Talk:United States Congressional investigation of the Unification Church

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This article was nominated for deletion on August 15, 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

I'm not sure the title of this article, United States Congressional Report on the Unification Church, is correct. The Fraser Committee explicitly denied that its investigation was primarily about the Unification Church but rather on Korean-American Relations.

Of course, the church's position is that Fraser abused his committee for self-aggrandizement at the expense of the church, and it published a detailed critique of what it called 'the Fraser Report' (see Truth Is My Sword, by Bo Hi Pak).

Nonetheless, a major focus of the committee and the bulk of its report was to leak allegations against what it repeatedly called "the Moon Organization". None of these allegations were ever substantiated, as the Fraser Report actually admits. They pursued a PR strategy of:

• Leak the allegation
• Make sure it gets wide publicity
• Quietly admit to having no evidence to back up the accusation

--Ed Poor, not bitter just sad :-(

Ed, you of all people should be able to answer this: The Unification Church claims that "when the Fraser Report was finally published, it admitted (in one hard-to-find sentence) that none of the allegations asserted in the rest of the report could be substantiated." Where in the report is this hard-to-find sentence? Also, if these allegations were untrue, then surely Moon would have sued Congressman Fraser and the government for libel? --Modemac 23:44, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. I'm much more interested in building Wikipedia, than in using it to defend my church. But since you ask, here's a lengthy quotation from Bo Hi Pak: -- Uncle Ed (talk) 17:14, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

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==Begrudging Admissions--

Mr. Fraser conducted the most extensive congressional inquiry into a religious organization in recent history, alleging that the Unification Church was a front for the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. To prove this, he subpoenaed church officials, interviewed scores of present and former church members, minutely scrutinized church financial records (literally tons of documents were turned over to the subcommittee), probed the business and political affiliations of church members, sent investigators to Korea, and speculated about the meaning of the church's religious doctrines and teachings. Despite all of this, in the end he had to admit that all of his major allegations were false. Rather than apologizing for the ugly rumors his investigation had spread, however, Mr. Fraser buried his admissions in begrudging, single-line statements in the middle of a 447-page report that few people will ever read.

For instance, Mr. Fraser's final report on Korean-American relations had to recognize the following:

1. That the Unification Church and associated organizations were not agents for the Korean Government or the KCIA (Fraser report p. 389).

2. That the ridiculous rumor that the Director of the KCIA had founded the Unification Church-a rumor propagated by Mr. Fraser himself-had no basis in fact (Fraser report p. 354).

3. That the ugly stories, made public by the investigation, alleging that Rev. Moon had been arrested on morals charges in Korea also turned out to be utterly groundless (Fraser report p. 353).

4. That there was no evidence of funding by the Korean government and no collusion between the members of the Unification Church and Tongsun Park with regard to stock purchases in the Diplomat National Bank (Fraser report pp. 385-6).

No, Mr. Fraser could not bring himself to make these admissions publicly. Instead he made a series of new charges, many of which have nothing at all to do with Korean-American relations and are equally outlandish and unfounded. As a fig leaf to hide his own failure, Mr. Fraser has now asked for more investigations. After spending $685,000 and nearly three years, all he could recommend is that "somebody should investigate." When one Washington reporter heard this at his press conference he commented, "Do you mean after all this time and money, you're calling for another investigation? You've got to be joking!" [1]