Rev. Moon, the Bushes & Rumsfeld & North Korea

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/010301a.html

January 3, 2001

Rev. Moon, the Bushes & Donald Rumsfeld

By Robert Parry

George W. Bush’s choice of Donald Rumsfeld to be U.S. defense secretary could put an unintended spotlight on the role of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon – a Bush family benefactor – in funneling millions of dollars to communist North Korea in the 1990s as it was developing a missile and nuclear weapons program.

In 1998, Rumsfeld headed a special commission, appointed by the Republican-controlled Congress, that warned that North Korea had made substantial progress during the decade in building missiles that could pose a potential nuclear threat to Japan and parts of the United States.

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"North Korea maintains an active WMD program, including a nuclear weapon program. It is known that North Korea diverted material in the late 1980s for at least one or possibly two weapons," the report said.
Rumsfeld’s alarming assessment of North Korea’s war-making capabilities now is being cited by Republicans as a justification for investing billions of taxpayer dollars in an anti-missile defense system favored by Bush and Rumsfeld.
Yet, during the early-to-mid 1990s, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was monitoring a series of clandestine payments from Sun Myung Moon's organization to the North Korean communist leaders who were overseeing the country's military strategies.

According to DIA documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Moon’s payments to North Korean leaders included a $3 million “birthday present” to current communist leader Kim Jong Il and offshore payments amounting to “several tens of million dollars” to the previous communist dictator, Kim Il Sung.
The alleged payments – and broader Moon-North Korean business deals reported by the DIA – came at a time of a strict U.S. government ban on financial transactions between North Korea and any U.S. person or entity, to keep hard currency out of North Korea's hands.

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