EXPOSE: THE "CHRISTIAN" MAFIA (PART 3)

One of the first tactics employed by the Fellowship was to expand outward from the Cedars. The Fellowship purchased two homes in close proximity to the Cedars that became "group homes" (dormitories) in violation of county ordinances prohibiting such homes without proper state and county accreditation.
The Fellowship argued that it had verbal authorization from the county for such homes, a point of contention with some of the non-Fellowship neighbors. The two homes are called Ivanwald (a group home for men) and Potomac Point (a group home for women). It was well known to the neighbors that these group homes were used to house troubled teens and young adults (a significant number of them were the children of prominent politicians and businessmen) but the Fellowship kept the names and home addresses of these mostly out-of-state "guests" a secret from the county government and the local Woodmont Civic Association, which began to complain about the out-of-state traffic as well as certain VIP limousines constantly speeding through the quiet residential neighborhood in north Arlington.

Although secrecy was paramount to its operations, the Fellowship saw a need for a public relations point man. They selected Richard E. Carver, a former Republican mayor of Peoria, Illinois; a reserve Air Force colonel, and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management under Ronald Reagan. In 1982, Carver, a member of Reagan’s Commission on Housing, recommended cutting billions of dollars from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 8 housing program. That resulted in thousands of people, including families with children, going homeless across the nation. According to the Chicago Tribune, Carver caused waves in the Air Force when he insisted on purchasing custom made Air Force dinnerware and whiskey glasses from a West German manufacturer for the use of 65 Air Force attaches in capital around the world. It turned out that Carver wanted to impress the top management at Passau, West Germany-based ZF Industries with his abilities to expedite procurement through the vast Air Force bureaucracy. There was one problem for Carver – the Pentagon had a directive prohibiting such purposes except for a very few top flag rank officers. In 1986, Carver bypassed the Secretary of Defense and went straight to the Secretary of the Air Force for authorization to spend $100,000 on the West German dinnerware. When the cost of the dinnerware increased to $115,000, Air Force purchasing officers began to complain.

Subsequently, the West German china manufacturer went through ZF Industries to complain that the cost did not cover shipping. Carver then requested additional money for shipping costs. When that posed a problem, carver suggested that the dinnerware order be increased to $1.1 million to cover the original order in addition to custom made china for 138 commanders, mostly colonels, of Air Force bases and stations around the world. Lt. Gen. Carl Smith, chief of the Air Staff, then put his foot down – telling Carver that his china deal was way out of line. Smith said if colonels received dinnerware, every general would want it also. The bill could top $6.3 million. Smith told Carver the money could be used to improve dilapidated housing for officers and enlisted men in some of the Air Force’s residential units. Carver told General Smith that he should reconsider, whereupon, Smith retorted with a firm "No." In other words, Smith was not about the follow such a ludicrous order from a civilian superior.

Carver eventually left the Pentagon. He hooked up with the Fellowship as its major front man, became a consultant for Smith Barney (it was reported that Carver actually was retained by Smith Barney as a consultant while he still worked at the Pentagon at a fee of $920 a month), and joined ZF Industries as head of its U.S. subsidiary. The Chicago Tribune referred to Carver as an "Ed Meese of the Pentagon." The comparison was serendipitous. Meese, Reagan’s ethically-challenged Attorney General, was also a core member of the Fellowship. One of Carver’s deputies at the time was Ernie Fitzgerald, the whistleblower who, in 1968, identified a $2 billion overrun with the C5A cargo plane. His reputation as a dogged whistleblower on government waste and fraud with contractors, Carver quickly gave Fitzgerald and unfavorable performance report and transferred Fitzgerald out of his office, which prompted a complaint from Representative John Dingell (D-MI), a determined watchdog on contractor overruns. Carver told People magazine, "Ernie has the capacity to really irritate people . . . He has a kind of antagonistic way of doing things." Certainly, not the way of the Fellowship, where people smile, talk about their commitment to "Jesus," and engage in backroom shady deals. Soon, Carver would turn his attention away from the likes of Fitzgerald and towards the suspicious neighbors of the Cedars.

Residents of the Woodmont neighborhood of Arlington noticed something strange about the Cedars shortly after the Fellowship moved in. One long time Arlingtonian was hired to do some plumbing at the estate. He noticed in 1980 that the estate’s "carriage house" had been converted into a group home. Men and women who stayed there were assigned chores around the complex – women would cook and do the laundry while the men would tend to the lawn and perform other maintenance work. In 1980, the Fellowship referred to themselves not only as "The Family" but also "The Way." The plumber also noticed that the old "well house," which sat in an extreme corner of the estate, overlooking Washington, DC, was converted into a residence. Although that home appears nowhere on Arlington zoning maps, neighbors have discovered that it serves as the residence for Coe when he visits the Cedars.

After it became apparent that the Fellowship was establishing much more than a place of worship in North Arlington, neighbors became more concerned. The first event that triggered suspicion was when a one-lane bridge that carried cars, bicycles, and pedestrians on North Uhle Street over Spout Run Parkway collapsed. The Fellowship saw to it that without the bridge, it turned its end of what was renamed 24th Street became a secured cul-de-sac. Even though the very end of 24th Street remains county property, the Fellowship painted the bridge supports white to give them the appearance that they were a "gate" onto the Fellowship’s private property. When non-Fellowship neighbors tried to have the one-lane bridge rebuilt as a pedestrian and bicycle trail, the Fellowship resorted to a nasty campaign to discredit and harass the proponents. As a result, a mini-civil war broke out in quiet Woodmont. Some residents suggested the Fellowship actually sabotaged the original North Uhle Street bridge to provide permanent secrecy and security.

Similar suspicions surround the purchase by a Fellowship member of the neighboring 19-acre estate property, which was resold to Arlington County. The county turned it into a historic site and park – the Fort C.S. Smith Park. However, a number of residents contend the Fellowship wanted the park to be a security buffer zone. Originally, there were plans to build a nursing home on the adjoining property. Although the park closes at night, it keeps its lights on 24 hours a day. A government source confided the Fellowship worked out a deal with the county to keep the lights on so the parking lot can be used as an emergency heliport in the event the Cedars must evacuate its VIPs.

In August 2003, Ivanwald and the Cedars received the kind of attention it disdains. The Washington Post ran a couple of stories about James Hammond, a 21-year-old male resident of Ivanwald, who broke into four homes in the Woodmont neighborhood looking for prescription drugs. Although he broke into four homes, he pleaded guilty to breaking into only two. Rose Kehoe, the past president of the Woodmont Civic Association, complained about the secrecy associated with the Fellowship’s dormitories for the troubled youth. Some neighbors argued that criminal background checks should be required for the residents of the Fellowship homes. In addition, residents of Woodmont, who referred to the Fellowship as the "pod people," complained that additional Fellowship youth were being housed in other Fellowship homes in the neighborhood. Over twenty homes in the Woodmont neighborhood were purchased by Fellowship members as of the end of 2004. Kehoe told the Post, "We don’t know who is running around. We don’t know if they are criminals or previous sex offenders."

One local resident told the Arlington County Board that the young people who stay at the Cedars complex appear "abnormally passive." She said that they wait for "God to tell them what to do."

Passions became inflamed when non-Fellowship residents learned that the Fellowship never possessed a special permit to run group homes in the neighborhood, a violation of Arlington County’s zoning laws. Carver, the Fellowship spokesman, insisted the Fellowship had an informal verbal nod from the county. A number of the young residents who filter in and out of Ivanwald and Potomac Point are students from Christian evangelical Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California.

Another bone of contention between the Fellowship and residents was the speeding limousines that transported U.S. and international political VIPs to and from the Cedars. On Tuesday mornings, the Cedars hosts an "ambassadors breakfast," while on Thursday mornings, former Senator Charles Percy hosts something called the "International Finance Meeting" for 25 people. One retired Washington, DC newspaper editor who has lived in Woodmont for 48 years referred to the Fellowship as the "rich Christians." Doug Coe has also played host to arch neo-conservative Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (who is Jewish) at prayer meetings at the Cedars, which is all the more intriguing since Bush selected Wolfowitz to be the next President of the World Bank.

A U.S. State Department bus transports foreign and U.S. diplomats to and from the Cedars for the Tuesday morning 7:30-9:30 a.m. meeting. Yet more limousines arrive at the Cedars for a meeting held at 9:30 p.m. on Sundays. The county placed speed bumps on 24th Street to answer the concerns about speeding motorcades but they did not deter the speeding. One neighbor estimated that there are some 80 limousine trips per week to the Cedars. Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat visited the Cedars in 1999 complete with his automatic weapon-carrying security guards. Out-of-state license plates abound at the Cedars compound.

To say that the Cedars is wired into American foreign policy would be an extreme understatement. One of the Fellowship’s core members with significant links to the foreign policy establishment, including the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), is Dr. Douglas Johnston, a veteran of nuclear submarines, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy and Director of Policy Planning and Management in the Office of the Secretary of Defense under Jimmy Carter, and the founder and president of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy. Johnston, who was involved in various international conflict resolution programs, prepared a conflict resolution casebook in which he cites Buchman’s Moral Rearmament post-war reconciliation efforts between Germany and France. Of course, for Buchman and his friends, those efforts largely involved nothing more than reintegrating supporters of the German Nazis and Vichy French back into government and business.

The Cedars have hosted various world leaders – becoming what has amounted to a shadow State Department. Perhaps its importance as an international rendezvous point is why several miles of fiber optic cables have been installed at the Cedars by Verizon and Comcast. In one instance, the Fellowship requested permission to build an "underground chapel" on the Cedars premises. Although the facility was never built, neighbors suspected that it was a bomb shelter.

Local residents, who, as they put it, have not drunk the Fellowship’s "Kool Aid," point to the constantly expanding Fellowship enclave in Arlington. They claim the Fellowship has taken over two local church congregations – Falls Church Episcopal and Cherrydale Baptist – as well as opening their own private school – Rivendell. Two other northern Virginia churches reportedly have a number of Fellowship congregants – Potomac Falls Episcopal and McLean Bible Church. In addition, Arlington skeptics of the Fellowship point to the increasing political clout of the Fellowship, for example, in placing one of its members, Michael Foster, on the Arlington Planning Commission as chairman, successfully buying the votes of four of the five members of the Arlington County Board (all Democrats), and installing an ally as president of the Woodmont Civic Association.

Sometimes, the Fellowship invites members and non-members alike to special functions at the Cedars. For example, it sent out this invitation in 2004:

HISTORY UNITES US

Woodmont Neighbors and Friends of the Cedars

Are cordially invited to attend a

Free Lecture on

Oriental Rugs

Safi Kaskas of Beirut, Lebanon

Saturday, May 1, 2004

Hosts: Hon. And Mrs. Don Bonker [former Democratic Representative from State of Washington]



When non-members attend such functions at the Cedars, they are assigned one person who follows them everywhere they go. In every room in the Cedars, they are always under the watchful gaze of a photograph of Billy Graham. Coe has been referred to as the "shadow Billy Graham."

According to Arlingtonians who have investigated the Fellowship, Doug Coe once owned a residence in very liberal Takoma Park, Maryland and continues to own residences in Annapolis, Maryland (where he and his followers have similarly taken over a residential area cul-de-sac) and Seattle, Washington, the one-time hometown of his mentor Vereide. Local politicians point to the Fellowship’s generous political contributions as a way of buying influence and maintaining their secrecy in the county.

Another troublesome aspect to the Fellowship’s expanding presence in Arlington is a resurgence of Nazi activity in the county. "White power" and Nazi groups continue to hold meetings in the same North Arlington neighborhoods where Rockwell and his Nazis once lived. The rise of Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in Louisiana GOP politics spurred the Nazi movement around the country, including the persistent cell in Arlington. As late as 1999, these meetings attracted Nazi skinheads from around the country as well as foreign leaders, like the leader of the British National Front, a racist, ultra-right party. In addition, there were very recent cases of anti-Semitism experienced by members of one of the local American Legion posts. It should be recalled that the American Legion was to be used as the vanguard of the 1930s right-wing coup against Franklin Roosevelt. In December 2004, suspected white supremacist arsonists set fire to dozens of expensive homes under construction in nearby Indian Head, Maryland in a subdivision called Hunters Brooke. Some of the homes had been purchased by African Americans. At least ten of 26 homes set ablaze were severely damaged. Immediately, the right wing media began blaming "eco-terrorists," but soon the real culprits were soon uncovered. It emerged that at least five white racists charged with the arson were members of a group called "The Family," which is, ironically, one of the names used by the Fellowship.

But the Fellowship has shed much of its former ties to the Nazis and fascists. Although the fascist ideology is behind the scenes, the Fellowship has dropped its explicit hatred for other races and religions. One observer called the Fellowship "Fascism with a smiley face." For a group with so much power, it is amazing that since the early 1970s, only a handful of meaningful articles have been written about it. In the early 1970s, Playboy wrote about Senator Hatfield’s association with the group. The Portland [Maine] Phoenix wrote a story about Governor Baldacci’s ties to the group and the Las Vegas Weekly looked into Senator Ensign’s membership in the group. Two major exposes were Jeff Sharlet’s Harper’s article, "Jesus Plus Nothing," and Lisa Getter’s article in the Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post wrote about the Fellowship after the break-ins of homes in Arlington by resident of Ivanwald and the resulting problems with neighbors and county. Perennial Democratic presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche’s various publications have also focused on the Fellowship and its influence in government. But aside from those articles and some mention on a few Weblogs, the Fellowship continued to maintain its preferred secretive existence.

During the 2004 election campaign, northern Virginia Democratic congressional candidate James Socas highlighted the membership in the Fellowship of his opponent, incumbent Republican Frank Wolf. Socas said his research indicated that Wolf was a member of a religious cult whose leadership praised the leadership qualities of Hitler, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin and Osama Bin Laden. The Socas campaign released a report titled, "Who is Frank Wolf? Moderate Republican or Leader of the Religious Right?" The Washington Post also reported on Socas’s charges that Wolf was a member of an extremist religious group and Wolf’s response that the charges were "bogus." The Fellowship’s public relations man Carver told the Post that Socas’s charges were "ludicrous." Coe did not return phone calls from the Post. It was the kind of political donnybrook the Fellowship abhorred but here was a congressional candidate bringing to light the membership in "the Family" of one of the House’s most powerful Republicans. In yet another example showing the ties between the Fellowship and the neo-conservative movement, the Post quoted Michael Horowitz of the neo-con Hudson Institute defending Wolf. Lamely, and obviously without researching the history of the Fellowship, Horowitz called Socas’s linking of Wolf to a group that praised Hitler nothing more than "hate speech" and "McCarthyism."

Turning the "People’s House" Into the "People’s Temple"

Adding to the Fellowship’s perception as a powerful and secretive organization is its ownership of a boarding house and conference center around the corner from the U.S. Capitol at 133 C Street, SE, Washington, DC. At any given time, eight members of the Senate and House have resided at the C Street Center where they sleep, pray, and eat for a mere $600 a month. C Street Center resident Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) claimed on his Federal Election Commission expense report that he paid the C Street Foundation $762 on December 11, 2001. Similar boarding houses have been set up by the Fellowship in London for Members of Parliament and in Moscow for members of the State Duma.

Past and current residents of the C Street Center have included former Representatives Steve Largent (R-OK) and Ed Bryant (R-TN), former Representative and current Democratic Governor of Maine John E. Baldacci, Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) (Brownback is also a member of the right-wing Fascist-oriented Opus Dei sect within the Catholic Church), Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), John Ensign (R-NV), and Tom Coburn (R-OK), Representatives Mike Doyle (R-PA), Bart Stupak (D-MI), Zach Wamp (R-TN), and former Senator Don Nickles (R-OK).

Other past members included Senators Sam Nunn (D-GA), John Chafee (R-RI), Roger Jepsen (R-IA), Charles Percy (R-IL), Strom Thurmond (R-SC), David Durenberger (R-MN), Jennings Randolph (D-WV), Paul Trible (R-VA), Phil Gramm (R-TX), William Armstrong (R-CO), Lawton Chiles (D-FL), Dan Coats (R-IN), Jeremiah Denton (R-AL), John Stennis (D-MS), Al Gore, Jr. (D-TN), and Larry Pressler (R-SD), and former Representatives J. C. Watts (R-OK), Robert Dornan (R-CA), and Tony Hall (D-OH). George W. Bush named Hall, who purported to be a strong defender of human rights, to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for World Hunger. In typical Fellowship fashion, Hall immediately began to lobby the UN on behalf of Monsanto to accept genetically-modified foods.

Other significant members of the Fellowship are Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Conrad Burns (R-MT), Richard Lugar (R-IN), James Inhofe (R-OK), Bill Nelson (D-FL) (Nelson’s wife Grace serves on the Fellowship Foundation’s Board of Directors), and Rick Santorum (R-PA), Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), and George Allen (R-VA), Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Representatives Frank Wolf (R-VA), Tom DeLay (R-TX), Tom Feeney (R-FL), Curt Weldon (R-PA), Jerry Weller (R-IL), and Joseph Pitts (R-PA).

Friends of the Fellowship, if not outright members, include Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), and former Senator Zell Miller (D-GA).

One of the more interesting affiliates of the Fellowship is Senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY). A former "Goldwater Girl" in the 1964 presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton seemed to have partially recovered some of her earlier conservative underpinnings. According to her autobiography, Living History, after her husband became president, Clinton paid a visit to a women’s meeting at the Cedars on February 24, 1993. Present were Susan Baker (wife of the first Bush’s Secretary of State, James Baker III), Grace Nelson (wife of Florida’s Bill Nelson), Joanne Kemp (wife of former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp), Linda LeSourd Lader (wife of Clinton ambassador to Britain and founder of the Renaissance Weekend Phil Lader – the Renaissance Weekend in Charleston, South Carolina is billed by Lader as a "spiritual" event), and Holly Leachman of the Falls Church Episcopal Church (one of the churches taken over by the Fellowship). Leachman and her husband Jerry had been involved in 1997 with a Cleveland, Ohio Fellowship adjunct called the Family Forum. The Leachmans were interviewed by ABC’s Nightline on February 25, 2004. They extolled the virtues of Mel Gibson’s controversial film, The Passion of the Christ, along with other evangelicals, including some Jewish converts to Christianity.

Senator Clinton admits to having a continuing close relationship with Susan Baker, through Baker’s visits to Capitol Hill and the letters she and other Fellowship wives wrote her during the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Even Bill Clinton seemed to have been taken in by the Fellowship. In his autobiography, My Life, Clinton brags that he never missed a National Prayer Breakfast. In his autobiography, Bill Clinton erroneously writes that it was not until 2000 that Coe invited the first Jew, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), to speak at the breakfast. However, New York Mayor Ed Koch spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1981 Senator Jacob Javits in 1984, and Arthur Burns in 1986.

Ironically, it was Susan Baker’s husband who served as the political fix-it man for Clinton’s Vice President Al Gore in delivering Florida’s 25 electoral votes to George W. Bush in 2000, costing Gore the White House. In fact, Senator Clinton wrote that all of her relationships with the Fellowship began with the luncheon she attended in 1993. In her biography, Senator Clinton writes of Douglas Coe, "[he] is a genuinely loving spiritual mentor . . . Doug Coe became a source of strength and friendship." Of course, Clinton is referring to the period of time when her husband was being harassed by conservative Republicans out for blood – the Whitewater investigation and impeachment hearings brought about by what she called the "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her husband. It is amazing that Mrs. Clinton would have established such a trusting relationship with people who were the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that she complained about so vociferously.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Clinton remained close to Coe, who she invited to accompany her as a member of the U.S. delegation that attended Mother Theresa’s state funeral in Calcutta in 1997. Mother Theresa had spoken at Coe’s National Prayer Breakfast meeting in Washington in 1994. From that platform, Mother Theresa launched a verbal broadside against President Clinton’s pro-abortion policy. For Coe, being at Mother Theresa’s state funeral was a strange juxtaposition from his reported attendance at Bohemian Grove meetings of San Francisco’s elite Bohemian Club – festivities that are replete with pagan rites. But as one senior Pentagon official said, "the Fellowship has nothing to do with God or Jesus, it is a capitalist cult." One of the major members of the Bohemian Club is former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe, who is also close to conservative Christian Representative Tom Feeney (R-FL), the former Lieutenant Governor running mate of Jeb Bush in the 1994 Florida gubernatorial election, a major political operative in 2000’s fixed presidential election when he was Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, attorney and registered lobbyist for Yang Enterprises – the NASA contractor accused of creating rigged election software and spying for China, and the politician accused of helping to launder large sums of money through the Florida Department of Transportation – the agency that controls one of Florida’s biggest cash cows – the toll turnpikes.

Other important women members of the Fellowship are Interior Secretary Gale Norton, former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Eileen Bakke, the wife of former Advanced Energy Systems (AES) CEO Dennis Bakke. Dennis Bakke, who was succeeded at AES by former George H. W. Bush Budget director and current Carlyle Group official Richard Darman, resigned after allegations that Bakke funneled AES revenues into the Fellowship. AES became infamous when it took over the Republic of Georgia’s electrical distribution system and began cutting off electricity to those who never paid for it under Soviet rule. Affected were elderly people on fixed pensions, young couples, and even the Tbilisi airport and an important military base. Dennis Bakke is a resident of the Cedars neighborhood where he owns an estate called Dogwood Rise.

Entertainers and sports figures have also been featured at the Fellowship’s political prayer meetings over the years. They have included Jim Nabors, Dallas Cowboy coach Tom Landry, and the Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs and fullback Charlie Harraway.

Not every member of Congress thought the Fellowship’s activities on Capitol Hill were appropriate. Former Senator Lowell Weicker (R-CT) told The Washington Post in 1981 that the Christian evangelicals "want to proselytize the whole country . . . That’s what I’m fighting against." Former Senator and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern (D-SD), the son of a minister, told the Post, "those guys have such a personal view of religion that it isn’t reflected on the Senate floor -- if anything, they lean over backwards to avoid social issues . . . one of my criticisms is that they don’t see the social implication of moral and religious faith." Former South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC), a devout Lutheran, never went to a Fellowship meeting. According to long-time investigative journalist Robert Parry, in 1983, Representative Jim Leach (R-IA), speaking at a meeting of the moderate Republican Ripon Society, warned that the College National Republican Committee, once headed by Karl Rove, had solicited and received money from Moon’s Unification Church. Rove’s successor, Grover Norquist, disrupted Leach’s presentation. Norquist is now an unofficial adviser to both Rove and George W. Bush. And like the Fellowship, also had links to the Similarly, for those who question or criticize the Fellowship, Coe has a patent response, "They are enemies of Jesus."

A senator who incurred the wrath of the Fellowship and its allies was the man who challenged George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 – John McCain. After McCain beat Bush in New Hampshire, the right-wing evangelicals pulled out all the stops to nail McCain on their home turf – South Carolina. Christian operatives associated with Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, and South Carolina’s Bob Jones University began spreading rumors – through "push polls," e-mail, sermons, and word-of-mouth that McCain fathered an illegitimate "black girl" out of wed lock (a reference to his adopted Bangladeshi daughter), that he was a traitor while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, that his wife Cindy was a druggie, and that he was gay. The gambit paid off. McCain was trounced by Bush in South Carolina and Bush went on to win the Republican nomination. For the Christian mafia, Bush was their best hope for total control since the founding of the United States. Next, the fundamentalists turned their attention to the Democratic nominee – Al Gore, a former theological seminary student.

Although Gore won the popular vote for President, a phalanx of right-wing GOP operatives descended on the pivotal state of Florida to engage in judicial subterfuge after widespread voter suppression took place at the polling places. Two fundamentalists on the U.S. Supreme Court – Antonin Scalia (an Opus Dei member) and Clarence Thomas (who also has strong links to Opus Dei) – voted with three other members to stop the Florida vote recount, ensuring that Bush won the White House. Nevertheless, Gore has always admired Doug Coe, even calling him his "personal hero."

The Moon organization also gained immense influence in the George W. Bush administration. Not only had Bush’s father taken Moon’s money to give speeches after he left office, but the junior Bush appointed Unification Church members to sensitive posts in his administration. David Caprara, head of Moon’s American Family Coalition, was appointed to head the AmericCorps’s anti-poverty program, VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America). Moon’s rhetoric would track with the right-wing policies of Bush – Moon called gays "dung eating dogs" and American women "prostitutes." And hearkening back to the days of Vereide and Buchman and their Nazi friends, Moon said the Holocaust was God’s revenge for the crucifixion of Christ.

The Fellowship’s Very Own Foreign Policy

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the Fellowship is their involvement in international affairs at the highest levels. Ever since Vereide sent emissaries abroad to further the aims of the Fellowship, the group had sought access at the highest levels of governments abroad. A significant Fellowship presence was established in various English-speaking countries – Britain, Canada, Australia, and South Africa – as well as the Netherlands, Germany, France, India, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and countries in Scandinavia, Latin America, and Africa. Thanks to the support of two ministers in General Franco’s Fascist Spanish government, Vereide and Coe were able to penetrate Spain and obtain adherents, mostly through the offices of the neo-Fascist Catholic Opus Dei sect. Vereide was also able to convince Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie to be a major supporter of the Fellowship. Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist Chinese government was also a supporter and remains one to this day. Every year, the Fellowship’s C Street Center receives a $10,000 check from the head of Taiwan’s mission in Washington. The Fellowship also established close links to Liberia’s autocratic President William Tubman. Today, Fellowship adherents are even found in the leftist government of Brazil’s President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Fijian dictator Sitiveni Rabuka is a Fellowship member. He also overthrew his nation’s democratically-elected government. In Canada, a Fellowship ally, the extreme conservative Stockwell Day of the Canadian Alliance, calls for the establishment of a Christian state. He wants to overturn the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage, wants public funding of private religious schools, and outlaw abortion. Day hopes to one day become Canada’s Prime Minister. One Fellowship denomination in Toronto, the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, was expelled from its parent denomination, the Vineyard Churches of Anaheim, California. The parent body cited the Toronto church’s prayer and Scripture interpretation practices. Another one of those who the Fellowship counts as a friend is French far-right leader Jean Marie Le Pen. The French leader has created a firestorm of protests in France and elsewhere by claiming the Nazi occupiers of France were not so brutal and that the Nazis were not inhumane. It is the same rhetoric once espoused by Vereide, Buchman, and Gedat.

The Fellowship’s involvement in foreign countries is documented in archived files held at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois. Organized in a manner similar to how the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) stores and segregates files, the Fellowship’s archives consist of 592 boxes of documents, photos, audiotapes, film, and negatives. The documents are have an automatic declassification schedule, in the same manner that NARA handles classified files. The Fellowship’s new policy, adopted in 2003, states "All folders with paper records less than twenty-five years old are closed to users until January 1st of the year following the 25th anniversary of the creation of the youngest document in that file, except to those users with the written permission of the President of the Fellowship Foundation. This restriction applies to everyone, including Foundation staff and associates. Example: A folder containing material dated no later 1977 would be open January 1, 2003."

Coe has been one of the Fellowship’s most frequent travelers. A review of international wire service stories reveal Coe globe hopping with congressional Fellowship members for a number of years. From Pakistan Newswire, Islamabad, on November 29, 2000 (a little less than a year before 911 and a few weeks after the presidential election): "A five-member US business delegation headed by Mr. Douglas Coe, Special envoy of Congressman Mr. Joseph Pitts, called on Federal Minister for Commerce, Industries and Production Mr. Abdul Razak Dawood at Ministry of Industries and Production here on Wednesday." From the Polish Press Agency, Warsaw, December 17, 1997: "Former deputy Sejm speaker Aleksander Malachowski was granted Wednesday the St. Brother Albert award for his concern for ‘the weak and those in need’ and his ‘social journalism characterised by humanistic values.’ In the scope of ecumenical activity the awards went to priest Waldemar Chrostowski and Stanislaw Krajewski for creating the foundations of Christian-Jewish dialogue and Douglas Coe from the United States for organizing annual meetings of politicians in Washington for furthering communication regardless of political divisions."

From Xinhua News Agency, Havana, November 27, 1990: "Two U.S. congressmen arrived here Monday on the first stage of a 10-day visit to the Caribbean to seek ways of understanding between the united states and the region, the official news agency Prensa Latina informed. Republican senator for Minnesota and Tony Hall, the Democrat representative for Ohio, are traveling as members of the ‘National Prayer Breakfast’ religious organization, which aims to promote friendship between peoples. Upon his arrival, Durenberger told the press, ‘we are visiting Cuba with the goal to make new friends on a personal basis.’ Political relations reflect personal ties and in the case of Cuba, and the United States ‘there are no political or personal ties,’ he said. Hall affirmed that their visit, which will last little more than 24 hours, aims to ‘build bridges between political and personal lines,’ and help create ‘ways of communication’ between the two countries. The two congressmen expressed their hope that the relations between the two nations, which were suspended in 1961, can improve in the near future. Durenberger was a member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee for eight years and severely criticized former President Ronald Reagan's policy of force against Nicaragua. The delegation which also includes Douglas Coe, a member of the ‘National Prayer Breakfast’ Executive Board, and other businessmen will also visit the Grand Cayman Island, Belize, Aruba and Venezuela."

The trip to off-shore banking havens by the Fellowship delegation is of note. These were the same islands noted by former U.S. intelligence operatives as the location of billion dollar money tranches and corporate artifices used by the Bush family to engage in various illegal activities, including drug money laundering, corporate fraud, and funding the fixing of elections. The Fellowship not only had an interest in Caribbean off-shore banking havens but made special invitations to Cook Islands Prime Minister Geoffrey Henry and Fiji Prime Minister Sir Ratu Kamisese Mara. Both island nations are off-shore banking havens and the Cook Islands featured prominently in the transfer of money and gold looted from the Philippines and placed in Bush-controlled secret accounts following Marcos’s overthrow in the 1980s. Henry and Mara were guests at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1991 where George H. W. Bush was also present.

In 1987, Coe was in Mongolia, officially as a tourist (Mongolia was still Communist). However, shortly after Communism fell, the Fellowship and the Moon organization set up shop in the largely Buddhist country. Fellowship missionaries fanned out across to other Buddhist regions that had been close for years to outsiders: the Russian Buddhist Republics of Tuva, Kalmykia, Buryatia, and Evenkia. The Fellowship called them "unreached peoples." Similarly, after the recent tsunamis that killed over a quarter million people in South and Southeast Asia, fundamentalist Christian aid workers arrived with more than relief in mind. Local officials in Sri Lanka and Indonesia complained about the relief workers using the disaster to proselytize and adopt orphans into Christian homes. The people of the worst affected area, Aceh in Sumatra, were also referred to as "unreached people," meaning they had not yet been subject to conversion outreach.

The Fellowship also had a keen interest in intelligence matters, especially when they involved Fellowship members. For example, one of the tape reels held by the Fellowship at the Billy Graham Center concerns the use by the CIA of journalists as informants. The tape is described: "Reel-to-reel, 7 ½ ips. 1 side only. January 23, 1976. Radio program Panorama, broadcast on station WTTG in Washington, DC, hosted by Maury Povich, with commentator Ms. Bonnie Angelo. The guest on the show is correspondent and informant for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The conversation is about contacts between U.S. intelligence agencies and journalists. Chuck Colson is referred to very briefly during the interview, in reference to knowledge of a list in the Nixon White House of journalists who were intelligence informants."

The Fellowship’s influence in Vereide’s native country of Norway was revealed in late 2004 when the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet exposed Norway’s Lutheran minister and Christian Democratic Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik as a secret member of the Fellowship. Although Bondevik at first downplayed his role in the Fellowship, Bondevik later was forced to admit that in December 2001 he met at a dinner at the Cedars with then-Attorney General Ashcroft and that the meeting involved his official role as Prime Minister. Apparently, Bondevik and Ashcroft discussed the U.S. military tribunals. Ashcroft referred to Bondevik as his "brother in Christ" and he serenaded Bondevik Norwegian folk songs after dinner. Bondevik had previously argued that his involvement with the Fellowship was a personal matter. In addition, it was revealed that Norway’s ambassador to the United States, Knut Vollebuk, was a frequent visitor to the Cedars as were a number of members of Norway’s Christian Democratic Party. As the scandal deepened, Coe’s involvement in Norwegian politics came to the fore. Torkel Brekke, a Norwegian religious researcher, revealed in his book Gud i norsk politkk (God in Norwegian Politics) that Coe provided advice and money to Christian Democrat politician Lars Rise. During a campaign in 1997, Coe told Rise to target voters in the heavily Muslim eastern part of Oslo. Coe emphasized that Christians and Muslims shared common views on the evils of pornography, alcohol, abortion, and same sex marriages. For Rise, the strategy was successful although a subsequent election saw him dropped as a Christian Democratic candidate. The Coe-Rise affair points to the alliance the Fellowship has formed over the years with Muslims, particularly more radical Islamists. For example, in 1988, the first Muslim, Saudi Prince Bandar, spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Norway’s opposition political leaders, from the right to the left, demanded an explanation from Bondevik about the role of the Fellowship in Norwegian politics. Socialist Left leader Kristin Halvorsen told the Oslo daily Aftenposten, "seen with Norwegian eyes, this is a reactionary association." The Labor Party and right-wing Progress Party also raised concerns about Bondevik and the Fellowship. For many Norwegians, Bondevik was tied with George W. Bush through a secret and right-wing fundamentalist group.

It has also been reported that under the Bush administration, U.S. embassies have held prayer breakfast meetings as a way of buying access to U.S. officials, particularly those involved in important trade and defense issues. Such meetings have been reported taking place in U.S. embassies in Copenhagen; Oslo; Stockholm; Helsinki; Tallinn, Estonia; Vilnius, Lithuania; Bern, Switzerland; Luxembourg; The Hague; Rome; Brussels; Canberra; Port Louis, Mauritius; New Delhi; Mexico City; Belize; Warsaw; Vienna; Berlin; and Prague.

Fellowship members are found in governments throughout the world. This is not surprising considering the country-by-country files the Fellowship has on its worldwide activities. There are files on such hotspots as Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Greece (with a special file on 1967 -- the year of the nation’s military coup), Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Israel, Korea, Kuwait, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, Panama and the Canal Zone, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. The files also cover the Fellowship’s activities in the more obscure Sao Tome and Principe, Upper Volta, Mali, and Aruba. One country that is missing from the Fellowship files is Chile, where on September 11, 1973, a bloody U.S.-inspired coup was launched against the socialist government. That coup resulted in the assassination of President Salvador Allende and years of suppression that saw the murder of thousands of opponents of fascism.

The National Prayer Breakfasts serve as important opportunities for foreign leaders to meet with American presidents. Leaders like former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, South African Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Hungarian President Arpad Goncz, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his wife Janet, King Taufa’ahau Tupuo IV of Tonga, the late Macedonian President (and Methodist minister) Boris Trajkovski, and leaders of Lithuania, Slovakia, Albania, and Romania have all sought the offices of Coe and the Fellowship to meet the President of the United States. The 2003 National Prayer Breakfast drew 3 heads of government, 21 Cabinet ministers, 11 Members of Parliament, 54 ambassadors, 56 U.S. senators, 245 U.S. House members, and a majority of Bush’s Cabinet secretaries.

In 2001, the unlikely joint appearance of Congo’s new President Joseph Kabila and his arch-enemy (but one-time mentor) Kagame at the 2001 Prayer Breakfast just after Bush’s inauguration raised eyebrows. Although they could not arrange a separate meeting with Bush, the two leaders did meet at the Cedars. What was unusual is that on January 16, 2001, just four days before Bush’s swearing in, Kabila’s father, the former Marxist rebel Laurent Kabila, was assassinated in the Congolese capital Kinshasa. Observers suspected Rwandan influence behind the assassination. The elder Kabila was battling Rwandan army units in the eastern Congo. Forty years earlier, almost to the hour, Congo’s first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, was executed by U.S.-backed mercenaries working for the CIA. It was also four days before President Kennedy was sworn in as President.

There were also African news reports that Ivory Coast's First Lady, Simone Gbagbo, was affiliate with a powerful evangelical Christian group called "The Cedars." Mrs. Gbagbo was cited in a confidential UN report as leading death squads in Ivory Coast's bloody civil war against mainly Muslim groups in the north of the country. Observers believed that Simone and her husband, President Laurent Gbagbo, decided to curry favor with the Fellowship in order to erroneously convince Bush administration officials that they were fighting to keep Ivory Coast from falling into the hands of Islamic radicals.

One of the oddest visitors to the Cedars was Saif al Islam, the second-eldest son of Libyan leader Muammar al Qaddafi and his heir apparent. The links between Qaddafi's family and the Fellowship coincided with Libya's abandonment of weapons of mass destruction and the resumption of operations in Libya by U.S. oil companies.

A non governmental organization (NGO) has reported that both the Fellowship and the Moonies are slowly taking over the government of Fiji. The Fellowship has infiltrated the Foreign Ministry and shadowy U.S. businessmen tied to the Fellowship are reportedly buying up prime real estate on Ono island,which sits on the other side of a main shipping channel across from the main island of Viti Levu. Charles Colson has been reported to have been very active in Fiji. Similar Fellowship inroads into government and the NGO community have been reported in Kenya. Both Fiji and Kenya are being planned by the Bush administration to host major U.S. military bases.

Coe’s invitations to various leaders would pay off for George W. Bush. When he had to cobble together a "Coalition of the Willing" to support his invasion of Iraq, Bush was able to call on Fellowship leaders to sign on. It was through their Fellowship connections that the leaders of Albania, Palau, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Uganda, Rwanda, Tonga, Romania, Lithuania, Solomon Islands, El Salvador, and other countries signed on to the "coalition."

Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) told the Los Angeles Times he did not think much of the Fellowship’s backdoor diplomacy, "Well, if I might observe, I’m not sure a head of state ought to be able to wander over here for the prayer breakfast and, in effect, compel the president of the United States to meet with him as a consequence . . . I mean, getting these meetings with the president is a process that’s usually very carefully vetted and worked up. Now sort of this back door has sort of evolved."

Coe’s son David apparently did not think much of Bush’s war against Afghanistan. According to a Fellowship insider, the younger Coe spoke derisively of Bush’s Afghan campaign, asking rhetorically, "this is his vision?" David Coe indicated that Afghanistan was small potatoes and that if one wanted to see a real military campaign, the exploits of Genghis Khan and his invasion of Afghanistan should be studied.

The Fellowship and its alliance of tax dodges and interlocking directorship corporations were much more aggressive in U.S.-occupied Iraq. According to the Washington Post, the Colorado-based Christian and Missionary Alliance (Colorado is the home base of James Dobson's myriad of national and international organizations with tentacles springing forth from his Focus on the Family group) and Franklin Graham's (Billy Graham's son) Samaritan's Purse hit the ground running in Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Seven new Christian evangelical churches sprang up in Baghdad after the U.S. occupation. The arrival of the evangelicals alarmed Iraq's 2000 year old and 800,000-strong Christian community of Eastern Rite Catholics (Chaldeans), Roman Catholics, and the small sect of Mandeans (followers not of Jesus but of John the Baptist), not to mention the Sh'ia and Sunni Muslim hierarchy. Baghdad's Roman Catholic archbishop said the evangelicals were "seducing Christians from other churches." Franklin Graham, who called Islam an "evil and wicked" religion, was also active in evangelizing neighboring Jordan, where 50 evangelical churches had been established. Patriarch Emmanuel Delly, the head of the Eastern Rite Chaldean Catholic Church, Iraq's oldest and largest Christian denomination, was also alarmed at the arrival of the evangelicals saying they treated Iraq's traditional Christians as "not true Christians." Other traditional Iraqi Christians said the arrival of the evangelicals threatened a status quo that enabled the Christians to continue to exist in the primarily Muslim country, i.e, a tacit agreement that the Muslim and Christian communities would not try to proselytize one another.

The involvement of the Fellowship in central Africa’s woes may be deeper than in organizing meetings at prayer breakfasts. On April 6, 1994, the executive jet carrying the Hutu Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi from a peace summit in Tanzania with Kagame’s U.S.-backed guerrilla army in Uganda was shot down by Soviet made surface-to-air missiles captured by U.S. forces from Iraq in Desert Storm. All aboard the presidential aircraft were killed, including the French crew. That prompted a terrorism investigation by a special French anti-terrorism court. The author’s book, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999 prompted an invitation by the chief judge to testify as an expert witness about the shooting down of the Rwandan plane.

It was during that testimony, the author was asked to investigate a secretive group made up of right-wing Republicans, current and former intelligence agents, U.S. oil interests and particularly associates of then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Evidence indicated that the group was involved in the terror attack on the Rwandan aircraft. One ad hoc name for the group uncovered by French intelligence and law enforcement was the "International Strategic and Tactical Organization" or "ISTO." In fact, the description provided of the group by the French and the Fellowship match almost completely. The location of Armitage’s consulting firm, Armitage & Associates LC (AALC) in the Kellogg, Brown & Root/Halliburton building in Rosslyn (Arlington), Virginia, just around the corner from Advanced Energy Systems and a few miles from the Cedars pointed to the Fellowship as the secretive and dangerous group the French counter-terrorism investigators had discovered during their five year investigation. The results of the downing of the aircraft were staggering: 800,000 people died in Rwanda in Hutu-Tutsi ethnic warfare after the attack, tens of thousands died in similar ethnic strife in Burundi. But in Congo, some 4 million died after successive U.S.-supported Ugandan and Rwandan invasions of the country. The deaths resulted from warfare, famine, and disease brought about by the invasions. However, U.S. gem, mining, and oil companies made handsome profits in central Africa amidst the war and ethnic turmoil. Richard Sezibera, Rwanda’s ambassador to the United States and Kagame’s special envoy for Africa’s Great Lakes region, is a frequent guest at the Cedars. One interesting footnote – a senior U.S. government official ran into Doug Coe during the height of the inter-ethnic warfare in central Africa. Coe was in Burundi.

If Islamist fundamentalists can embrace terrorism, can fundamentalist "End Time" Christians? The FBI thinks so. Prior to 2000, the FBI, in a report titled "Project Megiddo" warned that Christian millenialist sects might use the beginning of the 21st century to pull of a grand terrorist act. The report stated, "The volatile mix of apocalyptic religious and [New World Order] conspiracy theories may produce violent acts aimed at precipitating the end of the world as prophesied in the Bible." The name Megiddo refers to a hill in northern Israel that was the site of a number of Biblical battles. "Armageddon" is Hebrew for Megiddo Hill. The FBI report warned that Christian millenialists might strike military installations and buildings in New York City such as the UN headquarters.

Mike German, a seventeen-year FBI veteran agent, resigned from the bureau 2004 after he discovered the Bush administration was not serious about investigating right-wing terrorist groups active in the United States and that his FBI bosses were failing to investigate links between Florida-based right-wing Christian identity terrorist groups and foreign Islamic terrorist groups. Others familiar with the Fellowship confirm that the group is an "End Times" Christian survivalist group that wants to bring about Armageddon to rid the world of non-whites and non-Christians.

Stealing an Election for Christ

According to Time magazine, after Bush’s re-election, a group of evangelicals, not surprisingly known as "The Arlington Group," wrote Karl Rove a letter signed by former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, Don Wildmon, Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell demanding that Bush not waver and support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Rove is a key Fellowship asset in the White House. Often whistling "Onward Christian Soldiers" in the halls of the White House, Rove was credited with turning out millions of fundamentalist voters in the 2004 presidential election. Rove also managed to turn out hundreds, if not thousands, of evangelical and fundamentalist election "fixers," who ensured that Democratic votes were suppressed, miscounted, undercounted, discounted, and not counted.

The Fellowship’s network of fundamentalists would never be as important as it was in the 2004 presidential election. With polls showing the race either tied or with Democratic candidate John Kerry ahead in key "swing" states, the alert to very zealous Christian activist went out across the nation.

The prime target was Ohio, where the Fellowship and its fundamentalist allies had built up a vast network of operatives in state and local government, including state agencies and county election boards. But more importantly, the Fellowship had links to the election machine companies that would be crucial to fixing election results in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and other states – ensuring that Fellowship core member George W. Bush had four more years to put a practically indelible fundamentalist stamp on the United States. The money invested over the years by Lennon, Armington, Lindner, and other right-wing Ohio captains of industry in fundamentalist Christian causes and think tanks like the Ashbrook Center finally paid off. The Ohio Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, who, copying Katherine Harris’s antics in Florida’s fraudulent 2000 election, used his government position and his co-chairmanship of Bush’s state election campaign to suppress the vote, especially in largely Democratic African-American districts.

Blackwell, who, as a former Deputy Undersecretary of HUD, was well versed in the art of distributing Bush political slush fund money and ensured that this was distributed far and wide in Ohio. This money is what Republican strategist Ed Rollins once called "walking around money" – money used by Republicans in New Jersey’s elections to pay off African American preachers to turn out the vote for their candidates. In Ohio, this tactic paid off in polling places in churches. Instead of turning out the vote, some local preachers, white and black, aided and abetted in suppressing the vote. One of Blackwell’s closest friends is fundamentalist preacher Ron Parsley of World Harvest Church. At the New Life fundamentalist church in the Gahanna District of Columbus, machines tallied 4258 votes for Bush when only a total of 628 votes were cast. Similar chicanery and racketeering occurred throughout Ohio and in other states during the vote tabulation and recounting processes. Two of the voting machine companies contracted by Ohio are headed by people who are conservative Republican partisans – Walden O’Dell, the CEO of Diebold of Columbus and the Rapp family that runs Triad Government Systems of Xenia, Ohio. Both brand of machines caused election problems in Ohio and elsewhere.

For example, several churches in Mahoning County, Ohio were the scenes of voting irregularities. They include:

Price Memorial Zion Church, Precinct 2E, Youngstown (voters were given confusing information and many elderly voters were told their polling place had changed, also voters voting for Kerry had their votes switched to Bush).

Spanish Evangelical Church, Precinct 2A, Youngstown, machines inoperative and switched votes from Kerry to Bush.

Elizabeth Baptist Church, Precinct 2C, Youngstown, one voting machine failed to record votes properly.

Tabernacle Baptist Church, Precinct 3C, Youngstown, one machine failed to record votes.

Martin Luther Lutheran Church, Precinct 5F, Youngstown, one touch screen machine broken the other erased votes.

St. John’s Greek Orthodox Church, Boardman, first two attempts to vote for Kerry go to Bush, third attempt records vote for Kerry. Poll worker brushes off complaints.

St. Nicholas Byzantine Church, Youngstown, machine records Kerry votes for Bush.

The skimming of votes in Mahoning County was replicated across the state. Ohio’s 20 electoral votes were delivered to George W. Bush just like manna from the heavens. For the fundamentalists who took part in the fraud, the "Christian" ends were definitely justified by the Machiavellian ways.

In 2005, the Ohio evangelical movement became part of the focus of Federal and state criminal probes into the laundering of state funds into the coffers of the Bush-Cheney 04 campaign and the Ohio Republican Party. An investment firm called MDL was being investigated for fraud involving two rare coin funds managed for the Ohio Bureau of Worker's Compensation fund. Up to $12 million from the funds was discovered missing. The managing director of MDL was Joe Watkins, an evangelical Lutheran pastor from Philadelphia. Watkins, a well known African American Republican, was tied to Kenneth Blackwell and the anti-gay and anti-Kerry evangelical political crusade in Ohio that was nurtured by Karl Rove and was partly instrumental in turning the 2004 election to Bush.

Waiting for God

Journalist, columnist, and television commentator Bill Moyers recently wrote that "for the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington." Ever since Abraham Vereide, a misguided immigrant to this country who brought very un-American ideas of Nazism and Fascism with him in his steamer trunk, the so-called "Christian" Right has long waited to take the biggest prize of all – the White House. Moyers correctly sees the Dominionists or "End Timers" as being behind the invasion of Iraq. He cites the Book of Revelation that states, "four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." Such words may have their place in Sunday School and in church halls but using such thinking to launch wars of convenience or religious prophecy have no place in our federal and democratic republic. Moyers also rightly sees fundamentalist thought behind Bush’s "faith-based initiatives" and the rolling back of environmental regulations.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world no longer feel the United States is a country that can be trusted. They feel the people who run the affairs of state are out of control and dangerous. Considering the hold the Fellowship and their like-minded ilk have on the United States (and some of its allies) they are correct in their fears.

The political and religious dynasties who have embraced the Fellowship, Vereide, Fascism, Moon, Buchman, Moral Rearmament and all of their current and past manifestations, hatreds, and phobias show no sign of ceding power any time soon. There are many such father-son dynasties that hope to ensure a continuation of their shameful racketeering and political chicanery under the corporate "logo" of Jesus: George H. W. Bush to George W. Bush; Douglas Coe to David Coe; Billy Graham to Franklin Graham; Oral Roberts to Richard Roberts, Pat Robertson to Gordon Robertson; Jerry Falwell to Jonathan Falwell; Jeb Bush to George P. Bush; Robert Schuller Sr. to Robert Schuller, Jr., and Sun Myung Moon to at least nine sons (who are known about).

For them and their followers, they should keep in mind something Jesus said, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit."

Amen.

EXPOSE: THE "CHRISTIAN" MAFIA (PART 1)
http://hiddenmysteries.net/geeklog/article.php?story=20061227191130352

EXPOSE: THE "CHRISTIAN" MAFIA (PART 2)
http://hiddenmysteries.net/geeklog/article.php?story=20061227192018680

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com

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