Newspaper Legitimizes Global Cult

• A "conservative" Washington daily is pushing for a world government headed by a strange cult boss who revels in multicultrualism.

About 100,000 Americans read the Washington Times and enjoy a good "conservative" product featuring Pat Buchanan and important stories ignored by the Washington Post -- but they should know the paper's reals mission.

The Times' founder and financial angel, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, dreams of a world government with himself as the theocratic dictator. The source for this information is Moon.

After parlaying money begged on the streets and at airports by members of the Unification Church into billions, Moon is buying respectability with the Rimes, which is said to be "must" reading among conservative opinion-makers in Washington.

Moon's first newspaper venture, the short-lived New York Tribune went nowhere, sold mostly to true believers in his cult. It featured lengthy tributes to Moon and his cause and news was merely filler material.

So, with expert advise, Moon entered the Washington newspaper market with a more professional product. He hired James Whalen, then publisher of a metropolitan paper in California, as his founding editor and publisher.

Whalen, who had a ling and distinguished career covering South America for Scripps-Howard newspapers, often said publicly that he would quit the Times if the unification Church ever tried to exert editorial control.

He produced a good newspaper, covering stories shunned by the liberal Establishment and offering a cafeteria of conservative opinion columns, in addition to Buchanan.

MOONIE INFLUENCE

Except for one rupture, in which the Times gave heavy page-one play to a mass wedding performed by Moon uniting thousands of couples whom he had brought together, the church's control was unobservable.

But it was there in the form of Josette Shiner, now managing editor. When the Times was launched in the spring of 1982, the title and role of Mrs. Shiner was obscure. But she was and is a glazed-eye member of the Moonie cult.

Members of the church are sometimes referred to as Moonies, after their leader.

Mrs. Shiner's power was demonstrated in 1982 when Whalan hired Jim Tucker, a freelance writer whose work often appears in The SPOTLIGHT, as national editor. Whalan had read The SPOTLIGHT and both were Scripps-Howard veterans.

Mrs. Shiner was able to overrule the publisher and fire Rucker, who had written unflattering pieces about the Moonies. Two years later, Whalan was gone. He quit. His explanation was simple: "The Times is a Moonie newspaper."

Meanwhile, the Washington Times Foundation was also busy buying respectability, staging events featuring 'conservative" speakers. The newspaper continued to pursue a "conservative editorial policy.

But when the Moonie perceive that the time is at hand, the Rimes will throw its weight behind the movement for world government. Moon made this clear in a speech on the occasion of the Times' 15th anniversary June 16, which also concluded its conference on a "New World Culture."

"Among Americans, some people do not like the concept of One World under God," Moon said. 'Some white people do not like black people.

"Now the times are changing,' he added. "The coming time is the age of One World under God. God is working for this kind of world."

Moon called for a global "UN University" to help people learn to be world "saints."

"America should feel indebted to me, he said.