986.
published by Jane Hunter, P.O. Box 19580, Sacrunento. CA 95819
Throughout Rios Montt's iron-fist rule over Guatemala, the
mainstream press characterized Gospel Outreach, and its
Latin-affiliated Verbo churches, as just one among hundreds of
eccentric sects stationed in Guatemala following the 1976
earthquake there. But there's more to Gospel Outreach than
meets the eye.
Gospel Outreach may or may not he classified as if distinct
"stream" of the shepherding movement. It may he that Gospel
Outreach practices a moderate form of shepherding. The signs
are there for those who can read between the lines. Its literature
emphasizes "commitment," "covenant relationships," "spir-
itual authority," and other code words common to shepherding
groups. Mainstream press reports about Rios Montt's regime
noted that his U.S. church elders exerted an unusual degree of
influence on the General's decision-making processes."
Gospel Outreach has nearly 50 churches within the United
43. See especially the Son Josc Mrnrurv %,'It % article by Gordon Mott June
19. 1983, quoting church elders on hos "everyone syho conies into the church
is assigned a member so that a personal relationship IN established." One of
Gospel Outreach's top evangelists, Richard Paradise. said in a taped inter
view in March 1986 that he was ordained hy Itoh N1unilonf with I)ennis
Peacocke during the mid-1970s. The group's main flmction. honeser, has
remained its counterinsuri_,ency role in Central \nrcrica
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States (mostly in California, Oregon, and Washington), and
an estimated 4000 members worldwide. Like the Peacocke
network, it grew out of the Jesus People movement of the late
1960s. In 1970 five born-again hippies from southern Cali-
fornia came to Eureka, California looking for a place to open up
a coffee house. There they met Jim Durkin, a conservative real
estate agent and part-time Assemblies of God preacher.44
Durkin became a spiritual godfather to the young Christians.
He let them stay in one of his vacant properties, then helped
them open up a coffee house and start a community at an
abandoned Coast Guard Lighthouse.45
An excellent PBS film, "The Gospel in Guatemala," pro-
duced by Steve Talbot and Elizabeth Farnsworth of KQED
television station, documented Gospel Outreach's trans-
formation into a major political force in Guatemala. In 1976 a
band of zealous Gospel Outreach evangelicals went to Gua-
temala to help the country rebuild after a major earthquake.
Like other Protestant groups, they had a dual purpose: to help
in a humanitarian sense and, at the same time, to convert
Catholic Guatemalans into Bible-believing fundamental-
istS.46
One of Gospel Outreach's earliest converts was Rios
Montt, a general trained in the U.S. In a corrupt election in
1974, Rios Montt had lost the presidency, but during a March
1982 officers' coup, he was asked to assume the role of pres-
ident-and his pastors said "go ahead." Within a week of Rios
Montt's accession to power, Pat Robertson flew to Guatema-
la, presumably to begin plans for a support network of U.S.
evangelicals. By May 1982, Robertson told the New York
Times47 that his Christian Broadcasting Network would send
44. New York Times, August 14, 1983.
45. According to a taped talk given in Sacramento in May 1986 at a con-
ference sponsored by the South Lake Tahoe group Christian Equippers Inter-
national.
46. See especially the NACLA Report on the Americas January/February
1984 issue on "The Salvation Brokers: Conservative Evangelicals in Central
America."
47. New York Times, May 20, 1982.
The South Africa Media Campaign
It is all very reminiscent of Muldergate, the scandal that
ensued when it was discovered that South Africa's De-
partment of Information (DOI) had authorized expenditures
of $73 million for more than 160 secret projects to buy
politicians and media favorable to the apartheid state.
Rev. Moon's Washington Times was one of the beneficiar-
ies-approximately $4.5 million was funneled to Moon's
overseas enterprises. The South African government
bought substantial interest in a chain of more than sixty
newspapers in the U.S.; Saturday Evening Post publisher
Beurt SerVaas accepted gifts and business deals from Pre-
toria; and more than two hundred U.S. journalists toured
South Africa on all-expenses-paid trips.
By 1986 the embattled South African government-
fighting its Black population at home while hoping to forestall
international economic sanctions from abroad--had few
allies left in the world. Abandoned even by conservative
Republicans in the U.S. Senate, it seems that fundamen-
talist Christians remain the last bastion of support in the
U.S. for South African apartheid.
Beginning in the spring of 1986, Christian TV and radio
preachers sympathetic to Pretoria have waged a media cam-
paign designed to persuade their U.S. audiences that South
Africa is a victim of liberal media bias and that the African
National Congress is nothing but a "Soviet puppet" intent
on depriving the U.S. military-industrial complex of "our"
strategic minerals.
Naturally, Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting
Network has been a leader in favorable coverage of South
Africa. A case in point is a news feature, "Who is the
ANC?" aired on CBN's "700 Club" September 11, 1986.
The piece featured film footage shot at close range of two
alleged ANC atrocities: One victim was burned alive with a
1. See Murray Waas, "Destructive Engagement: Apartheid's Target
U.S. Campaign," National Reporter. Winter 1985.
gasoline-filled rubber tire "necklace;" another was stabbed
to death by a crowd of attackers. Juxtaposed between the
violent scenes were clips of ANC President Oliver Tambo
and Winnie Mandela advocating all-out war against the
South African government.
Robertson capped the piece with an interview with his
friend (and former CBN employee) then Senator Jeremiah
Denton (Rep.-Ala.) who chaired the Senate Subcommittee
on Security and Terrorism.2 Denton said the rising price of
platinum signaled the beginning of the end for U.S. access
to South African chrome, platinum, and manganese.
Robertson likened U.S. "softness" toward the ANC to pre-
vious "betrayals" of Anastasio Somoza and the Shah of
Iran.
It is doubtful that the atrocity scenes shown on the "700
Club" could have been filmed by independent newsper-
sons. Network film crews have been routinely threatened
by township organizers who suspect reporters may be gov-
ernment agents. Pretoria has banned journalists from
covering any political assembly in South Africa, and
footage that has been filmed has not been successfully
transported out of the country.
There is, however, one likely source of the footage.
According to Ronn Haus, President of the California-based
Family Christian Broadcasting Network (FCBN) and a
close associate of Robertson (see other sidebar), last
spring Haus accompanied CBN officials at a meeting
with a "person from the Reagan administration." They
were shown film footage of a necklacing and told that the
footage would eventually be released for U.S. TV au-
diences.
In an interview at the COR convention, Haus said that the
South African government is selecting supportive U.S.
media people for tours of their country. "They are bringing
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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missionaries and more than a billion dollars to help Brother
Rios Montt rule the country. While this extraordinary promise
never materialized, Rios Montt managed to convince Congress
that he would not seek massive sums of U.S. aid. Instead, he
would rely on "private aid" from U.S. evangelicals.
In June 1982 Rios Montt's aide and Gospel Outreach elder
Francisco Bianchi came to the U.S. to meet with the U.S.
Ambassador to the OAS William Middendorf, presidential
Counselor Edwin Meese III, Interior Secretary James Watt,
U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala Fred Chapin, and Christian
Right leaders Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Loren Cun-
ningham (head of Youth With a Mission). The State Depart-
ment held a special briefing for Christian Right leaders, em-
phasizing the need for private support for the Rios Montt
regime.'"
48. Donna Eherwine. To Rios Montt with Love Lift.' The Notion. February
26. 1983. In a sense, the pro-Rios Montt campaign laid the groundwork for the
later private contra aid network.
Out of these meetings Gospel Outreach organized Inter-
national Love Lift. In ''700 Club' promotionals and fundrais-
ing letters, Love Lift fundraisers capitalized on the funda-
mentalist tradition of anticommunism and patronage toward
Indian people. On January 8, 1983, President Reagan lifted the
1977 ban on military aid to Guatemala instituted by President
Carter for human rights reasons. That same day 35O U.S.
evangelicals set sail with a boat carrying $I million worth of
food, clothing, medical supplies, and housing materials,
destined for refugee camps in Guatemala's Ixil triangle. Farnsworth and Talbot's documentary revealed the Gospel
Outreach workers' participation in the Guatetllalan army's
administration of camps for survivors of Rios Montt's brutal
massacres. The question that was left unanswered was what
role, if any, Gospel Outreach played in planning and conduct-
ing the genocidal campaigns.
Further information implicating Verho church members
49. The No to,,. op. iii.. ii 45.
them over there in different ways and trying to do a show-
and-tell, hoping that these people will come back and
advocate the position of the South African government."
Haus himself was invited to tour South Africa last summer.
He says he canceled the trip because it was "at the invitation
of and underwritten by the South African government, and I
finally decided that I didn't want to be wrongly interpreted
as a pawn.
Ronn Haus and Dennis Peacocke were among about 500
U.S. Christian leaders invited by Secretary of State George
Shultz to a special State Department briefing on South Afri-
ca June 2, 1986. The State Department will not disclose the
list of invitees nor the precise nature of the meeting.
Since the State Department briefing, Haus's network,
which broadcasts throughout California and nationally by
satellite, has hosted a number of white South African mis-
sionaries on its "California Tonight" talk show. Among
them were Vic and Anton Sawyer, now based in Oregon;
Johan Englebrecht who heads the Institute for Church
Growth, a murky South African organization that "trains
Christian leaders," and Fred Shaw, head of the Christian
League of South Africa.'
The current Christian Right media treatment of South
Africa was organized at the February 1986 convention of the
National Religious Broadcasters.' At that time the ex-
ecutive committee of the NRB agreed to help a group of
white South African pastors form a South African NRB and
to support their efforts by touring the country and returning
with "the true story."
In March Ben Kinchlow, Robertson's Black co-host on
the "700 Club," went to South Africa. In a live satellite feed
from South Africa, Kinchlow testified that with the excep-
tion of a "whites only" sign at a public beach, he personally
experienced no racism there. On the same feed, Kinchlow
conducted a live interview with South African Foreign
Minister Pik Botha-at a time when secular U.S. jour-
3. Taped interview with Ronn Haus. July 3, 1986.
4. For a thorough treatment of Shaw's activities as well as the full scope
of Pretoria's use of rightist Christians in Britain in the I 970s. see
Derrick Knight, Bevouc/ the Pole: The C'hri.vtian Political F'riiige
(Lancashire: Carat Publications, 1982).
5. See "h he Christian Underground," in this issue.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
nalists were not allowed access to Pretoria's top leaders.
Naturally, the interview centered on the potentially negative
consequences of proposed economic sanctions against
South Africa.
In May NRB executive director Ben Armstrong toured
South Africa with John Gimenez and his Rock Christian
Network film crew, Dick Bott, owner of a string of Chris-
tian radio stations in the Midwest, and Tom Wallace,
general manager of northern California's major Christian
radio station KFAX. Wallace said the tour was paid for not
by U.S. broadcasters but by an "anonymous group of South
African businessmen.Armstrong confirmed this and
agreed that some of the money may conic front the South
African government, as Haus indicated.
"There are some South African businessmen who per-
ceive that perhaps their whole future depends on getting a
different view across in this country," Wallace said. Upon
his return from the tour he devoted several of his afternoon
talk shows to discussions of mainstream media distortion
of South Africa and taped interviews with Zulu Chief
Gatsha Buthelezi, believed by many to he a collaborator
with the South African government. Since May other tours
have been organized by the Full Gospel Business Mcn's
Fellowship International ,x with reduced airfare rates pro-
vided by the South African government airline, South
African Airways.
To promote the tours, the airline has produced a 30-
minute video "The Other South Africa," narrated by Stephen
B. Stephens, an Ohio-based Christian husinessman. The
video features interviews with well-respected fundamen-
talist leaders, including Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn,
and Ray MacCauley, urging Christians to visit South Africa
and imbibe its physical and spiritual heauty. The two-week
tour price of $1795 includes meals, and the promoters say
it's a great vacation-there are luxurious hotels complete
with gourmet restaurants, sandy beaches, and lots of gift
shops filled with diamond jewelry at reasonable prices. It
really is the other South Africa. ?
6. Telephone interview, July 1986.
7. Telephone interview, July 1986.
8. See 'Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International.'' in this
issue.
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emerged after Rios Montt was ousted from office in August
1983. According to a special report entitled "Sectas y
religiosidad en America Latina" published in October 1984 by
the Chile-based Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios
Transnacionales,50 during Rios Montt's rule, members of
Gospel Outreach's Verbo church took jobs in espionage and
torture and accompanied Israeli and Argentinean experts dur-
ing interrogation sessions. The report quotes an evangelical
pastor, Clemente Diaz Aguilar, who was detained and tortured
by mistake in January 1983:
... my captors stole everything from me.... Those who
captured me, in front of me, divided up my money, and later
they led me into the hands of the torturers. In the long hours
of torture, they asked me constantly about other pastors-
...of some churches in the capital; they asked me also about
my views on liberation theology and about the liberation of
the people of Israel.
The torturers, tired of doing so much damage to me, rested
for a while; then I recognized some of them: two are
members of a singing duo from these churches IVerbo and
Mision Elim]; I begged [them] to recognize me because I
recognized them; then they asked me questions about my
capture, my complete name, my address, my church and my
activities. When they realized I was not the person they were
looking for, they begged my forgiveness, saying "Brother,
we are also Christians.-51
The report describes what kind of "Christians" Rios Montt
and his aides really are: Within the first nine months of his
administration, 12 evangelical pastors were assassinated; 69
were kidnapped; 45 "disappeared"; 15 were jailed; I I foreign
missionaries were expelled; 88 evangelical temples were de-
stroyed; and 50 more were occupied by the Army. 5` In August
1982 Francisco Bianchi told a U.S. newspaper: "It is true, we
have killed Indians, because they are communists or col-
laborators with the guerrillas."5; In December 1982 a group of
North Americans interviewed a number of Guatemalan reli-
gious leaders, including a Verbo Church pastor. They asked him
about Rios Montt and about Army massacres of indigenous
people. He responded:
The Army doesn't massacre the Indians. It massacres
demons, and the Indians are demon possessed: they are
communists. We hold Brother Efrain Rios Montt like King
David of the Old Testament. He is the king of the New
Testament.54
The Word is Propaganda
Aside from its actual intervention on behalf of the Guate-
50. "Sects and religion in Latin America," published in Spanish by the In-
stituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales. Casilla 16637. Correo
9, Santiago, Chile, October 1984.
51. Ibid., pp. 21, 22, translated by Sara Diamond.
52. Ibid. Rios Montt's own brother, a Catholic Bishop, had to go into exile
in Costa Rica. Lawrence, op. cit.. n. 42, p. 35. See also Counte rSpv. Vol. 7,
No. 3 (March-May 1983), p. 48: "Gospel Outreach propaganda gives the im-
pression that all evangelical Christians in Guatemala-possibly 20 percent of
the population-support Rios Montt. That is simply not true. The Army has
massacred evangelical Christians in the same fashion it has disposed of
others. Only one week after Rios Montt took power, soldiers threw grenades
into an evangelical church in Chupol. Quiche province, accusing those inside
of being guerrillas. Thirty-six people were killed."
53. Op. cit., n. 50, p. 23.
54. Ibid.
malan military, Gospel Outreach plays a key role in persuad-
ing U.S. fundamentalists that U.S. policy is designed to
benefit Third World people. The main vehicle is the "Frontline
Report," covering International Love Lift's ongoing work
throughout Latin America.
Verbo's International Love Lift media arm is directed by
Costa Rica-born Alfred Kaltschmitt, a former Coca Cola,, ad
man, who sums up the purpose of his work:
We're intimately involved in what's happening politically,
socially, and spiritually in the Hispanic world. We're con-
veying that information to North Americans and Europeans
from a Christian point of view. The liberal press has so
consistently distorted Latin American news that some
Christians have formed wrong opinions of what's happen-
ing. These opinions inadvertently might lead them to back
up political decisions that could foster a communist
takeover in the hemisphere.55
In article after article on Central and South America's "turmoil
and despair" the main themes are that Jesus is the only answer
to fighting between left and right: political solutions are futile;
that people are suffering from "hopelessness"-not from
objective conditions like hunger, illiteracy and sickness: that
this hopelessness and despair is spreading and will soon
reach the borders of the United States; and that violence is
everywhere; its source is unknown but probably can be attrib-
uted to rebellious leftists.
These themes are conveyed using techniques explicitly
appropriate for the evangelical audience. For example, in the
August 1986 issue, Brother Efrain Rios Montt wrote a piece
based on the notion that the North and South American con-
tinents should be seen as "one body," and that, just like the
human body, the various parts cannot function without each
other. Of course, he defined the U.S. as the head of the body
controlling the rest.56
Though the analogy is false-Third World countriescannot
be likened to subordinate parts of a human body-it works
because it is an analogy frequently used by shepherding
leaders to justify authoritarian direction by leaders of the
"Body of Christ."
International Love Lift continues to lead the fight against
"communist takeover" in the region. Its current projects in-
clude: a Verbo school in Managua: a campaign to fight
Catholicism and spiritualism in Brazil; Casa Bernabe or-
phanage in Antigua, Guatemala, for orphans of massacres: a
missionary outreach from Latin America to the U.S. to work
with Florida's Cuban community; a Leadership Training
School with over 1,000 members in Guatemala City, directed
by Rios Montt himself; and a Love Lift School of Evangelista,
directed by the Christian Equippers International of South Lake
Tahoe, California (headed by Francis Anfuso, whose twin
brother Joseph Anfuso is a leader in Gospel Outreach).
Maranatha-God's Green Berets
This young man is taking over his campus, and I want you
to know that we're to take over too. The Bible says we are
to...rule. If you don't rule and I don't rule, the atheists and
the humanists and the agnostics are going to rule. We
should be the head of our school board. We should be the
55. Frontline Report, Vol. 10, No. 5.
56. Ibid., Vol. I I. No. 4.
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rightwing political organizing. Issue alter issue features
articles on the merits of capitalism, the threat of terrorism. and
the global war on communism. In addition, Maranatha dis-
tributes The Contest For World Dominion: A Christian Re-
sponse to Karl Marx, which says, "Are we to sit hack and just
accept the idea that the Iron Curtain, the Bamboo Curtain or the
Sugar Cane Curtain can keep the gospel out of communist
nations? Christians of this generation! It is time that we take
the world!" Maranatha also distributes a booklet on "Christian
Dominion" in which Bob Weiner argues that God chose
"English-speaking Teutonic peoples" to come to America and
The North American Congress on
the Holy Spirit
Bob Weiner, president of Maranatha Ministries, prays
that "Christians must take dominion."
head of our nation. We should be the Senators and the Con-
gressmen. We should he the editors of our newspapers. We
should be taking over every area of life.'
This is Bob Weiner speaking. His Maranatha Campus
Ministries organization claims campus ministries at 56 uni-
versities in 31 states.5" and operations in a number of foreign
nations. Weiner is a major presence in the religious Right, and
serves on the Board of Governors of the Council for National
Policy, the Steering Committee of the Coalition on Revival,
and the Steering Committee of the North American Congress
on the Holy Spirit (see sidebar), which sponsored a conference
in New Orleans attended by several hundred Maranatha
followers from around the country.""
"Maranatha" is a Greek word, meaning "the Lord cometh."
Maranatha Campus Ministries, epitomizes the shepherding
movement's focus on "taking dominion" over secular society.
Maranatha members describe themselves as "God's Green
Berets," and it's true: they are the most aggressively
evangelistic and politically rightwing of any campus crusad-
ers. 60
Looking at Maranatha's monthly tabloid, The Forerunner,
it is hard to tell if the group's primary purpose is evangelism or
57. The Forerunner." TV program aired on Concord, California Christian
TV station KFCB, December 7. 1985.
58. The Forerunner. October 1986. p.12. Mar natha's director for
evangelism worldwide. Rice Broocks, wrote Change the Campus-Change
the World: A Battle Plan (or Reaching This Generation: he has appeared on the
70() Club, and heads Maranatha's Society for Creation Science (SCS) which
pushes creationism on college campuses. Three members of the Advisory
Board of SCS, Richard Bliss. Henry NJ. Morris, and Duane Gish. are
associates of the California Institute for Creation Research (ICR). founded by
Tini LaHaye. Bliss authored the Arkansas statute which mandated creation-
ism he taught in the schools: Morris and Gish are both members of the Council
for National Policy.
59. Weiner was a scheduled speaker at Gerald Derstine's Christian Retreat in
1986 (Blessings, Fall 1985) and at Francis Anfuso's Christian Equippers In-
ternational (CEI) conference in May 1985. where Larry Tomcrak and Jim
Durkin of Gospel Outreach were also scheduled (Charisma, February 1986).
In January 1986 Derek Prince addressed several thousand members of
Maranatha at a New Year's meeting (Charisrnu, June 1986).
60. Fred Clarkson. "Reagan Youth." Interchange Report. Winter 1985.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
In addition to the conventions of the National
Religious Broadcasters and the Coalition on Revival, a
third significant conference was the North American
Congress on the Holy Spirit and World [vangelization
(NAC), held in the New Orleans Superdome October
8- 11, 1986, sponsored by the North American Renewal
Service Committee (NARSC).
While COR was organized by Protestant fundamen-
talists and Pentecostals, the NAC was organized prin-
cipally by Catholic charismatics associated with People
of Praise community in South Bend, Indiana, and was
attended by both Catholic charismatics and Protestant
Pentecostals.'
The NAC was administered and organized by the
Catholic-run Charismatic Renewal Services located in
South Bend, Indiana. South Bend is the headquarters of
the controversial People of Praise Community, with
which David Sklorenko, NAC Director, is associated.
People of Praise and its related organization, Word of
God, in Ann Arbor, Michigan (out of which the former
split following an obscure dispute), are at the huh of a
rapidly proliferating network of Catholic charismatic
organizations in the United States and abroad which are
structured like the Protestant shepherding groups in
terms of strict hierarchy and intense organizational and
ideological loyalty of members. Both Word of God and
People of Praise have outreach programs to non-Catho-
lics and, in the latter group, non-Catholic Christian
groups can have formally established "covenant rela-
tionships." The Community of Jesus the King. if Cath-
olic community in New Orleans connected to People of
Praise, provided much of the local organizing and ad-
ministrative staff.
Although NAC was organized by this Catholic
Charismatic network, non-Catholic Pentecostals were
represented on the Steering Committee of NAC's
sponsoring organization (NARSC), and participated in
the New Orleans events.
I. The Catholic charismatics were represented at NRB h% Fi John
Bertolucci, of the University of Steuhensille. ssho addressed the
Catholic session at NAC. Bertolucci is on the Aehison Board of the
Ann Arbor Neer Corenam magavine. which is largels a Word of God
publication.
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"administer government among savage and senile peoples"
and to "establish a system where no chaos reigned."
Aside from its absurd pseudopolitics, Maranatha has also
been likened to a religious cult.' Members are not permitted
to date; if they feel God's calling to become engaged to
someone, they submit their request to their shepherd who will
let them know if they may marry. As in other shepherding
"streams" each sheep is assigned a shepherd to oversee his or
her spiritual and worldly activities. Financial obligations from
members are strictly enforced, and at one time Maranatha
required new members to sign a Statement of Covenant which
read, in part:
I recognize the authority of the elders as God has set them in
the Body. I am willing to submit my life unto them for ex-
hortation, rebuke, correction, instruction in doctrine, and
guidance.'`
In November 1982, evangelicals worried about cults met with
the leadership of Maranatha to discuss concerns about the
group's authoritarian reputation. Charles Farah of Oral Rob-
erts University and Jerry Horner of Pat Robertson's CBN
University came to Maranatha's defense.;
Maranatha and Politics
The organization has been useful to the Republican Party.
The Wall Street Journal, noting that Maranatha sent between
60 and 100 members to campaign door to door for Mark
Siljander in 1982, described Weiner's organizing pro-contra
aid demonstrations on 70 campuses across the country on the
eve of a crucial vote on the issue in Congress."
One of the most notorious Maranatha political operatives
was David Fazio, The Forerunner's campus correspondent in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1986. He was the National
Chairman of the Raleigh-based Students for America," which
61. On August 16, 1985 the Wall Street Journal ran a front page story on
Maranatha headed, "Fervent Faction: Maranatha Christians Backing Rightist
Ideas, Draw Fire Over Tactics. Campus Defectors Say Group Often Uses
Mind Control To Guide Personal Lives," citing a recent committee of es-
tablished religious leaders which concluded that Maranatha "has an au-
thoritarian orientation with potential negative consequences for members."
The article noted that Maranatha had been removed from several campuses by
college authorities. The authoritarian ideology within Maranatha was re-
emphasized in the June 1986 issue of The Forerunner, which ran a reprint from
Dennis Peacocke's newsletter "Bottom Line" denouncing "The Fear of
Absolutes." Both Peacocke and Larry Lea are frequent contributors to The
Forerunner.
62. Statement of covenant, from the library files of Spiritual Counterfeits, a
group of evangelicals in Berkeley, California, which watches cults.
63. Christianity Today, August 10, 1984, p. 39.
64. President Reagan, said the article, had sent Weiner a congratulatory
note in 1982, at the suggestion of Morton C. Blackwell, director of Youth for
Reagan/Bush in 1980, who became Special Assistant to Reagan in charge of
liaison to religious groups; he resigned his White House post in 1984 to head
the Leadership Institute, based in North Springfield, Virginia. A Leadership
Institute brochure of 1984 listed an Advisory Board which included Senators
William Armstrong, Orrin Hatch. Jesse Helms, Roger Jepson, Paul Laxalt,
Steven Symms, Paul Trible, and Congressmen Phil Crane, Newt Gingrich,
Ken Kramer, Trent Lott, Mark Siljander, Gerald Solomon, and Vin Weber,
among others. The Institute trains young political activists, some of whom
had been involved in the disruptive heckling of Mondale and Ferraro during the
1984 campaign. Blackwell told the Wall Street Journal that ten percent of the
400 Institute trainees had been members of Maranatha, and one of them,
Claude Allen, directed young volunteers in the successful 1984 campaign to
reelect Jesse Helms.
65. Students for America was founded in Washington by Ralph Reed,
former executive director of College Republicans. According to Fazio it soon
28 CovertAction
had led a group of students to "safe houses" in Tegucigalpa,
Honduras, to meet with contras and one of their commanders,
Indalecio Rodriguez. Fazio told the Washington Post (August
8, 1985), "I feel the contras are very honest."
Recruitment is a primary goal for Maranatha, along with
attempts at establishing political hegemony on campuses.
Maranatha claims to have taken over the student government at
the University of Hawaii, and in the Philippines, Maranatha
students at the University of the City of Manila won numerous
student council positions.
On the heels of the 1986 coup in the Philippines which
brought Corazon Aquino to power, Maranatha launched a spe-
cial summer outreach there. Maranatha evangelists from the
U.S. flocked to the Philippines to evangelize. The goal was to
double the membership of the Maranatha Church in Manila and
to open a new church in Makati, the financial district of the
capital."
Maranatha has at least one church in Jamaica. A few
months before the Philippines outreach, Maranatha apostle
Bob Weiner led a team of 31 disciples to Kingston, Jamaica,
where they preached at the University of the West Indies.
Maranatha's Forerunner claims that 1000 students were con-
verted to Christianity by Maranatha evangelists during a two-
week period."7
Maranatha has been working with Caribbean Christian
Ministries, whose director, Rev. Geoff Donnan proposed the
distribution of The Forerunner to 2500 Christian leaders who
were on his regular mailing list." The "thriving" Maranatha
church in Guatemala is sending a team to start a new church in
El Salvador in 1987. This operation will be led by James (Di-
ego) Thomas who built the nearly 200-member Guatemala City
church as well as the one in Honduras.
Other Streams
Aside from the major shepherding streams led by Bob
Mumford and Dennis Peacocke, Gospel Outreach's Jim
Durkin, and Maranatha's Bob Weiner, there are an unknown
number of separate but interrelated networks. Some of the
more significant are:
? Larry Tomczak's People of Destiny International (PDI),
based in Wheaton, Maryland. Tomczak oversees about a doz-
en churches in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia,
Florida, Texas, and California, each with several hundred to
several thousand members. Tomczak is a member of the
Coalition on Revival Steering Committee (see below), and has
good relations with Dennis Peacocke,"9 Bob Weiner, and
relocated its headquarters to Raleigh in order to aid Sen. Jesse Helms in his
reelection campaign. In August of 1985 Reed told the Wall Street Journal. "I
think that Maranatha has gotten a hum rap." He claimed that 1.000 of SFA's
4,000 members were "from Maranatha." On July 16, 1984 Reed was lauded in
Spotlight for setting up the Student Coalition for Truth. It included Students for
America, Young Conservative Alliance of America, Students for a Better
America, Heritage Foundation's Catholic Study Council, and Young Ameri-
cans for Freedom. It denounced the NEA and those who run the nation's
schools as liberal "dunces."
66. It is unclear just what kind of relationship Maranatha maintains with the
Aquino government; one of the young converts to Maranatha was an Aquino
campaign worker. The Forerunner. September 1986, p. 9.
67. The Forerunner, July 1986, p. 6.
68. Forerunner's mid-1986 special issue "Maranatha Special World Har-
vest '87 Issue", which also covers operations in other countries; also
Caribbean Christian Ministries (CCM) Status Report, August 1986, p.6. The
CCM Board of Reference includes Gary North, Dennis Peacocke. Gary De-
Mar, and Paul Lindstrom.
69. Tomczak dined recently with Dennis Peacocke, who, he exclaimed, "is
doing excellent behind-the-scenes work both in San Francisco and in the nation
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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Larry Tomczak, shepherding leader.
Gospel Outreach leaders. His recent book, Divine Appoint-
ments, was published by Servant Books, the in-house pub-
lishing arm of Word of God in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
In March 1986 Tomczak visited the Tyler, Texas offices of
Youth With a Mission (YWAM)7O and the Last Days
Ministries of Melody Green71 in neighboring Lindale.
Green's Last Days ranch attracts hundreds of young people
from around the country and encourages them to participate in
foreign mission work under the guidance of YWAM, Campus
Crusade, Sudan Inland Mission, and Wycliffe Bible Transla-
tors, as well as in her own programs in Belize and Paraguay.72
The July/August issue of People of'Destiny magazine has a
feature article by Jim Durkin, the founder of Gospel Outreach.
Durkin also runs Forward Edge International, which adver-
tises in People of'Destin,.7;
Cult-watching organizations are keeping an eye on Tomczak
and his "apostolic team." Tomczak's followers have been
especially active in abortion clinic picketing and have been
recruiting church members from the ranks of anti-abortion pro-
testors.74
? Great Commission International (GCI), headed by Jim
McCotter and also based in Maryland, but without apparent
ties to the other shepherding streams. CAIB spoke with young
GCI recruiters at the Washington COR conference. They said
that GCI practices shepherding, with every member assigned
to a cell group which oversees individuals' spiritual and
worldly growth. GCI's political arm, Americans for Biblical
Government, lobbies against abortion and in favor of contra
aid.75
to mobilize Christian leaders for Spirit-led activism." People of Destiny
Report, Summer 1986.
70. See "The Christian Underground." in this issue.
71. Green is a member of the COR Steering Committee, and a consulting
editor of World Christian magazine, based in Chatsworth, California, one of
the best sources of information about U.S.-based foreign missions.
72. Last Days, April 1984 and December 1985. The latter also extolled the
case history of a young recruit to The Navigators who did mission work in
Ghana. Green also approvingly cites one advocate of whipping recalcitrant
children: "IFlorming the habit of ready and willing submission to your will
prepares them in forming the habit of obedience to God, which is more im-
portant than anything else...... Last Days. December 1985. To protest abortion
she gained publicity by hauling around a dead human fetus.
73. "When you join a Forward Edge short-term team, you spend It) days to
3 weeks at the "forward edge." God uses you in ways you never imagined....
Join a Forward Edge short-term team to: Guatemala. England/Scotland,
Nicaragua, China. Nepal (tentative). The Philippines. Also teams to U.S.
Cities, Teen Wilderness Teams." People of Destiny. May/June 1986.
74. The Cult Observer. September 1985, p. 13.
75. Great Commission Church was the subject of an article in the May 2.
1986 Te cas Observer, which noted the pro-contra organizing of Americans for
Biblical Government. of which McCotter is President.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
GCI member Bruce Hallman is the media director for High
Frontier, the private pro-Star Wars lobby founded by retired
Gen. Daniel Graham. When asked about the relationship
between his pro-Star Wars work and the popular Christian
belief in Armageddon, Hallman said "no comment." Hallman
is also a Washington spokesperson for Christian Voice. (See
"Christian Voice," "The Christian Underground," and
"Moon's Law," in this issue.)
In 1986 GCI caused confusion among Democratic and
Republican Party leaders in Montgomery County, Maryland
when the church ran twelve candidates for off ice-eight for the
Republican Central Committee and four for Democratic state
delegate seats.'
? John and Anne Gimenez pastor the Rock Church in Vir-
ginia Beach, Virginia. They have been professionally and
politically associated with Pat Robertson most of their
careers. Their church, located only one mile from CI3N, was
headquarters for the 1980 Washington for Jesus rally. Rally
organizer and church member Ted Pantaleo has served in
several political capacities for Robertson, including first ex-
ecutive director of the Freedom Council. The Rock Church is
one of a number of "kingdom" churches which are building
post-millennial political movements and spinning off clone
congregations nationwide.
The Coalition on Revival-Streams Flowing Into One
River
The major apostolic streams of the shepherding movement
and their activities known to date, form a seamless web of in-
terconnections. Within the last several years. the leaders of'
Christian Right groups have launched an unprecedented effort
toward "unity," manifesting itself in the sharing of resources
and the creation of several umbrella organizations.
In 1984 Tim LaHaye formed the American Coalition for
Traditional Values (ACTV) to unite politically active tninis-
ters.77 At the same time, an effort was under way to bring the
leaders of the shepherding churches together with astute
political strategists in what can only he described as a "united
popular front," akin to a vanguard party in (counter)revolu-
tionary situations.
The result is the Coalition on Revival (COR), which held its
third annual convention in Washington. D.C. July 2-4, 1986.
CAIB attended this splashy event which culminated with a
dramatic Lincoln Memorial ceremony. There COR members
announced their intentions to impose their brand of the Chris-
tian World View on every aspect of society.
The conference marked a new phase of' unity among Bible-
thumping shepherds and shrewd political strategists. Anion',
those present at the COR conference were:
? Jay Grimstead, founder and President of COR. Grinstead
described his odyssey from believing in the imminent Second
Coming of Christ and the pre-tribulation rapture to a "muscu-
lar" form of Christianity which "takes theology to the streets."
"We are promoting confrontation everywhere and this means
church discipline," Grinstead said, encouraging pastors to
notify colleagues of individual Christians who refuse to stop
sinning.
A lengthy, unpublished draft of COR's Manifesto for the
Christian Church, calls for all pastors to restructure their con-
gregations into "home cell groups" of no more than 12
76. Washington Post. August 17. 1986.
77. See "Moon's Law," in this issue.
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COR's Requirements
The Coalition on Revival was distinguished by the
rigor of its participant screening procedures.
All attendees were required to sign four itemized
ideological "Commitment Sheets" and answer correctly
twenty "Yes/No" written questions. They included both
arcane theological references and repeated references to
the literal truth of the Bible, including:
A willingness "to renounce Lucifer and all his evil
works including any involvement in the occult, witch-
craft, seances, Ouija boards, Transcendental Medi-
tation, and all pantheistic Eastern mysticism...."
Acceptance of the "inerrancy of the Old and New
Testaments," and agreement that the Bible "is without
error in the original manuscripts...."
Affirmation of the "reality of angels... Satan... and
demons... and the present activity of angels and demons
in human affairs...."
And, of course, belief that "the fall of mankind
happen[ed] as it is described in Genesis 3, involving a
talking serpent and fruit being eaten."
In addition, opposition to abortion, adultery, and
homosexuality were de rigueur. ?
Jay Grimstead rallies Christian soldiers to "take
theology to the streets."
members accountable to each other in personal matters. The
document recommends that each "sheep" be required to sign a
legal statement to the effect that he or she will not take legal
action if the church staff administers "discipline"--including
public excommunication-for behavior deemed unbiblical.71
? Connie Marshner, protege of New Right leader Paul
Weyrich (one of the founders of the Heritage Foundation and
current President of the Free Congress Foundation). Marsh-
ner, like Weyrich, is a Roman Catholic but she is also an im-
portant organizer in the battle for "traditional family values."
At the COR conference, Marshner predicted that "Christian
unity" would eliminate pornography, divorce, adolescent re-
bellion, and resentment between workers and employers.
? Colonel Doner, Chairman of the American Christian
Voice Foundation. Christian Voice is famous for its publica-
tion of "moral report cards" rating candidates on their
positions on social issues. At the COR convention, Doner
told reporters that Dennis Peacocke had recently become his
78. Grimstead himself has a -pastoral relationship" with Dennis Peacocke.
according to an internal shepherding movement letter written by Peacocke in
December 1983. Peacocke has been "counselling" Grimstead and his wife
Donna.
Colonel Doner, key organizer in Christian Right, is
disciple of Dennis Peacocke.
pastor, and that he planned to move from the Washington,
D.C. area to Santa Rosa, California in order to work with
Peacocke politically.79
? Ray Allen, President of Christian Voice. In 1984 Allen
was responsible for the so-called "Texas Plan," whereby
fundamentalist activists seized control of the GOP machinery
in Lubbock, Texas. Our agenda is to export this model,"
Allen told the Religious News Service after the 1984 elec-
tion."' COR is the vehicle for exporting this model to
California and other states. Currently Ray Allen is COR's
hired public relations official: COR pays him $2,000 per
month, according to its 1986 financial statement.
? Carolyn Sundseth, formerly of the White House Office of
Public Liaison for religious groups. herself a charismatic
Christian. She delivered a letter of congratulations from Presi-
dent Reagan. Sundseth's son Christopher Sundseth, a former
Ronn Haus, president of Family Christian Broadcasting
Network, advises Christians that, "a good Jew likes a
good deal."
director of the Adolph Coors Company's political action com-
mittee, was a Reagan appointee at the Treasury Department
until he was dismissed following a mini-scandal over his
sending a vicious postcard to a California man who protested
an Education Department official's statement about the U.S.
being a "Christian nation."" Carolyn Sundseth told the COR
conference that she frequently had Bible studies in her White
House office, and that at least once a month someone was born
again there.
79. See "Christian Voice," in this issue.
80. William Bole. "The Christian Right Eyes the Republican Party,"
Religious News Service, printed in Interchange Report, Winter-Spring 1985.
81. Washington Post, August 7, 1985.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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Rambo Contact Groups
and Leading Lights
Young Americans for Freedom
College Republican National Committee
U.S.Council for World Freedom (WACL)
Students for America
Freedom's Friends (William Murray and the contras)
Conservative Caucus
Alpha 66
American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV)
Alive and Free
National Young Vietnamese for Freedom
Nemesis (a rightist student group active at UCLA)
John Singlaub
Colonel Doner
Dennis Peacocke
Rep. Robert K. Doman
Dr. Donald Sills
Jack Wheeler
Howard Phillips
Tomas D. Schuman (former KGB agent!) ?
? Tom Barlow, a rancher from Cape Town, South Africa,
who urged conference participants to oppose speedy change in
South Africa. "Whoever rules South Africa will rule the world
for the next 100 years," Barlow said. "The United States can't
even make a ball bearing without minerals from South Africa."
? Ronn Haus, President of TV-42, Family Christian
Broadcasting Network in California. Haus spoke on the need
for Christians to "infiltrate" and "revolutionize" the media.
When asked about the problem of soliciting radio and TV
advertisers in cities with lots of Jewish-owned media, Haus
said to "offer yourself cheap." "A good Jew likes a good deal,"
he quipped.
? David Balsiger, of the Biblical News Service, co-
publisher of Christian Voice's Biblical Scorecards. Balsiger
also heads up a fairly new far-right grouping, the RAMBO
Coalition (Restore a More Benevolent World Order). RAMBO
is an umbrella for secular groups (see sidebar) involved in
financing various "freedom revolutions"-better known as
counterinsurgency operations-in Nicaragua, Angola. Mo-
zambique, Afghanistan, etc. RAMBO made newspaper
headlines in 1986 for its series of demonstrations at Chev-
ron-Gulf stations, protesting the oil company's business
dealings with the Angolan government. Balsiger told a reporter
that he soon hopes to organize Cuban exiles to stage civil dis-
obedience actions at Chevron-Gulf corporate headquarters.
RAMBO's protests are unique within rightist circles-it's
not often that dedicated "conservatives" oppose red-blooded
capitalists' efforts to make a buck.
? Gary North and Rousas J. Rushdoony, leaders of what is
known as the "Christian Reconstruction Movement" within
fundamentalism. Rushdoony runs a Christian think tank in
Southern California called the Chalcedon Foundation, which
issues reams of reports and position papers charging that the
state cannot and should not address social issues and "prov-
ing" that "secular humanism" is a bankrupt, dying philosophy
that will soon be replaced by an all-pervasive "Biblical world
view." Rushdoony is an advisor to Dennis Peacocke's Alive
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Ronn Haus and Maureen Salaman
Ronn Haus's Family Christian Broadcasting Net-
work (TV-42) broadcasts throughout Northern Califor-
nia from stations in Concord and Fresno. It produces not
only Dennis Peacocke's "The Bottom Line," but also
"Accent on Health," hosted by Maureen Salaunan. Each
week Salaman takes a hehind-the-scenes look at how
"rich doctors" do more harm than good to their patients
and how corporate conspirators are plotting to destroy
dairies that distribute unpasteurized milk.
Salaman is the president of the 100,000-nicniber
National Health Federation, she is also known nationally
as a veteran activist in Willis Carto's Liberty Lohbv.
Carto has been described by civil libertarians as the
most notorious anti-Semite and racial supremacist in the
United States. In 1985 Carto's Institute for Historical
Review lost a lawsuit to a Long Beach, California man
whose family was gassed at Auschwitz. Carto claims
the Nazi holocaust never took place.
In 1984 Salaman campaigned as the Vice-Presidential
candidate on the slate of Carto's electoral front, the Pop-
ulist Party. In the spring of 1986 Salaman led an internal
power struggle within the Populist Party. She Caine out
on the side of Carto against the less extreme American
Independent Party faction. At TV-42's live filming of a
Christian trade show in Sacramento last spring, Sala-
man said, "I'm urging people to send their money di-
rectly to the Spotlight in Washington. D.C." The
Spotlight, Carto's tabloid, has the largest circulation of
any far-right weekly in the United States.
Ronn Haus says he knows Maureen Salaman only as
a nutritionist and health expert. ?
and Free organization, and Gary North's Texas-based pub-
lishing company is publishing Peacocke's forthcoming hook
Christ the Liberator. North is a so-called financial expert who
teaches fundamentalists to abandon soft currency in favor of
gold. North is a popular speaker on the "hard currency" lecture
circuit, where he frequently shared the platform with
members of the John Birch Society.
? The Caribbean Crusaders Michael Bresnan, lose
Gonzalez, Jimmy Hassan, and Geoff Donnan. They held a
special luncheon at the COR convention, at which they an-
nounced that the theme of the "persecuted church" in socialist
countries should be a new rallying point for rightwing
Christians. Gonzalez has since been named head of the
Department of Hispanic Studies at Pat Robertson's CBN Uni-
versity.
Last Words
Bob Mumford, shepherding leader, delivered the opening
night keynote address. Mumford said COR's mission is to
legislate "the whole Bible for the whole world." Dennis
Peacocke, key mover and shaker within COR, publicly
pledged his allegiance to his shepherd Bob Mumford. At the
opening plenary session Jay Grinstead inadvertently an-
nounced that Peacocke will be organizing a non-public network
of ministers united on a county-by-county basis. Peacocke
declined to elaborate on the details of this project.
"We're doing this on a very, very quiet basis," he said.' ?
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At the NRB Convention:
The Christian Underground
By Michael O'Brien*
The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), the largest
important umbrella organization of the religious Right, arose
out of intense religious factional disputes in the 1940s. After
much feuding with the relatively liberal Federal Council of
Churches (later renamed the National Council of Churches), a
number of fundamentalist churches established the National
Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1942. Two years later,
to counter the influence of the Federal Council of Churches in
religious broadcasting, the NAE sponsored the creation of the
NRB. In 1968 it had only 104 members, by 1980 there were
900.1 By the time of its 1986 conference, membership was up
to 1,125.2
The NRB Board of Directors includes the most prominent
members of the religious Right: Bill Bright, Jerry Falwell,
Billy Graham, Jim Bakker, Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson, and
Jimmy Swaggart, among others.
While purporting to be a national network of religious
broadcasters, it is in fact among the largest activist coalitions
of aggressive political organizations. Its fierce anticommun-
ism provides a political motivation for its domestic and ex-
tensive international political operations and for its work with
groups such as the Moonies and the World Anti-Communist
League. Recently their anticommunism has been updated with
trendy diatribes against "secular humanists." Under the cloak
of religion NRB members have gained access both to favorable
tax benefits for themselves and to home TV screens and
radios of millions of Americans, which would otherwise have
been impossible.
The National Religious Broadcasters Convention was held
February 2-5, 1986 at the Washington-Sheraton Hotel in
Washington, D.C. It was organized on two levels, both
literally and figuratively. Above ground in the main conference
halls, the NRB hosted Congressmen, Senators, White House
liaisons, FCC Commissioners, and luminaries of the reli-
gious Right including Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Jimmy
Swaggart.
While the major public figures paraded about in the main
sessions, the most interesting and continuing event of the
convention took place underground in the cavernous exhibit
halls, where over 300 organizations had set up shop. Here,
amid elaborate corporate displays of state-of-the-art electronic
broadcasting hardware were the organizations representing the
I. Jeffrey K. Hadden and Charles E. Swann, Prime Time Preachers (Read-
ing, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1981), pp. 80, 81.
2. Religious Broadcasting, February 1986, p. 4. This is the official
publication of the NRB.
* Michael O'Brien is a researcher who has studied the religious Right for
many years.
32 CovertAction
radical Christian vanguard of the movement. Many of the
groups associated with the NRB "underground" and which
participated in the main events, have attributes of the "shep-
herding" organizations;3 some have links to the Moonies,
some to anti-Semitic organizations.
The NRB Underground
One indication of the impact the extremist "underground"
fringe of the religious Right has had on the NRB was sym-
bolized by the New Wine magazine logo on the cover of the offi-
cial folder distributed to convention participants. New Wine is
the unofficial journal of the shepherding movement. Conven-
tion documents included the February issue of New Wine, with
a flattering cover story on Pat Robertson, whose Christian
Broadcasting Network (CBN) and CBN University had exhibit
booths.4
The New Wine presence at the conference was not the only
indication that more was involved than mere broadcasting of
religious messages. Taiwan, South Africa, and the National
Guard sponsored prominent booths. High Frontier and an
organization called Friends of the Americas (FOA) were also
in attendance.
High Frontier
The High Frontier booth was staffed by Bruce Hallman, its
"press director," who noted, "We feel there's a real turn-
around on college campuses [in favor of Star Wars-the
Strategic Defense Initiative-for which High Frontier lob-
bies]."s High Frontier's director, retired Lt. Gen. Daniel
Graham, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency
and Vice-Chairman of the American branch of the World Anti-
Communist League, is also a member of the National Advi-
sory Board of Christian Voice' An August 1986 press
release from the Biblical News Service (which co-publishes
with Christian Voice the Candidates and Presidential Biblical
Scoreboard), lists Hallman as one of two responsible "con-
tacts," and gives an address at Christian Voice's office at the
Heritage Foundation.
The other "contact" is David W. Balsiger, a member of the
Steering Committee of the Coalition on Revival, President and
3. See "Shepherding," in this issue.
4. In 1987 New Wine was succeeded by Christian Conquest, a new maga-
zine run by Charles Simpson. The board of directors of New Wine in 1986 in-
cluded Bob Mumford, Em Baxter, and Don Basham, who with publisher
Simpson were four of the five shepherding founders. Contributing editors
were Tulsa's Terry Law; R.J. Rushdoony; John Beckett, President, Inter-
cessors for America; and Larry Christenson, Lutheran charismatic and con-
tributing editor of Word of God's New Covenant magazine.
5. Washington Post, January 31, 1986.
6. See "Christian Voice," in this issue.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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founder of the RAMBO Coalition, and leader of the Ban the
Soviets Coalition which successfully prevented the Soviets
from participating in the Los Angeles Olympic Games.'
Friends of the Americas
Under a lurid display of photographs of Nicaraguan
refugees was the double booth of Friends of the Americas
(FOA). Its chairman, former Louisiana State Legislator Louis
(Woody) Jenkins,8 maintains extensive ties to the Christian
Right through his position as Executive Director of the Council
for National Policy (CNP).9 The CNP Board of Governors in-
cludes Gen. John Singlaub, Oliver North (giving his address
at the NSC), Pat Robertson (the current CNP President), Tim
LaHaye (a former CNP President), retired Gen. Daniel
Graham, Joseph Coors, and over three hundred others.
Recent articles linked Woody Jenkins directly to private and
CIA aid to the Honduras-based contras and MISURA, a contra
organization of Miskito Indians,"' and, according to FOA's
Friends Report of Summer 1985, FOA Executive Director Di-
ane Jenkins received the First Annual Ronald Reagan Human-
itarian Award at the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund dinner on April
15, 1985 in Washington, from the President himself. A Spe-
cial Edition of the Friends Report of January 1986 lists FOA
operations in Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica,
Colombia, and El Salvador.
Gospel Crusade and Christian Retreat
Also active at NRB were the Florida-based Gospel Crusade
and its sister organization Christian Retreat, over which
Gerald Derstine presides as president and director. Derstine
is a prominent activist in the shepherding movement'' and
most of his international focus is on Central America with sin-
gular hostility toward the Sandinista government, which has
come under attack from his journal, Blessings.
Derstine claims to have been active in Honduras for 20
years and his son Phil recently delivered "3,0(X) boxes of relief
(35 tons) to Nicaraguan refugees in Honduras," and discussed
"the threat of Communism in Central America with the new
President of Honduras, Jose Azcona."'' Gospel Crusade's
Institute of Ministry was brought to Tegucigalpa in 1982, and
7. Balsiger co-published the Presidential Biblical Scoreboard with Colonel
V. Doner (the former Chief Strategist of Christian Voice, former National Di-
rector of Christians for Reagan, and member of the Steering Committee of the
Coalition on Revival), until Doner left for California to join his pastor Dennis
Peacocke. See "Christian Voice" and "Shepherding," in this issue. The
current Candidates Biblical Scorecard lists Christian Voice President Robert
Grant as co-publisher with Balsiger. Grant had been a member of the Executive
Committee of the Coalition for Religious Freedom, formed to lobby to keep
Rev. Moon out of jail.
8. Jenkins is also a member of The (Religious) Roundtable's Council of 56.
9. A call to the telephone number listed for the CNP was referred to another
number which is Jenkins's office.
10. Village Voice, June 18, 1985; "Who's Behind the Aid to the Contras",
The Nation, October 6, 1984; "'Privatizing' the War," CAIB, Number 22 (Fall
1984); and "Behind the Supply Line," CAIB. Number 25 (Winter 1986). See
also Affidavit of Daniel Sheehan, December 12, 1986, submitted in the Chris-
tic Institute suit on behalf of Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey. filed May 29,
1986, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
11. Derstine lectured at the Maranatha training school as early as fall 1974
and serves as Vice President of the National Leadership Conference which
co-sponsored the nondenominational session of the New Orleans conference.
The President of the NEC is Jamie Buckingham, editor-at-large of Charisma
magazine. There are advertisements in Ble.csings for lectures at Christian
Retreat by LaHaye, Lester Sumrall, Vinson Synan, Dick Iverson. Bob
Weiner, George Otis, and Jamie Buckingham, among others.
12. The Truth . . . Nicaragua. a Gospel Crusade pamphlet, p. 9.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Phil Derstine (far left), with Adolfo Calero (center left)
and Enrique Bermudez (center right), in what he
described as the contras' "secret map room." Derstine
said the FDN leaders asked him to obliterate the faces of
two of the people in the photograph. He told CAIB that
beginning in 1985 Lt. Col. Oliver North "set up"
operations between Gospel Crusade and contra leaders.
Gospel Crusade's Nicaragua-related operations include:
receiving U.S. military transport assistance for 1011 tons
of "humanitarian aid," providing motivational training
for contra troops, and giving taped debriefings to State
Department or CIA officers following missions to the
FDN in Honduras or Nicaragua. Derstine says he has
visited contra camps "ten or twelve times" in the past 18
months, and he has frequent private meetings with
Honduran President Jose Antonio Ancona.
has a 95-acre tract of land just north of the city where schools
of ministry now are being held.' Derstine, his son, and his
daughter Joanne visited a contra military camp inside Nicara-
gua in 1985.'" Derstine also claims 128 Gospel Crusade
churches in Haiti; 15 but the scope of his interest in fighting
communism is not limited to Latin America. The Fall 1985
issue of Blessings features an article by Dan Wooding, the
Chief Correspondent of Open Doors News Service, on his
travels in socialist countries, and the Summer 1985 issue
advertises a "Praise Filled" Bible study and Christian retreat
tour to Israel with Gerald Derstine.
Behind the growing operation is the $I million International
Training Center which Derstine is completing at his Florida
headquarters. It will house their Kingdom Living Institute,
Pastoral Training School, and Missionary Training School,
and will include a 5(X)-scat classroom and others that will
accommodate 50-100 students."'
Christian Response International
President Reagan's former White House liaison to the
Christian Right operating out of the Office of Public Policy
13. ibid., p. 6.
14. Blessings, Fall 1985.
15. Blessings, Summer 1985. p. 29.
16. Ibid.. Fall 1985, p. 23.
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Carolyn Sundseth, former White House liaison officer,
held prayer meetings there.
Liaison,'7 Carolyn Sundseth, is on the seven-member U.S.
Board of Directors of Christian Response International (CRI),
which also ran an exhibit booth at NRB. The Board includes
Kentucky State Senator Tom Riner and Oklahoma Senator Don
Nickles. 'H CRI's International Board of Reference includes
Congressman Tony Hall, whose brother Sam was recently
arrested in Nicaragua for espionage. i9 CRI, the U.S. affiliate
of Christian Solidarity International, established in Zurich in
1977, was incorporated in 1983 and is mostly involved in
support of its Christian allies in socialist countries.
CRI's International Reference Board includes David
Atkinson and Paul Vankerkhoven. Atkinson, a Conservative
member of the British Parliament, is Chairman of the British
Section of the International Society of Human Rights (ISHR),
whose newsletter of October/November 1986 claimed that
under the Sandinistas censorship has been "far greater than
that under Somoza." He has "urged Western invasion of Cuba
or South Yemen if [the] Soviets do not withdraw from
Afghanistan.") The International Advisory Committee of the
ISHR includes Otto von Habsburg, a major European support-
er of the World Anti-Communist League groups in Europe.
Vankerkhoven, a member of the European Parliament, and
long-time stalwart of the European extreme Right, was a
founder of the League Internationale de la Liberte, the Belgian
branch of the World Anti-Communist League, which hosted
the 1983 and 1986 WACL conferences.'
17. In September 1985 Sundseth left her White House post to work for the
presidential campaign of Pat Robertson as Outreach Director of Americans for
Robertson.
18. Ritter is a member of the (Religious) Roundtable: Nickles serves as a
Senatorial Adviser of the National Defense Council Foundation headed by
Andy Messing, a member of the advisory board of the U.S. branch of the
World Anti-Communist League.
19. Other members of CRI's International Board of Reference include:
David Breese, President of Christian Destiny and a member of the National
Advisory Board of Christian Voice: Rep. Christopher Smith (Rep.-N.J.),
Congressional Advisor to Christian Voice: Joon Gon Kim, Director of South
East Asia for Campus Crusade for Christ: D. James Kennedy, member of the
(Religious) Roundtable, former member of the Executive Committee of the
Coalition for Religious Freedom: and Sen. Paul Trible (Rep.-Va.). Sam Hall
was declared mentally unfit to stand trial and released by the Nicaraguans in
January 1987.
20. Andrew Roth, Parliamentarv Profiles, 1985.
21. On Vankerkhoven see generally Article 31 (Paris), November 1986, pp.
13, 14: and Serge Dumont. Lee Brigades Noires. Brussels, 1983.
34 CovertAction
CRI has established a steering committee to guide its legal
efforts on behalf of "oppressed Christians." It includes
Michael Farris, attorney for Concerned Women for America."
Farris, a member of the Steering Committee of the Coalition on
Revival, was interviewed on Pat Robertson's 700 Club in
March 1986 complaining about "religious discrimination
against Christians." He represents the Tennessee plaintiffs
who want to have creationism taught as science in the public
schools.
CR1 claims it was responsible for bringing to the United
States from Romania Father Gheorghe Calciu, who had been a
professor at the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Bucha-
rest.` According to Rev. Moon's New York City Tribune,24
Calciu had been "jailed from 1948 to 1964 for alleged fascist
activities," and had become a priest only in 1972. The Septem-
ber 1985 Response featured a photograph of Calciu with his
arms around CRI Director Jeffrey Collins and Tony Hall along
with Congressmen Wolf and Smith "at a CRI luncheon held on
Capitol Hill soon after Calciu's arrival in the United States."
Youth With a Mission
Carolyn Sundseth had been a member of Youth with a Mis-
sion (YWAM), a prominent group also with shepherding
characteristics, which distributed literature at the NRB. When
YWAM celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1985 Sundseth was
there to read a letter from Reagan praising YWAM for "a justly
renowned reputation for upholding the principles of morality
and the spiritual values which have traditionally guided our
nation."
YWAM literature distributed at the NRB conference cites
support from Campus Crusade's Bill Bright, Pat Robertson,
Tim LaHaye, NRB Executive Director Ben Armstrong, and
U.S. Ambassador William Middendorf. YWAM was founded
in 1960 by Loren Cunningham. By 1970 the first YWAM
training center was established in Lausanne, Switzerland and
over 100 exist today in over 50 countries as springboards for
mission. Most offer the basic Discipleship Training School
and attract an international student body.' YWAM was soon
working with Vietnamese refugees and claims that "since
1979 U.N. authorities have given YWAM teams responsibil-
ity for medical aid, food and clothing distribution, vocational
rehabilitation, language and cultural adjustment classes, child
care, and administration in refugee camps both in Thailand and
Hong Kong."26
Until recently, the U.S. armed forces were closed to some
forms of evangelism because of the requirement that chaplains
be sponsored by a sizable and recognized religious organiza-
tion. Thus a number of rightwing charismatic groups banded
together to form the Dallas-based Chaplaincy Full Gospel
Church.- Among the Church's "spiritual advisers" are Loren
22. Response. July-August 1985. This is CRI's official journal, published
from its Rockville, Maryland headquarters. Concerned Women for America is
run by Tim LaHaye's wife, Beverly.
23. Response, September-October 1985.
24. January 22, 1986.
25. GO, a glossy color-illustrated manual distributed at NRB, undated, p.
44.
26. Ibid., at 78.
27. Its Senior Military Advisors include retired Brig. Gen. Charles M.
Duke, Jr., and Col. H. Speed Wilson (who is active in FGBMFI). Pastors/
Spiritual Leaders backing it include: Larry Lea, Kenneth Copeland. Bob
Tilton, Loren Cunningham, Jim Jackson. Jerry Horner (CBN), Earl Paulk. A.
W. Rasmussen, Gwen Shaw, and Del Browning. The director is E. H.
("Jim") Ammerman, who was invited by Bob Weiner to address the Maranatha
session in New Orleans. See "Shepherding," in this issue.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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Cunningham, Larry Lea, and Kenneth Copeland. Cunningham
also spoke at the Maranatha session at the New Orleans con-
ference of the North American Congress on the Holy Spirit.
(See sidebar.)
Among the literature distributed by YWAM at the NRB
conference was the "GO Manual: Global Opportunities in
Youth With A Mission." The 125-page booklet lists available
posts in YWAM projects around the world.-' The concluding
16 pages list 190 YWAM international addresses from
American Samoa to Zimbabwe, with contact names, but in-
cludes the caveat on every other page to not mention YWAM in
the address.
Church on the Rock
Another church exhibiting at the conference was Larry
Lea's Church on the Rock, based in Rockwell, Texas, which
began in 1980 and now claims over 11,000 members. Pastor
Lea, who is featured on the cover of the October 1986 issue of
Charisma magazine, is a member of the COR steering com-
mittee and is to become the new Dean of the Oral Roberts
School of Theology.
Lea's church works in El Salvador with Cubie Ward's
Paralife Ministries of Ft. Worth, Texas. `t' Ward presented a
paper at the COR convention on "Opportunities in El Salvador
for God's Redemptive Purpose." The June 1986 issue of
Ward's newsletter, Living Words thanked God for one per-
ipatetic example of the substance of this "purpose":
God sends many ministries to El Salvador to achieve His
own specific purpose....One such ministry, headed by
evangelist John Steer, completed an eight day tour of twelve
military bases. Over 3,700 men, whose average age was
eighteen, heard from Ithis) ex-soldier (Vietnam Veteran)
how much God loves the soldier....
Brother John Steer spoke of his experience in Vietnam....
He explained that... killing for the joy of it was wrong, but
killing because it was necessary to fight against an anti-
Christ system, communism, was her John Steer spoke of his
experience in Vietnam....
He explained that... killing for the joy of it was wrong. but
killing because it was necessary to fight against an anti-
Christ system, communism, was not only right but a duty
of every Christian.
Intercessors for America
Lea has been given extensive space in the newsletter of In-
tercessors for America (IFA), whose President John Beckett
is also on the steering committee of COR. -" The IFA, based
in Reston, Virginia. organizes prayers for God to "intercede"
28.YWAM's international headquarters are in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. From
a missionary center in Hong Kong it says it sends operatives throughout
Asia, including Korea. Japan, Indonesia. Thailand, People's Republic of
China, Mongolia, the U.S.S.R., India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. In its January
1986 issue World Christian magazine (pp. 19 ff.) described YWAM:
"Scattered in 60 countries of the world are 5,100 long-terns YWAM tnis-
sionaries and 190 permanent YWAM bases. Last year, the organization sent
out a whopping 15.000 short-term missionaries, more than any other mis-
sion.'
29. Churisnm. October 1986.
30. See the advertisement in Living Words, September/October 1986. Vol.
2. No. 3. at p. S. The cooperation of the two groups was further confirmed in
conversations with Paralife staff.
31 . Beckett is also a contributing editor of New Wine and a member of the
Board of Directors of the (Religious) Roundtable.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Larry Lea.
for America by fulsome endorsements of Star Wars and all
other elements of the Reagan military and foreign policy
agenda. IFA distinguishes itself by a singular interest in
Freemasonry, a favorite "conspiracy" to the ultra-Right, which
often writes of the "Jewish-Masonic Conspiracy
IFA's executive director, Gary Bergcl, who has been
published on recent occasions in Larry Tontczak's People of
Destiny magazine, also exhibited at NRB. 'I'oniczak, if former
Catholic, and member of the COR Steering Committee, was
also a speaker at the New Orleans Conference where he ad-
dressed a session of the Association of International Mission
Services workshop.
Other Groups
A number of other groups prominent at the NRB conference
are discussed at length in Sara Diamond's " Shepherdimg." in
this issue. They include: Maranatha. People of Destiny
ternational, and Great Commission International.
In-
?
32. See, for example, the May 1986 issue of the II \ nesssletter The ul
tra-Right rarely discusses members of then ovsn ,croup vsho are invoked ssith
factions of the Masons. including Jesse Ilelms. and memhers of the
notorious fascist Italian P-2 Masonic lodge.
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 Approved For Release 2010/06/03: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100170002-7
Moon's Law":
"God Is Phasing Out Democracy"
By Fred Clarkson*
Over the years, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the founder,
spiritual leader, and titular head of the vast Unification
Church conglomerate, has repeatedly declared that his goal is
global theocracy. He has expressed his desire for political and
economic control originating from centralized religious power.
Moon and his organization have been consistent in their efforts
to carry out this vision. They are not always successful, but
they persist. What is essential to understand about the Unifi-
cation Church and its related operations is that its religion and
its politics are virtually inseparable. Equally important to
understand is that the Moon organization' is an integral part
of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), which in turn
has played a pivotal role in the development and activities of
the Unification Church.
In the U.S. the Moon organization has sought allies on
many fronts, notably the New Right, and particularly the
religious Right. These efforts have met with mixed success,
but there is no doubt that it has made deep inroads into
American political life. Where they intend going may be
gauged by Moon's sermons. In 1973, for example, he de-
clared, "My dream is to organize a Christian political party,
including the Protestant denominations and Catholics, and all
the other religious sects."'
The purpose of this article is to detail the religious and
political origins of the Moon phenomenon in the U.S. in order
to clarify the more confusing elements.'
Inside the League
The World Anti-Communist League (WACL) is an inter-
national coalition of fascist and conservative groups and
political parties founded in 1966 by agents of the governments
of Taiwan and South Korea.4 One of the original groups was
1. The Moon organization is the term used by the congressional com-
mittees investigating the "Koreagate" scandal in the mid I 970s. It is used here
with the assumption that the various Moon enterprises, including the church,
operate with a high degree of central coordination and common put-pose.
2. Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Report of the Sub-
committee on International Organizations of the Committee on International
Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, October 31, 1978 (hereafter, the
Fraser Report), p. 315.
3. A list of the many Moon fronts is available for SI.(X) and a self-
addressed stamped envelope from Steve Hassan, Box 45032. Somerville, MA
02145.
4. Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside The League (New York:
Dodd Mead, 1986) is the first book-length expose of the World Anti-
Communist League. It details the role of the Moon organization, as well as the
*Fred Clarkson is a free-lance journalist based in Washington, DC.
36 CovertAction
the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL). Its
Japanese affiliate, Shokvo Rengo, became a WACL chapter in
1968. Shokyo Rengo (Victory Over Communism) began after a
1967 meeting between Sun Myung Moon, Ryiochi Sasakawa,
Yoshio Kodama, and two of his lieutenants. Kodama was the
head of Japanese organized crime, the Yakuza. One of the
lieutenants, Osami Kuboki, became head of the Unification
Church in Japan, as well as a leader in WACL. Soon after-
ward, WACL began indoctrinating young Yaku_a gang mem-
bers in anticommunist ideology similar to what the Moon or-
ganization was already doing in Korea with government offi-
cials. Sasakawa, an important World War II Japanese fascist
leader, became the head of Shokyo Rengo, and Kodama its
chief advisor.
Sasakawa's relationship to the Moon organization, which
dates back to 1958, continues to this day, including ongoing
financing of both the Unification Church and Shokyo Rengo,
which is controlled by the Church.
Sasakawa, Kodama, and other important "Class A" war
criminals were mysteriously released from Sugamo prison
only a year and a half after World War 11. They went on to found
the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and have played prominent
roles since. One fellow inmate, Nobusuke Kishi, became a
prime minister. In 1959, Kishi helped establish a quasi-
governmental, boat-racing/gambling franchise, which he gave
to Sasakawa, who grew fantastically rich from the proceeds.
Kishi was also the prime mover in establishing APACL in
Japan and remained active in WACL throughout the 1960s,
serving as chairman of the planning committee in 1970.
Sasakawa was described by U.S. Army intelligence as
one of the most active fascist organizers prior to the war." In
the 1930s both Sasakawa and Kodama were jailed: Sasakawa
for plotting the murder of a former premier, and Kodama for
plotting the murder of a prime minister. Kodama was a
notorious war profiteer and Japanese intelligence agent in
China. "His long and fanatic involvement in ultra-nationalist
activities, violence included, and his skill in appealing to
youth make him a man who, if released from internment,
would surely be a grave security risk."'
involvement of Nazi war criminals, fascist governments. American racists.
Latin American death squad leaders, and other extremist and criminal
elements that comprise much of the League's membership. This hook is es-
sential reading for anyone interested in the political context, and activities of
the Moon organization. See also CAIB Number 25 (Winter 1986). for a dis-
cussion of WACL aid to the Nicaraguan conn-as.
5. Anderson, op. cit., n. 4, pp. 61. 62.
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Meanwhile, the first Moon missionaries arrived in the U.S.
in 1959. By the early 1960s, Moon fronts had been established
and were working in collaboration with the Korean Central In-
telligence Agency (KCIA). Indeed, shortly after the military
coup which elevated Park Chung Hee to power in 1961, his
KCIA director (and founder), Kim Jong Pil, stated that he in-
tended to "organize and utilize" the Unification Church as a
"political tool" (see sidebar), according to the October 31,
1978 Report of the Subcommittee on International Organiza-
tions of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, known as the
Fraser Report.'
The Fraser Report, a House of Representatives investigation
into Korean covert operations in the U.S., chaired by Donald
Fraser (Dem.-Minn.), reveals that one of the early KCIA/
Moon projects was the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation
(KCFF). The ostensibly non-profit organization quickly turned
from a "cultural" to a political operation under the influence of
"Honorary Chairman" Kim Jong Pil, who wanted the "Freedom
Center" in Seoul, South Korea to be its principal project. Thus,
by the spring of 1964, KCFF was raising funds from
Americans for the Freedom Center, which was, in fact, an
APACL project promoted and subsidized by the Korean gov-
ernment with at least $796,231.' The Freedom Center serves
as the "secretariat" of WACL to this day.
In 1966, KCFF launched another KCIA project, Radio Of
Free Asia (ROFA), which broadcast anticommunist pro-
gramming to the region. The Korean government provided the
broadcast facilities, and the KCIA controlled the programming
through their psychological warfare section, called the "7th
Bureau."' During its period of organization, Lt. Col. Bo Hi
Pak, a military attache at the Korean Embassy in Washington,
actually ran KCFF, despite a series of American figureheads
fronting the Freedom Center and ROFA fundraising cam-
paigns. Pak had been given a special discharge from the Ko-
rean Army, apparently to devote full time to KCFF in Wash-
ington. He was among Moon's principal operatives as well,
and used KCFF for Church purposes. KCFF hoodwinked a
number of prominent Americans, including former presidents
Eisenhower and Truman to serve on its advisory board. Using
their names, KCFF raised funds for their projects and some
money was apparently skimmed to fund the Unification
Church.'
The International Federation for Victory Over Communism
(IFVC) was formed in 1968 in Seoul. This was Moon's
principal political organization. Shokvo Rengo, the Japanese
affiliate, was also formed in 1968. The American affiliate was
incorporated in Washington, D.C. in 1969 as the Freedom
Leadership Foundation (FLF). Shokvo Rengo hosted the 1970
WACL Conference in Tokyo, for which Moon claimed to have
raised $1.4 million.10 FLF President Allen Tate Wood
attended as a "youth delegate" with several American Moon-
ies. He later broke with Moon, gave press conferences de-
nouncing Moon, and testified before the Fraser Committee.
While visiting Korea on the same trip, Wood was instructed
by Moon to "win the power centers" of the U.S. for him,
beginning with academia.'' Moon also told him that "part of
6. Fraser Report. pp. 118. 354.
7. Ibid., pp. 121. 357-58.
8. Ibid.
9. lhid., pp. 357-58.
10.1hid., pp. 319-20.
I. Press Statement by Allen Tate Wood. November 15. 1979 (hereafter
Wood Press Statement).
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Moon stands before his prime target.
our strategy in the U.S. must be to make Iticnds in the FBI, the
CIA and police forces, the military and business communi-
ty...as a means of entering the political arena, influencing
foreign policy, and ultimately of establishing absolute do-
minion over the American people.""
According to the Fraser Report, political operations in the
U.S. were at first opposed by religious "purists" in the Unifi-
cation Church. However it was "pointed out to them that the
Church in Japan and Korea carried extensive anticommunist
political programs. They were told it was Master's expressed
desire to begin political work in the United States. Thereafter.
a member's objection to political activities was considered
infidelity to Master and was like being disobedient to God." '
In 1971, Moon came to the U.S. after his immigration dif-
ficulties were overcome through the intervention of Senator
Strom Thurmond (Rep.-S.C.), who had spoken at Moon's
1970 WACL conference in Tokyo. Based on interviews with
ex-Moonies, Robert Boettcher, the staff director of the Fraser
Committee, wrote that Moon was "appalled" by American in-
dividualism, and he considered relocating to Germany, where
people "were trained in totalism." Some former members
recall that Nazi films on organizing Hitler Youth were shown
as examples to Moonie leaders. Nothing was more important
than developing a cadre of strong leaders totally subservient to
his will."14
12. Ripon Forum, January 1983.
13. Fraser Report, p. 320.
14. Robert Boettcher. Gi(rs of Deceit INe's fork: Ilolt. Rinehart and
Winston, 1980). p. 166.
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Wood has said that " f under the aegis of American Youth
for a Just Peace (AYJP)...set up by myself and a man named
Charles Stephens, the Unification Church carried out ex-
tensive lobbying in the spring of 1970. This lobbying was
carried out by church members under orders from their
superiors... to try to indicate to Congress... strong grassroots
support for a hard line in Vietnam." He also emphasized that
because "the church's tax exempt status would be threatened if
we carried out our political activities openly, we were careful to
hide our real identity behind the guise of AYJP. During this
time, AYJP received 'anonymous' donations from 'friends of
the President' [Nixon] through connections with Charles Col-
son and Jeb Magruder. So the Unification Church in the 1970s
was the recipient of money to carry out the programs of the
government."
"Mr. Moon has said," continued Wood, "that 'God is
phasing out democracy.' Well, whether or not God is doing it,
it is clear that Sun Myung Moon wants to do this ...so right
now, the United States is acting as a seedbed for fascist relig-
ious cults whose objective is in the end to destroy the Consti-
tution, and remake America in the image of an autocratic hier-
archical fascist state." 15
In 1975, Moon publicly denounced WACL as "fascist" and
purportedly withdrew; however, this was most likely simply
an effort to keep a lower profile. The Washington Past, cover-
ing the 1978 WACL conference in Washington, reported that
the Unification Church was absent and no longer involved."
However, a Unification Church minister hired buses for
CIA-connected Cuban exiles to attend, according to interviews
with the Cubans by Jeff Stein, writing in New York maga-
zine.t7 It is clear that the Moon organization never really left
WACL. Osami Kuboki has been a member of the WACL ex-
ecutive board for many years, and even hosted the 1982 WACL
conference in Japan.
Significantly, the youth section of WACL, currently headed
by David Finzer'H of the Washington-based Conservative
Action Foundation, has reportedly received a grant from the
South Korean WACL chapter. 1' Finzer's group is providing
seminars on "political technology" for WACL Youth, and
originated the Chevron/Gulf boycott-a campaign which re-
ceived support from the RAMBO Coalition (see sidebar in
"Shepherding," in this issue)-designed to highlight the
efforts of Jonas Savimbi's UNITA to overthrow the gov-
ernment of Angola.
David Finzer is also involved in the counterrevolutionary
war against Mozambique. There are two factions of the Mo-
zambique National Resistance (MNR or Renamo). The first,
led by Mozambican exile Artur Vilankulu, is endorsed by the
Conservative Action Foundation and some State Department
officials. David Finzer, secretary-general of the World Youth
Freedom League, the WACL youth affiliate, has assured the
press that even Gen. John Singlaub supports this faction.
However, to cover its bets, the CIA, along with the Heritage
Foundation and South Africa, is backing a second MNR group
with offices in the Heritage Foundation's Washington build-
ing. Luis B. Serapiao, also a Mozambican exile who is an
associate professor of African studies at Howard University,
is the spokesperson for this group, which has also enlisted
the aid of Bishop Abel Muzorewa of Zimbabwe. ?
38 CovertAction
"An Automatic Theocracy"
While WACL generally promotes fascist political pro-
grams, when the Moon organization is involved, the mes-
sages released are more explicitly theocratic. Essentially,
Moon's followers believe he is the new Messiah, the second
coming, not of Jesus but of the Messiah. Moon says that God
told him: "You are the son I have been seeking, the one who
can begin my eternal history."2" He says that God has
revealed his plan to him and that he has spoken with Jesus,
Moses, and other great historical religious figures.
Moon intends to bend the U.S. to "God's will," which will
lead to a final war with Soviet communism, and finally to the
Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. According to The Divine
Principle, the basic theological work of Unificationism. World
War III is "inevitable". This war may be fought with weapons,
or with "ideology," in order to "subjugate and unify the Satanic
world." The organization created to refine and promote this
ideology appears to be CAUSA (see sidebar) which the
Unification News describes as an "ideological movement,"
which "unites all religious people as a God-accepting force
against the God-denying forces such as communism."-1
The Divine Principle denounces the tripartite constitutional
system of western democracies, stating that "Since the Con-
stitution is not made of God's words" the three branches of
government "cannot help opposing and conflicting with one
another, and lack mutual harmony and order."
Moreover, in 1973, Moon said that "American style
democracy" is "a good nursery for the growth of commun-
ism.''22 Ten years later he told his annual International Con-
ference for the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS) that "neither
Democracy nor Communism provides the means to cure the
ills of society.... Not only has Democracy been unsuccessful
16. Paul Valentine, The Fascist Specter Behind the World Anti-Red
League," Washington Post. May 28. 1978.
17. New York Magazine, September 10, 1979.
18. See "Christian Voice." in this issue.
19. Searchlight, October 1986.
20. Boettcher, op. cit., n. 14, p. 31.
21. Church and State, May 1986.
22. Fraser Report, p. 314.
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at this task, but it has proved itself unable to resist and over-
come the destructiveness of Communism.... What is needed
is a third alternative, a movement based on a new understand-
ing of truth... this is the Unification Movement, with Unifica-
tion ideology.
Echoing Moon and The Divine Principle. Bo Hi Pak told an
audience composed largely of retired American and Asian
military officers in May 1985. "We believe we are at war. This
Third World War began long ago. This war will not be fought
just militarily. A fundamental characteristic of this war, we
feel is the ideological battle." Evidently referring to the Soviet
Union he continued, "The enemy of our freedoms and our faith
in God regards this war as total war, and he feels bound by
none of our religious convictions of right behavior. He utilizes
everything as a weapon in this war, not only in the military
field, but also in the areas of politics, economics, education,
communications media, arts, and even sports." He called it an
"inevitable showdown" that "may occur with the next ten
years."
23. "Absolute Values and the New Cultural Revolution." 12th International
Conference on the Unity of the Sciences. Chicago. Illinois. 1983, pp. 17-18.
Thus the Moon organization has been consistent over the
years, from their basic hook through the speeches of the Mas-
ter and his most prominent disciple. One former member
observed that Moon's teachings "were often referred to by
other members as an 'ideology' that would change the political
systems of the world. It was made clear to me that so long as
the church-related aspects of the group were emphasized,
Moon's followers would he in a protected position as far as
first amendment religious freedom was concerned, and he able
to take advantage of the tax laws as well."
Moon's theocratic aspirations are well documented in a
series of speeches and sermons from the 1970s, compiled
under the title Master Speaks. In 1973, for example, Moon
declared that ''Iw]hen it comes to our age. we must have an
automatic theocracy to rule the world. So we cannot separate
the political field from the religious.... Separation between
religion and politics is what Satan likes most." In Moon's
kingdom, Korea would be the central nation: the Rome of a new
Empire. What is more, "In the ideal world centered upon God,
everyone will speak only Korean, so no interpreter will he
24. Fraser Report. p. 316.
The CAUSA Kingdom
CAUSA is the principal political arm of the Unification
Church. It was founded in 1980, following an exploratory
tour of Latin America countries, during which Bo Hi Pak
met with key rightwing and military leaders. CAUSA's
main activities from 1980-1982 were arranging ideological
indoctrination seminars for political, military. and other
leadership groups all over the continent. In 1983, CAUSA
North America was founded, and began organizing similar
seminars in the U.S. Although originally known as the
Confederation of the Associations for the Unification of the
Societies of the Americas, by this time the "Unification" had
been changed to "Unity" in an apparent effort to distance
CAUSA from the taint of the church.
Whatever its name, control of the organization by the
Unification Church has been continuous. The directors of
CAUSA International are all serious Church members.
According to an internal CAUSA strategy memo dated Jan-
uary 1984,1, the CAUSA directors proposed to "cooperate
so as to best support Our True Parents [Mr. and Mrs.
Moon] and Colonel Pak in this campaign to find 70 million
members.... We in CAUSA have been called by True
Parents to participate in a most crucial campaign which will
focus upon recruiting 70 million members within the com-
ing two years." The "directors" of CAUSA are the de-
partment heads within the organization. The "principal par-
ticipants" in the meetings which led to drafting the
document were: Antonio Betancourt, Thomas Ward, Wil-
liam Lay, Joe Tully. Takeshi Furuta, Frank Grow, Celia
Roomet, Roger Johnstone, David Decker, and Tony Co-
lombrito. Significantly, the CAUSA directors planned to
learn from "the Japan IFVC's (International Federation for
Victory over Communism, or Shokvo Rengo) drive for 3.5
million members." The IFVC model was to aim for leaders,
mostly political leaders "and when the leader committed
himself, he also committed his movement."
Takeshi Furuta is apparently the key liaison between the
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Japanese and the American organizations. While a director
of CAUSA, Furuta was a member of the .Japanese delega-
tion to the 1985 WACL conference in Dallas. At the 1986
WACL conference, Osami Kuboki, Furuta, and their wives
were the Japanese delegates.
Meanwhile, the CAUSA regional advisors attending the
1985 U.S. CAUSA conference in San Francisco. were also
all Unification Church ministers. On the agenda of events
for 1984, along with numerous ideological conferences,
was a media tour of Asia, ostensibly under the auspices of
the World Media Conference (WMC). WMC is purportedly
a project of News World Communications, the parent coin-
pany of the Washington Times. However the CAUSA
document suggests that it was planned, if not organized by
CAUSA. 'the Asian tour was led by former U.S Ambas-
sador to Japan Douglas MacArthur. and delegates met with
Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone, among other leaders in
Asia. Similar tours have been organized to Central Ameri-
ca, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union.
Once limited to the Western Hemisphere. since 1983
CAUSA has become a global project with significant activi-
ties on every continent. The general thrust of the ('Al.
seminar is anti-communist education from a historical per-
spective. The CAUSA antidote to communism is "God-
ism", which is simply the Unification Church philosophy
without Moonist mythology.
Bo Hi Pak offered a CAUSA perspective of the Godist or
Moonist Kingdom, when speaking of Paraguayan dictator
Gen. Alfredo Stroessner. "I believe he's a special man.
chosen by God to run his county. This echoes an earlier
revelation by Moon who said of the 1961 military coup of
Korean dictator Park Chung Hee: "God set up a powerful
new leader, the present president of this Korea. and the new
order in our society."` ?
2. Christianity and Crisis. October 28. 1985
3. Fraser Report, p. 353.
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necessary." 25
Moon's religion-is-everything ideology includes the econ-
omy. He says that under his system, "even in Japan and
Germany, the people will not buy products from their own
country, but will buy according to centralized instructions.
What kind of system of thought or economy can function to
give these centralized instructions? Religion is the only
system that can do that."26
Moonism also transcends biology. Church members are
considered the "True Family" and Moon and his wife are the
"True Parents." Members celebrate as birthdays the day they
joined the Church. Anthropologist Willa Appel has written of
messianic cults and how this aspect is characteristic of many
groups: "For both messiah and followers, entrance into a
messianic movement constitutes spiritual rebirth. The mes-
siah is reborn as God's Second Son, his followers as his
children. The recruitment process that the messiah undergoes
is repeated by his followers. They too are required to give
themselves up to God (in the person of his stand-in, the
messiah) and forced to renounce their pasts, worldly pos-
sessions, attachments and ideas." As for the messiah, "He
is the Savior, destined to rescue the world from imminent de-
struction and they are the Chosen People who will implement
his mission."27
"A Movement Like Le Pen's"
Moon's political operations have taken many forms. In
Brazil, for example, CAUSA/Brazil has organized a long-term
campaign to collect eight million signatures on an "anti-
communist manifesto." They plan to use these petitions to
pressure the Brazilian Congress. 2' At stake is the Brazilian
Constitution, which is to be drafted by the new Congress. The
head of CAUSA/Brazil says 57 candidates received "logistical
but not financial support." He said "we are forming the future
base for a large party, though at present we are still apolitical"
and "we wanted to form a movement like Le Pen's in
France." 29
Le Pen is the leader of the fascist National Front which,
according to the British journal Searchlight, has close ties to
the Moon organization. Searchlight reported that "according to
Le Pen's estranged wife, CAUSA is an important financier of
the National Front." The head of CAUSA in France was a
member of the French delegation to the 1986 WACL conference
in Luxembourg.30
CAUSA conducts petition campaigns in the U.S., although
its petitioners are often very secretive about their affiliations.
They frequently refuse to identify themselves or to say what
25. Ibid., p. 314.
26. Ibid., p. 315.
27. Willa Appel, Cults in America (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1983) pp. 49-50. The Moon organization has used classic brainwashing tech-
niques to gain and keep recruits. Bereaved parents and friends have
sometimes resorted to various forms of "deprogramming." This moral and
legal twilight zone has been much discussed elsewhere. Appel's book de-
scribes how various forms of cult brainwashing work. This is significant in
this story because of the religious and political totalitarianism advocated by
the Moon organization.
28. Protestant fundamentalist and Pentecostal sects in Brazil also organ-
ized to try to influence the November 1986 elections. Alarmed about the pur-
pose of this activism, the Catholic Church wrote to the Vatican: "There are
indications this was part of American geo-political strategy as well as that of
nationalist, or rightwing military governments. Certain groups may have been
infiltrated by the CIA." Independent (London), October 8, 1986.
29. Ibid.
30. Searchlight, October 1986.
40 CovertAction
the petitions will be used for. In Madison, Wisconsin for ex-
ample, a Moonie would not tell a reporter "who would have
access to the information, or what purposes the names and
addresses would serve."31 However, internal CAUSA strat-
egy documents, originally revealed by CBS News, 32 suggest a
broader purpose (see sidebar on CAUSA). The November
1986 CAUSA newsletter claimed that "7.5 million Americans
have signed the CAUSA petition, stating their agreement with
CAUSA's goal to affirm a God-centered morality, uphold
freedom for all, and educate people about the dangers of
atheistic communism."
The Moon organization has a long history of electoral activ-
ism. The Fraser Report noted that they, in alliance with
"powerful rightwing figures in Japan, such as Ryiochi Sasa-
kawa,... openly participated in election campaigns there.' 33
Even before Moon came to the U.S., he had high ambitions.
Allen Tate Wood told the Fraser committee that the Moon
organization sought to gain enough influence in the U.S. to be
able to "dictate policy on major issues, to influence legisla-
tion, and to move into electoral politics.-34
After American Youth for a Just Peace was disbanded in
1971, its co-founder Charles Stephens moved to New York,
and ran (unsuccessfully), first for the State legislature in
1972, and for Congress in 1974. In both campaigns, FLF pro-
vided "volunteers." Also in 1974, the Moon organization pro-
vided considerable support for Republican Louis Wyman in
his unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate seat from New
Hampshire. Wyman reportedly promised to hire a church
member for his staff if he won. 31 Vengeful Moonies converged
on Minnesota in 1978 in a successful effort to defeat Rep. Don
Fraser, the sponsor of the congressional investigative report
on Koreagate, in the Democratic Senate primary.36 Moon
called Fraser's defeat an "act of God."
Congressman Donald Fraser (Dem.-Minn.) during
Koreagate hearings.
The Moon organization's party of choice has always been
the Republicans, and the New Right of the GOP in particular.
This relationship, epitomized by Moon's VIP seat at the first
Reagan inaugural, has been denounced repeatedly by the mod-
31. The DailS Cardinal, September 25, 1986.
32. CBS News, "West 57th Street," May 14, 1986.
33. Fraser Report, p. 319.
34. Ibid., p. 312.
35. Boettcher, op. cit., n. 14, pp. 162-64.
36. The Nation, March .II , 1979.
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crate Republican Ripon Society. Ripon president Rep. Jim
Leach (Rep.-Iowa) wrote that the "ties between the New Right
and Moon undercut the New Right's raison d'etre. A political
movement basing its appeal on old-fashioned patriotism and
family values simply cannot justify alliance with a cult that
preys on the disintegration of the American family and
advocates allegiance to an international social order operating
with cell-like secrecy.""
The FLF, though apparently supplanted by CAUSA as
Moon's U.S. political arm, is still occasionally active. In
May 1984 FLF paid for three Republican Senate staff members,
representing Senators Robert Kasten (Rep.-Wisc.), Steve
Symms (Rep.-Idaho), and William Armstrong (Rep.-Colo.),
to "fly to Central America where they met with government
leaders and U.S. Embassy officials in Honduras and Guate-
mala and joined the official U.S. observer delegation to the
Salvadoran election." 38
Convicted Felons
In 1984, Moon entered Danbury Federal Prison to serve an
18-month sentence for conspiracy to file false tax returns, to
obstruct justice, and to commit perjury.;' The Moon organiza-
tion claims that Moon and his co-defendant Takeru Kamiyama
were unfairly prosecuted due to racial and religious intolerance
on the part of the U.S. government. Remarkably, the Moon
organization has used the disaster of Moon's imprisonment to
benefit its public image. Across the political spectrum, many
people offered grudging support for Moon because they
believed he was mistreated by the judicial system. The Moon
organization has skillfully exploited these sentiments, and
indeed, had a major role in creating them. What began as a
campaign for "religious freedom" has become a multi-faceted
strategy to further the Moonist agenda. In 1984, Bo Hi Pak
said that "freedom of religion has become a major issue in
America, and Reverend Moon is the rallying point. -40 Echo-
ing this theme, New York Unification Church leader Ken Sudo
told fellow Moonie leaders in May 1985 that, "Father went to
Danbury as the leader of the Unification Church, but when he
comes out, he must be the leader of the Free World. -41
If Moon had only failed to pay income tax on $160,000 he
would not ordinarily have been prosecuted on criminal char-
ges. But evidence of willful violation of the law made criminal
prosecution inevitable. In 1973, tax lawyers and accountants
told Moon's representatives to keep his personal assets sep-
arate from those of the Church. Kamiyama ignored this advice
and prepared Moon's taxes under Master's personal supervi-
sion. They forged and backdated ledgers to hide Moon's
37. Ripon Forum, January 1983.
38. Washington Post, September 16-17. 1984. An edited version appears in
the Cult Awareness Network News, June 1985. CAN, P.O. Box 608370,
Chicago IL 60626.
39. As summarized by the Court of Appeals, Moon and his co-defendant,
Takeru Kamiyama, were both charged with "conspiracy to file false federal
income tax retums, to obstruct justice, and to make false statements to gov-
ernment agencies and to a federal grand jury." Moon was also charged with
three counts of filing false returns, and Kamiyama was charged with aiding
and abetting two of the false filings. Kamiyania also faced two other charges of
obstruction of justice and five charges of perjury. The defendants were con-
victed of all charges: on appeal, one of Kamiyama's perjury convictions was
overturned; all the other convictions were upheld. The "Messiah defense"
notwithstanding, the Supreme Court declined to review the case.
40. Proceedings of the 7th World Media Conference, November 19-22,
1984.
41. Fred Clarkson. "The Manifest Sins of Sun Myung Moon," Christianity
and Crisis, October 28 1985. Back issues are available front: 537 West 121
Street, New York, NY 10027.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
assets within the Church's. The prosecution proved. among
other things, that the paper used to falsify the 1973 records
was not even manufactured until 1974.4'
Moon's defense on appeal, (known as the "Messiah de-
fense") is consistent with his theocratic ambitions. Moon
claimed that some of his followers believed he is "potentially
the new Messiah," the "embodiment" of the Church, and thus
exempt from personal income taxes. The court held, however,
that even Messiahs are not exempt from taxes, and have a
status as an individual distinct from the church. Freedom of
religion is "subordinate to the criminal laws of the country."
The court ruled that "To allow otherwise would be to permit
church leaders to stand above the law."
Moon as Martyr
The Moon-as-martyr campaign has been orchestrated by the
Moon organization, public relations firms, and grantees. The
most prominent example is the Washington-based Coalition
for Religious Freedom (CRF) which, according to CRF presi-
dent Don Sills, has received at least $500,000 from Moon
sources.` A prominent CRF spokesperson and executive
committee member is Joseph Paige. As Executive Vice Presi-
dent of the Black Baptist Shaw Divinity School, Paige received
$60,000 from the Unification Church for his school, which in
turn gave Moon a much publicized honorary doctorate. Paige is
also active in CAUSA.4``
In 1984, the Association of Concerned Taxpayers, headed
by then Rep. George Hansen (Rep.-Idaho). started CRF.` A
CRF fundraising letter signed by Hansen declared that "a
deadly government assault against religion has erupted in
America land] powerful government forces are moving quickly
to smash the great constitutional guarantees protecting the
freedom of religion." Hansen strongly objected when the IRS
withdrew tax-exempt status from Bob Jones University
because of racial discrimination and policies against inter-
racial dating. He also condemned the state of Nebraska for
arresting fundamentalist Everett Sileven after Sileven refused
to allow teachers at his private school to he certified by the
state as required by state law.41'
The obstacle to "religious freedom" as defined by Moon and
much of the Christian Right, is "secular" government, which
they see as a stepping stone to "Satanic, atheistic, Conunun-
ism." Bo Hi Pak declared that the world is a battleground
between "God and no God."47 CRF claims that the Moon pro-
42. The Moon case has been discussed in more detail in (hris(iwi1l5 cold
Crisis, October 28. 1985: the Nest Republic. August 26. 1985. and the
Sacramento Bee, September 15, 1985.
43. Seattle Post-hnelligencer, September 27. 1986.
44. Clarkson, Op. cit., n. 41.
45. Hansen himself was later jailed fix fraud and failure to disclose loans
and profits from rightwing oil baron Nelson Bunker Hunt to his wile, as
required by congressional disclosure rules. lie was recently paroled Joseph
Paige has also served time. According to a Washington Post account (August
14, 1973), Paige and a co-conspirator formed it "non-profit corporation...
falsely representing it as part of the Federal City college. lot sshich Paige
was Dean] and diverted checks written on the $230.0(8) federal education grant
into a special... bank account from which then drew checks for personal use.'
The criminal records of Moon, Hansen, and Paige have led Washington in
siders to refer to CRF as the "Coalition of Religious Felons."
46. These, and the Moon case, have been it major rallying point for the
religious Right against what Hansen calls it conspiracy by "government
planners." Elsewhere, "independent" churches have refused health and safety
inspections of churches, schools, and orphanages, as 'ell as state licensing
of child care centers. These are usually based on it refusal to submit to
"secular authorities" and the claim they serve only the higher authorit of God.
47. Fred Clarkson, "`Privatizing' the War." C.1111/. Number 22 (Fall 1984).
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secution and the alleged attack on religion by government "is
largely the result of the ungodly secular humanist philosophy
that has contaminated our schools, the media, and the various
levels of government." The 1985 CAUSA Lecture Manual
stated that "in the United States, and intermediary stage prior to
communism may be secular humanism."41
The CRF executive committee has developed rapidly since
1984, to include most of the major televangelists, such as Tim
LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, James Robison, Rex Humbard, D.
James Kennedy, and Jimmy Swaggart. Recently, the Moon
organization opened an international front in its "religious
freedom" campaign. According to Moon's New York City
Tribune, the World Council on Religious Liberty (WCRL) was
founded in December 1986 at a conference in Geneva, Switzer-
land. The Chairman of WRCL is Joseph Paige, and its "Chair-
man of the North American Caucus" is Don Sills. They have
recruited Dr. Robert G. Muller, assistant Secretary General of
the United Nations, as chairman of the Council's International
Advisory Committee. The Council's headquarters are in
Raleigh, North Carolina, which is also home to Paige's Shaw
Divinity School.49
Gray Areas
While "Father" Moon served time, his followers organized
48. Clarkson, Op. cit., n. 41.
49. New York Cirv Tribune, December 10. 1986.
an elaborate public relations campaign which included the
religious freedom campaign, efforts to get Supreme Court
review of the Moon case, and finally a campaign to get Moon
pardoned. The Moon organization hired, among others, the
public relations firm of Gray and Co., headed by Robert Keith
Gray, a former Reagan campaign official. In early 1984,
according to sources familiar with the incident, Gray and Co.
director Robert B. Anderson solicited the signature of prom-
inent Washington Rabbi Joshua Haberman for Hansen's
religious freedom petition to President Reagan. The petition
was general in nature, but was then used in CRF's direct mail
blitz. Haberman withdrew, saying he had been deceived and
that his name was being used to advance causes which he did
not support.
Robert Anderson, a former Treasury Secretary in the
Eisenhower administration, was already involved with the
Moon organization at the time. He spoke at the founding con-
ference of CAUSA North America in Montego Bay, Jamaica in
1983. He also headed a Moon-funded front known as the
Global Economic Action Institute from 1983 to 1986. He was
succeeded in this post by former Senator Eugene McCarthy.
Gray, who co-chaired the 1981 Reagan Inaugural Com-
mittee, was the first President of the Georgetown Club, an elite
social club financed by his friend, KCIA operative Tongsun
Park (see sidebar). According to a former KCIA director, the
Georgetown Club was a KCIA front used by Park to facilitate
The KCIA Connection
The Moon organization was central to the Koreagate
scandal of the 1970s. The tale goes back before the 1961
military coup that brought Park Chung Hee to power. The
House of Representatives' investigation of the scandal,
headed by Rep. Donald Fraser (Dem.-Minn.), summarized
some of this early history:
In the late 1950s, Moon's message was favorably re-
ceived by four young, English-speaking Korean Army
officers, all of whom were later to provide important con-
tacts with the post-1961 Korean government. One was
Bo Hi Pak, who had joined the ROK (Republic of Korea)
Army in 1950. Han Sang Keuk...became a personal
assistant to Kim Jong Pil, the architect of the 1961 coup
and founder of the KCIA. Kim Sang In retired from the
ROK Army in May 1961, joined the KCIA and became an
interpreter for Kim Jong Pil until 1966. At that time, [Kim
Sang In] returned to his position as KCIA officer, later to
become the KCIA's chief of station in Mexico City. He
was a close friend of Pak Bo Hi and a supporter of the
Unification Church. The fourth, Han Sang Kil, was a
military attache at the ROK embassy in Washington in
the late 1960s. Executive branch reports also link him to
the KCIA. On leaving the service of the ROK gov-
ernment, Han became Moon's personal secretary and
tutor to his children....
In the period immediately after the coup, Kim Jong Pil
founded the KCIA and supervised the building of a
political base for the new regime. A February 1963 un-
evaluated CIA report stated that Kim Jong Pil had "or-
ganized" the Unification Church while he was KCIA di-
rector and had been using the Unification Church "as a
political tool."'
Though the Fraser report noted that "organized" is not to
be confused with "founded," since the Unification Church
was founded in 1954, "...there was a great deal of in-
dependent corroboration for the suggestion in this and later
intelligence reports that Kim Jong Pil and the Moon
organization had a mutually supportive relationship, as well
as for the statement that Kim used the Unification Church
for political purposes."2 The report also notes that the four
above named Moonie army officers played key roles in early
ROK/U.S. relations. Han Sang Keuk was a translator for
Park Chung Hee when he met with President Kennedy in
November 1961. And Kim Sang In accompanied Kim Jong
Pil when he visited Washington in 1962, where they were
briefed by the CIA, FBI, and Defense Department. One of
their escorts was Bo Hi Pak who was a military attache at
the ROK embassy in Washington at the time. Pak was also
reportedly the liaison to the American intelligence commu-
nity.;
The Fraser Committee also "obtained a copy of Kim Jong
1. Investigation of Korean-American Relations, Report of the Sub-
committee on International Organizations of the Committee on Inter-
national Relations. U.S. House of Representatives, October 31, 1978 (the
Fraser Report). pp. 354, 24.
2. Ibid., p. 24.
3. Robert Boettcher, Gifts of Deceit (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston, 1980), p. 40.
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"lobbying activities" in the 1970s.511 For at least the past few
years, Gray and Co. has been registered as a foreign agent for
Japan and South Korea.
The pardon campaign failed. However, four months after
his release from prison, Moon visited Korea where, in the
Olympic stadium, a rally of about 30,000 people was hosted
by his original political organization (still a part of WACL), the
International Federation for Victory over Communism (IFVC).
According to the London Times, no senior Korean government
officials were present. However, Osami Kuboki read a
message of support from Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone.
Kuboki said both Nakasone and former Prime Minister Kishi
had "interceded on Moon's behalf with President Reagan."
According to the Tines of London, Nakasone "telephoned the
President because of Mr. Moon's status as an international
leader, while Mr. Kishi, a supporter of the Unification Church
in Japan, had written to the President three times.-51
Kishi, who was a WACL leader in the late 1960s, is also
involved with CAUSA's International Security Council (ISC).
ISC's purpose includes organizing retired military officers of
the Western Alliance, and holding anticommunist conferenc-
es. Kishi also co-chaired Moon's 1984 World Media Con-
ference in Tokyo.
50. Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda (New York: Ballantine, 1984), p. 145.
51. Times ILondonl, December 17, 1985.
Pit's itinerary... which showed that [Kim Sang In] was part
of the entourage which toured the United States, meeting
numerous U.S. officials. While in San Francisco, Kim
Jong Pil...met secretly with a small group of Unification
Church members who were among Moon's earliest fol-
lowers in the United States." A person present at that meet-
ing "recalled that Kim [Jong Pil] told Unification Church
members that he would give their movement political
support in Korea, though he could not afford to do so
openly."'
All this serves as a backdrop to the Koreagate scandal.
The Moon organization, as noted above, cooperated closely
with Kim Jong Pil in establishing the Korean Cultural
Freedom Foundation as a mutually beneficial political
operation. However, as of at least 1970, Park Chung Hee
and his associates developed multifaceted plans to in-
fluence and subvert the U.S. Congress and Executive
Branch, primarily it seems, to assure continued U.S. mili-
tary presence in South Korea. Also involved were efforts to
influence trade legislation, discredit opponents of the Park
regime in the U.S., influence the U.S. academic communi-
ty, influence the U.S. news media, and a host of other ac-
tivities, many of them illegal. The key areas of the scandal,
as exposed by the congressional investigations, were
bribes and campaign contributions made to Members of
Congress and Senators. Several were indicted and jailed.
For most others, there was apparently insufficient evidence
for prosecution. Much of the congressional influence
scheme was organized by Tongsun Park, a KCIA agent and
businessman. Kim Sang In, a frequent visitor to Park's
house, and traveling companion, was believed by con-
gressional investigators to have been Park's supervisor or
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Nobusuke Kishi, Japanese war criminal, founding
member of WACL, and CAUSA official.
Kishi's involvement underscores the importance of Japan
to the Moon organization. Despite its Korean roots and the
historical animosity between Korea and Japan, the Unification
Church has had a limited popular following in Korea and very
large support in Japan. Indeed, its predominant source of
funding has been Japan. The Washington Post. quoting a for-
"control agent." During this period, the early 1970s, Kim
Sang In was an aid to the KCIA Director Lee Hu Rak, and
was later KCIA Station Chief in Mexico City. The Fraser
Report also notes that he "served for a time as liaison to the
U.S. CIA."5
Kim Sang In has, since at least 1982, been executive
Vice President of the parent company of Moon's
Washington Times newspaper, News World Communica-
tions (NWC). Bo Hi Pak is President of NWC, as well as
CAUSA, and the still existent Korean Cultural Freedom
Foundation (KCFF). Han Sang Keuk later became the
Korean Ambassador to Norway,' and is currently in-
volved in CAUSA's International Security Council.
As for the Koreagate scandal, the Korean influence
scheme apparently had its origins in a desire to emulate
successful foreign governmental lobbies in the U.S., nota-
bly Israel and Taiwan ("the China Lobby").7 There were
plans to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in com-
missions on rice deals, which in turn would be spent on
congressional bribes and other expenses: to infiltrate Con-
gress, the White House, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
While there was no evidence the KCIA succeeded in in-
filtrating the White House or the Pentagon, KCIA agents
were found to be on the staffs of Rep. Cornelius Gallagher
(Dem.-N.J.) and House Majority Leader Carl Albert
(Dem.-Okla.). There were also numerous Moonies work-
ing, mostly as volunteers in Congressional offices. in-
cluding Albert's. Among the "interns" who have been
placed on Capitol Hill through the Conservative Youth
Foundation (see sidebar) in the past year are, again, a num-
ber of Moonies, according to reliable sources. ?
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., pp. 102, 363.
7. Ibid., p. III.
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mer ranking Japanese Moon official, reported that some $800
million had flowed from Japan to the U.S. Unification Church
over the preceding nine years (1975-1984).5' Where the money
went is a matter of intense speculation. Some was invested in
businesses and real estate. Hundreds of millions have by now
spent on Moon's major publications, notably the Washington
Times, the New York City Tribune, and the newsweekly Insight
magazine. But clearly too, Moon money has been invested in
domestic American politics; and the funds documented here
are but the tip of the iceberg. (See sidebar.)
Who Does Moon Finance?
Amidst the many rumors of Moon organization fund-
ing of conservative political groups, there have been a
few documented examples. Those exposed to date in-
clude:
Inside the New Right
Part of Moon's U.S. strategy has been to seek alliances
with the religious Right. However, the relationship has been
highly controversial within the movement. While Moon money
is widely rumored to be a major financial underpinning of the
New Right, it is often kept secret because so many con-
servatives find the Moon organization repugnant.
Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, and one of the founders
and executive committee members of the Coalition for Reli-
gious Freedom, dropped his support for Moon in early 1984.
His spokesperson, Ron Godwin, denounced as "peculiar"
those who take money from a church whose "founder believes
he's divine.... They're taking money from a cult whose
doctrines are 180 degrees opposed. It's a little like the Jewish
National Fund accepting money from Arafat."53
But by August 1985, Falwell had cut short a tour of South
Africa to appear at a press conference at Moon's God and
Freedom Banquet. Both events were organized by CRF.
Godwin later became the business manager of Insight.
In a letter to Bo Hi Pak, taped onto a cassette by Rev. Tim
LaHaye of the American Coalition for Traditional Values
(ACTV is a political coalition of televangelists), LaHaye
thanked Pak for providing "timely" and "generous help" in
connection with an "extremely expensive" move of ACTV's
headquarters from California to Washington, DC.54 Like
Falwell, LaHaye was one of the founders and executive com-
mittee members of CRF. LaHaye later denied receiving money
from the Moon organization.
Whose Voice Is Christian Voice?
The rightwing Christian Voice claims 350,000 members,
including 40,000 ministers who become members by virtue of
having responded to direct mail funding appeals. The organi-
zation, which employs 17 field organizers, stepped into the
void left by the departure of the Moral Majority and ACTV from
significant political activity. However, they may have over-
stepped their position.
Christian Voice has come under fire recently for mis-
representing itself, and for its ties to the Moon organization.
Its claim to represent 45 million Christian evangelicals has
been challenged, notably by Robert P. Dugan of the National
Association of Evangelicals. He told Christianity Today
magazine that Christian Voice is "not constructed to be a
representative organization and its political positions may well
be determined by a handful of activists meeting over lunch.
They are accountable to no one but themselves." New Right
leader Paul Weyrich characterized Christian Voice as "con-
servative first and Christian incidentally, as opposed to other
52. Washington Post, September 16-17, 1984.
53. Carolyn Weaver, "Unholy Alliance," Mother Jones, January 1986.
54. Ibid.
Conservative Alliance (CALL), received $775,000
in 1984 from CAUSA.'
Coalition for Religious Freedom received $500,000
in 1984 from unidentified Moon sources.2
Conservative Youth Foundation received $250,000
in 1985 from CAUSA.3
California Republican Youth Caucus received
$5,000 in 1984 from CAUSA.4
Republican National Committee received $10,000
in 1984 from Bo Hi Pak.5
Republican National Committee received $10,000
in 1984 from James Gavin.' ?
1. Wall Street Journal, December 17, 1985. This money was in-
accurately reported as having gone to the National Conservative
Political Action Committee (NCPAC). A legal contribution to a PAC is
limited to $5,000. However, CALL, a non-profit lobbying group,
shared an office and switchboard with NCPAC, and was also headed
by NCPAC's Terry Dolan. The money was used for TV spots oppos-
ing trade with the Soviet Union, and to lobby Congress in favor of aid to
the contras and for funding for the MX missile.
2. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 27, 1986. CRF head Don
Sills admits to this figure. It could be much more.
3. Wall Street Journal, December 17, 1985. This operation, also
tied to Terry Dolan, who is a director of CYF, places young con-
servatives in Capitol Hill internships.
4. Ripon Forum, October 1985. This money went towards a
statewide youth conference at which a CAUSA representative spoke.
5. Federal Election Commission records show that Pak is an
"Eagle," or $10,000 contributor to the GOP. This status gives one
special access to high government officials. Pak is the head of most of
Moon's world-wide operations.
6. FEC records also show that Gavin is an Eagle contributor. Gavin
is a long-time Moonie and political operative. He headed the "Capitol
Hill Ministry" of the Unification Church during the Koreagate scandal
and later served as public relations director of the Washington Times.
groups that are Christian first, and conservative incidental-
ly. "55
The relationship between Christian Voice and the Moon
organization has plagued them for some time. At the center of
55. Christianity Today, November 7, 1986. Prior to the 1986 elections, the
Christian Voice political lobbying group used the religious freedom issue to
attack People for the American Way (PAW), a major liberal critic of the
religious Right. The PAW board includes such targets of the Right as the
National Education Association, as well as such mainstream religious fig-
ures as Rev. Charles Bergstrom of the Lutheran Council for Public Affairs,
and John Buchannan, a Baptist minister and former Republican Congressman
from Alabama. In a 28-minute film (aired October 9, 1986 on Pat Robertson's
Christian Broadcasting Network) PAW was attacked as "intolerant," "un-
American," "secular humanist," "communist," and "totalitarian." Co-hosted
by Christian Voice chairman Robert Grant (see "Christian Voice," in this
issue) and Washington Times columnist John Lofton, the film was a fundraiser
for the distribution of "millions" of the "moral Scorecards" (or "Biblical
Scorecards") used for rating candidates' qualifications for office. The im-
plication is that such public policy positions as the Balanced Budget
Amendment and Star Wars are based on a biblical imperative.
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Gary Jarmin, undercover Moonie.
this controversy is lobbyist Gary Jarmin, a Moonie from
1967-1973 who was active in Moon's Freedom Leadership
Foundation and who many suspect may be a Moon agent in the
New Right. A May 1981 article in Mother Jones raised this
question. Jarmin, who was the legislative director of Christian
Voice at the time, insisted, "I'm no longer affiliated with the
church; I'm not a member of it and I don't consult with their
people. This organization, [Christian Voice] is run by a board
of directors for whom I work, which is not in any way affiliated
with or controlled by the church. I think my actions speak
louder than my words."" Nevertheless, by February 1983
Jarmin had helped organize the first CAUSA North America
conference, held in Jamaica. Also in attendance were Christian
Voice chairman Robert Grant and Advisory Board members
W. Steuart McBirney and Ray Allen, and political strategist
Colonel V. Doner.
The relationships go even deeper. The three-member board
of Christian Voice's political action committee is chaired by
Jarmin, and includes Rev. Don Sills of the Moon-funded
Coalition for Religious Freedom. In August of 1985, Jarmin
helped organize CRF's God and Freedom Banquet held in
celebration of Moon's release from jail. He also led legislative
workshops at secretive CAUSA indoctrination sessions for
American state legislators during 1986. These events drew
about 100 conservative legislators from both parties to all-
expense-paid junkets, ostensibly to discuss the Constitution.
A more elite version of these meetings is the CAUSA-
sponsored American Leadership Conference, where Jarmin
has also spoken. Jarmin has been joined at other CAUSA
events by Robert Grant, who addressed the 1985 CAUSA
National Conference in San Francisco. Grant currently chairs
the Executive Committee of the Coalition for Religious Free-
dom.
Although CRF declares its independence from the Moon
organization (despite the Moon funding), the current executive
director of CRF is DanHoldgreiwe, a longtime Moon operative
who worked for Moon's Freedom Leadership Foundation from
the late 1970s to the early 1980s. 5'
The Moon relationship with Christian Voice surfaced as a
last-minute issue in the 1986 Colorado Senate race between
Rep. Ken Kramer (Rep.) and Rep. Tim Wirth (Dem.).
Kramer, who is a member of the Christian Voice Con-
gressional Advisory Board, claimed not to know of the Moon
56. Mother Jones. May 1981.
57. Louis Wolf. "Accuracy in Media Rewrites the News and History," in
CAIB, Number 21 (Spring 1984), p. 24. at 36.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
connection. He told the Denver Post, "I'm not a Moonie,""'
and asserted to the Rocks' Mountain News that the Moon con-
nection, if proven, would "be a matter of great concern to file,
and I would have to take a new look at the situation.... I do not
support the Moonies in any way."5" Nevertheless, Wirth won
the race.
CAUSA and the Catholic Church
While best known for its growing relationship with Protes-
tant fundamentalism, the Moon organization has actively
sought close links with the Catholic Church, particularly in
Latin America.` Their success has been decidedly mixed.
The Bishops of Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, and Japan
have all denounced the Unification Church in pastoral letters.
While this has put a crimp in their operations, Moonism is not
without allies. The Archbishop of La Plata, Argentina spon-
sored the first CAUSA seminar in that country, and later a-
warded an honorary doctorate to Moon from the Catholic Uni-
versity, while he was in jail.
According to an internal strategy document dated January
1985, CAUSA views its relationship with the Catholic Church
as "extremely important.... One [pastoral] letter of the
Bishops in any country will considerably damage our activi-
ties. If it happens in a Third World country, all the faithful
Catholics will go away, leaving us with 'non-faithful' ones,
making our situation even more miserable." 'i
Indeed, the Honduran Bishops denounced CAUSA as "an-
ti-Christian" and declared that the Unification Church "creates
a species of material and spiritual slavery" that poses
"serious dangers to the psychological, religious, and civic
integrity of anyone who yields to its influence.""' The
Japanese Bishops, noting major theological differences with
the Unification Church, also "discourage all Catholics from
any collaboration with it. While the Holy See is contrary to any
participation by the faithful, it is even more opposed to
whatsoever [sic] attendance and collaboration on the part of
Catholic priests.-13
The principal Moon advocate within the Church appears to
be Father Sebastian Matczak, a Polish priest who has spoken
frequently at CAUSA conferences, and who teaches philoso-
phy at the Unification Seminary in Barrytown, New York. The
CAUSA paper notes that "Dr. Matczak, in his latest visit to
Rome the past January [1984] could verify that the had reputa-
tion of our movement is mainly coming from Latin America,
while there they say that official documents from the Vatican
prevent them from any relation with us."" '
Despite serious obstacles to Moonist advances on the
Catholic Church, the organization claims that CAUSA has a
"strong connecting point" with the Church in most Latin
countries. The internal report notes, however, that the strategy
of seeking relationships with the hierarchy. and inviting
priests to CAUSA conferences, has generally failed. As a
58. Den er Past. November 3, 1986.
59. Rocky Mountain Nears. November 2, 1986.
60. Wolf, Op. cit., n. 57.
61. Internal CAUSA document. January 1985.
62. Interchange Report, Fall 1984.
63. Arlington I Virginia] Catholic Herald. August S. 1985.
64. Internal CAUSA document. January 1985. The Report is a confidential
3-year review of CAUSA/Catholic relations. Written by Roger Johnstone and
Liliana Karlson, and submitted to CAUSA's Bo Hi Pak. foot Ward. and An.
tonio Betancourt, the Report makes clear that their intentions are more than
ecumenical in spirit: "The goal is: the CATHOLIC WORLD (80'4 of all
Christianity). The time is: NOW! Tomorrow might he too late!"
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Pope John Paul II with Moonies Tom Ward and Bo Hi
Pak (circled) at AULA conference.
result, "it seems that we have to open two fronts, one in
Rome, one in Latin America." The latter option emphasized
secret and highly selective CAUSA conferences with priests
as a way to build a core of supporters, whose favorable reports
would percolate up to the Vatican. Dr. Matczak reportedly
"finds this strategy... the only way and an absolute neces-
sity." The twin goals of this plan were to "STOP THE
NEGATIVITY FROM WITHIN" (the Catholic Church) and to
"Declare war to the Liberation theology."c'S
It is possible that the Rome option is still viable. A new
Moon unit called AULA (Association for the Unification of
Latin America) was formed in Rome in December 1984.61
AULA's second annual conference, in December 1985 in
Rome, was attended by a dozen former presidents of Latin
American countries and was received by the Pope. The Moon
organization is skilled at using the prestige of out-of-power
politicians. Two weeks later three former presidents of Co-
lombia, and two of Costa Rica represented AULA at Moon's
welcome home rally in Seoul, South Korea.'7
According to Unification News, AULA is drafting a pro-
posed constitution for a "United States of Latin America."c'x
AULA's constitutional specialist is Cleon Skousen, head of
the National Center for Constitutional Studies, who worked
closely with CAUSA in 1986, organizing conferences of con-
servative U.S. state legislators. According to Church and
State magazine, Skousen is not only far-right but "believes
America is a fulfillment of Mormon prophesy regarding the
pre-millennial preparation of the Earth."69
Prior to becoming the current "prophet" of the Mormon
church, Ezra Taft Benson endorsed Skousen's work as having
"the Lord's approval" and appeared at many Skousen events.
Benson's son Mark, is on Skousen's board of directors.
Skousen is the most visible link in an apparent Moon/Mormon
alliance. Another important link is U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch
(Rep.-Utah), who is a Mormon Bishop and has spoken at
several CAUSA/Skousen conferences in the past year which
65. Ibid.
66. AULA is headed by Jose Maria Chaves, a longtime Moon operative. A
native of Colombia. Chaves is now based in New York. He is a director of the
Committee to Defend the U.S. Constitution, a Moon front group which placed
full page ads in major American newspapers claiming Moon was a "Victim of
a Government Conspiracy." Warren Richardson, the first director of CAUSA
North America and former general counsel to the Liberty Lobby was a director
at one time as was David Finzer of the Conservative Action Foundation. In
1985, Finzer took over the youth arm of WACL, and in 1986 was elevated to
the executive board. See "Christian Voice," in this issue.
67. Times [London], December 17. 1985.
68. Church and State, May 1986.
69. Ibid.
have had a disproportionate number of Mormon politicians
from Utah and Idaho in attendance.
Conclusion: Moon's Law
The Moon organization is an ominous, anti-democratic
element in American and world politics. Its history is syn-
onymous with post-World War 11 fascism. In coalition with
rightwing secular and religious groups the Moon organization
is attempting to create a broad-based, mainstream fascist
movement in the U.S.
The simplistic and distorted CAUSA worldview is appeal-
ing to authoritarians who glean a sense of historical im-
portance from the notion of an imminent and ultimate battle
between good and evil-where they are the good guys. It is all
the more convenient that those who stand in opposition-
liberals, communists, democratic conservatives, and tools-are
all lumped together as forces which are either complicit with
the enemy or must be ignored.
The totalist Moon ideology tells new Moonies that everyone
outside the "True Family," including their biological parents,
may be agents of Satan. CAUSA's philosophy expresses a
similar view. Doubt about Moon, even personal doubts, may
be Satan at work. Moon's law is arbitrary and totalitarian. The
Moon organization's willful violation of American laws is
based on theological premises which recognize neither the
legitimacy of constitutional democracy, nor the legitimacy of
any law, save its own. The Fraser Report, the testimony of
former Moonies, media stories, and legal proceedings offer
repeated examples of criminal activity. Though the Moon
organization speaks of love and peace, these sentiments ring
hollow when contrasted with the violent rhetoric of Bo Hi Pak
and the hate-filled sermons of Sun Myung Moon. The activi-
ties of the Moon organization should be examined in this con-
text, because despite the mendacity of the Moon organization,
when it comes to politics, they mean what they say.
Letter to the Editor
Thank you for your informative article on the
American Ambassador to the United Nations, Vernon
Walters. This is the kind of information we need, not
only in this country but all over the world. However.
there is a very important detail in your article that needs
some clarification.
The riots that took place in Bogota, Colombia in April
1947, during the Pan-American Conference, which you
refer to as Walters's "first brush with revolution and
counterrevolution," were not the result of the Conference
itself, but of the assassination, on April 9, of the pop-
ulist and popular liberal leader, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan.
Gaitan, a fiery speaker. a man who rose from the
bottom and was adored by the masses, was shot before
he could become the next President. His death produced
two days of rioting by the enraged populace of Bogota.
They were put down by military reinforcements brought
into the capital from several neighboring provinces.
This is considered a very important date in Colombian
history, as it signaled the beginning of modern-day Col-
ombia.
Yours truly,
LAt.o BORJA
SAN FRANCISCO
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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Fatima
by Walter Sampson*
On May 13, 1981 Mehmet All Agca attempted to assas-
sinate Pope John Paul II at Saint Peter's Square. Almost four
years later, Agca told a judge in an Italian court that the attempt
on the life of the Pope had been part of "the third secret of
Fatima."
Was this simply the gibberish of a crazy man'? No doubt it
was. But ideas cone from somewhere and it seems unlikely
that Agca could have acquired independent knowledge of an
obscure Catholic vision, much less have become converted to
it, given his Sunni Moslem religious upbringing, without
some coaching.
A video about Fatima shown on prime time television in
several major U.S. cities used footage of the Pope slumped
over, having just taken a bullet from Agca's gun. The video
recalled the scene of panic in Saint Peter's Square. Actor
Ricardo Montalban narrated, explaining how the assassina-
tion attempt took place on the anniversary of the vision of
Fatima.
On May 13, 1917, near the Portuguese village of Fatima,
three children claimed to have seen an apparition of the Virgin
Mary. They were told to return the next month, when, they later
said, they heard three "secrets" about coming events in the
world. The first secret, one of the children explained many
years later, was a vision of hell: the second was that the Soviet
Union, if not converted to Christianity, would "spread her
errors throughout the world...." The third secret, to which
Agca referred in court, is still a secret. Montalban, reading
from a script prepared by Saint Gabriel Media, Inc., insisted
that the assassination attempt, falsely linked by the media to
Bulgaria, and by extension to the Soviet Union, was part of the
second secret of Fatima.
Was the idea of the third secret of Fatima planted in Agca's
mind while in prison'? Was it just a coincidence that he shot the
Pope on the anniversary of the vision at Fatima'? While there
are no hard answers at this time, there is room for supposi-
tion. Authors Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead. in The
Rise and Fall al the Bulgarian Conneetiorr, write that the Secre-
tary-General of the Union of Catholic Bishops, a Dr.
Hoemeyer, paid a friend of Agca's to convince Agca to say that
he was hired by the KGB.' The authors also point out that
Agca wrote a letter to Vatican authorities complaining of pres-
sure by a Catholic chaplain in Ascoli Piceno prison, Father
Mariano Santini, and they ask, "Why would Agca, a non-
Catholic, require the aid of a Catholic chaplain."2 Agca wrote
that in prison he feared for his life because of threats made by
Santini. Santini could have drilled Agca, not only to name
Bulgarians as being behind the assassination attempt, but
also on how Agca was part of some greater cosmic plan known
as the "secrets of Fatima."
I.I:duard S. Herman and Frank Brodhead. The Rise and ht/1 at the
Bulgarian Crnuu'elion (Ne York: Sheridan Squarc Puhlications. 1980). P.
11.
2. lbid.. P. 109.
History of Fatima
While the connection between Agca and the Fatima nmsterv
is unproved, the historical role of Fatima as a rallying point for
the right wing of the Catholic Church is not. Fatinists
themselves estimate that only about two percent oh Al
Catholics are involved with their movement,' yet the message
of Fatima has strongly interested three Popes: Pius XII. Paul
V1, and most recently. John Paul II.
Fatima has long been a tool of rightwing political interests.
Its strange history began in Portugal when Europe was con-
vulsed by World War I. and revolutionary movements were
rising in Russia, Portugal, Germany. and elsewhere. In
Portugal there was increasing discontent stemming Irons food
shortages, strikes, and an unpopular government, and Much
anger was directed against the conservative Catholic Church.
In May 1917, seven months before the Portuguese government
fell, three children claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary at
Cova da Ira about 70 miles north of Lishon, near the village of
Fatima. The children said that the apparition told them to return
to the site at the same hour and on the same date every month
for the next six months. One month later they claimed to haye
received apocalyptic revelations pertaining to the late of the
world.
Jacinto, Francisco, and Lucia-the three children of
Fatima-with whom Agca shared a vision of the third
secret.
Although as many as 70,000 Portuguese pilgrims gathered
near Fatima on October I3th. 1917, the apparitions were not
embraced by the Church until many years later. Not until 1935
did the one surviving child. Lucia dos Santos, then a Carmelite
nun, reveal the contents of two of the three secrets. Address-
ing a crowd of a half-million pilgrims, she explained that the
first secret was a vision of hell and the second was that the
Soviet Union must he converted to the Catholic faith.
In August of 1941, two months alter three million German
troops had advanced into the Soviet Union. Lucia dos Santos
was persuaded (by those she called "God's representatives on
Wafter Sampson uis an ime'tieati~e journalist in California.
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earth") to put the secrets on paper and to give it to the church.'
In October of the same year Pope Pius XII traveled to Portugal
and told Catholics to pray that the promises of Fatima be
realized soon. When the German army surrounded Leningrad,
Hitler precipitously announced the defeat of Soviet forces.
Immediately after this, in a Jubilee message over the radio,
Pope Pius XII told an audience that the first injunction of the
Virgin Mary had been fulfilled.'
According to the interpretation of the followers of Fatima,
the first secret-the vision of hell, was now realized. This
implied that the second secret-the conversion of Russia,
was next on God's agenda. Francisco Franco, the fascist dic-
tator of Spain, organized 17,000 men into the Blue Division to
go to the Soviet Union and help the Germans. Bishops and
priests, who viewed the invasion as part of the first two
secrets spoken by Lucia dos Santos, blessed their arms.
The Fatima cult did not die after the failure of the invasion of
the Soviet Union. In fact, just the opposite happened. The
followers of Fatima grew in size and strength, as part of the
Cold War. In October 1951 Pope Pius XII reaffirmed his belief
in the vision when he announced to a crowd at Fatima that he
had "turned his gaze from the Vatican gardens to the sun, and
there was renewed for his eyes the prodigy of the Valley of
Fatima." The Vatican said that the Pope saw the sun jump
about the sky, "agitated, all convulsed, transformed into a
picture of life."'
The Apocalyptic Aspects of Fatima
Apocalyptic thinking is a very important part of political and
religious cults because it gives authority to a small group of
people to interpret events for the rest. Reverend Sun Myung
Moon, who claims to have spoken to Jesus and Moses, once
told his followers, "I am your brain." In May 1985 Ronald
Reagan extolled the metaphysics of Fatima by telling the
Deputies of the Assembly of the Portuguese Republic that in
"simple people like the children of Fatima, there resides more
power than in all the great armies and statesmen of the world."'
In recent years much has been written about the apocalyptic
beliefs of Ronald Reagan and the Protestant Christian Right;
but what about the Catholic Right? Historically, the Catholic
Church hierarchy did not prophesy the end of the world. Noted
New Testament scholar, Ernst Kasemann, once wrote that,
"Apocalyptics was the mother of all Christian theology." That
was in the days when the Christians fought against the Roman
Empire for their survival. Once Christianity became the state
religion, the hierarchy did not see much value in believing that
the world would soon be rocked by the heavens. They liked the
world as it was. In the fourth century St. Augustine interpreted
the book of Revelation as a metaphor, not as a literal prediction
of events. When there were revolts against the Catholic
Church in sixteenth century Germany, the Protestant rebels
believed their actions were part of an imminent Second Coming
while the Catholic Church hierarchy stayed clear of such
forecasting.
It may be that the development of nuclear arsenals had an
influence on leaders' perceptions of the end of the world.
Whatever the causes, the powerful, including Ronald Reagan,
4. Joaquin Maria Alonso. The Secret of Fatima: Fact and Legend
(Cambridge, Mass.: The Ravengate Press, circa 1976), p. 32.
5. Avro Manhattan, Catholic Imperialism and World Freedom, Arno Press,
circa 1972. p. 32.
6. Ibid.. p. 41.
7. The Fatima Crusader. October- December 1985, p. 8.
48 CovertAction
Pope John Paul II and Sister Lucia of Fatima,
discussing second secret-a vision of Russia's conversion.
who once avoided end-time belief, now occasionally champion
it, and the Catholic Church is no exception.
In 1960 John XXIII became the first Pope to read the third
secret and then he stored it away in the archives. There is a
story that Pope Paul VI opened the envelope containing the
secret, turned pale, and put it back into a drawer, never to
speak of it again. On May 13, 1967 Paul VI became the second
Pope to visit the Fatima shrine in Portugal, telling the crowd,
"After Hiroshima, we can understand Fatima better."' The
third Pope to visit the shrine, John Paul 11, did so precisely a
year after he was shot. He donated a bullet from the
assassination attempt to the shrine-a shrine he might never
have visited had Agca not tried to kill him on the anniversary of
Fatima. Perhaps he did see the events of May 13. 1981 as part
of some greater, divine unraveling of history.
One Fatima-oriented group with significant clout is the
National Committee for the National Pilgrim Virgin of Canada.
It publishes a magazine called the Fatima Crusader. Father
Nicholas Gruner, who heads the organization, gives a stormy
right-wing appraisal of the world in his magazine:
Lives of millions and millions of people are literally
dependent upon our response to Our Lady's Urgent Mes-
sage at Fatima. Many of us will die very soon if the predic-
ted "annihilation of various nations" takes place. This will
certainly happen if people do not respond now to Our Lady's
Message.'
TFP: Fatima and Politics
Fatimists are not concerned only with apocalyptics; their
fervent anticommunism calls for political activism with an
arch-conservative bent. The most significant political force
directly linked to Fatimists is The Society for the Defense of
Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP), founded in Brazil in
1960 by Professor Plinio Correa de Oliveira. The U.S. branch,
headed by John R. Spann, also publishes the America Needs
Fatima Newsletter and runs the America Needs Fatima Cam-
paign. With your $15 contribution to the Campaign you get "our
new prayer card [which] contains the full text of the special
anti-communist prayer to Our Lady of Fatima."
8. Peter Hebblethwaite, "Pope and Fatima." Neer Blackfriars. October
1982.
9. The Fatima Crusader, October- December 1985. p 2.
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WACL luminaries, including Fred Schlafly, to left of
Plinio Correa de Oliveira, visiting TFP headquarters.
TFP is a prominent force in Latin America. There, rather
than looking toward the future, TFP strongly emphasizes the
past. Its leaders preach more about holding back land reform
and communism than they do about the secrets of Fatima. TFP
makes an ideal of the old traditional Church; the Church which
used to hold sacred all property rights and titles, including
those of Kings and Queens. But TFP even goes further, view-
ing the Middle Ages as the apogee of human history. Their
emblems are medieval and members and supporters decorate
their homes with graphic pictures of the Crusades.
TFP has branches in the U.S., Canada, Spain, France,
South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Uru-
guay, and Venezuela, with about 2,000 full members
world-wide, virtually all wealthy and all male, about 500 to 800
in Brazil alone. The U.S. branch, founded in 1974. has an es-
timated 50 to 100 members.
Although TFP is small, its members have great political
influence with numerous contacts to the power elite. In Brazil,
the largest Catholic country in the world, there have been wide
divisions in the Catholic Church between those who favor the
traditional Church as a citadel for the oligarchy and those who
see it based on Christian communities, working for the poor.
In Brazil, after a CIA-supported coup overthrew President
Joao Goulart and installed General Humberto Castelo Branco,
unprecedented repression followed. The TFP worked with the
CIA and was active both before and after 1964 as intellectual
and financial backers of the military dictatorship."' In the
TFP literature, the events of 1964 are described in these terms:
The troublesome agitations of the early 1960's helped to
make manifest the exemplary attitude of the Armed Forces,
which showed themselves patriotically and courageously
determined to crush the agitations of the subversive
minorities."
TFP established a number of training camps near Rio de
Janeiro where the armed forces and police, themselves trained
by the CIA, instructed TFP members.''
The year 1967 was significant for TFP because "societies
similar to Brazilian TFP began to form in nearly all the sister
nations of South America, united by ties of mutual friend-
ship."" This was the year the Chilean TFP was founded. In
the 1973 CIA coup against President Salvador Allende, it
proved important. Indeed, it imported counter-revolutionary
techniques used in Brazil, and worked with the terrorist group,
Patric v Libertad. The CIA coups in Chile and Brazil were
10. Penny Lernoux, Crv of the People (New York: Doubleday, 1980). p.
296.
1 I . Antonio Augusto Borelli, editor, Tradition. Family, and Property: Hall
it Century of Epic Anti-Comntunisin. circa 1981.
12. Lernoux. op. cit., n. 10, p. 295.
13. Borelli, op. cit., no. 11. pp. 112-13.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
similar in many ways, including organized demonstrations by
middle and upper class women. These were tested by the TFP
in Sao Paulo with CIA support. TFP and Patria v Libertad
sponsored a similar demonstration five days before Allende's
overthrow.
Fatima in the U.S.
In 1974 TFP came to the United States. 'I'FP supporters
claim to have many "friends" in the White House and some
Congressmen have sent their aides to TFP international
meetings in Brazil. According to one source, several White
House people visited TFP headquarters in New York and re-
ceived ceremonial swords, one of the medieval emblems of the
group, which they hung on their office walls.
On February 13, 1984, President Reagan sent a letter of
"warm regards" to TFP President John R. Spann for the
support the society had given him. The letter was sub-
sequently printed in various TFP newsletters.
Another significant Fatimist organization in the U.S. is the
Blue Army. First founded in 1947 by Rev. Harold V. Colgar,
the Blue Army regards itself as exclusively religious, but in
1982 Bishop Jerome Hastrich of Gallup, -Texas. a leader in the
Blue Army, told a writer for the National Catholic Reluhrter,
"the peaceniks would say it is better to he red than dead; we
would say that it is better to be dead than red."" This does
not have a particularly religious ring to it.
One difference between TFP and the Blue Army is that TFP,
though steeped in tradition, is more oriented toward politics
than the Blue Army. Matrio Navarro. the Brazilian-horn TFP
representative in Washington, the son of a Brazilian ambas-
sador, works with such new-right figures as Paul Weyrich,
Richard Viguerie, and Morton Blackwell. In 1974, almost
exactly a year after the coup in Chile, some other right and
new-right figures, among them Lee Edwards, Fred Schlafly,
and French writer Suzanne Labin, were received by the TFP at
the St. Michael's Auditorium in Sao Paulo.
The U.S. TFP has organized numerous anti-abortion
demonstrations, particularly targeting Planned Parenthood
offices. Since 1973, they have participated in the annual
"March for Life" in Washington. In 1983, they placed an ad in
newspapers across the country, denouncing Reagan's plan to
name Henry Kissinger as the head of the administration's
Commission on Central America. The ad noted that, "Kissin-
ger symbolizes all the lack of political foresight that led to the
handing over of Vietnam to the communists."' 5
Conclusion
Fatima is a vivid example of religion in support of particular
political programs. Over the years it has changed and con-
formed to the interests of different rightists. As the pro-
ponents of liberation theology challenge the economic struc-
tures that perpetuate poverty, Fatima will no doubt continue to
play an important part in the Catholic Right's attempts to stifle
progressive change in the church.
How a Sunni Moslem named Mchmet Ali Agca really fits
into the picture is not clear. It', in fact, there was something
more than coincidence in the Agca-Fatima connection, some-
day we may know. ?
14. Terri Goodman, "Blue Army devotion gains popularity in the t'.S
National Catholic Reporter, May 21, 1982.
15. Brochure published by TFP entitled "The American Socie1 h r the Dc
fense of Tradition, Family, and Property," American TFP, I' D Box 1 21 ,
Pleasantville, NY 10507.
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The Far Right Goes After Black Support
By Clarence Lusane*
A Trojan Horse of sorts is slowly edging its way into the
Black community in the U.S. By political and religious means,
the far Right is attempting to curry Black support for its
causes. Deception and misrepresentation are the main tactics
being employed in this noxious endeavor. By addressing
issues of concern to Blacks, such as abortion, school prayer,
starvation in Africa, minority rights, and political empower-
ment, a number of Blacks are being duped by far-right forces
into supporting causes that are diametrically opposed to their
interests.
Efforts To Win Political Support
Neither the Republican Party nor other rightwing political
elements has seriously tried to win Black votes or Black
support for their agenda. This has been due in part to the lack of
legitimate Black political figures who will accept their rightist
positions. Occasionally, however, a Black is found who will
get on the bandwagon and become a spokesperson on behalf of
the Right.
Recently, Black reactionaries-former Black Panther Eld-
ridge Cleaver and Roy Innis of CORE-were persuaded to run
against progressive Black Congressmen Ron Dellums
(Dem.-Cal.) and Major Owens (Dem.-N.Y.) respectively.
Both Cleaver and Innis were backed by far-right and neo-
fascist forces. Cleaver had the support of the Rev. Sun Myung
Moon's Unification Church and other far-right groups, while
Innis embraced an endorsement from Bernhard Goetz, the New
Yorker who shot four young Black men in a subway car, and
Roy Innis, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE), shakes hands with Bernhard Goetz.
spoke at meetings called by the supporters of Lyndon
LaRouche (see below). These races were mounted simply to
harass Dellums and Owens because, in fact, neither Cleaver
nor Innis has any real base in the Black community. Both were
severely trounced in the Democratic Party primaries.
* Clarence Lusane is a freelance writer who frequently contributes to CA/B.
50 CovertAction
Some noted evangelists are making inroads in the Black
community. Pat Robertson's co-host on his "700 Club"
television program' is Black conservative Ben Kinchlow,
who has visited South Africa and interviewed P. W. Botha.
And Bishop John L. Meares, the white leader of Evangel
Temple in Washington has planned a national "Inner City
Pastors' Conference" for March 1987 with the theme of "The
Kingdom Awakening to Reconciliation," evidently offering a
fundamentalist approach to race relations. Meares is a
Pentecostalist whose beliefs have been likened to those of
"shepherding" groups,2 and Bob Mumford, one of the leaders
of the shepherding movement. is to speak at the conference.;
The Moonies
Since his 1982 conviction and imprisonment for con-
spiracy, obstruction of justice, and making false statements,
Rev. Sun Myung Moon has attempted to portray himself as a
victim of persecution.' Moon's followers have claimed that
he was subjected to a racial and religious witchhunt. They
argue therefore that the Black clergy has a particular, vested
interest in coming to his defense.
There are two Moon organizations through which outreach
to Blacks is attempted: The Coalition for Religious Freedom
(CRF) and CAUSA U.S.A. CAUSA members are often found
at subway stations and airports around the country soliciting
signatures on petitions for their various causes. In addition to
attempting to build support for Moon, the CRF is also known
for its defense of racist religious institutions. While trying to
persuade Blacks that they had an interest in defending Moon,
the CRF was also involved in organized efforts to regain a tax
exemption for Bob Jones University. Its tax exemption was
revoked in 1984 because it taught and practiced racial segrega-
tion.
CAUSA sponsors seminars which feature leading right-
wing ideologues such as Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media;
Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor of Moon's Washington Times
and co-author of the anti-Soviet spy novels The Spike and
Monimbo; and Eldridge Cleaver. Anti-communist diatribes
and KGB conspiracy theories dominate these gatherings.
Blacks, such as Cleaver, are given a platform from which to
attack Black leaders and organizations.
The Washington Times regularly runs articles in support of
the South African-backed renegade Jonas Savimbi who is
attempting to overthrow the government of Angola. Rather than
reporting on his murderous raids and lack of support from the
Angolan people, Savimbi is praised and falsely portrayed as a
heroic freedom fighter. Roy Innis gained notoriety a few years
1. See "Holy Spirit or Holy Spook?" in this issue.
2. (Washington Post, December 21, 1986.
3. See "Shepherding," in this issue.
4. See "Moon's Law," in this issue.
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It is not just the Black community into which the
Moonies have made inroads. Russell Means, former
American Indian Movement leader, who now works the
Moon lecture circuit denouncing the Sandinistas,
kowtows to CAUSA conferees.
ago with his efforts to recruit American Blacks to join
Savimbi's South African-financed forces as mercenaries.
Lyndon LaRouche
Perhaps the most worrisome efforts by the far Right to win
Black support are the attempts being made by arch-fanatic
Lyndon LaRouche. Famous for promoting conspiracy theo-
ries, uncritical support for Reagan's Star Wars military plans,
and a super-clandestine life style, LaRouche has begun in the
past two years to dig his claws into the Black community.
Through a front organization, the Schiller Institute, LaRouche
and his followers have initiated serious attempts to organize
Black backing for his causes.
LaRouche runs a multi-million dollar empire of publications
and organizations principally concerned with implementing
and promoting his various conspiracy causes. Once a self-
proclaimed leftist, he now espouses some of the most
crackpot theories on the right. As cult leader of a following that
numbers in the thousands internationally, the LaRouchies
have threatened numerous reporters and researchers attempt-
ing to expose the true nature of their work.
The Schiller Institute, headed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche,
wife and companion of Lyndon, was founded in May 1984.
The assistant director is Allan Salsbury who is Black.
Ostensibly an institute to promote German-American friend-
ship, it has become the principal vehicle through which La-
Rouche hopes to gain Black followers. One of the Institute's
first efforts was to organize a march and rally in Washington,
D.C. on Martin Luther King's birthday, January 15, 1985. It
was hypocritically called a march for the "Inalienable Rights of
Man." According to press reports, between 5,000 and 10,000
people showed up, mostly Black. The purpose of the march
was not to celebrate the birthday of King, as in most Black
communities around the country; the major theme on which the
Institute was able to win some Black following was a call for
ending hunger in Africa. This theme was combined with a call
for support of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI),
better known as Star Wars.
Black clergy in particular are targeted by LaRouche.
According to research done by the Center for Democratic
Renewal (formerly the National Anti-Klan Network), Black
ministers Rev. Lamar Keels from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Rev.
Wade Watts from McAlester, Oklahoma, and Rev. James
Cokley of New York City were all reportedly present at the
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
demonstration. In addition, Montgomery. Alabama NAACP
president Albert Sankey was quoted by New Solidarity. a
LaRouche newspaper. as saying "I can't think of a better way
to celebrate Dr. King's birthday... than to mobilize with the
march on Washington to feed Africa with American tech-
nology." New Solidarity also reported that a busload came
from the blackbelt town of Tuskegee, Alabama.
New Solidarity is filled with pictures of Blacks demonstra-
ting in support of Star Wars, carrying posters with the hizarrc
theme, "I Have a Dream, Feed Africa, and Build the Beam,"
marching under the banner of the Schiller Institute. According
to LaRouche, the Schiller Institute has Black supporters and
members in Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles, Birming-
ham, and Ohio. Veteran civil rights activists are shown wav-
ing U.S. flags and speaking on platforms with white Schiller
Institute members. Amelia Robinson of Birmingham, who is
touted as having marched with Dr. King. is featured pro-
minently speaking in support of Star Wars.
It is folly to rely solely on LaRouche accounts, however, as
misrepresentation and blatant lies are a common tactic. For
example, they falsely claimed that Los Angeles Mayor Tom
Bradley proclaimed November 12th "Schiller Day." In another
flight of fancy, representatives from the Schiller Institute told
international audiences that "We've basically taken over the
civil rights movement in the United States."
In addition to attempting to woo Blacks to the Schiller In-
stitute by coating his rightwing wolf in civil rights clothing,
LaRouche has also fielded a number of Black political
candidates. In Michigan, he hacked Henry Wilson, a retired
auto worker, for governor. Wilson received only about six
percent of the vote. In Baltimore, Hazel Judd ran for Congress
in the 7th Congressional District with LaRouche hacking. She
received only about two percent of the vote. And there have
been other Blacks who were convinced to run for office at every
level of government. Many appear to be neither affiliated with
the Schiller Institute nor hard core LaRouche followers. A
number of them were given free trips around the U.S. and
abroad and sold the line that they were working towards Black
empowerment by running for office.
LaRouche is a hardline racist and no friend of the Black
community. In the past year in a number of his publications,
including New Solidarity, he has hysterically attacked Rev.
Jesse Jackson, Randall Robinson of TransAfrica, and other
Black leaders. These attacks have ranged from personal slurs
to racist epithets to outlandish fabrications. For example, he
has accused Jackson of being under the control of the Israeli
security agency Mossad and the Anti-Defamation League.
Robinson and others involved in anti-apartheid work were
accused of not being radical enough and at the same time of
being agents of communists, terrorists, and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF).
Other Blacks have also been attacked. In the April 26, 1985
edition of New Solidarity, a front page article was boldly
headlined "Mayor Andy Young Backs Genocide Against
Blacks." Rep. Walter Fauntroy (Dem.-D.C.) has been called
an agent of the IMF and an advocate of policies that "will
murder 300 million Africans." Carrying their anti-Black cam-
paign further, LaRouche members have disrupted speeches by
former Georgia State Senator Julian Bond and Jean Young,
wife of Andy Young.
5. November loth is the anniversary of the hirth of German classical poet
Friedrich Schiller.
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Yet, it is LaRouche who has allied with the apartheid
rulers. He has boasted publicly and in his paper that he
regularly sells information to the South African government.
According to the New York Times of October 7, 1979,
LaRouche was paid to produce private reports on the U.S. an-
ti-apartheid movement for South Africa's Bureau of State
Security.
On the domestic side, the Ku Klux Klan has figured pro-
minently in LaRouche activities. Klan members have served
as LaRouche personal bodyguards and traveled with him as
security. The Klan has reciprocated by having high praise for
LaRouche and his activities. He has also actively defended
Klansmen, organizing defense work for Pennsylvania Klan
leader and American Nazi Party activist Roy Frankhouser, who
later became a part of LaRouche's inner circle. Frankhouser
was indicted, along with other LaRouche henchmen, on
charges of conspiracy and fraud in a credit card ripoff scheme.
LaRouche is a rabid anti-Semite and has worked with a
number of neo-fascists in the U.S., including the late arms
merchant and mercenary trainer Mitch Werbell and segrega-
tionist Col. Tom McCrary. LaRouche idolized former Nazis
such as past South African state president and apartheid
architect Nico Diederichs.
Conclusion
The political sophistication of the Black community will
eventually beat back any organizing efforts by the far Right.
The racist and pro-fascist rantings of the Moonies, LaRouche,
and other rightwingers are already being exposed and de-
nounced by anti-racist and progressive voices in the Black
community.
It is important, however, to recognize the political and ideo-
logical damage that can be done by these groups. Through the
use of various and ever-changing fronts, political disruption
can occur and valuable resources and time can be wasted
attempting to defeat this enemy. Given the apparent decision
by some sectors of the far Right to win some degree of Black
support, those who defend democratic rights and racial justice
must be ever vigilant.
Black Church Support for Apartheid
The progressive religious community in general, and
Black churches in particular, have always opposed a-
partheid in South Africa, especially through the divestment
effort. In the United States, churches have divested hun-
dreds of millions of dollars in funds from corporations that
do business in South Africa.
Recently, however, several Black church figures in the
U.S. and in South Africa have helped blunt the general
thrust of this church work, aimed at isolating the South
African regime and its corporate supporters, by giving tacit
or direct support to the views of the White House and the
South African apartheid regime. While these attempts to
posit and defend a modest approach to the elimination of
apartheid are limited to only a few, they are worth noting for
their potential appeal to their unwary followers.
In the U.S., Episcopal Bishop John T. Walker has come
out against divestment as a tactic to bring pressure on
corporations to stop doing business with apartheid.
Walker is one of the highest ranking Black clergy in the
country and until this year supported divestment. Accord-
ing to Walker, two recent trips to South Africa altered his
view of the role U.S. business plays in the South African
political scene.
He now believes that these corporations can play a
positive and constructive role under apartheid-to develop
more Black businesses and to train more Black supervi-
sors and managers. Walker's program, in essence, is an
updated version of the almost universally disparaged Sul-
livan Principles. The Sullivan Principles are a set of
voluntary guidelines to guarantee equity towards Black
workers on the part of U.S. corporations, but have been
used as a cover by American businesses to justify their
continuing investment in apartheid.
In South Africa itself, the apartheid regime has found a
friend in Bishop Isaac Mokoena. An enthusiastic supporter
of Reagan's constructive engagement policy, Mokoena is
noted for his extreme conservatism and his attacks on
Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu.
He recently formed the United Christian Conciliation
Party. The UCCP claims it is a non-racial political party that
promotes Christian values, multi-racial democracy, and
free enterprise. There have been reports that the UCCP has
received money from the Bureau for Information, the chief
propaganda arm of the apartheid government. When Presi-
dent P.W. Botha came to power, Mokoena was one of the
first (and few) Blacks to meet with him.
Mokoena's attacks against genuinely recognized Black
leaders have been childish and vicious. When asked at the
press conference announcing the UCCP his position on the
release of African National Congress leader Nelson Man-
dela, he replied that "it appears primarily up to Ms. Winnie
Mandela to seek her husband's release." He appeared on
South African television on the night that Tutu won the
Nobel Peace Prize and criticized Tutu for his support of dis-
investment.
While attacking legitimate leaders, Mokoena has been
making trips abroad arguing for greater foreign investment
in South Africa. He showed up at the Conservative Party
conference in England to raise funds and promote the
UCCP. He has found it impossible to explain, however,
how the UCCP will run Black candidates in a system that
explicitly denies Blacks the right to run or vote. On a Jan-
uary 1986 trip to the U.S., Bishop Mokoena visited the
National Religious Broadcasters conference (see article in
this issue), where he appeared at a press conference under
their auspices. Mokoena, like Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, is a
favorite with U.S. rightwingers who, embarrassed by the
foibles and hypocrisy of Reagan's South Africa policy, are
constantly seeking Black spokesmen to reflect their poli-
tics.
Tolerance of Bishop Mokoena's conciliatory attitude to
apartheid is rapidly waning. The New York Times reported
on November 25, 1986 that Mokoena was physically
attacked upon his return to South Africa from a conference
abroad. According to the Times, four men seized and kicked
him, and threw him in a mining dump. ?
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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The New York Times on the Bulgarian Connection:
"Objective" News as Systematic Propaganda
Part Ill
By Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead*
In November 1986 the New York Times returned once again
to the "Bulgarian Connection." This alleged conspiracy organ-
ized by Bulgaria (and a ,fortiori the Soviets) to assassinate
Pope John Paul Il may well become a classic example of the
bias and propaganda service of the western media. In this
effort the Times distinguished itself by placing its editorial and
news columns at the disposal of Claire Sterling, Michael
Ledeen, and other rightwing propagandists. For five years the
Times pushed the Bulgarian Connection as true, giving full
attention to every pro-Plot claim, ignoring dissenting views
and inconvenient facts, and refusing to investigate leads in-
compatible with the Sterling model of Bulgarian and Soviet
guilt.' When the Bulgarian trial defense finally took the stand
in Italy and presented its case, from March 4-8, 1986, the
Times blacked out the story entirely. And when the case con-
cluded with the acquittal of the Bulgarian defendants on March
29, 1986, the Times quickly regrouped to the line of defense
left open by the acquittal for "lack of evidence"-the case
couldn't be proved, but suspicions justly remain that the East
was guilty.
As is customary, the Court followed its verdict with a
"Statement of Motivation," a document intended to explain and
justify its decision. Released in November 1986, the State-
ment was striking for its length, lack of new insights, and
failure to address seriously many of the most significant as-
pects of the case. The Statement, written by the junior judge in
the case, was virtually ignored by the mass media in Italy and
elsewhere in Europe. In the United States, however, the
document served as the occasion to breathe new life into the
Bulgarian Connection. It was the subject of a Sterlingesque
news article and an Op-Ed column by Sterling herself in the
Times (see sidebar), and an editorial along the same lines in
the Wall Street Journal.
which "objective journalism" serves a propaganda function.
This is by the selective use of documents, elevating those
consistent with the propaganda line to prominence, no matter
how empty of substance they may he, and playing down or
entirely ignoring those incompatible with the preferred view.
In the case of the assassination attempt against the Pope,
once the Times had opted editorially for the Bulgarian Connec-
tion, its news department simply disregarded a series of major
documents that would have raised doubts about the favored
line. As one important instance, on July 12, 1984 the Italian
Parliament issued its long awaited Report of the Parliamentarv
Commission on the Masonic Locli e P-2. The document de-
scribed in great detail the penetration of this massive neo-
fascist enterprise into the military establishment, secret
services, and judiciary, among others. This Report was
newsworthy in its own right, but it also had a hearing on the
Bulgarian Connection case, as it addressed features of Italian
institutions that were directly involved in making and pro-
secuting the case against the Bulgarians. The New York Times
never even mentioned the publication of this Report.
As a second major illustration, one year later, in July 1985,
a major Italian court decision was released, which described
repeated corrupt behavior by officials of the Italian secret
service agency SISMI, including the forgery and planting of
documents. These officials were also charger; v ith in-
volvement in a coverup of the agents carrying out the 198() Bo-
logna railway station massacre. a terrorist connection that
would attract frenetic Times coverage when believed to be the
work of suitable villains. Furthermore. SISMI officials had
visited Agca in prison and were intimately involved in the
Bulgarian Connection case. In fact, on May 19, 1981-six
days after the assassination attempt-SISMI issued a forged
document implicating the Soviet Union in the shooting of the
Pope. This forgery was never mentioned in the Times, and the
Selective use of documents July 1985 court decision was barely noted in a hack page at--
The attention given by the Times to the recent Statement of title.
Motivation illustrates one of the most important means by It is evident that these blackouts are of materials that sug-
gest a corrupt Italian process and the possibility that Agca was
1. The first item in this series, dealing with the Times's coverage of the persuaded and coached to pin the plot on the East. A propa-
Salvadoran and Nicaraguan elections, appeared in CovertAction Information ganda agency pushing the Bulgarian Connection as true will
Bulletin, Number 21 (Spring I984). naturally avoid such documents.
2. This is spelled out in detail in Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, In contrast, each official document that advanced the case,
The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square or could be so construed, was given strenuous Coverage.
Publications, 1986), Chapter 7.
Most notable here was Prosecutor Albano's Report, which
*Edward S. Herman teaches a course in The Political Economy of the Mass
Media at the University of Pennsylvania: Frank Brodhead is a historian and
journalist.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
3. Criminal Court of Rome, Judgment in the Matter of l' rauecwt, Pa_ ien_u.
et al., July 29, 1985, signed by Francesco Amato. President of the Coml.
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was featured on the front page of the New York Times under
Claire Sterling's byline on June 10, 1984. Sterling was
obviously a protagonist in the case,4 and her summary of the
Albano Report was predictably misleading. The most im-
portant contribution of the Albano Report was to make public
the fact that Agca had withdrawn some of his most sensational
"evidence," including his claim to have visited Antonov's
apartment and met his wife and daughter. This part of the
Report was blacked out by Sterling and the Times..
As evidence and proposed scenarios accumulated suggest-
ing that Agca had been coached, the Times played dumb. The
Italian press was full of claims in 1983 that Agca had been
threatened with release into the general prison population if he
did not talk, and even Martella acknowledged in his Report that
he had suggested the possibility of a commuted sentence if
Agca "cooperated." The Times refused to explore such claims
and rejected an Op-Ed offering by Diana Johnstone, European
correspondent of In These Times, that discussed these points.
In November 1984, Orsan Oymen, the West German corre-
spondent for the Turkish paper Milliyet, published a pair of
lengthy and well-documented articles entitled "Behind the
Scenes of the `Agca Investigation,"' which described various
Vatican efforts to propagandize the Bulgarian Connection and
to get Agca to implicate the Bulgarians and Soviets. These
articles and lines of investigation were ignored by the Times.
Perhaps the most blatant case of willful ignorance con-
cerned the Italian fixer and former member of SISMI, Fran-
cesco Pazienza. Wanted for several crimes, Pazienza had fled
Italy and in 1985 resided in exile in New York City. Eventually
he was seized and held there by the Immigration and
Naturalization Service. Pazienza had been a partner of Michael
Ledeen in the "Billygate" affair in Italy, and retained this con-
nection after Ledeen became General Haig's righthand man in
Italy in the early days of the Reagan presidency. Pazienza had
also been a close associate of SISMI head (and P-2 member)
Giuseppi Santovito. From 1983 onward it was alleged in the
Italian press that Pazienza had been involved in getting Agca to
talk, and he himself eventually made detailed accusations of
coaching by elements of SISMI. Although Pazienza was
readily available for interviews in a New York City jail, the
Times ignored him. Our hypothesis is that they did this
because if they had talked to him it would have been difficult to
avoid discussing his connections with Ledeen (an active pro-
tagonist during the Bulgarian Connection affair) and with Ster-
ling. The results would not have reflected well on the quality of
Times sourceing. Pazienza's story would also have high-
lighted the Times's suppression of facts concerning the
corruption of SISMI, and raised questions about coaching.
This would have disturbed the propaganda line.
Tagliabue on the Bulgarian Connection: A Case Study
in Bias
To show in another way the propagandistic quality of the
Times's coverage of the Bulgarian Connection, we will ex-
amine in detail the article by John Tagliabue, "Verdict on Papal
Plot, but No Answer," published on March 31, 1986. This
piece, which provides a summing up of the case by a veteran
Times reporter assigned to the Rome trial, is a potential classic
Claire Sterling: The Master Builder
While the Times has been the major vehicle for the pro-
pagation of the Bulgarian Connection in the United States,
the role of chief propagandist has been filled by Claire Ster-
ling.
To be sure, much of her output has found other outlets,
including her initial salvo claiming a Bulgarian Connection,
published by the Reader's Digest in their September 1982
issue. But it was through the New York Times that Sterling
made her greatest impact. In its news columns and
editorials, the Times followed her outlines of the Plot
faithfully. It published her extensive and highly misleading
interpretation of the Albano Report on the front page in June
1984. And it kicked off its coverage of the 1985 trial with an
article co-authored by Sterling and foreign correspondent
John Tagliabue.
The significance of the Times-Sterling axis is twofold.
First, by allowing Sterling the role of supposedly objective
news analyst and news reporter-despite her clearly
tendentious role in the development of the Bulgarian Con-
nection case, and her notorious looseness with essential
facts concerning "international terrorism"'--the Times
1. For a discussion, see Herman and Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the
Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1986),
pp. 125-46. See also CAIB, Number 18 (Winter 1983), pp. 12-13; Number
19 (Spring-Summer 1983), pp. 13-21; Number 21 (Spring 1984), p. 20;
Number 23 (Spring 1985), pp. 3-38; and Number 25 (Winter 1986), p. 30.
helped to legitimize views that might otherwise be dis-
missed as those of a lunatic fringe. Secondly, the Times's
agenda-setting function for the U.S. media ensured that
Sterling's views would be given extremely wide distribu-
tion, becoming the "common sense" of the news wires and
informed opinion.
The most recent developments in the case of the
Bulgarian Connection display the enduring quality of the
Times-Sterling axis, and the imperviousness of the U.S.
media to mere fact. On November I I the Italian court
released its "Statement of Motivation," a I ,200-page
document intended to explain its earlier decision that found
all Bulgarian defendants in the case not guilty on the basis
of insufficient evidence. The statement received little notice
in Italy, where the case has become a national embarrass-
ment. In the United States, however, it served in a modest
way in the process of rehabilitating the Connection as part
of the Cold War arsenal of usable legends. This Phoenix-
like re-emergence of the Connection was predicted in our
Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection, and not un-
naturally the first steps in its revival bear the imprint of
Sterling operating through the Times.
The Times's (unsigned) news article of November 12
focused on the Statement's reiteration of well-worn Ster-
lingisms, and these were repeated in an Op-Ed by Sterling
("Behind Agca's Gun") on November 21. The core of these
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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of dishonest reporting. We will show how Tagliabue in-
corporates all of the elements of the Sterling model of the
Bulgarian Connection, selects facts in accordance with the
requirements of the line, and bypasses conflicting facts and
interpretations.5 We will comment point by point, referring to
the paragraph number of the Tagliabue piece presented in a
separate illustration.
The framing of the issue. In paragraphs 1-4 Tagliabue
frames the issue in terms of the failure of the Rome court to
exonerate completely the Bulgarian defendants and the con-
sequent possibility or likelihood that they may still be guilty.
"Few people were surprised by the verdict," states Tagliabue.
But the failure to find the Bulgarians guilty should have been
quite surprising, given the Iong assurances by Sterling and
associates that the Bulgarians were clearly behind the plot,
and that, as one of her comrades, Paul Henze, stated, the
"evidence" has "steadily accumulated to the point where little
real doubt is now possible." c'
An alternative frame would have been as follows: After a
three year investigation and lengthy trial, backed by the
resources of the Italian state, and despite the powerful inter-
5. Immediately after the shootinc of the pope in 1981. Tagliahue, then a
Times correspondent in West Germans, wrote sonic enlightening articles on
Agca's Turkish fascist connections. All of this material was ignored by
Tagliahue after he became the Time.s's correspondent at the Rome trial in 1985.
his first story on the trial. signilicantly, was co-authored with Claire Sterling.
and his coserage of the trial remained faithful to her model.
6. Paul hence. Pic Plot to Kill th(' Pope New York: Charles Scribner's.
1985). p. 196.
ests in Italy and the West with a stake in finding the Bulgarians
guilty, the prosecution still failed to persuade an Italian jury of
Bulgarian guilt. These vested interests and their propaganda
vehicles were given a bone to chew on, however, in the form of
a decision to dismiss the charge for "lack of' cvidence," rather
than complete exoneration. This then allowed the propaganda
agencies to frame the case in the Tagliabue manner.
Protec?tiun of the Italian judicial proccss. Throughout the
history of the case the Times blacked out evidence of the com-
promised quality of the Italian institutions involved in pursu-
ing the Connection. Investigating Judge Martella was always
treated as a model of' probity, and conflicting facts were
ignored.7 Note how in paragraph 14 Tagliahue wastes space on
a gratuitous and irrelevant accolade to Martella (which is also
given a sub-heading for emphasis). His statement that "Fees
people stood up to assail the magistrate'' is absurd, as the trial
witnesses were asked to give concrete evidence on the facts of
the case: they were not in a position to assail the pretrial in-
vestigating magistrate and any such attempts would have been
impermissible in the courtroom. Only the Bulgarian defense
was well qualified and able to assail Martella, and they did so,
in effective statements that were unreported in the Timer. In
paragraph I I Tagliabue points out that although the trial was
supposed merely to verify the findings of' the preliminary in-
vestigation, in fact the prosecution did a great deal of new in-
7. For example. Martella's lack of control over Agea's s isitors and rraslmg
materials badly compromised the case, as did the distressing number of leaks
that came out of' his supposedly secret investigation See Merman and
Brodhead, op. (it_ it. 2. pp. 118-20.
articles stressed Agca's knowledge of facts about the
Bulgarian co-defendants: suspicions raised by the Bulgar-
ians' alibis: Agca's knowledge of the now famous truck,
which was loaded at the Bulgarian Embassy on the very day
of the assassination attempt, and which was supposedly to
be used to help the assassins make their getaway: and,
most importantly, the Sterlingesque claim that Agca's out-
bursts on the witness stand were "signals" to his Bulgarian
co-conspirators. This latter point was reiterated in a Wall
Street Journal editorial a week later (November 18, 1986),
which claimed that "Agca knew that if he didn't undermine
the case against the communists, his worst sentence might
well he the one another apparent enemy of the Bulgarian
state, Georgi Markov, received in London at the end of a
poisoned umbrella."
The Statement of Motivation was obviously intended to
support the jury's earlier verdict. The document contained
almost nothing new, and was largely a rehash of the pro-
secution case outlined in the Martella Report. Neverthe-
less, Sterling, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times
characteristically refrained from noting that the Statement's
few novelties tended to undermine the Bulgarian Connec-
tion. Thus the Statement concluded that there was not a
second gunman at St. Peter's Square on the day of the
assassination attempt, as the Martella Report had main-
tained. Nor was there evidence of any "diversionary" activ-
ity by a co-conspirator in the Square, as Martella. Sterling,
and Henze had suggested. Moreover, according to the
Statement, the only evidence of any conspiracy at all argues
for an exclusively Turkish operation, consisting of the
network of Gray Wolves that assisted Agca in his escape
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
from prison and sheltered him during his wanderings in
Western Europe. Sterling and company would have us
believe that this network was "rented" by the Bulgarians to
assassinate the Pope. And while the Sterlingites admit that
their case for this rests exclusively on Agca's testintonv
they maintain that this testimony has been corroborated in
many particulars, and the uncorroborated part is thus
believable. But the Statement of Motivation maintains that
"Agca's statements have never received corroboration, and
have never led to any concrete results." This observation
was not reported by Sterling, the Times. or the Wall Street
Journal.
The case of the Bulgarian Connection has followed a nat-
ural life cycle common to similar episodes of inventive dis-
information. An initial media swallowing of extremely im-
plausible charges of Bulgarian (and Soviet) perfidy easily
withstood a failure to substantiate them and the gradual
accumulation of contrary evidence. While this particular
example of Free World propaganda distinguished itself by
the public ravings of Agca at his trial, and by an earlier peri-
od (pre-Connection) in which a very different story was
developed by the media, it is not essentially different from
similar disinformation ventures (the Libyan "hit squad,"
"Yellow Rain," the KAL-007 shootdown, the Nicaraguan
MIGs of 1984, etc.) in which initial claims of L?nenry guilt
were printed without qualification on the front pages, and
the later disintegration of the case was confined to the in-
side pages or omitted altogether from the ''newspaper of
record." Like these other ventures, the Bulgarian Connec-
tion is available for continuing service if the Free World
struggle against the Enemy requires it. ?
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vestigative work. This suggests that the trial court found
Martella's investigation sadly lacking, but Tagliabue never
addresses the point.
Agca's desertion of the case. An important part of the
apologetic framework is the claim that Agca, who had pre-
sented an allegedly coherent version of a Connection up to the
trial, suddenly did an about face and refused to testify
altogether (paragraphs 6-7). Furthermore, his behavior sup-
posedly became totally erratic, apparently intended to torpedo
the case (paragraph 10). The prosecutor couldn't overcome this
difficulty.
In reality, Agca's claims emerged very slowly and con-
tradictorily, with dozens of retractions that, taken together, are
best explained by coaching, outside information, and guesses
by Agca as to what Martella and the press would like to hear."
It took Agca 17 months from the time of his imprisonment to
name a Bulgarian-seven months from the time when he
agreed to cooperate with the authorities. His descriptions of
the Bulgarians changed on an almost daily basis. His core
claims of links to Bulgarians were never substantiated by a
single independent witness, and posited behavior by the
Bulgarians that violated common sense and every principle of
spycraft.
The claim that Agca became more erratic during the trial is
not based on evidence. Agca's persistently erratic behavior
was obscured by the secrecy of his earlier testimony, but it is
clear from the Martella Report that he was already claiming to
be Jesus and displaying other symptoms of irrationality. Fur-
thermore, Tagliabue's statement that Agca refused to coop-
erate during the trial is false-Agca periodically withdrew
from the proceedings when his testimony became too in-
coherent, but he always returned to the stand, and he answered
a vast number of questions. One hypothesis that 'i'agliabue
never entertains is this: If Agca's claims were based on
coaching and/or imagination, in an open court he would be vul-
nerable and quickly pushed to the wall. No longer protected by
0
0
O
0
0
Verdict on Papal Plot, but No Answer
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
srwiu w n. rw. rst riww
ROME, March JO - An Italian
court's decision on Saturday to acquit
three Bulgarians 'for lack of prod'
leaves unresolved the question of
whether they tmspired to assassinate
Pope Jodi Paul 11.
Few people were sur-
prised by the verdict Si
the public prosecutor, in
Aaallysb an unusual plea lest
month, admitted his lads
of conclusive evidence for
a "Bulgarian connection" to the 1981
shack on the Pope and asked for the
Bulgarians' acquittal.
The decision by the prosecutor, Anto-
nio Marini, was in part a declaration of
despair, for the formula "for lack of
proof" implies that evidence exists
supporting both the guilt and the trno-
m rce of the defendants, and that the
court is powerless to reach a conclusive
decision.
Under Italian law, criminal cases
can end with any of three vereicts A
defendant can be declared guilty, not
guilty, or, if the evidence is ambiguous,
acquitted for lack of proof.
Over 10 months and through 98 les-
sons that produced more than 11.000
pages of testimony, the court of two
judges and three lay jurors silted evi-
dence from a broad range of sources,
but its mainstream of incrimi sting
charges against the Bulgarian defend-.
ants flowed fro?n the capricious Meh-'I
met All Agca, the Pope's convicted as-
sailant and the state's key witness
In the 23-month investigation that led
to the trial, Mr. Agca had given investn-
gators - with many backtracks, con-
tradictions and corrections - a broad
picture of events leading up to the as
sassination attempt, including a Bul-
garian role in enlisting him and then
assisting him during his stay In Italy up
to the day of the shooting.
Then on the trial's first day last May
27, Mr. Ages did an about-face. The
Turkish gunman refused to discuss the
details of his charges of a Bulgarian
connection, merely stating repeatedly.
"I confirm everything."
More unsettling, his behavior, never
predictable, became totally erratic.
Day after day, to the distress of the
pteecutibm, Mr. Aga declared in
curt that he was Jesus. He kept fling-
ing his apocalyptic pronouncements,
with as that his shooting of the Pope it
him the mysteries of Fatima, or that
the world was about to end.
Prosecutor Marini, faced with the
collapse of his case through behavior
that transformed the principal witness
into one that most American courts
would probably have rejected out of
hand, declared that none of Mr. Ages's
testimony could be taken at its face
value without outside corroboration.
For the proncutioo, that was the
beginning of the end.
son-ad Purpoodw am
"This trial should have ended tart
May 27," Mr. Agri told the court last
August, suggesting that his shift In
behavior ma have been designed to
torpedo the A of the court, though
for what reason he did not say.
The court mode valiant efforts to sr-
mount the obstacle. Though Italian
trials are essentially verifications of
cases put together in pretrial investiga-
tions by magistrates, Mr. Marini trav-
eled to a half dozen European countries
to hear new, witnesses. His efforts were
aided by arrests of key associates of
Mr. Alice, including Abdullah Calif. an
obscure right-wing terrorist and drug
trafficker, and Yalcin Orbey, another
suspected terrorist who had known Mr.
Agca before the shooting.
There were partial confirmations of
Mr Agca'" complex tale. Mr. Orbey
said the Bulgarians had indeed wanted
to use Mr Agra to shoot the Pope, but
did not trust him Mr Catli hinted at
obscure secret service contacts with l
West German --.ritelligence. and of pay-II
ments for unspecified purposes to
Turks involved in the investigations.
The court pushed its efforts through
last summer. but Mr. Marini and the
.;'the Court were 'ever
.a!e to .i?-. .i bOi..tingevi-
dence for assertions Mr. Ages had de,
scribed in such detail. And without his
assistance, the search was to prove fu-
tile.
Magistrate Escaped Criticism
Few people stood up to assail the
magistrate who had assembled the
case against the Bulgarians. The
magistrate, Ilario Martens, had
gained a reputation for honesty and
doggedness, but he had also promoted
Mr. Ages to the key player in the
drama.
But the prosecution's failure before
the court was perhaps the most punish,
ing commentary on the case he had
prepared. For with the discrediting of
Mr. Ages'" testimony, the edifice of the
prosecution's arguments proved too
unstable to support.
The court's decision Saturday this
puts an end to the legal pursuit of the
Bulgarians, since the prosecution has
would contest the decision, seeking
acgmttaL
But the verdict is likely to turn the
1 Bulgarian connection into one of many
judicial battles that remain heatedly
contested The Italian court's ambigc-
ins decision gives grounds for some
critics to continue to maintain that the
Bulgarians, probably at the instigation
of the Soviet Union, arranged the shoot-
iog to eliminate the Pol
sh-bores Pope,
presumably In an effort to crack reli-
gious-inspired resistance to Commu.
mat rule in Poland.
But the acquittal also supports others
who contend that Sergel L Amours and
two other former Bulgarian officials
acquitted here ware the victims, at
tut of a malfunctioning of Italian jus-
tice, at worst of a Western intelligence
plot to pin the shooting of the Pope no
Soviet bloc governments.
Setting of East-West Tunisia
Whether or not the charges against
the Bulgarians were rue, their emer-
gence at the nadir of Soviet-American
relations in the early 1I80's gained.
them additional credence among many
in the West. There were frequent
charges of Bulgarian Complicity in
Soviet bloc efforts to subvert govern-
ments in the eastern Mediterranean,
like Turkey, by smuggling arms often
paid for by the drug trade.
Indeed, Mr Agca and many of his
right-wing associates were the prod-
ucts of grave political tensions in their
native Turkey that pitted violent leftist
terrorists against their counterparts on
the right. Both sides were purportedly
supported by the Bulgarians, who
sought to promote instability, regward-
less of its ideological source, in a nation
allied '+"h the United States.
Similarly, though with lee viru-
'ence, tensions between the left and
right in Italy ran high at the time, when
Italy's large Communist Party was
near the top of its postwar influence.
Italian magistrates, acting at the in-
stigation of informers, investigated
charges that Bulgarian agents had
sought to kill Lech Walesa, the founder
of the Solidarity labor movement in Po?
land, when he visited Italy.
Underlying all this was the fact that
the wounding of the Pope came at a
time of swelling resistance to Commu-
nism in Poland, where the election of a
Polish Pope was viewed, not ]east by
the Soviet Union, as a signal of spiritual
support for the growing discontent.
How He Knew, Who He Knew
The key factual question is probably
how Mr. Aga knew what he knew and
when he knew it. On the answer to the
question hangs the Credibility of his
charges. the course of his nearly two
years of crossgustmeiog, the Turkish
gunman revealed many details about
the Bulgarians - descriptions of their
apartments, details of their penotal
habits, phone numbers and nicknames.
The simplest explanation Is that Mr.
Ages got such information in his jail
cell from assiduous attention to televi-
sion and close study of newspapers,
magazines and publications of all sorts
- a study that prompted Judge
Severrno Santiapichi to wonder aloud in
desperation who was paying for all the
subscriptions
But even attorneys for the Bulger.
tans acknowledge that many of the de-
tails did not appear in Italian pubBcs-
tims, if at all, until after Mr. Ages
mentioned them to his Interrogators.
Another view is that Mr. Ages and
Ma associates drew their information
about the Bulgarians from other can-
taus, in the business of son guna
or drags from the eastern edtterra-
neen to the Was.
Spent 2 Months in Bulgaria
Mr. Ages is known to have spent
nearly two months in Bulgaria in the
summer of 1980, and information
gleaned from such stays could have
formed the basis of his later assertions
The more sinister view, espoused by
critics of the use on the political lei,
including Soviet bloc governments, is
that Mr. Ages was fed the information
by Western intelligence services Intent
on building a case against the Soviet
bloc.
Only one thing seems certain after
all the debate - that even If someday
Mr. Ages speaks the truth, he has so
ohm need his knowledge of the (acts as
a bargaining chip with Italians, But-
gasiap, lurks and anyone he per-
ccvea as able to help him that few are
likely to little" him.
"The Bulgaria w continue to heap de-
ntmclations at him." Mr. Ages's court-
appointed defense attorney. Pietro
l'Ovidio, said at the trial's conclusion.
In fact: they should be thankful t
him."
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Martella, Agca failed to produce his "evidence"--and fre-
quently withdrew in confusion-because he had nothing real to
offer the Court.
Tagliabue also never asks this further question: Even if
Agca had clammed up (which was not true), given the ex-
tensive Martella investigation and report, why would the Court
not be able to follow the already established leads to a suc-
cessful outcome'? Why was not a single witness produced to
confirm Agca's allegations of numerous meetings and trips
with Bulgarians in Rome'? Why was the car allegedly rented by
the Bulgarians never found'? Where is the money supposedly
given to Agca? Tagliabue plays dumb.
"Partial confirmation" of Agca's tale. In paragraph 12
Tagliabue describes some alleged partial confirmations of
Agca's claims. The first is that "Mr. Ozbey said the
Bulgarians had indeed wanted to use Mr. Agca to shoot the
Pope, but did not trust him." But this is not a partial confirma-
tion if the net result was that the Bulgarians failed to hire Agca.
Furthermore, another reporter present when Ozbey testified in
Rome claims that Whey did not tell the Court that the
Bulgarians "wanted to use" Agca. According to Wolfgang
Achtner of ABC-TV News in Rome, the only thing Ozbey said
was that the Bulgarians "listened with interest, but behaved
with indifference" (the translation by the Turkish interpreter in
court) or "listened with interest but didn't take it seriously"
(Achtner's own translation). In short, it would appear that
Tagliabue has doctored the evidence.
The other "partial confirmation" is that "Catli hinted at
obscure secret service contacts with West German intelli-
gence, and of payments for unspecified purposes to Turks
involved in the investigations." This vague statement does not
even mention the plot against the Pope and is partial confirma-
tion of nothing. The most important Catli evidence was his
description of the attempt by the West German police to bribe
Ozbey and Agca's supposed co-conspirator Oral Celik to
come to West Germany and confirm Agca's claims. As this
supports the coaching hypothesis. Tagliabue blacks it out.
The only other testimony by Catli mentioning the secret
services involved Gray Wolves leader Ali Batman, who told
Catli he had heard from the German secret police that at a meet-
ing in Romania the Warsaw Pact powers had decided to kill the
Pope. This was apparently a leak of the forged SISMI
document of May 19, 1981, which had made this claim. Thus
the hearsay recounting of the substance of a forgery is
Tagliabue's "partial confirmation" of Agca's claims of a Plot!
We should also note that while he cites these "partial con-
firmations," nowhere does Tagliabue list the contentions of
Agca that remained unconfirmed.
The Soviet-Bulgarian motive. Two of Tagliabue's 32
paragraphs (17 and 23) were devoted to expounding the Soviet
motive in allegedly sponsoring Agca's assassination attempt:
"to crack religiously inspired resistance to Communist rule in
Poland." Tagliabue here follows a longstanding Times tradi-
tion of absolutely refusing to allow a counterargument to be
voiced on this issue. Even if they covered their tracks well, a
Soviet-inspired murder of the Pope would have been blamed on
the Soviets, solidified Polish hostility, and had enormously
damaging effects on Soviet relations with Western Europe.
Thus it would have been risky without any offsetting bene-
fits."
9. For a further discussion of the alleged Soviet motive, see ibid., pp.
14-15.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
John Tagliabue, New York Times disinformationist.
Who gained and who lost from the Plot? Were there any
possible western motives that might hear on the case?
Tagliabue follows the Sterling line in failing to raise these
questions. But once Agca was imprisoned in Italy, cold
warriors of the West had much to gain and little to lose by ma-
,ca to pin the assassination attempt on the Fast.
nipulating AL,
Tagliabue mentions (in paragraph 19) that the charges of a
Bulgarian Connection surfaced "at the nadir" of U.S.-Soviet
relations. While he notes how this added to the credibility of
the Plot in the West, he never hints at the possibility that its
serviceabiity to the new Cold War might explain Agca's
belated confession.
Agca's stay in Bulgaria. This has always been critical in the
Sterling-Times scenarios. What is always unmentioned is that
bringing Agca for a long stay in Sofia would have been a viola-
tion of the rule of plausible deniability. Even more so would he
using Bulgarians to help Agca in Rome. Tagliabue does not
mention the question of plausible deniability. He also fails to
note that if Agca had stayed in Sofia for a while, this would al-
low a prima facie case to be made by a western propagandist
that the East was behind the shooting. and could provide the
basic materials for working Agca over for the desired confes-
sion.
Bulgarian im'olvement in Turkey. Tagliabue asserts (para-
graph 20) that the Bulgarians were "purportedly" supporting
both the extreme Left and Right in Turkey "to promote instabil-
ity" in a conflict "that pitted violent leftist terrorists against
their counterparts on the right." This is a Sterling myth, with
Tagliabue hiding behind "purportedly" to allow him to pass oft
myth as purported evidence. The equating of Left and Right in
the Turkish violence of the 1970s is false: the great majority of
violent attacks were launched by the Gray Wolves, under the
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protection of the police and military. Tagliabue also fails to
discuss the fact that the extreme Right actually participated in
the government in 1977 and had extensive links to the army and
intelligence services. The claim of Bulgarian support for both
the Right and Left is not sensible and has never been supported
by evidence. Tagliabue never mentions that the the United
Sterling on Breytenbach and South Africa
In her The Terror Network and in a review of the book
End Papers in the Wall Street Journal of October 10, 1986
("An Anti-Apartheid Afrikaner on the Record"), Claire
Sterling uses and abuses the writings of the South African
poet and fighter against apartheid, Breyton Breytenbach, in
ways that are revealing of her qualities as a journalist and
her fundamental apologetics for the South African apartheid
regime.
Let us start with a few examples of her pervasive dis-
honesty. First, in both The Terror Network and the review,
Sterling puts enormous weight on the fact that, after being
arrested by the South African police in 1975, Breytenbach
pleaded guilty, and told the South African court "that he was
wrong" (Sterling), "that my doings were stupid and that
with which I became involved with good intentions could
lead to harm for other people" (Breytenbach). If Breyten-
bach's statements had been made in a Soviet court after a
lengthy incarceration, Sterling would have laughed; but
South Africa is part of the Free World, and she nowhere
discusses the threats and coercion applied to Breytenbach,
even though the process which produced his courtroom
statement occupies many pages of his prison memoirs, The
True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist. He instructs us in
the Confessions to "hear the insidious voice of the con-
troller" in his prison and court statements. Instead, Ster-
ling takes his staements and confessions from prison and
court at face value, even though he later repudiated them.
Second, Sterling misrepresents Breytenbach's attitudes
toward Henri Curiel. It is a major purpose of her Wall Street
Journal review to suggest once again that Curiel, a long-
time supporter of Third World liberation movements, was
in fact a KGB agent.' Thus Sterling quotes from Breyten-
bach's True Confessions: "Seldom have I met someone so
single-minded and so warped by his single-mindedness."
She does not quote his warm accolade to Curiel on the very
next page: "An inspiring man, a limpid ideologue, and a
man who remained committed to the better instincts of man-
kind. Never did he lose sight of the ongoing eternal struggle
for justice and a slightly larger measure of freedom" (p. 89).
Third, Sterling misrepresents Breytenbach's position
on the need for revolution in South Africa. Sterling says,
"The primal question he asks in this book about South Afri-
ca today: `Can reform still obviate revolution?' goes un-
answered." This is a fabrication. Breytenbach closes his
essay on the question "Can Reform Still Obviate Revolu-
tion," as follows:
The strategy of reform, although modifying some
elements of the data, has ultimately no grip on the future.
I . See other sidebar for a brief account of her loss of Paris slander suits
for such characterizations of Curiel. See also CAME, Number 19
(Spring-Summer 1983), pp. 15-16.
And although there is not yet a majority strategy for
revolution, there is a depth to the despair and the bitter-
ness and the resolution of the people (and an inner libera-
tion too: a cultural awareness, a political tempering) that
expresses itself in a willingness to die for the cause, in
the burning of corpses, in the attempts to create auton-
omous power centers and germinal people's armies. The
mourning, the strikes, the marching, the acrid smoke,
the breakdown of White-imposed civic structures, the
refusal to accept White "peace"-these flash one clear
signal: the point of no return has been reached. The civil
war has already started. [Page 200.]
Sterling's fundamental apologetic for the apartheid
regime is, of course, indirect. Like Ronald Reagan, Ster-
ling is "against apartheid' and allegedly concerned with the
condition of the Black majority. But she does not dwell very
much on the actual conditions of the Blacks and the forms of
repression they suffer, and the eloquence that Breytenbach
brings to this subject-e.g., "we know from the inquest
into the Uitenhage massacre that the police have orders to
shoot to kill. And they do. Women and kids. From the
back"-never finds its way into Sterling's accounts. In-
stead, the burden of her argument is that anybody who tries
to do anything serious for South African Blacks-like
Curiel, Breytenbach, and the African National Con-
gress-are "being used" by sinister forces. (For Sterling,
the story of Breytenbach is "not just of his own human
weakness, but of how cynically he has been used by harder
heads than his.") But if Sterling and her primary source,
French journalist George Suffert, collaborate with South
African intelligence in attacking the ANC and all of its
supporters, are they not "being used" by the apartheid
regime? The point never arises for Sterling.
In her review of End Papers Sterling says that Breyten-
bach was wrong in supporting armed struggle, because "it
opened appalling prospects of biblical massacre for black
South Africans." Sterling, unfortunately, has not chosen to
discuss in any detail the actual degree of oppression and
desperation of the Black majority, nor to denounce it, nor to
propose any constructive solutions. She does not urge a
rigorous arms embargo on South Africa, nor the arming of
the frontline states that have already suffered large mas-
sacres and starvation from South African destabilization.
Sneering at "parlor pinks" like Breytenbach and others who
urge revolution, and once again totally oblivious of her own
role of "parlor (and journalist) counterrevolutionary," Ster-
ling advises the Black South Africans to wait for the "quiet
diplomacy" of the freedom-loving West to alleviate their
condition. In short, Sterling is a de facto ally of the
apartheid regime and supporter of its violence at home and
abroad. ?
A
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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States had more than "purported" links with the Turkish army,
secret services, and the fascist Nationalist Action Party and
that the terrorist events of the late 1970s eventually served
U.S. interests well.
Key question: how Agca knew so much. This is the key
question for Tagliabue (paragraph 24), but there are others that
he might have raised if he had worked outside the Sterling
format. Why did it take Agca so long to name Bulgarians? Was
he subject to any coercion or offered any positive inducements
to make him talk'? Why did his "evidence" accumulate so
slowly and require continuous amendment'? Why did he have to
make major retractions'? Is a judicial process not hopelessly
compromised when a prisoner with it vested interest in lying
says what his interrogators want him to say'? Where he can lie
incessantly and amend claims without penalty'? Where he is in
regular touch with the outside world to get new facts as the
basis for altering obsolete claims'?
"Even the attorneys fir the Bulgarians...... In assessing
How the New York Times Protects Its Disinformation Sources
Just as it ignores documents incompatible with its
editorial lines, so the Times also protects its disinformation
sources by blacking out important information that would
put their work in a negative light. For example, Claire Ster-
ling's numerous attacks on the murdered French activist-
radical Henri Curiel resulted in suits for slander brought
against Sterling and her publisher in Paris. The New York
Times has never even mentioned these slander suits, which
would put Sterling in a bad light not only because she lost
them in whole or in part, but also because of the insight they
provide concerning her sources and methods. Sterling had
gotten much of her information from journalist George Suf-
fert, who was a conduit for French and South African in-
telligence, and who obligingly placed the African National
Congress at the top of his list of "terrorist" organizations.
In her The Terror Network Sterling strongly intimated that
Curiel was a KGB agent, but the French court, on the basis
of documents provided by French intelligence, found no
support for this claim. Thus cornered, Sterling retreated to
the defense that her insinuation of Curiel's KGB connection
was merely a "hypothesis" rather than an assertion of fact.
The case, in short, showed that she was a conduit of dis-
information, quite prepared to slander a murdered radical on
the basis of claims by extreme rightwing disinformation
sources.
Michael Ledeen, a neo-conservative activist and dis-
informationist with ready access to the Times, has also re-
ceived its close protection. His book Grave New World was
reviewed in the Times by William Griffith, a Reader's Di-
gest "roving editor" and MIT political scientist, who found
Ledeen's version of the Bulgarian Connection entirely con-
vincing.' Ledeen was deeply involved with Francesco
Pazienza in the "Billygate" affair and had numerous con-
tacts with Italian intelligence and the Italian extreme Right.
The Italian fascist and head of P-2, Licio Gelli, hiding in
Uruguay, instructed one of his accomplices to convey a
manuscript to Ledeen. Pazienza claimed that Ledeen was a
member of the Italian intelligence agency SISMI, with code
number Z-3. Ledeen received over $100,000 from SISMI
for various services, including the supplying of stale U.S.
intelligence reports that SISMI then passed off as its own.
Ledeen funneled this money into a Bermuda bank account.
1. For an evaluation of Grave Not World and Ledeen on the Bulgarian
Connection, see Herman and Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian
Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Publications. 1986), pp. 162-73.
See also "Disinformationgate," in this issue.
His manipulative activities in Italy were on such a scale that
in the summer of 1984 a newly appointed head of SISMI told
the Italian Parliament that Ledeen was a "meddler" and
persona non grata in Italy. None of these points was ever
disclosed in the Times.
Nor did the Times properly dispose of another com-
promised source on the Bulgarian Connection, the Bulgar-
ian defector Jordan Mantarov. Mantarov's testimony about
the Bulgarian role in the attempt on the Pope was the
centerpiece of a long, front-page article by the Times's own
correspondent, Nicholas Gage. The article, published in
March 1983, described Mantarov as a former commercial
attache at the Bulgarian Embassy in Paris. The Bulgarian
counter-claim, that Mantarov had only been an agricultural
mechanic, was later accepted by the Times's foreign editor
Craig Whitney, but the acknowledgement was given only
two inches of space on an inside page, and the case that
Gage had built on the basis of Mantarov's supposed inside
knowledge was not only allowed to stand uncontested by
the Tinies, but this "newspaper of record" continued to
regard Gage's contribution as a confirmation of Sterling's
basic claim of a Bulgarian Connection.
As a final example, the Times has extended sustained
journalistic immunity to the Soviet defector Arkady Shev-
chenko, whose memoir Breaking With Moscow made the
best-seller list in 1985. Shevchenko, a former Soviet diplo-
mat at the U.N., claimed intimate familiarity with the inner
circles of the Kremlin, and has passed himself off as an
expert on the decision-making process in the Soviet Union.
These claims were quickly debunked in a pair of fine in-
vestigative articles in the Washington Post and the New
Republic, which showed that Shevchenko simply could not
have done a number of things he claimed, and pointed out
that an earlier draft of his memoirs, which omitted any
claims to Kremlin-insider or super-mole status, had been
rejected by publishers as lacking in new revelations and
thus salability. Neither of these exposes-whose claims
were never refuted by Shevchenko or his publishers-
interfered in the least with the Times's (and other media out-
lets') interest in using Shevchenko as an expert-conimen-
tator on Soviet affairs. Thus the Times published Shev-
chenko's Op-Ed on the redefection of Soviet KGB official
Vitaly Yurchenko (November 12, 1985), and the New York
Times Book Review printed two favorable reviews of
Breaking With Moscow (December 8, 1985 and January 26,
1986), neither of which mentioned any of the doubts that had
been raised about its authenticity. ?
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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how Agca knew so much, Tagliabue allocates only one para-
graph to the possibility that Agca was coached. He goes to
great pains to stress that Agca knew an awful lot--telephone
numbers, personal habits, nicknames. He even gives space
equal to that allotted to coaching to Agca's stay in Bulgaria,
purportedly on the ground that Agca might have learned all the
details in Bulgaria. But this is fraudulent: There is no way that
a non-Bulgarian-speaking Turk could have learned in Bulgaria
the details of the Rome apartments and nicknames of Bulgarian
officials in Rome. Tagliabue is using this as a gimmick to drag
in the fact that Agca stayed in Bulgaria.
Tagliabue gives as the "simplest explanation" of Agca's
knowledge that he had access to books, newspapers, maga-
zines, and other materials from the outside. Interestingly, he
fails to mention the numerous prison contacts between Agca
and secret service, Mafia, and Vatican agents and emissaries.
Agca even wrote a letter to the Vatican complaining of pressure
from its representative in the prison (also linked to the Mafia),
a point long blacked out by the Times. These visits would point
to the ease with which Agca could have been fed information
while in prison. Tagliabue will not admit facts getting into this
dangerous territory.
A major question is how Agca knew details about An-
tonov's apartment when he later admitted to Martella that he
had never been there. The Bulgarians and Antonov's defense
went to great pains to prove that the information Agca provided
about Antonov's apartment had never been divulged in the
media before Agca enumerated the details. This implied
coaching, as did a mistake in identification where Agca de-
scribed a characteristic of Antonov's apartment that fitted
other apartments in the building, but not Antonov's. Tagliabue
says that "Even the attorneys for the Bulgarians acknowledge"
that Agca named things not available through reading the
papers, as if they were conceding a point, not making a dev-
astating case for coaching. Newspaper work could not be
more dishonest than this.
The more sinister view. In the one paragraph in his entire
article devoted to the possibility of coaching (paragraph 30),
Tagliabue merely asserts it as a claim, without providing a
single supportive point of evidence, although there are
many.") He uses a double propagandist's putdown-
ironically designating it as "sinister" extreme, far out,
wild), and associating the hypothesis with Leftists and the
Soviet Bloc. Even Tagliabue, in his earlier news reports, had
mentioned Giovanni Pandico's statement in Italy outlining a
scenario of coaching at which he claimed to be present, but
Tagliabue does not even cite this or any other documents or
facts that lend support to the coaching hypothesis. He sticks
to the ingredients that fit the Sterling format-good Martella,
Agca the betrayer of the case, the Soviet motive, Agca's visit
to Bulgaria, and his knowledge of details. All other materials
are designated "sinister" or blacked out to enhance the
credibility of the party line.
Agca helped the Bulgarians. Tagliabue closes (paragraph
32) with a quote from somebody who expounds one of his pre-
ferred themes-that Agca deliberately blew the case. This is
derived from Sterling's theory that Agca was always signaling
somebody in his vacillations. Note how Tagliabue states this
as a truth, although it is a wholly unproven Sterling gim-
mick. 11 What was Agca bargaining for in the trial? Did he
expect the Bulgarians to spring him'? To admit their own in-
volvement in the case by arranging a deal for his release'? And
if he were sabotaging the case in order to win favor with the
Bulgarians, as the Bulgarians obviously refused to respond,
why did he not finally decide to do them injury'? Tagliabue
never addresses these points.
In sum, this is a model case of propaganda under the guise
of "news." In this instance there are literal lies (in paragraphs
I I and-hidden behind "purportedly"-in 20), but these are
perhaps less important than the other systematic distortions.
Tagliabue and the Times frame the issue in terms of probable
Bulgarian guilt and the nonsubstantive factors that caused the
case to be lost. They refuse to discuss the failure to obtain
confirmation of any factual claims of meetings or deals with
Bulgarians. They fail to mention and discuss problems of
plausible deniability. They reiterate the elements of the pre-
ferred (Sterling) model without noting the illogic or well-known
counterfacts. They ignore evidence that would support the
coaching model. They use invidious language only for the dis-
favored line of argument and spokespersons, manipulating
words and bending evidence to the desired end. Tagliabue's
article should be perfect for classroom use in courses on
propaganda, media bias, and related subjects.
THE RISE AND FALL
OF THE BULGARIAN
CONNECTION
By Edward S. Herman
and Frank Brodhead
? 275 pages, fully indexed.
? Hardcover, $19.95; paperback $9.95
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10. Ibid., Chapter 5.
I. See ibid., pp. 139-41.
Please send me:
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JIIERIbAN SOUARE PVDLICATI0N5, INC.
P.O.Box 677, N Y, N Y 10013
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L-------------------J
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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Frank Carlucci:
Diplomat, Businessman, Spy
By Louis Wolf and William Vornberger
The Iran-contra firestorm demonstrates the duplicity of the
Reagan administration. The December 2 White House ap-
pointment of Frank Charles Carlucci III as the President's new
National Security Adviser was trumpeted by much of the media
as likely to inflate Reagan's sagging popularity. However,
Carlucci's professional history requires careful scrutiny,
conspicuously absent in most media reviews.
Carlucci is a survivor. Since 1956, he has held thirteen jobs
in six federal agencies during four administrations. After
graduating from Princeton in 1952, he spent two years in the
Navy, a year at Harvard's graduate business school, and a
year in low-level commercial jobs. Then, in Jul,. 1956, he
joined the Foreign Service.
Diplomat or Spook?
In October 1957 he was posted to Johannesburg, South
Africa, as an economic officer. In March 1960, after six
months studying French, he was assigned to Leopoldville.
Congo (now Kinshasa. Zaire). Despite his economic training
he was assigned as a political officer. One scholar of Zairian
affairs who worked with Carlucci at the time spoke with CA/B
on condition of anonymity. "Everyone knew ICarluccil was
working on the intelligence side" of the Congo desk, and that
while working in the country "there was no doubt that he was
totally supportive of U.S. policy vis-a-vis the leadership,
which was extremely hostile."
Less than two months after Carlucci arrived in Leopold-
ville, the CIA began plotting to assassinate President Patrice
Lumumba. 1 After several intricate. though unsuccessful,
CIA attempts to poison Lumumba, he was captured on January
17 by secessionist Katangan forces under CIA tutelage,
brutally tortured, and murdered. While a direct CIA role in the
execution was never proved, one CIA officer has confessed to
driving around the city with Lumumba's still warm corpse in
his car trunk.' Although Carlucci probably had no physical
hand in the execution, he and his superiors surely knew of the
extensive CIA plotting.
His reward for the successes of Leopoldville was a mid-
level job on State's Congo desk for two years. There he helped
support Moise Tshombe who came to power after I-.umumba's
1. Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, report of the Sen-
ate Select Committee To Study Government Operations with Respect to In-
telligence Activities, November 20, 1975, pp. 13-67.
2. John Stockwell, In Search o% Enemies: A C/A Story (New York: Norton,
1978), p. 105.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
death. When the Kasavubu government (which three out
Tshombe in 1965) considered dismissing mercenaries from
its armed forces, recognizing the People's Republic of China,
and strengthening ties with left-nationalist African states, the
CIA planned its overthrow. The result was a Coup placing
Joseph Mobutu (now Mobutu Sese Seko) in power where he
has remained a staunch and corrupt U.S. ally for 2I years. For
his contribution to furthering U.S. foreign policy in the Congo,
Carlucci was awarded the State Department's Superior Service
Award.
In 1964, he became U.S. principal officer in 7.anzihar, in the
United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar (now Taniania).
Eighteen months later he and a U.S. Emhassy counselor were
accused of plotting the overthrow of President Julius Nycrere
and given 24 hours to leave. An intercepted phone conversa-
tion between Carlucci and the other official, along with
documents implicating the U.S. in a plan to use white
mercenaries to attack the island, led to their ouster. The State
Department denied the charges. but thirteen years later, during
Carlucci's Senate confirmation hearing for CIA Depute Direc-
tor, the meeting went into secret executive session for a dis-
cussion of the Zanzibar assignment. `
Carlucci was sent to Brazil just after the elected government
of Joao Goulart was overthrown with the help of U.S. military
attache Vernon Walters and the CIA, bringing to power the
ruthless Castelo Branco dictatorship. Carlucci stayed in Rio
de Janeiro as executive officer and then as counselor until
1969, and openly acknowledged working in "close coopera-
tion" with the CIA station there.'
Between 1969 and 1974, Carlucci served in various
positions and agencies under Caspar Weinberger in the Nixon
administration. In September 1974, he became a Career
Minister in the Foreign Service, and in December, Nixon
appointed him Ambassador to Portugal. A Ieftwing gov-
ernment had recently come to power there after 48 years of'
fascist rule, and Carlucci's job was to undenninc the strength
of the Portuguese Communist Party. When he was implicated
in the CIA's aborted coup led by rightwing military officers,
the Portuguese military chief Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho
remarked on television that he could not guarantee Carlucci',,,
personal safety and that "it would without a doubt be preferable
3. Conlimiation hearing of I-rank Carlucci Ill to he Deputy Director of Cen
tral Intelligence, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Januwc 27, 1975,
p. 22.
4. Ibid., p. 43.
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for Mr. Carlucci to leave Portugal ... [because] at the point
where we are he might experience certain regrettable in-
cidents."5
Number Two at the CIA
Carlucci's three years (1978-1981) as Deputy Director of
Central Intelligence gave him a first-hand view of the way the
foreign policy he implemented in the field was formulated at
headquarters. He demanded, and finally got from CIA Director
Admiral Stansfield Turner, a written agreement that he would
have access to the same information as Turner.
The Washington Post recently reported that' in February
1979, President Carter, National Security Adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski, and Admiral Turner sanctioned a secret CIA
paramilitary sabotage operation against South Yemen, directed
by Carlucci, even though Turner had called it "harebrained."'
The operation was an utter failure and the CIA's role was
readily uncovered by the Yemenis.
Carlucci lobbied Congress intensively for the CIA, and
bragged about it. At the 1980 convention of the Association of
Former Intelligence Officers, he said, "We've managed to
pursue a very aggressive strategy on the Hill. That strategy
has paid dividends." One of Carlucci's proudest public
accomplishments at the CIA was his successful campaign to
exempt most CIA records from disclosure through the Free-
dom of Information Act. Additionally he pressed for a
statutory reduction of limits on CIA operations, even defend-
ing domestic Agency activities in what have euphemistically
been called "hot pursuit" cases.' He also pressured Congress
to pass the CIA-authored Intelligence Identities Protection
Act, signed into law by Reagan in 1982, which purports to
make it a crime to reveal the name of anyone "of operational
assistance" to U.S. intelligence.`
To help preside over the largest U.S. military build-up in
history, Caspar Weinberger, now Secretary of Defense,
recruited his old friend Carlucci to be his deputy, a post he held
from 1981 to 1982. Although Carlucci sought a moral high
ground by publicly calling for reforms in corrupt weapons pro-
curement procedures, an appearance of reform rather than real
change in Pentagon-defense industry dealings was the result.
Journalists revealed that behind the scenes Carlucci had
pursued "higher industrial profits, lower risk and closer
working ties between contractors and the Pentagon."9
In his own private financial dealings Carlucci invests
heavily in major military-strategic firms. His stock holdings
and memberships on boards of directors include Dow Chem-
icals, the Sperry Corporation, the Rand Corporation, the
Hudson Institute, the Center for Naval Analyses (all of which
5. Jack Bourderie, "A Tough Little Monkey," in Ellen Ray, et al., editors,
Dirty Work H: The CIA in Africa (Secaucus, New Jersey: Lyle Stuart, 1978),
p. 210. This article first appeared in the French magazine Afrique-Asie, April
7, 1975. Carlucci once described the counterrevolution in Portugal as saving it
from "failing into a Communist abyss." In the same piece he praised
Portugal's "liberal profit remittance regulations." And, tellingly, he described
Portugal as "a staunch NATO ally. Its facilities in the Azores arc critical to
enabling the U.S. and its NATO allies to extend their strategic reach." Frank
Carlucci, "Portugal: A Good Trading Partner for the U.S.," Business America
(the official publication of the Information Trade Administration of the De-
partment of Commerce), June 7, 1985, P. 29.
6. Washington Post, December 4, 1986, p. Al.
7. Ronald Brownstein and Nina Easton, Reagan's Ruling Class. Portraits
of the President's Top 100 Officials, (Washington, D.C.: The Presidential
Accountability Group, 1982), p. 444.
8. See CAME, Number 10 (August-September 1980), p. 3.
9. Washington Post, March 31. 1985, p. Al.
Is the NSC the CIA's
Washington Station?
In all the media coverage about covert operations run
out of the National Security Council, what went largely
unmentioned was the significant presence of CIA per-
sonnel on Admiral Poindexter's NSC staff. Vincent M.
Cannistraro, a 12-year CIA veteran, and Robert Earle, a
Marine Corps officer on the CIA payroll since 1985,
were both assistants to Oliver North at the NSC.
Cannistraro's primary responsibility was to facilitate
material support for the Angolan contras, UNITA.
Several other CIA officers worked out of NSC offices
during this period. Three known operatives were James
Stark, Craig Coy, and Clark A. Murdock, director of the
NSC Africa affairs division. Although these men are in
the process of returning to Langley, in December
Carlucci named Fritz W. Ermarth, a controversial CIA
Sovietologist, as the new NSC Soviet affairs director,'-
and he also brought back David Barry Kelly, ` a 20-year
CIA man who worked in the Agency operations di-
rectorate under Turner and himself, as his NSC in-
telligence/antiterrorism unit head.
It was claimed at the outset of the scandal that "senior
White House officials in early 1985 bypassed the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency to avoid mandatory disclosure
[to Congress] of such covert operations, according to
informed sources."4 But existing law stipulates that
covert operations "by all departments, agencies, and
other entities involved in U.S. intelligence activities"5
must be reported to Congress.
On January 12, 1987, Carlucci issued a memorandum
stating that "the staff of the NSC shall not itself under-
take special activities."' [Emphasis added.] However,
the memorandum leaves no doubt that the NSC, under
Carlucci, will continue to have a central role in oversee-
ing, if not "undertaking," what they call "special
activities"-what we call covert actions. The New York
Times reported, inaccurately, that Carlucci promised the
NSC "would no longer involve itself in covert opera-
tions."' [Emphasis added.] But the language of Car-
lucci's memorandum ensures the NSC will be involved.
The NSC will provide `review of, guidance for, and di-
rection of the conduct of special activities."' This is how
Carlucci keeps his options open. ?
1. Buffalo News, November 13,
1986, p. 1.
2. Washington Post, December
December 21, 1986, p. A22.
17, p. A 16: December 18, p. A9:
3. James Bamford, "Carlucci and the N.S.C.." New York Times
Magazine, January 18, 1987, p. 92.
4. Walter Pincus, "CIA Bypassed in Iran Arms Supply."
Washington Post, November 8, 1986, p. A I.
5. National Security Act, ?501(a): 50 U.S.C. ?413.
6. Washington Post, January 1 7 , 1987, p. A1 8 .
7. New York Tones, January 18. 1987, p. 1.
8. Washington Post. January 17, 1987, p. A] 8.
have abundant Pentagon and CIA contracts), the South African
diamond conglomerate DeBeers, the American Broadcasting
Company, and the American Stock Exchange.' ?
10. Who's Who in America, 1983-1984, p. 83: Brownstein and Easton. op.
cit., n. 7, p. 444.
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Carlucci left the government in late 1982 and joined Sears
World Trade Inc. (SWT) the next year. In 1984 he became
president and chief operating officer of SWT, a subsidiary of
the world's largest retail company, Sears-Roebuck. Until it
was dissolved in 1986, SWT had 1,100 employees in offices
around the world. Fortune magazine reported that some inter-
national traders were speculating that SWT served as a cover
for American intelligence personnel abroad.''
At SWT, Carlucci created its consulting subsidiary, the
International Planning and Analysis Center, Inc. (IPAC), and
recruited many of the former military officers on its Washing-
ton staff. According to its brochure, "iPAC's goal is to help
its clients exploit the opportunities created by worldwide
change."1' With subsidies from the Agency for International
Development, IPAC's stated functions are selling advice and
technical financial expertise to Third World governments and
companies." However, retired Air Force General James R.
Allen is responsible for IPAC's less public defense pro-
curement consulting activities. He and his staff exploit their
contacts at the Pentagon and in defense industries in order to
market IPAC's services. 14
Conclusion
in October 1986, Sears-Roebuck dissolved SWT. The
subsidiary had lost $60 million, $12 million in 1986 alone. It
seems only fitting that the president of a bankrupt multina-
tional would then go on to become National Security Adviser of
a bankrupt administration. It is also extremely ironic that
11. Fortune, February 7, 1983, p. 91. While at SWT, Carlucci admitted
having at his "beck and call- the databases of the Commerce Department, the
Pentagon, and the State Department. two years after he had left government.
Industry Week, March 19, 1984. p. 83.
12. Current International Planning and Analysis Center, Inc. brochure. p.
1.
13. The Hudson Institute. a conservative thinktank that performs a sub-
stantial amount of classified research for the Pentagon, collaborated closely
with IPAC to establish what it calls a "planning framework which identifies the
major trends and uncertainties that will alfect U.S. and allied defense in-
dustries... to assist finis and government agencies make near tern planning
decisions which take advantage of future opportunities." Ibid., p. 3.
14. Two other entities appearing to be part of the Scars empire have signifi-
cant business with the Pentagon. In 1985, Sears Petroleum Transport of
Rome. New York did $10.7 million worth of work for the Pentagon, while
Sear,, JA Inc. of Tenn Haute, Indiana had $1.1 Million Pentagon business.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Carlucci, who worked closely with the CIA while if diplomat
and then rose to become Deputy Director of Central In-
telligence, should remark that under his new tenure there
would be no covert actions carried out by the NSC.
The company that Carlucci keeps is dubious at best. When
he was at the Pentagon, Carlucci worked with General Richard
Secord, now a central figure in the Iran-roll/1'o scandal. At that
time, Secord was under grand jury investigation firr garnishing
illegal profits from arms sales to Egypt; despite the protests
of the Pentagon general counsel. Carlucci gave Secord hack his
job. 16
Today, Carlucci is staffing the NSC with fanner associates
from his Pentagon and Sears World Trade past. As his deputy,
he named Lt. General Colin L. Powell, a highly decorated
former U.S. Army Ranger who served in Vietnam, and was
commander of the U.S. Army V Corps in Frankfurt, Germany.
Powell worked as a senior military assistant to Carlucci at the
Pentagon. Carlucci appointed as NSC director of Middle Fast
affairs, former State Department director of antiterrorism,
Robert B. Oakley, a former Princeton classmate. Carlucci's
new executive secretary, retired Array Colonel Grant Green,
was his assistant both at the Pentagon and at Sears World
Trade.
Finally, he named Jose S. Soriano to oversee Latin
American affairs and the continuing propaganda operations of
Radio Marti. Sorzano is a zealous Cuban-American activist
who was president of the Cuban-American Foundation, a pro-
fessor of government at Georgetown University, and .leave
Kirkpatrick's deputy at the U.N. front 1983 to 1985."
The day President Reagan named his new National Security
Adviser, the fifth of his presidency, Carlucci told the media at
a White House briefing, "I am organizing fir the future."A
sober analysis of his career and of his ideological commitment
gives rise to deep concern about what he intends to organi/c
and for what kind of future. ?
15. Washington Post, January 17, 1987, p. A 18.
16. Jonathan Kwitny, "New NSC Chiefs Tics to Men Cited in Iran ('rise.
Illegal Arnis Deal May Cloud Housekeeping Task.' Wall .beet.Iournsd. Ian
uary 9, 1987, p. 44. While with Scars, Carlucci hired, at a $1_1)0,[1110 annual
salary, Erich von Marbod, a forwer Pentagon director of international arms
sales, who had resigned in the midst of the Edwin A\ ilum iits e twlations
17. Washington Post, December 17, 1986, p. A 10.
18. NBC Evening News, December 5. 1986.
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"Southern Air, We're Southern Air...":
The Reagan White House's Private Air Force
By David Truong D. H.*
A current country music song by artist Ray Stevens talks
about a fictitious airline and opens with the following rhyme:
Southern Air, we're Southern Air
Flyin' high over Dixie
Hospitality to spare...
In its newsletter last summer, Southern Air Transport de-
scribed this potential hit as good for business, with little
thought to the company's own potential for publicity in the
coming months.
Southern Air Transport is now the world's largest com-
mercial freight airline using Hercules L-100 planes. In July
1986, it tripled its fleet to eighteen such aircraft, in addition to
the Boeing 707s which it had been operating since early 1986.
Last year, following years of losses, Southern Air ex-
perienced an all-time record income-more than $5 million in
one month alone. While revenues for 1986 were estimated at
about $40 million, James H. Bastian, Southern Air's board
chairman and sole owner since 1980, said recently that reve-
nues for 1987 should be well over $100 million.'
Southern Air is however more than just a burgeoning air
freight company. Its ties to U.S. intelligence and covert activi-
ties span three decades. In the 1960s, Southern Air, together
with Air America, Air Asia, Civil Air Transport. and other
concerns, made up the covert "air force" of the Central In-
telligence Agency. During this period, James Bastian was
general counsel for both Southern Air and Air America. SAT's
corporate roots during its CIA days were with an obscure
company founded by George A. Doole, Jr., Pacific Corpora-
tion, based in Delaware.
Doole, who died in March 1985, was to CIA proprietary
airlines what Admiral Rickover was to the U.S. nuclear navy.
A short time after Doole's retirement from clandestine work in
1971, the Agency decided, for various reasons, to sell its pro-
prietaries. Stanley G. Williams, Southern Air's chief officer,
who helped Doole run the airline for a decade, bought it in De-
cember 1973 at a bargain price, with the explicit agreement that
it would be available for clandestine operations if needed by the
Agency.'
Southern Air's economic rebound with its L-100 fleet may
be related to a 1973 agreement with the CIA. Southern Air did
not actually buy the Hercules L-100s from Transamerica
Airlines. The latter shut down its operations on September 30,
1985. Its employees, wanting to make the airline their own,
1. Southernek'.s, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer 1986.
2. Washington Post, December 20. 1986.
offered, with the help of financial backers, to purchase
Transamerica for $110 million. At the time, Southern Air's
management made a lower offer of $82.5 million. Transameri-
ca's management-known to have personal ties to the Agen-
cy-rejected their employees' offer and sold the company's
assets to Southern Air. In early 1986 however, it was revealed
that Southern Air did not actually purchase the L- I00s; it sim-
ply leased them from Transamerica while claiming publicly in
its newsletter that it was buying them.
This expansion came at the time of a parallel increase in
U.S. covert activities in Central America. Had Southern Air
decided to buy the L-100s it would have had to reveal, in its
financial statements for the Federal Aviation Administration,
that the funding originated from the CIA or a CIA proprietary.
Southern Air's CIA connection was first exposed in the
early 1970s; it received further unwanted publicity in 1976 in
the Report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Govern-
mental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activi-
ties-the Church Committee.
In July 1984, CBS News exposed Southern Air's renewed
involvement with CIA support activities for the contras. ` It told
of several flights of small arms shipments to the contras,
beginning in April 1983 and originating at Palmerola air base in
Honduras. Nothing more of significance came out at that time.
Then, in 1986, the downing of a C-I23K over Nicaragua, on a
covert flight to resupply weapons to the contras, produced a
major rent in the veil of secrecy around Southern Air's air
freight activities.
Since the downing of the plane. on October 5, developments
in Washington and in Central America clearly indicate that
Southern Air Transport was for all purposes the clandestine air
force of the Reagan White House. Initially, the administration
remained silent and tried to contain the incident and sub-
sequent revelations. However, at the trial of the captured sur-
viving crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, Nicaraguan officials
produced records and documents from the plane's wreckage,
exposing Southern Air's clandestine role. Hasenfus con-
firmed the information. This prompted investigations by the
FBI and by congressional subcommittees into possible
violations of the Neutrality Act and Arms Control Act.`
The two deceased crew members, William J. Cooper (who
originally hired Hasenfus) and Wallace B. Sawyer, had flown
for Southern Air since 1981. They were also Air America
veterans. In fact, they belonged to the Air America Associa-
tion Club from which Southern Air hired most of its employ-
ees. Two decades ago, the CIA used the now defunct Air A-
merica as its air force in the war in Indochina. It was the largest
paramilitary program in history and involved servicing and
* David Truong D. H. is a researcher and policy analyst and a long-time
watcher of U.S. intelligence activities in the Third World.
64 CovertAction
3. See CAIB, Number 22 (Fall 1984), pp. 28-29.
4. Miami Herald. October 18, 1986.
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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supplying tens of thousands of Thai and Laotian mercenaries
from Thailand.'
It comes as no surprise that all of the participants in the
so-called "private" air support network to the contras (an
operation one-tenth the size of the Agency's covert war in
Laos), specialized in covert organizational and logistical
skills developed at various levels during the war in Indochina.
But while covert activities in Indochina were managed entirely
by the Agency, with considerable input from other government
organizations, the contra aid program seems to be managed
directly out of the White House with the participation of high-
level CIA officials. Other senior officials seem to have had
little say in the contra war.
The Contra Supply Network: Field Office
On October 5, Felix Rodriguez, also known as Max Gomez,
twice called Vice President George Bush's deputy national
security adviser, Col. Sam Watson to inform him about the
missing plane.`' In his testimony, Hasenfus identified
Rodriguez as one of the covert flight managers and chief liaison
between the U.S. supply operation and the Salvadoran air force
command. In fact, the Cuban-born Bay of Pigs and Vietnam
special operations veteran has a most notorious past. He was
a CIA adviser to the Bolivian commandos who captured Che
Guevara in 1965, and insiders have reported that it was he who
shot the defenseless, wounded prisoner in the head. Rodriguez
admits to carrying Che's wristwatch and reportedly also
carries a lock of his hair.
According to documents obtained by the Washin,kton Post,
Rodriguez, along with two other CIA veterans, Luis Posada
Carriles and Rafael Quintero, ran a motley fleet of five aircraft
at Ilopango air base in El Salvador.7 The flight crews, 25 then
in all, were working for Southern Air. A Panama-based front
company, Udall Research Corp., provided the management
cover for the operation. Aguacate airfield in Honduras was the
other key airfield in the region fulfilling the same supply func-
tion.
Luis Posada, who was also known as Ramon Medina, is
as notorious as Rodriguez. He capped a I5-year career of ter-
rorist actions against Cuba with his participation in the 1976
bombing of a Cubana airliner off Barbados, which killed all 73
people aboard. He was jailed in Venezuela along with the
mastermind of the Cubana operation, Orlando Bosch, but es-
caped several years ago, under mysterious circumstances.
Quintero went often to Costa Rica, seeking precise
coordinates for air drops from the contra headquarters. He
then relayed the information to Rodriguez and Posada for ex-
ecution of the drops over southern Nicaragua. CIA officers
were reported to be managing the contras' operational head-
quarters in Costa Rica.' While on "humanitarian" supply
5. See Christopher Robbins. Air Americo: The Simi o/ the C/A's Secret
Airlines Nev. (York: Putnam's, 1979), and John Marks, "The CIA's Corpor-
ate Shell Game," in Dine Work: The C/A in Western Europe (Secaucus, New
Jersey: Lyle Stuart, 1978), p. 127.
6. Nest York Times, December 16. 1956.
7. For an excellent investigation of contra-related operation, in Central
America, see Ron Curran and John Zack. "The Contra Connection." Los An-
geles Weekly, December 12. 1986: and Jay Levin. "Nicaragua: (he Invasion
Plans." Los Angeles Week/N, December 12, 1986.
8. New York Times, January i 1. 1987. According to the January 17. 1987
Las Angeles Tirnes, the CIA's Chief of Station in San Jose, Costa Rica, pre-
viously disciplined for his role in the preparation of the notorious contra man-
ual advocating assassination, has been recalled because of his excessive in-
volvement with ccnuras in his host country. Robert Parry of the Associated
Press reported further on January2_3, 1987 that the station chief. codenamed
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Luis Posada Carriles, CIA veteran, surfaces again in
Contragate.
flights, Southern Air crews helped map coordinates for future
weapons drops.
Beginning in January 1986, CIA agents were running the
contras' logistical system in Costa Rica. h:I Salvador, and
Honduras, following Ronald Reagan's intelligence finding of
January 9, 1986. The CIA spent $13 million toward that end."
Southern Air claimed that an "unknown client" hired it to
maintain the five aircraft at Ilopango. Thcv frcyuently flew to
Miami for "maintenance" and, on the return flights. crew
members often picked up $10,000 at Southern Air's Miami
office. This is the legal currency limit allowed across the U.S.
border without any customs declaration. These cash transfers
paid for the Ilopango group's operating expenses at the discre-
tion of Posada. fu There are also numerous reports of drug-
smuggling flights by the Ilopango group.
The Money Trail: Hakim, Secord, and North
As is CIA practice, the funding and servicing of the live
aircraft at Ilopango were made in a compartmentalized manner
so the source of the funds could not he traced. Crew members
received their paychecks by direct wire transfer to U.S. hank
accounts from an unknown Pennsylvania-based company,
Corporate Air Services. Inc., the channel for the funding
source.
The planes at Ilopango cost a little more than S I million.
American Marketing and Consulting Co.-one of retired
General Richard V. Secord's many shell companies bought
the first DHC Caribou and then resold it to the contras in 1985.
American Marketing sold the second Caribou directly to Udall
Research in October 1985: they then exported it to Panama.
SAT purchased the C-123s, Southern Air's nianagcnicnt
claims, from an "unknown customer."
Except for the C-I23s, the funds used to pay the seller,
Maule Air Inc., for the other aircraft carte from a Bermuda
subsidiary of a Swiss-based banking services concern. ('ont-
pagnie de Services Fiducieres (CSF). Following the decision
by the Swiss Justice Ministry to cooperate with the U.S. Jus-
tice Department's criminal investigation of the Iran-( oMra
connection, it was revealed that CSF's director, William I.
Zuker, has been the Geneva lawyer for Albert Hakim and his
firm, Stanford Technology Trading Group International. Ila-
kim's partner is General Secord.'' Zuker personally man-
aged money transfers into two secret accounts at ('relit
Tomas Castillo, had been suspended hs the CIA. allezeells f,r Ivin to an in
house Agency investigation.
9. Washington Post, January 14. 1987.
10. Washington Post, December 7. 1986.
I I . See Washington Post and 'Vise York l imcs..lanuar '1), 1987
12. See Peter Maas. "Oliver North. Strange Recruits.' Vcsr fork /7mcs
Magazine. January 18. 1987. p. 20
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Suisse, one controlled by Secord, Hakim, and Oliver North
together, and the other by North alone under the name of Lake
Resources. Lake Resources was another Panama-based shell
company.
Oliver North also used a third account which the CIA set up.
In it were some of the profits from the Iran arms sales
earmarked for use by the contras. This account was used to
finance the rebels in Afghanistan to the tune of $500 million per
year.
It is extremely likely that funds for the aircraft and their
flight crews came from these accounts, as further investiga-
tion by the new independent prosecutor will show. Such funds
could have been generated by loans or contributions from
cash-rich countries like Saudi Arabia in return for U.S. com-
pensatory moves favorable to their security interests or by
profits from the sale of arms to Iran. The latter would only be
available from August 1985 when the Reagan administration
agreed to shipments of U.S. weapons to Iran. Recently, one
contra leader, Alfonso Robelo, admitted that the United
Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO) had received about 25 percent
of the funds from profits of arms sales to Iran.' 3 The answers
to key questions about the supply network and its funding (not
to mention the apparently missing millions) will have to come
from Richard Secord and Oliver North.
Come Fly Southern Air: The Operational Managers
On October 5th, Felix Rodriguez also sent a coded message
about the missing C-123 to retired Col. Robert C. Dutton in
Vienna, Virginia. Dutton is Secord's assistant at Stanford
Technology Trading Corp.'` Telephone records indicated
that Southern Air crew members made many calls to retired Lt.
Col. Richard Gadd, whose company office is in the same
building as Stanford Technology Trading Corp.' 5
According to available records, the State Department con-
tracted Gadd's firm, American National Management Corp.,
to deliver non-military supplies to the contras inside Nicaragua
and to contra camps in Honduras. Contra leaders Adolfo and
Mario Calero personally chose this company. The individuals
at the State Department responsible for overseeing the contra
aid program and acting as liaison with Gadd were Robert Owen
and Elliott Abrams. Abrams is now head of the Interagency
Task Force in charge of disbursing the $60 million appropri-
ated by Congress for the contras.
Gadd then subcontracted Southern Air Transport to set up
13. Associated Press, December 16, 1986, from San Jose. Costa Rica.
14. Washington Post, December 7, 1986.
15. Nen'sdov, December 7, 1986.
the delivery network. In early 1986, Dutton began to share
operational control of the activities of Southern Air's flight
crews at Ilopango.' 6
After the State Department contracted Gadd's firm, he
reportedly told the flight crew to mix weapons and ammunition
with non-military supplies on their supply flights. 17 This
was a direct violation of the congressional ban on military aid
to the contras. Southern Air and State Department officials
continue to maintain that the weapons supply operation was
separate.
Secord, Dutton, and Gadd were all graduates of the Office
of Special Operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Secord had
the longest experience in clandestine operations, dating back
to the late 1960s. He was then stationed in Udorn, Thailand,
working with the CIA in the clandestine war in neighboring
Laos. It is no wonder that Secord, by every account, became
the operational commander of the weapons supply network,
using Southern Air as the hub for operations in the U.S.
Secord has ties to key CIA senior officials he met during the
war in Laos. Tom Clines and Theodore Shackley, a former
deputy director of operations. both helped him put together the
contra supply network. is
Southern Air's Policy Executives
After Col. Watson spoke with Felix Rodriguez the day the
plane was shot down, he promptly alerted the White House
Situation Room and the NSC staff. By extension, this meant
informing Oliver North as well as the chief CIA officer detailed
to the NSC, Duane Clarridge. Both played key roles in Central
America and Middle East operations.'`'
Watson's contacts with Rodriguez were documented in it
chronology of events which Vice President George Bush's
office released more than two months after the C- 123 down-
ing.20 By then, the entire administration perceived itself
besieged by the media and the revelations around the Iran-
contra connection.
The statement from Bush's office showed the depth of
White House involvement in the covert supply network. Until
December 15th, the White House insisted it had no part in the
operation. In a message dated October 6, Col. Dutton warned
Rodriguez not to call "high ranking officials" directly any long-
er.21 On January 3, 1987, Rodriguez issued a statement
downplaying his crucial role in the Ilopango operation. He also
agreed fully with the chronology of events released by Bush's
office.
While the role of Vice President Bush and his staff in the
contra supply operation has yet to surface fully, the more vis-
ible aspect of White House clandestine operations has been
Oliver North's daring travels and meetings with the help of
Secord. North also received a call from William Casey shortly
after the C-123 downing. North had long been a key participant
in a little known interagency covert action planning group,
dubbed the "208 Committee." Located in room 208 of the Ex-
ecutive Office Building adjacent to the White House, the corn-
16. Washington Post, December 7, 1986.
17. Nesrsdav, December 7, 1986.
18. New York Times, December 6. 1986: and see Maas, op. cit., it. 12.
19. Clarridge's links to Col. North and direct aid to the contras in violation
of congressional prohibitions was the subject of a New York Times article. Jan
uary 21, 1987. Also, NBC News quoted U.S. government sources saying
Clarridge planned the 1983 mining of Nicaragua's harbors and wrote the CIA's
controversial training manual for the contras the same year.
20. Statement from Vice President Bush's office, December 15, 1986.
21 . Washington Post, December 7, 1986.
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Hercules L-100, the workhorse of the Southern Air Transport covert operations.
mittee's planning was done by the NSC staff and their resident
CIA colleagues. There has been no confirmation of the activi-
ties of the 208 Committee in the management of the contra war
and of the Iran arms sales.
The activities of former National Security Adviser Vice
Admiral John M. Poindexter in the Iran-contra connection
remain unclear; in the final analysis, events may show that
Poindexter did make all the key decisions with regard to the
contra connection, most likely with the President's broad,
philosophical blessing.
At every level, major efforts were made to fine tune the legal
implications of joint NSC-CIA covert activities so that no one
would end up required to report to Congress.
The Weapons Flights to Iran
Southern Air played an even more essential covert role in the
Iran arms sale, than it did in Central America. The airline was
a tool to further the White House plans to reestablish a
foothold in this strategically located country on the Persian
Gulf.
Though Southern Air is no longer a proprietary of the CIA,
its owner, James Bastian, and its management have long ties
to the Agency. Today, the airline remains at the beck and call of
the CIA, and most likely the Pentagon's Office of Special
Operations, for clandestine air freight activities. The Military
Air Command at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois also in-
fluenced Southern Air's activities. MAC contracts, according
to data from the Federal Procurement Data Center, made up an
increasing share of Southern Air's yearly business since
1984: $9.1 million in 1984 (32 percent), $23.4 million in 1985
(60 percent), and $18.2 million or 57 percent for the first 9
months in 1986 (4th quarter data are not yet available). For
1987, MAC's contracts are estimated at 65 percent of
Southern Air's total business.
In late November 1985, Duane Clarridge, Casey's White
House watchdog, contacted Southern Air regarding an arms
shipment to Iran, at the request of Oliver North. He needed to
fly a cargo of U.S.-made weapons, stocked in Israel, from
Lisbon to Tehran, because the Israelis encountered objections
from the Portuguese government for their own transshipment
of arms to Iran, and needed U.S. help. Southern Air provided
one of its B-707s based in Ankara, Turkey.
As in the contra supply operation, North asked Secord to
supervise the sensitive arms transshipment in Lisbon. The
CIA station in Lisbon apparently pressured the Portuguese."
The Agency's then Deputy Director, John McMahon, pro-
tested North's request-done without clear presidential au-
thority-hut nevertheless approved Southern Air's flight from
Lisbon to Tehran. The shipment included parts for 18 early
model Hawk missiles but Iran eventually rejected them as
useless and obsolete. Southern Air's management did not
register its B-707 flight with the F.A.A.
Southern Air's subsequent flights for the White House
were all direct from the United States and part of U.S. over-
tures to Iran. SAT made four sets of flights in 1986, all under
the supervision of Secord: early February. late May, July-
August, and mid-October. They left from Kelly Air Force
Base, which SAT also uses for shipments of materiel to
Ilopango, El Salvador and Palmerola, Honduras for the
contras.
The February and October shipments involved two B-707
flights, the July-August shipment three: all flights carried
mostly older TOW missiles. The May shipment, known as
the McFarlane mission, was to involve three flights: due to the
failure of the McFarlane group to persuade Iran to help free the
remaining American hostages in Lebanon. two loaded B-707s
remained in Israel.' The Southern Air flight which carried the
McFarlane group also carried items that Iran had long wanted:
critical spare parts for Iranian I (improved) Hawk missile
batteries (and a Bible and cake from the White House). The
parts were to strengthen significantly Iran's air defenses of oil
installations against attacking Iraqi aircraft.
According to some intelligence officials, the May flight
might have carried crucial spare parts for U.S.-made Phoenix
air-to-air missiles as a symbolic gesture. This past fall, for
the first time in years, an Iraqi Mirage fighter was downed by
an Iranian Phoenix missile, according to Xinhua News Agency
and Radio Tehran (October 15-16).
The U.S. supplied Iran with a total of 2,008 TOW missiles
and several hundred critical I-Hawk missile parts. '['his in-
cludes one or two Israeli shipments in September 1985 from
their own stocks, using one of their three cargo airlines.
For the Iran flights, Southern Air was closely tied to the still
secret logistics system the Pentagon and CIA used when deal-
ing with arms transfers for covert operations. Kelly AFB has
been the very secure home of the Electronic Security Command
and provides "technical services" support for multiservice
operations, i.e., covert operations.
Air America of the 1980s
In many ways, Southern Air resembles modern private
corporations which depend heavily on defense-related con-
tracts for their livelihood, like many high-tech companies and
thinktanks in the Washington metropolitan area, which do
22. Washington Punt. January 11. 1987.
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classified or covert work for the Pentagon, the CIA, and sim-
ilar agencies. Covert activities remain a trademark of Southern
Air. In the 1980s, the CIA or the Pentagon's Office of Special
Operations would simply contract Southern Air to carry out the
covert delivery of weapons to UNITA rebels in Angola. For
example, Southern Air L-100s flew in August 1983 from
Dallas to Lagos, Nigeria, long a major transshipment point for
Agency deliveries to UNITA. In May and June of 1983,
according to FAA records, Southern Air made two very un-
usual flights to Luanda, Angola, from Dobbins AFB in
Marietta, Georgia. These flights currently are under con-
gressional scrutiny.
Southern Air has also relied heavily on Military Airlift
Command contracts. From April to December 1985, it flew an
enormous amount of military cargo throughout the Caribbean
and Central America from two bases: Charleston, South Caro-
lina and Norfolk, Virginia. Lagos, Portugal, and Howard
AFB, Panama, were two major transshipment points. Begin-
ning in January 1985, Southern Air made several flights from
Miami to San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, and Guatemala City for
contra resupply operations.24
Miami, however, was not the only point of departure. Other
airports in the U.S. from which shipments of materiel go to the
contras include: Daytona Beach, New Smyrna, Hollywood,
Fort Lauderdale, and the civilian airport at Elgin, all in Florida;
Moiseant Field near New Orleans and Baton Rouge, both in
24. The only major non-U.S. government contract in the past three years
has been with an Irish cargo company, Guernsey [AS, a subcontractor to Di-
amang, Angola's state diamond company.
Disinformationgate
(continued from page 72)
Naturally, the New York Times placed the initiative with the
National Security Council: "President Reagan contended that
the program had its inception in mid-1985 when McFarlane
sent an American consultant, Michael Ledeen to Israel.";
The Israeli press depicted Ledeen as an American agent
who got Israel involved as a broker in a deal between the U.S.
and Iran. Israeli Defense Minister and former Director General
of Foreign Affairs David Kimche told the Los Angeles Times
that the purpose of his July 1985 visit to Washington was to
confirm Ledeen's bona fides. However, there were a number
of glaring problems with the Israeli cover story. Kimche had
already met with McFarlane in January 1985 to urge arms sales
to Iran.4 He had been pushing for this policy since 1981.
3 . New York Times, December I I , 1987. The significance of the Israeli role
was finally broached in the Times on February 1, 1987, p. 1.
4. According to the Los Angeles Times (December 28, 1986). in January
1985, "Kimche approaches McFarlane with a list of hundreds of Iranian 'mod-
erates' and encourages the U.S. to open a dialogue with the Iranians.- And
according to the Miami Herald (December 7. 1986). Kimche, "the prime mover
of Israel's policy of secretly selling arms to Iran, tried as early as 1981 to get
the U.S. to trade arms with Iranian moderates." Ledeen has been deeply
embroiled in Iranian politics for some time, and not, it would seem, on the side
of the "moderates." According to Diana Johnstone's recent (January 21 , 1987)
In These Times interview with Abol Hassan Bani Sadr, former President of
Iran, Ledeen, who accompanied McFarlane and North on his May 1986 trip, is
known in Iran as "the man who sold out Sadiq Ghotbzadeh to Khomeini." In
1982, Ghotbzadeh, then Foreign Minister, was apparently involved in a plot to
replace Khomeini, and sent word only for the U.S. not to intervene. But
Ledeen advised the U.S. government that Khomeini was anti-Soviet, which
was good enough for the U.S.; it therefore opposed any move against him.
Two months later, Ghotbzadeh was arrested and executed.
Louisiana; San Francisco, Sepulveda, and Long Beach in
California; and Houston-Hobby and Dallas-Fort Worth in
Texas. Military airports include: Kelly AFB, Charleston
AFB, Scott AFB, and Howard AFB. The international trans-
shipment points for weapons are Lisbon and Lagos in Portu-
gal.
In early 1986 there were several Southern Air flights from
Lisbon, Portugal, to Ilopango, El Salvador. Intelligence
sources confirmed that there was an influx of aid to the contras
via Ilopango at this time.'
Conclusion
Southern Air Transport, though ostensibly no longer a CIA
proprietary, has evolved into a modern version of Air America.
While doing regular contract work for the Pentagon's MAC and
for civilian charters, Southern Air can immediately transform
itself into a covert air force for the CIA and other agencies.
This is corporate flexibility that the CIA airline proprietaries of
the 1960s did not have. As a result it makes Southern Air a
more destructive instrument in furthering U.S. covert policy
objectives in many regions.
One example has been Southern Air's multi-regional role in
Central America and in the Iranian arms scandal, managed by
Richard Secord and the Reagan White House. A covert in-
strument, however, is only as potent as those who wield it.
With the continuing revelations of the Iran-contra connection,
perhaps Southern Air Transport will become just another
bankrupt cargo airline. ?
And Ledeen was hardly a stranger to Israeli officials. In
fact, the ludicrous part of the Israeli cover story is the allega-
tion that Kimche, who lived in New York for five years in the
1960s as chief of Mossad's western hemisphere operations
division, had to travel to Washington to establish Ledeen's
bona fides. David Kimche and Amiram Nir spent their pro-
fessional lives in the Mossad, an agency not unknown to
Ledeen.
Ledeen and Israel
Michael Ledeen was a founder of the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs and was a major participant in the
1979 and 1984 Jonathan Institute Conferences on Terrorism.'
Both institutes have substantial ties to Mossad. Indeed,
Ledeen is the missing link of covert operations by Mossad in
the U.S. during the Reagan administration.
The most visible trail left by Mossad is the disinformation
activities of Ledeen and friends. Michael Ledeen, Robert
Moss, and Claire Sterling were all speakers at the 1979
Jerusalem conference of the Jonathan Institute, a meeting
which many Israeli intelligence agents attended. The speakers
bemoaned the fall of Somoza and the Shah; Moss blamed the
KGB;6 Ledeen pointed out that even the KGB would not have
succeeded if it were not for their mole (unnamed) in the Carter
administration. Ledeen and his co-di sinformationists always
raise the specter of a KGB role in Iran and Nicaragua, primarily
to justify more U.S. covert action. Indeed, one of the themes at
the Jerusalem Conference was that Carter had destroyed the
CIA.
5. See CAlB, Number 22 (Fall 1984), p 5: and Number 23 (Spring 1985).
pp. 16-17, 26, 3 1-33.
6. Wall Street Journal, July 26. 1979.
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Israel's Worries
Governments like South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, and es-
pecially Israel, simply cannot survive without continued U.S.
military and economic assistance. The "loss" of' Iran and
Nicaragua under the Carter administration led then to a certain
concern about the reliability of the United States. Israel de-
cided it would have to play a more aggressive role in U.S.
domestic politics in order to guarantee an unwavering partner.
The propaganda themes spread during the Jerusalem con-
ference were aimed at the 1980 U.S. elections, to discredit
Carter, support conservatives, and present Israel as the
U.S.'s most reliable ally in the face of terrorist and Soviet
threats. The vehicle was disinformation.
The Golden Age of Disinformation
At no other time in American history. not even during World
War 11, have so many millions of Americans been led to
believe such hysterical hoaxes. The Reagan era will go down
in history as the golden age of disinformation. And if you
follow the paper trail of verifiable disinformation spread the
last six years within the U.S., the Israelis are first, the CIA a
poor second, and the KGB dead last as a source of dis-
information spread in the U.S.
Disinformation became one of the buzzwords of the Reagan
administration. It covered every piece of news they didn't like,
including statements by Democrats. Meanwhile the CIA
spread disinformation about Libya, Iran. Grenada, and Nica-
ragua. Hours before the Grenada invasion, Admiral Poindexter
told reporters an invasion was out of the question. Later he
wrote his famous memo outlining a policy of disinformation
aimed at Libya. President Reagan accused Sandinista leaders
of being dope dealers. As part of McFarlane's cover story for
U.S. involvement in Iran, he repeated disinformation about a
massive build-up of Soviet strength on the Iranian border.
Disinformation is intrinsically of interest to journalists
because someone is polluting the information stream. What is
not generally realized is that disinformation is always coordi-
nated with other covert operations. Often a specific dis-
information theme is deception and cover for other activities by
the originator. Michael Ledeen has been involved in the dis-
semination of a number of disinformation stories which pro-
vide sufficient data to test this proposition.
Before popping up in the middle of the Iran-contra scandal,
Ledeen had built up a reputation concocting or spreading major
disinformation themes. among them:
? The notion that the CIA was destroyed under Carter:
? That there was a KGB Mole in the Carter administration:
? That the loss of Iran and Nicaragua was the work of' the
mole:
? That the Soviet Union is behind an International Terror
Network:
? That it tried to kill the Pope:
? That the Libyans tried to kill President Reagan:
? That the Iranians tried to kill President Reagan: and
? That Fidel Castro and Tomas Borg_e are major narcotics
dealers.
These fake stories, spread with the conspicuous help of
Israel, had the surface appearance of being solely rightwing
American propaganda. In fact, Israel was actively covering its
penetration of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Indeed,
the first four hoaxes were the Mossad Party Platform for the
1980 U.S. elections. To sell its expertise in the area of com-
batting terrorism, and to get the attention of credulous
Number 27 (Spring 1987)
Michael Ledeen, Mossad contact in arms-for-hostages
deal.
American conservatives, Israel fostered a Soviet angle. It
tried to curry favor with the CIA, and to discredit further the
existing liberal U.S. foreign policy estahlislintent by launch-
ing a witchhunt against non-existent moles.
Mossad cannot stand detente, hetwecn Iraq and Iran or
between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It is to the advantage of
Israeli intelligence to promote the notion that the Soviet Union
tried to kill the Pope and that it is behind all acts of international
terrorism.
While everyone else was amused h\ the preposterous story
of a Libyan "hit squad" out to kill the President, a story which
originated with Israeli intelligence, Reagan had concrete
bunkers built to surround the White House. and heavily armed
Marines in fatigues on the roof. II' you ate an intelligence agent
and you want to get the attention of sonic world leader, tell hint
you have uncovered a terrorist plot to kill him. The CIA had
been employing this trick in the Third World for years: \k 11N
should we be surprised that Mossad pulled it on Reagan''
Arms Deals
The Israeli media are focusing on Ledeen, descrihing hint
as an American agent, not because he really helped organize
the plan, but to divert attention from David Kinchc and
Amiram Nir. On one level, the Iran-(01111'0 scandal is merely a
giant footnote in the story of Israeli intelligence operations in
support of arms sales.`
7. See Los ans;elcv Times. December 14. HSI5 ATttl ( Il/I. Slumber Itt
(March 198?). p. 25.
8. Israel has the lartiest stockpile of IS vse.tpom, outside 0l the I S.. and
as a result of the invasion of l.ehanon, and other acorn.. A huge stockpile of
Soviet weapons. Israel itself is a major trim m;utulaeturer utd c\portcr. es
pecially to countries such as hall, South :\Irica. I ittt itt. ultl Chile Since
Israel's military security is dependent on h;ninc the ten huest iseapons
there is a constant need to sell obsolete I S and Soy iel weapon, Israel must
devote sums for research and development closer to the hudtiet of a
superpower, out of all proportion to a counts o! 4 million ( )tie w:n of p,t
ing is by selling 70 percent o(Isracli na ntttactored iscapons ahruad
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According to the New York Times, "hundreds of retired
Israeli army officers, ex-agents of Israel's secret service, the
Mossad, and private arms merchants are circling the globe
trying to put together arms deals." The Washington Post, put
the number of such Mossad agents and arms dealers at
"between 700-800.""'
The Iranian arms deal that Oliver North and Michael Ledeen
were involved in is similar in nature to two previous cases
where criminal charges were brought: those of Israeli General
Abram Baram in New York and Paul Cutter in Orlando,
Florida. In fact these two cases shed new light on the clear
pattern of Israeli involvement behind all these so-called "Iran
arms cases."
The Israeli role in the New York case is straightforward,
even though the sums are staggering: $2.5 billion worth of
weapons to Iran, including an entire brigade of tanks. The cast
of characters is familiar: Adrian Khashoggi, his attorney,
Ghorbanifar, McFarlane, etc. The other case is less well
known.
When Michael Ledeen founded the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs, Paul Cutter became a Director. He
had been the editor of Military Science and Technology. After
the invasion of Lebanon, when Ariel Sharon was getting some
bad press in the U.S., Cutter's magazine was full of articles
by Sharon and friends, along with puff pieces extolling
Israel."
Cutter became Director of a new company, European De-
fense Associates, with offices in Paris,'' London, Wash-
ington, and Tel-Aviv. It sold arms captured by Israel in
Lebanon to U.S. allies, and later, U.S. weapons stockpiled in
Europe to Iran. He set up a new magazine, Defense Systems
Review, where he shared the masthead with Brig. Gen. Meier
Ben Neftali and Shoshana Bryen. Shoshana Bryen was
identified as "executive director of the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs," while Gen. Naftali was "assigned
to the U.S. as head of the Israeli Procurement Mission."
Cutter was caught in an FBI sting in Orlando, for con-
spiracy to sell arms to Iran and of the six defendants was the
only one sent to jail.' 3 Cutter might be forgiven a certain
amount of bitterness, sitting in his jail cell in Arizona watch-
ing Ledeen on ABC's "Nightline" and Israeli arms dealers liv-
ing in palatial estates.
Committee on the Present Danger, the National Strategy Infor-
mation Center, and the Center for Strategic and International
Studies. These organizations went on to staff the Reagan
transition teams for the CIA, NSC, Pentagon, and State, and
members later took over top positions in these foreign-poli-
cy-making bodies.
Michael Ledeen was brought to the CSIS'4 by David
Abshire and Walter Laquer. Laquer is part of the Israel lobby
at CSIS, together with Yonah Alexander and Edward Luttwak.
Ledeen was transmogrified from a petty propagandist into a
national security expert through his post at CSIS. When
Reagan took office, Ledeen was one of over 30 CSIS staffers
to join the new administration.
People outside Washington do not realize the extent to
which U.S foreign policy is initiated by the staffs of con-
gressional committees and the staffs of the Directors of the
CIA or NSC. This is the case even in normal times. Under
Reagan, foreign policy sank all the way to the basement.
Why Did They Do It?
It is not part of any White House cover-up to portray Reagan
as detached and uninformed, or even senile. The locus of Iran
policy really was the White House basement. And if Reagan
did not know everything the NSC was up to in his basement,
the public knew nothing at all. It was fed a diet of secrecy, de-
ception, and disinformation.
There is a connection between disinformation and covert
action, between deception and political intrigue. While Kim-
che, Nir, Ledeen, and North were acting behind closed doors,
what the public got was disinformation.
Who Is the Mole?
Ledeen is the kind of person who thinks that the shortest
distance between two points is a tunnel. As befits an in-
dividual obsessed with moles, Ledeen has spent a great deal
of time in Washington and Tel-Aviv tunnels. The Iran-contra
story is fairly complex, but journalists are missing the real
story: Michael Ledeen is the mole. ?
14. On Ledeen's role as editor at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS), see CRIB, Number 10 (August 1980): "The CSIS is an in-
telligence-connected think-tank and conservative shadow cabinet.-
Israeli Penetration
Even granted constant Israeli pressure, the question
remains why the Reagan administration collaborated in a deal
in which it stood to gain very little. The answer lies in a com-
bination of Israel propaganda and covert Israeli penetration of
the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
Preceding the 1980 elections, Israel had already built up a
significant influence in the Committee for the Free World, the
9. New York Times, December 7, 1986.
10. Washington Post, December 12, 1986.
11 . Military Science and Technology. January. February, and March 1983.
Cutter toured Lebanon at Sharon's invitation.
12. The manager of the Paris office of European Defense Associates was
Col. Ralph Mark Broman. Broman was also the Paris chief of the Pentagon's
Office of Defense Cooperation, which controls the movement of U.S.
weapons among U.S. allies.
13. Cutter claims that his operations involved arms sales of $1.2 billion,
with commissions of $400 million. That money, he says, was siphoned off
by the Pentagon to contras fighting the governments of Afghanistan, Angola.
Ethiopia, and/or Nicaragua.
70 CovertAction
Bound Volume
CAIB is pleased to announce the production of the
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copies of issues Number 13 through 25 inclusive, plus
index.
The magazines are case-bound in high-quality, red
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The cost, postage included in the U.S.. is $75 for
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This edition is very limited, and includes several
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Number 27 (Spring 1987)
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COver'tActim
Back Issues: No. I (July 1978): Agee on CIA; Cuban exile trial; consumer
research in Jamaica. (Photocopy only.)
No. 2 (Oct. 1978): How CIA recruits diplomats; researching undercover offi-
cers: double agent in CIA.
No. 3 (Jan. 1979): CIA attacks Bulletin: Secret Supp. B to Army Field Man-
ual; spying on host countries.
No. 4 (Apr.-May 1979): U.S. spies in Italian services; CIA in Spain; CIA re-
cruiting for Africa; subversive academics; Angola.
No. 5 (July-Aug. 1979): U.S. intelligence in Southeast Asia; CIA in Den-
mark, Sweden, Grenada. (Photocopy only.)
No. 6 (Oct. 1979): U.S. in Caribbean; Cuban exile terrorists; CIA plans for
Nicaragua; CIA's secret "Perspectives for Intelligence." (Photocopy only.)
No. 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980): Media destabilization in Jamaica; Robert Moss;
CIA budget; media operations; UNITA; Iran.
No. 8 (Mar.-Apr. 1980): Attacks on Agee; U.S. intelligence legislation;
CA/B statement to Congress; Zimbabwe; Northern Ireland.
No. 9 (June 1980): NSA in Norway; Glomar Explorer; mind control; notes on
NSA.
No. 10 (Aug.-Sept. 1980): Caribbean; destabilization in Jamaica; Guy-
ana; Grenada bombing; "The Spike"; deep cover manual.
No. 11 (Dec. 1980): Rightwing terrorism: South Korea: KCIA; Portugal;
Guyana; Caribbean; AFIO; NSA interview.
No. 12 (Apr. 1981): U.S. in El Salvador and Guatemala: new right: William
Casey; CIA's Mozambique spy ring; mail surveillancc.(Photocopy only.)
No. 13 (July-Aug. 1981): South Africa documents; Namibia "solution"; mer-
cenaries and gunrunning: the Klan; Globe Aero; Angola; Mozambique; BOSS;
Central America; Max Hugel; mail surveillance.
No. 14-15 (Oct. 1981): Complete index to nos. 1-12; review of intelligence
legislation; CA/B plans; extended Naming Names.
No. 16 (Mar. 1982): Green Beret torture in El Salvador; Argentine death
squads; CIA media operations; Seychelles; Angola; Mozambique; Klan in
Caribbean; Nugan Hand. (Photocopy only.)
No. 17 (Summer 1982): History of CBW; current CBW plans; Cuban dengue
epidemic; Scott Barnes and yellow rain fabrications; mystery death in
Bangkok.
No. 18 (Winter 1983): CIA and religion; "secret" war in Nicaragua; Opus
Dei; the Miskitu case; evangelicals in Guatemala; Summer Institute of Linguis-
tics; World Medical Relief; CIA and BOSS; torture in South Africa; Vietnam
defoliation. (Photocopy only.)
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Number 27 (Spring 1987)
No. 19 (Spring-Summer 1983): CIA and the media, history of disinforma-
tion; "plot" against the Pope: Grenada airport; Georgic Anne Geyer.
No. 20 (Winter 1984): Invasion of Grenada; war in Nicaragua: Ft. Huachuca:
Israel and South Korea in Central America; KAI. flight 007.
No. 21 (Spring 1984): New York Times on El Salvador election; manipulation
in Time and Newsweek: Accuracy in Media: Nicaragua update.
No. 22 (Fall 1984): Mercenaries and terrorism; Soldier of Fortune: "privatiz-
ing" the war; Nicaragua update; U.S.-South Africa terrorism; Italian fascists.
No. 23 (Spring 1985): Special issue on "plot" to kill the Pope and the "Bul-
garian Connection"; CIA ties to Turkish and Italian neofascists.
No. 24 (Summer 1985): State repression and use of infiltrators and pro-
vocateurs; infiltration of sanctuary movement; attacks against American Indian
Movement; Leonard Peltier; NASSCO strike; Arnaud de Borchgrave and Rev.
Moon; Robert Moss; Tetra Tech.
No. 25 (Winter 1986): U.S., Nazis, and the Vatican; Nazis in the U.S. and
Latin America; the Sovereign Military Order of Malta; the Greek civil war and
Nicholas Gage's Eleni; WACL and Nicaragua; torture.
No. 26 (Summer 1986): U.S. state terrorism and Vernon Walters; semantics of
terrorism; Libyan bombing; contra agents; Israel and South Africa, spies, and
terrorism; the real Duarte; media manipulation in Costa Rica: democracy in
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No. 27 (Spring 1987): Special issue on the Religious Right: also the New
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Transport; and Michael Ledeen.
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CovertAction 71
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 Approved For Release 2010/06/03: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100170002-7
Disinformationgate
By Fred Landis*
If Contragate is the new Watergate, then Lt. Col. Oliver
North is G. Gordon Liddy and Michael Ledeen is E. Howard
Hunt. One thing that unites these two characters is an almost
infantile fascination with psychological propaganda opera-
tions-"psyops."
The North-Ledeen Team
North and Ledeen have worked together in a number of
operations in recent years, very different, but all, one way or
another involving psyops or disinformation.
In 1983, North was involved in the Grenada invasion.' The
media were excluded and U.S. Army Psyops took over the
local press and radio. The mainstream U.S. media got a bizarre
White Paper authored by Michael Ledeen, purportedly based
upon the three tons of documentation the U.S. invaders seized.
That same year Ledeen and North participated in a National
Security Council planning group that led to the creation of the
State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy. North fed the
Office CIA and DIA material on Nicaragua, grist for its propa-
ganda mill, while Ledeen and others churned it out.
In 1984, North masterminded an attempted drug trade sting
against Nicaragua. North's colleague, "retired" Gen. Richard
V. Secord, purchased a C-123K cargo plane from Southern Air
Transport. It was outfitted with hidden cameras and turned
over to DEA agent Barry Adler Seal. Seal then force landed at a
military airfield in Nicaragua, where he got photos of a
Nicaraguan official, Federico Vaughn, investigating. That
photo then became the basis of much disinformation on a
supposed Borge-Castro narcotics trafficking ring.' President
Reagan used the photo on television, stating, with utterly no
I. North worked with the Delta Force, which was involved, disastrously.
in the early hours of the invasion of Grenada.
2. See, e.g.. the Washington Times of August 9. 1984.
* Fred Landis is a specialist in propaganda analysis who has contributed
frequently to CAfB. His new book, The CIA Propaganda Machine, will be
published by Ramparts Press this year. He also lectures on this theme.
INFORMATION BULLETIN
P.O. Box 50272
Washington, DC 20004
evidence or justification, that a box in the picture was filled
with drugs. Like a bad penny, the same plane returned to
Nicaragua in October 1986, carrying Eugene Hasenfus.
After the 1984 congressional elections, North helped plan a
series of sonic booms over Nicaragua, in an attempt to rattle
the Sandinistas. Ledeen then orchestrated a rumor campaign
among the Washington press corps that the invasion of
Grenada had just been a preamble to the invasion of Nicaragua.
In the 1986 congressional elections, North assisted in the
political campaigns of Senators Paula Hawkins (Rep.-Fla.)
and Jeremiah Denton (Rep.-Ala.). They lost. But interesting-
ly, Denton's Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism and
Hawkins's Subcommittee on Children, Family, Drugs, and
Alcohol were both favorite platforms for Ledeen to spread his
media hoaxes.
Ledeen and Contragate
Ledeen's role in Iran-a-scam and Contragate begins with
his secret missions to Israel. But it is unclear who was urging
whom to do what. According to leaked portions of a Senate In-
telligence Committee report, the sale of arms to Iran was
planned and implemented by the Israeli intelligence service,
Mossad. Each time that the U.S. rejected further participation
in the Israeli plan, some Mossad agent was urgently dis-
patched to the U.S. to put their plan back on track. Throughout
the leaked Senate report, there are references to "the Israeli
plan." And the text of a memo by Lt. Col. Oliver North titled,
"Covert Action Finding Regarding Iran" reads: "Prime Minis-
ter Peres of Israel secretly dispatched his special adviser on
terrorism (Amiram Nir) with instructions to propose a plan by
which Israel, with limited assistance from the U.S. can create
conditions...."
But instead of trying to shift the blame to Israel, the White
House sought to delete all references to the Israeli role from
the Senate report, and the media accounts followed suit.
(continued on page 68)
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