TV Reviews : ‘Frontline’ Penetratingly Investigates Rev. Moon

If budding investigative journalists want to see what it’s really like getting that story, they should watch reporter Eric Nadler as he runs, trots, cajoles and tries to bring down the Jericho-like walls surrounding the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in “Frontline’s” remarkable story, “The Resurrection of Reverend Moon” (9 p.m. tonight, KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15; 8 p.m. on KVCR Channel 24).

It’s not easy, but Nadler, with producer Rory O’Connor, nevertheless manages to draw a terrifying picture of a decades-long project by ultra-right-wing foreigners, led by Moon, to influence American government policy. Such influence is prohibited under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The story begins with how such Moon-supported front groups as the American Freedom Coalition insinuated themselves into innocent “support the troops” rallies during the Gulf War. Although AFC honchos deny any connection to Moon, Nadler digs up the documents to prove it.

The point is that, after being jailed for tax violations and conspiracy in the early ‘80s, Moon is back, even if the “Moonies” who pestered college campuses in the ‘60s and ‘70s are gone. The report suggests that the Moonie phenomenon was just an early phase in a larger effort by Moon and his Unification Church to gain power inside the Beltway.

James Whalen, former editor and publisher of the Moon-financed Washington Times, puts it most bluntly when he says that Moon’s shadowy organization is spending “more on . . . the obtaining of influence, of power, than any . . . organization I know of in this country”--including, he adds, the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or General Motors.

No longer--if it ever was--a church, the Moon operation, Nadler reveals, is a highly sophisticated, extremely well-heeled conglomerate that has spent more than $1 billion in the United States in the last decade.

It was money well spent. Ronald Reagan claimed to read the Washington Times first thing in the morning, and Nadler finds that several Reagan officials, including George Bush, had contacts with or ties to the Moon operation.

Dogged investigator that he is, Nadler hunts down the money trail in all this, and it leads to Ryoichi Sasakawa, a major Japanese magnate with a fascist background. With these deepest of deep pockets, Moon’s empire looks to be around indefinitely.