Media Transparency 
Bill Berkowitz

Despite an upcoming appearance by George H.W. Bush at the newspaper's
25th anniversary celebration, a 20+-year former Washington Times
reporter says that the newspaper's survival is threatened

On May 17, former president George H. W. Bush will deliver the
keynote address at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Reverend
Sun Myung Moon-owned Washington Times newspaper at the National
Building Museum. According to Fishbowl DC, a letter from the
newspaper's President Thomas McDevitt pointed out that ''The evening
includes a special reception; the inaugural Founding Spirit Awards;
dinner; and a Founder's Address from ... [Moon], whose commitment to
the need for diverse viewpoints in the nation's capital during the
Cold War era led to the launch of the Washington Times on May 17, 1982."

"You would think Bush would be given pause by a long record of
behavior such as: Moon's claim to be Jesus Christ's replacement; his
reputation among the Southern Baptists as a 'wolf in sheep's
clothing,'" John Gorenfeld, an investigative reporter and a longtime
chronicler of Moon's activities, recently reported in a post at the
blog Talk To Action. "But it turns out, their decades-long
association has withstood many such bumps in the road."

A history of mutual support

Over the years, Bush 41 -- and family -- have benefited from both the
Rev. Moon's political and financial support:

* In 1996, Bush 41 was the featured speaker at a Moon-sponsored
Buenos Aires banquet, for which he may have received as much as
$100,000 according to the Washington Post, to launch Moon's Latin
American publication "Tiempos del Mundo" (Times of the World). "A lot
of my friends in South America don't know about the Washington Times
but it is an independent voice," the former president said. "The
editors of the Washington Times tell me that never once has the man
with the vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper
that in my view brings sanity to Washington DC."

Bush added that he was certain that "Tiempos del Mundo is going to do
the same thing."

According to The Consortium's Robert Parry, "Bush then held up the
colorful new newspaper and complimented several articles, including
one flattering piece about Barbara Bush. Bush's speech was so
effusive that it surprised even Moon's followers":

"Once again, heaven turned a disappointment into a victory," the
Unification News exulted. "Everyone was delighted to hear his
compliments. We knew he would give an appropriate and 'nice' speech,
but praise in Father's presence was more than we expected. ... It was
vindication. We could just hear a sigh of relief from Heaven."

Parry also pointed out that "Bush's claims about the newspaper's
editorial independence "was not truthful." Practically from the day
it opened its doors, Parry wrote, "a string of senior editors and
correspondents have resigned, citing the manipulation of the news by
Moon and his subordinates. The first editor, James Whelan, resigned
in 1984, confessing that he had 'blood on his hands' for helping the
church achieve greater legitimacy."

The day after the Buenos Aires event, Bush accompanied Moon to
Uruguay "to help him inaugurate a seminary in the capital Montevideo
to train 4,200 young Japanese women to spread the word of his Church
of Unification across Latin America," Reuters reported.

It was also reported in November 1996, that Carlos Menem, then the
President of Argentina, told reporters from La Nacion that Bush had
claimed privately to be only a mercenary who did not really know
Moon. "Bush told me he came and charged money to do it," Menem said.

In February of this year, Robert Parry pointed out that "Throughout
these public appearances for Moon, Bush's office refused to divulge
how much Moon-affiliated organizations have paid the ex-President."
While "Bush's fee for the Buenos Aires appearance alone ran between
$100,000 and $500,000 .... Sources close to the Unification Church
told me that the total spending on Bush ran into the millions, with
one source telling me that Bush stood to make as much as $10 million
from Moon's organization."

* The Houston Chronicle reported in June 2006, that Moon's Washington
Times Foundation used the Greater Houston Community Foundation to
funnel $1 million for Bush 41's presidential library. Parry reported
that the newspaper "obtained indirect confirmation that Moon's money
was passing through the Houston foundation to the Bush library from
Bush family spokesman Jim McGrath. Asked whether Moon's $1 million
had ended up there, McGrath responded, 'We're in an uncomfortable
position. ... If a donor doesn't want to be identified we need to
honor their privacy.'

"But when asked whether the $1 million was intended to curry favor
with the Bush family to get President George W. Bush to grant a
pardon for Moon's 1982 felony tax fraud conviction, McGrath answered,
'If that's why he gave the grant, he's throwing his money away. ...
That's not the way the Bushes operate.'

"McGrath then added, 'President Bush has been very grateful for the
friendship shown to him by the Washington Times Foundation, and the
Washington Times serves a vital role in Washington. But there can't
be any connection to any kind of a pardon.'"

* In 2001, the day before the first inauguration of George W. Bush,
the newspaper's foundation sponsored a prayer luncheon that was
attended by some 1,700 religious, civic, and political leaders,
including the Rev. Jerry Falwell, former National Evangelical
Association President Don Argue, Trinity Broadcasting Network's Paul
Crouch and a host of leaders from the Southern Baptist Convention.

* Two years ago, Neil Bush accompanied Moon on a few legs of the
Reverend's "World Peace King Bridge-Tunnel" tour, showing up at the
Reverend's side in the Philippines and Taiwan.

In Manila, Bush attended the inaugural convocation of the Universal
Peace Federation (UPF), the Manila Bulletin reported. Bush met with
Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who "praised Moon for
his global peace efforts and God-centered, family-centered economic
and social initiatives in various parts of the world, including
projects in a number of Philippine cities," the Manila paper reported.

"Some 3,000 people, including Vice President Annette Lu, US President
George W. Bush's younger brother Neil Bush and Washington Times
president Joo Dong Moon, listened to Reverend Moon's speech at the
Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei," the Taipei Times reported.

The "World Peace King Bridge-Tunnel" was described by Moon: "For
thousands of years, Satan used the Bering Strait to separate East and
West, North and South, as well as North America and Russia
geographically. I propose that a bridge be constructed over the
Bering Strait, or a tunnel be dug under it, so that it will be able
to connect the world super highway starting from the Cape of Good
Hope in South Africa to Santiago in Chile, and from London to New
York, making the world a single community."

* Late last year, Business Week reported ("No Bush Left Behind"
October 16, 2006) that Neil Bush's Ignite! Inc. --featuring what the
company calls its "curriculum on wheels," or COWs -- received $1
million from "A foundation linked to the controversial Reverend Sun
Myung Moon ... for a COWs research project in Washington (D.C.)-area
schools."

While these items have been reported, the density of the Bush Family/
Moon relationship has been basically ignored by the traditional
press. Ironically, especially in light of Bush 41's upcoming
appearance at the Moon-sponsored Washington Times gala, last May,
David Brooks, a New York Times columnist and a commentator on PBS'
News Hour with Jim Lehrer wrote -- in a column headlined "The
Paranoid Style" -- that Kevin Phillips' claims in his bestselling
book "American Theocracy" that the Bush family has close ties to Moon
was one of a number of "bizarre assertions" in the book.

Dire analysis from former WT insider

In an Internet essay titled "Can the Washington Times
Survive?" (December 21, 2006), George Archibald, who says in his
biography that he was an investigative reporter at the Washington
Times for more than two decades, points out that "a festering
internal civil war within the company, featuring ideological and
abusive micro-management by senior TWT editors, backed by the
founder's top corporate manager at the Washington Times Corp., that
has driven out the newspaper's best people over the past five years,
and continues to drive people out," casts doubt on the newspaper's
survivability.

While praising the paper's "feisty Commentary section" for being "the
best newspaper opinion section in the country for its variety of
opinion, writers who are on top of national and world stories, and
originality in presenting best current views of all sorts, mainly
libertarian," and excoriating the editorial page and op-ed page run
by Tony Blankley, former press secretary to Newt Gingrich when he was
House speaker, for being "lame beyond belief," Archibald writes that
the "newsroom ... is in a morale slump that is so low that, as a
recently retired 21-year veteran of the newspaper's national news
staff and author of the newspaper's 20-year corporate anniversary
coffee-table book in 2002, I cannot think of a worse period in the
TWT newsroom's history since the paper's founding in May 1982 in
terms of low reporter and editor morale and low productivity when it
comes to really important breaking news scoops."

Beyond the declining credibility and morale questions, Archibald
points out that the newspaper's current management is the "main cause
of the dramatic decline of the influence and respect." The
newspaper's top management: Washington Times Corp. CEO Dong Moon Joo
(who anglicized his first name to Douglas) and the paper's two top
editors -- Wesley Pruden, scheduled to retire in five months, and
Fran Coombs managing editor.

"Pruden," writes Archibald "is an unreconstructed Confederate from
Little Rock, Arkansas, who still believes the South and slavery were
right and President Abraham Lincoln was wrong in going against the
Confederate rebellion to emancipate the slaves and save the union."
Archibald also confirms that charges in the October 9, 2006, story in
The Nation that "Coombs is a raging racist who despises blacks, Jews,
and Hispanic immigrants, and looks down on women (unless they are
white and have nice tits and well-shaped body)," was "reported
factually."

Archibald notes that "There is a corporate struggle under way between
Washington Times Corp. CEO Joo ... and the reverend's youngest son,
Preston Moon, an MBA graduate of Harvard, who has been anointed by
his father as corporate successor." According to Archibald "Preston
Moon wants to move The Times into profitability as quickly as
possible, after decades of red ink, and boost the paper's sagging
advertising, circulation, and editorial staff in order to move the
paper back into possible profitability, prestige, and a pace-setting
position again.

Smearing its way into the 21st century

Has the nearly $3 billion that he has sunk into the newspaper paid
off for Reverend Moon? Given Archibald's dire report, should the
public expect the newspaper to fold anytime soon? Despite low
circulation -- Archibald says it hovers around the 100,000 mark on a
daily basis -- Moon is clearly still drawing A-listers into his
sphere, as evidenced by the upcoming appearance of George H.W. Bush
at the paper's anniversary bash.

While Archibald paints a rather rosy picture of the newspaper's past
history, Robert Parry, author of "Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the
Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq," pointed out in a mid-February
story that over the years "the Times has targeted American
politicians of the center and left with journalistic attacks --
sometimes questioning their sanity, as happened with Democratic
presidential nominees Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. Those themes then
resonate through the broader right-wing echo chamber and often into
the mainstream media."

"In 2000, the Washington Times was at the center of the assault on Al
Gore's candidacy -- highlighting apocryphal quotes by Gore and using
them to depict him as either dishonest or delusional."

Earlier this year Insight, Moon's former print news weekly -- which
is currently online only -- reported that Hillary Clinton's
opposition research team had dug up information on her Democratic
Party rival for the 2008 presidential nomination, Barack Obama that
had him attending a fundamentalist Muslim "madrassah" while a young
child and that he was seeking to conceal his allegiance to Islam.

According to Parry, "The Insight attack on Obama was framed as a
heartfelt desire to test out the credibility of the 45-year-old
Illinois senator who identifies himself as a Christian and belongs to
a church in Chicago. 'He was a Muslim, but he concealed it,' a source
supposedly close to Clinton's background investigation of Obama told
Insight. 'The idea is to show Obama as deceptive.'"

"Insight used no named sources for the allegations, nor did the
magazine check out the facts about the school." The report "quickly
spread to the wider audiences of Rupert Murdoch's right-wing media
outlets, Fox News and the New York Post, and then into the mainstream
press. To further the subliminal link between Obama and Islamic
terrorism, the New York Post ran its story under the headline 'Osama'
Mud Flies at Obama.'"

Fox's John Gibson picked up the baton: "Hillary Clinton reported to
be already digging up the dirt on Barack Obama," said Gibson, anchor
of the network's "The Big Story." "The New York senator has
reportedly outed Obama's madrassah past. That's right, the Clinton
team reported to have pulled out all the stops to reveal something
Obama would rather you didn't know -- that he was educated in a
Muslim madrassah."

According to Parry, Obama had written "in his autobiography that
after he had attended a Catholic school for two years, his Indonesian
stepfather sent him to a 'predominantly Muslim school' in Jakarta
when he was six. This inconsequential fact apparently became the
basis for Insight's suggestion that Obama was indoctrinated at a
radical 'madrassa.'"

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs told the Washington Post that "The
allegations are completely false. To publish this sort of trash
without any documentation is surprising, but for Fox to repeat
something so false, not once, but many times is appallingly
irresponsible."

Howard Wolfson, a Clinton spokesman, called the Insight piece "an
obvious right-wing hit job by a Moonie publication that was designed
to attack Senator Clinton and Senator Obama at the same time."

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement
and a frequent writer for Media Transparency. He documents the
strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the
American Right.

Copyright 2007 Media Transparency