MOON PAPER: SIGNIFICANT D.C. FORUM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605620002-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: June 15, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

3 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605620002-4
ARTICLE APiEA ED
V '~. ^ 1 a 1
Washington Times
Moon Paper:
Significant
D.C.. Forum
By THOMAS B. ROSENSTIEL,
Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON-For those who
monitor status In this town by
tracking guest lists and reception
lines-and many do-the seating
Arrangements at the recent White
House Correspondents banquet of-
fered hard evidence of the chang-
ing, role of the Washington Times,
the flamboyant newspaper fi-
nanced by the Rev. Sun Myung
Moon's Unification Church.
-Last year, the highest-ranking
Administration officials to grace
the- Washington Times table were
.the director of the U.S. Information
Agency and the secretary of the
Air'Force.
This year,.tlie journal Washing-
ton once dismissed as the "Moonie
Paper" rated Atty. Gen. Edwin
Meese III, National Security Advis-
er Robert C. McFarlane, former
Secretary of State Alexander M.
Haig Jr. and Energy Secretary
John S. Herrington.
Circulation of 83,000
Over the last three years-and
particularly during President Rea-
gan's second term-the paper the
Korean evangelist founded as part
of his conservative global war on
communism has become a signifi-
cant " forum in the world's most
powerful city,
Although It has a circulation of
just 83,000 and is losing tens of
millions of dollars, the Washington
Times has been embraced by the
conservative movement; it is espe-
cially well read at the White
House, where Reagan has given it
his public endors rent.
"Everybody here (in the White
1 louse) gets it. Everybody here
reads it," said Patrick J. Buchanan,
Reagan's director of communica-
tions and a former syndicated col-
umnist whose wgrk.appeared in the
paper. "Thttaaltan Times to
VLri. .,
LOS ANGELES TITTS
15 June 1985
Despite such controversial polit-
ical activities as a campaign to raise
funds for the Nicaraguan contras,
the newspaper now Is read out of
necessity by liberals and-conserva-
tives, and monitored by other news
operations because Administration
Sources leak exclusive storied to it.
Medium for Special Interests
Because of such leaks, the
Washington Times was first with
Administration reports that Soviet
combat advisers had been spotted
alongside Nicaraguan troops inlar-
eas of contra activity. It was also
the first to publish allegations that
House Speaker Thomas P.: (Tip)
O'Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) had deliber-
ately manipulated the date of a
vote on aid to the contras in order
to block the proposal:
. The paper, has even become " a
way for special interests-usually
conservative-to shape the news
agenda of other, media, and stories
that might be disregarded or run
merely as part of larger stories,
elsewhere today are getting banner'
play in the Washington Times.
"Certain sources choose to give
them exclusives," admitted Leon-
ard Downie Jr., managing editor of
the Washington Post. "On occa-
sion, yes, we have followed those
stories ourselves because they
come from 1jgitimate documents of
a newsworthy nature.
By. traditional business stand-
ards, the paper- is hardly a success.
The Washington Times' national
edition, for instance, has just 9,000
subscribers. Advertising linage in
both editions is lean. And in its first
21 years, according to internal
documents, the paper lost $150
million.
In its avowed political purpose of
becoming a force in Washington,
however, the paper has fared far
better. The Washington Times was
founded in May, 1982, as. part of,the
Unification Church's "battle
against what it sees as the ultimate
enemy of human values and free-
dom-communism," according to a
Washington Times promotional
booklet.
Initially, suspicion existed over
Moon's motives and the prospect of
a controversial evangelical sect
gaining. political influence. Moon
was convicted of tax evasion in
1982 and is now serving an 18-
month sentence.
Suspicion Intensifies
Suspicion intensified when
foundii{
sisted that the paper was funded
simply by businesses in which
Moon associates had directorships.
Later, when Whelan was fired over
business differences with the own-
ers, he charged. that Unification
Church members were asserting
too much control.
Today, the Washington Times'
new editor-in-chief, Arnaud de
Borchgrave, says he "can live quite
comfortably" with Moon's politics..
Be also says he agrees with Unifi-
cation Church claims that Moon is a
victim of U.S. "political- persecu-
tion. -
"The Rev. Moon is in jail because
of., his convictions, because he rep-
resents a worldwide anti-commu-
nist crusade," De Borchgrave said.
"No question about that.... He is
an anti-communist, and that seems
to be a crime in our society today."
Today, the Unification Church's
ownership is much less .of a prob-
lem for the newspaper than it once
was. Both conservatives and liber-
als say the newspaper shows little
evidence of Moon's religious cru-
sade-only his political conserva-
tism.
In Tune With Current Mood
Moreover, the Washington
Times' avowed conservative pur-
pose and aggressive criticism of
other media-especially the rival
Washington Post-as too liberal
have matched the conservative
swing in Washington.
"Were there no move to the
right, no Reagan Revolution, there
would have been no position from
which the Washington Times could
have been nurtured," said John
Buckley, former deputy press sec-
retary to the Reagan campaign and
now press deputy for Rep. Jack
Kemp (R-N.Y.).
"Now, it has really become an
important source of communica-
tions among conservatives," Buck-
ley said. "It covers the conserva-
tive movement in detail and reports
on things important to conserva-
tives that might be overlooked
elsewhere."
Most important, the paper has
won Reagan's repeated endorse-
ment. After reelection, for in-
stance, the President granted his
first exclusive post-election inter-
view to the Washington Times, and
said that he read the paper every
morning. In a Rose Garden address
last summer, he advised students
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from the National YMCA Youth
Governor's Conference to read that
morning's Washington Times to
learn about geopolitics.
The paper also influences the-
President. In accepting the nomi-
nation for reelection in Dallas last
year, Reagan used material from
Washington Times columnist War-
ren Brookes on the impact of
Reagan's budget cuts. Brookes says
he often receives calls from White
House aides asking for more infor-
mation because the President had
clipped one of his columns and was
interested.
Once the president and his staff
were known to be readers, the
Washington Times' news and com-
mentary pages became impor.-
tant-a .place where one might
influence the President, or at least
anticipate his thinking.
"I began picking it up when I
began knowing full well that,it had
the blessings-of the White House,"
said Bob Neuman, former commu-
nications director of the Democrat-
ic National Committee and now a
Washington public affairs consul-
tant.
Once it had the President's im-
primatur and began to be used by
some Administration officials as a
forum in which to break stories, the
Washington Times began to have
an. impact on other media. Even
though some journalists consider,
the paper to be a polemical journal,
most of the major news bureaus in
town now monitor it each day.
Disinformation Network Cited
However, the paper often runs
stories about which most other
media are skeptical. The Washing-
ton Times, for instance, was entire-
ly alone in running a five-part
series alleging - that communist in-
terests have constructed a disinfor-
mation network in the United
States to dupe the American media.
(The existence of such massive
disinformation operations was the
premise of De Borchgrave's own
best-selling book, "The Spike.") "Intelligence experts call it 'The
Network'-a massive but almost
invisible spider's web of hundreds
of left-wing groups and organiza-
tions, linked together by sinewy
threads of personnel, ideology and
politics, and seeking dramatic
changes in the social, economic and
political policies of the United
States government," the series be-
an. "And now, Network ghas 2
report on policy or affect policy, fn
focused all its attention and re- that sense it seems to me there is a
sources on its latest target: Presi- difference in the news presentation
dent Reagan's Latin American po1- between the Washington Times
icy." and other papers," said Bill Ko-
"You still try t -break big stories vach, the New York Times' Wash-
elsewhere, but there are some ington bureau chief. "The editorial
stories of more parochial interests decisions at the (Washington)
to conservatives that -only the Times are more ideological."
Washington Times will cover, but Even some Republicans said the
if they have general news value paper favors the interests of the
they will get picked up,"'said Kemp more extreme so-called New Right
press secretary Buckley. over other conservatives. "They
Kemp-Ging-
Questionable Stories Surface definitely reflect the Kemp-Ging-
rich wing of the party," said an
At times. stories with more aues official from the Senate Republican
tionable news value get picked up 'leadership, referring to Kemp and
from the 12pye r as well.' On Ma 17, 'Rep. Newt Gingrich, a conserva-
the Was gton es' lea >'sto= tive Republican from Georgia.
ry-play wi banner headline -This question of ideology has
across page 1- ^ n h intensified since the hiringin
to be given the next day by CIA March of De Borchgrave as the
Director William J. CAsey ahnn Washington Times' new editor-
I?.S. policy in Latin American in-chief.
port from an -advance 'copy t De Borchgrave, Newsweek's
the speech obtained . . by the former 'chief foreign correspon-
WashingtonTimes?" - dent, is a theatrical globe-trotter
The: Washington Times -called who. once boasted that he kept the
the speech "the most corm en- combat fatigues of 12 nations in his
sive argument for~f.S U.S. assistance to closet so that he?could dash to wars-
the Nicaraguan resistance vet put on a moment's notice.
forward by the Reagan Adminis- He was fired from Newsweek in
tration?" 1980, because, he suggests, of his
But when the Associated- Press politics and his perceptions about
called the CIA for comment while communist manipulation of the
rewriting the story or its wire- it 'media. Newsweek sources said the
discovered that Casey had deliv- magazine in part had begun to
ered the same speech more than way that ~De Borchgrave- had
two weeks earlier to the Metropoli- become too close to his sources in
tan Club of New York. International intelligence circles.
Washington Times editors and ` De Borchgrave has made such
the paper's supporters say the changes at the paper as setting up ,q
paper's different story selection fund to pay reporters $1,000 bonus-.
and slant on the news are simply a es for what he calls "bell-ringdr"
necessary balance to the Washing- stories.
ton Post, which they consider bi- He has attracted the most atteW'
ased and liberal. tion in his new job, however, for his
On occasion, it is true the same political activities rather than 1I1
event is covered quite differently journalistic ones. In March he of-
by the two papers and judging the fered a $1 -million reward for info;;;
accuracy of either is difficult. tpetion leading to the arrest, trial
-A hearing on Capitol Hill or nd conviction of Nazi war cri mi
international terrorism, for in- ,)9sef, Mengele. In May he launched
stance, was covered on Page 1 of 4a fund In the paper's name to raise
the Washington Times and began $14 million in aid: for the contras in
by saying, "Increasingly violent Nicaragua; a response to what he
international terrorists are select- considered Congress' moral failure
ing new targets among Americans to authorize the contras aid.
abroad. . . " The Post ran the Even Downie at the Post said he
story inside and began with, "The thinks the paper has become more
Reagan Administration's counter- lively under De Borchgrave. And
terrorism programs may lead to the many conservatives, Buckley said,
killing of innocent bystanders on "pave,. a 'certain am'"ount of toler-
occasion.... " ance" for "such initiatives as the
".If- you think about whether the ! Nicaraguah aid fund because they
-news presentation is designed to support the paper in general.
JCOATE~VAZy
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Many other journalists, however,
find the- Nicaraguan-.aid initiative.
utterly' improper for 1 newspaper,
including; according to insiders;
sbme sta?f,members at,the Wash
inngton Ztiii ..
This is absolutely appalling for
SP newspaper to do, said Los An-
geles Tunes Washington- Bureau
chief Jack " Nelson i` t really has
become ' a different=newspaper in
tie last: year I; po4onger ithink it
has much credibility." Nelson also
said he 4thinks the Washington
Times now'41s almost a house organ.
forthe R.ea an Administration ".
De: rave, in part to quell
qi estions sn his own-staff,,posted a
message' on the office . bulletin
bhardo: "Some of our left-wing
detractors will , doubtless ask
whether it.is the role of a newspa-;
per to kill people '1'hequestion.has
no relevance to.whatis being done
here. Let's put thequestion anoth
, er way. Should the, French have"
aided George WashingtonK;. soxtthe~
istence? Should we have aid4the
French resistance against the Na-
zis? . . . Of course we should have
aided people fighting for freedom."
Admits Conservativeness
De Borchgrave believes. that
most journalists not only share a
liberal ideological agenda, but also
are trying to further that agenda in
their newspapers, and broadcasts.
"I find it extraordinary for (Wash-
ington Post editor) Ben Bradlee to
go around saying he's riota liberal,"
De Borchgrave said. "Why is - he
ashamed of being a liberal? I mean,
I' have many liberal friends... .
And I'm a conservative.' I'm not
ashamed of it.
"There -seems to be increasingly
in our society censorship by omis-
sion," De Borchgrave said. "Stories
are deliberately ignored, or buried
because they might change per-
ceptions in a way the self-anointed
opinion molders might disapprove
of."
if adds up, De Borchgrave sug-
gested, so that "We in the media
seem to be spreading. the plague of
self-hatred. America the racist.
America the exploiter. America the
uncompassionate: America on the
wrong side of history. I'm getting
tired of that."
Many wonder what will happen
to the Washington Times when a
Democratic Administration next
returns to power.
Syndicated columnist Jody Pow-
ell, who served as press, secretary
to Jimmy Carter, suggested that
"'their coverage; would shift much
more to the Hill and the Republican
opposition there," if Democrats
took power. "But the. tension
among the various right-wing phi-
losophies would become greater,"
once Reagan, is gone, and the
question would be- which
right-wing philosophy are they
representing."
Others, however, agree, with
Stephen Hess of the ..Brookings
Institution that the paper "could
become an important back channel
of opposition," and. a permanent
fixture on the conservative side in
official Washington.
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