God endorsed Holocaust, says Bush pal

Meet Chung Hwan Kwak, the number two man to the Reverend Moon, Washington Times owner. Mr. Kwak is the corporate official directly in charge of the conservative paper. A new photo finds him with the Bushes:

This is from a Korean news show. A reporter was touring Kwak's office, and the cult leader proudly showed him this photo, which the camera zoomed in on it. (We'll come back later to this fascinating picture, which has just become public knowledge.)

(If you're new to this developing scandal, read Bill Berkowitz's posts on Moon and Neil Bush.) Fun facts about Chung Hwan Kwak:

1) In 2003, echoing his master's anti-Semitic teachings, Kwak told an audience that Hitler carried out the Holocaust with "God's permission."

"Judaism committed a historical sin in front of Jesus, so Jewish people experienced the Holocaust under Hitler. Without God's permission, would it really have been possible for Hitler to do such a massacre?"

2) Kwak gained power in a palace coup within Moon's "royal family." There was a cruel and unpleasantly violent undertone to this upheaval.

One ex-Moonie told me, during the research for my book Bad Moon Rising, that Kwak was "Moon's Karl Rove," a "total bastard who will cut your nuts off at the first opportunity." Which you might agree with after you read the following story.

Until the late 1980s, another man, Col. Bo Hi Pak, was the loyal aide to Moon, the Spock to his Captain Kirk. Then, in 1988, the Washington Post's Michael Isikoff (of Lewinskygate fame) reported a grotesque series of events that ended with Pak rushed to Georgetown Hospital for a week, after suffering a burst blood vessel in his skull.

The church claimed Pak had fallen down a flight of stairs. But in her memoir In the Shadow of the Moons, Rev. Moon's daughter-in-law Nansook Hong said Pak had been beaten up as part of a scheme originated by Kwak, a story confirmed by others.

It started when Kwak introduced to the church's inner circle a Zimbabwean thug whom he claimed to be "channeling" the spirit of Moon's dead son. In the ensuing madness, Kwak convinced Pak and others to confess their sins to the Zimbabwean in private sessions. Kwak's inquisitor then pummeled the confessors senseless as part of this miracle, chaining them to radiators, pistol-whipping them, braining them with baseball bats.

Hearing of this violence, Rev. Moon, wrote Nansook Hong, "would laugh raucously if someone out of favor had been dealt an especially hard blow."

When the dust settled, the Zimbabwean miracle was widely considered a mistake; Pak was a broken man; and Kwak was the new leader of Moon's organization.

Wrote ex-Washington Times opinion editor Bill Cheshire:

"The Pak beating smacks strongly of Jonestown. And with Moon lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars a year on newspapers, magazines and political action groups in this country and abroad, such occult and aggressive practices give rise to secular apprehensions. If the 'reincarnation' doesn't rock those conservative shops that have been taking money from Moon, not even fire-breathing dragons would disturb them."

3) Dick Cheney is in that picture too.

4) Shouldn't all this be, I don't know, a big deal? Here's Rev. Moon's own "God Damn America" clip:

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/4/15/12450/1945