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Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Here's a guy the Republicans don't want us to know about.

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church and a self-declared Messiah from South Korea, is a major behind-the-scenes GOP player. His organization owns The Washington Times, the right-wing newspaper Ronald Reagan once called his favorite. Moon said he has pumped over $1 billion into the paper since the Church bought it in 1982. Those poor Moonies had to sell a lot of flowers!

Most folks recognize Moon as a dangerous cult leader who has recruited, brainwashed, and enslaved thousands of unsuspecting students from college campuses since the 1970s.

They also remember the mass weddings he conducted at Yankee and RFK stadiums where thousands of couples were brought together. Critics say church officials arranged the marriages to circumvent American immigration laws.

Moon controls a multibillion dollar tax-free business empire. In the mid-1980s, he served a year in prison for tax evasion. A lesser known fact is that his business operations have competed for, and received, government contracts worth millions of dollars. No ordinary commercial operation can compete with a Moonie shop because you can't beat the low cost of slave labor.

Moon says he's the only person in the world who knows all the secrets of God. Well, isn't he smart? He says he's been the Messiah ever since he ran into Jesus in Korea in 1936. He says Jesus asked him to take over the mission -- the one Moon says Jesus screwed up because He didn't get married.

Moon continues his lifelong pursuit of recognition -- to be crowned the new world Messiah. But he has often complained, "look, I'm doing my best to be the Messiah. You try to be the Messiah." Look, Moonpie -- Jesus never bitched about it, so clam up!

Moon came to the U.S. in the early 1970s. His organization is said to be not religious, but political. It has connections to South Korean intelligence operations designed to bolster the U.S. commitment to Seoul in case North Korea invades. His clout in Washington increased substantially during the Reagan administration because both Reagan and Moon are rabid anti-Communists.

He has given millions of dollars to a number of Republicans. Paid speakers at his Family Federation for World Peace have included George Bush, William Bennett, Jack Kemp, and Ralph Reed. In the early 1990s, his organization funneled millions to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University when it was facing staggering debts.

And Moon has strange ideas about sex. He's been married four times, but his followers say the first three marriages were not consummated and thus do not count.

Moon once told a conference that misunderstandings about male and female sex organs have led to confusion. He said his theology dictates that the husband owns his wife's sex organs, and vice versa. So if my wife wants to castrate me, that's her right?

And where does he stand on family values? In 1998, his daughter-in-law, Nansook Hong, told 60 Minutes that Moon had cheated on his wife and fathered an illegitimate son. She said he called it "providential affairs." That Moon's got a fancy word for everything, especially when he's been doing something naughty.

Nansook also told of a brutal beating she got from her drug-and-alcohol-addicted husband when she was pregnant. Moon and his wife blamed her, saying it was her fate to suffer. Her fate? Well, screw that! So Nansook fled Moon's high-security compound in Tarrytown, New York, along with her five children.

Moon also has an estranged daughter, Un-Jin. She supports her sister-in-law's story.

And this guy says he's the new Messiah. Yeah, right.