A cou­ple months ago, the Moonie-revived Newsweek post­ed a cov­er sto­ry on the JFK assas­si­na­tion. It’s most­ly “grassy knoll” stuff that just bores me to tears, and ignores the more impor­tant issues. For exam­ple, ever heard of a “debunker” address­ing Spaz T. Raikin? Not me.

How­ev­er, I do find it inter­est­ing that the author of the arti­cle has writ­ten for the CIA web­site and even won an award from them, con­ve­nient­ly, at the time he was writ­ing a book sup­port­ing the War­ren Com­mis­sion! To make it even weird­er... the guy is a con­trib­u­tor to the Nation Mag­a­zine! Not too shock­ing to any­one famil­iar with that pub­li­ca­tion’s his­to­ry, but still inter­est­ing. Check out his CV. At one point he had a fel­low­ship with the Ger­man Mar­shall Fund, among oth­ers. THIS is the kind of CV and funds you get if you toe the War­ren line.

http://www.maxholland.info/vita.html

In 2001, Hol­land won the J. Antho­ny Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, bestowed joint­ly by Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Nie­man Foun­da­tion and the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty School of Jour­nal­ism, for a forth­com­ing nar­ra­tive his­to­ry of the War­ren Com­mis­sion, to be pub­lished by Alfred A. Knopf. That same year he won a Stud­ies in Intel­li­gence Award from the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, the first writer work­ing out­side the US gov­ern­ment to be so rec­og­nized.

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/28/truth-behind-jfks-assassination-285653.html

More Moonie stuff, this time with the Bush­es. Inter­est­ing that this is NOT Moon’s idea... it’s a Larouche scheme that he’s been tout­ing for decades. While com­plete­ly oppo­site on eco­nom­ic issues, I see a lot of par­al­lels between Moonieism and Larouch­ism.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/neil-bush-jeb-bush-bering-sea-tunnel

Here Is a Crazy Sto­ry About Jeb Bush’s Broth­er and a $400 Bil­lion Tun­nel to Rus­sia That Was­n’t Meant to Be

Neil Bush did­n’t seem to flinch when his pal the Rev. Moon schemed to drill from Alas­ka to Siberia.

—By Tim Mur­phy
| Tue Jan. 6, 2015 6:15 AM EST

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon had a grand idea: the World Peace King Tun­nel. It would be 53 miles long, cost $400 bil­lion, and stretch under­neath the Bering Sea between Alas­ka and Rus­sia. It would take three years to build. When com­plet­ed, it would link up with the eight-lane Inter­na­tion­al Peace High­way that Moon had also pro­posed. That road would be bor­dered on both sides by one kilo­me­ter of land that would not belong to any nation. When both projects were com­plet­ed, traf­fic could pass unim­ped­ed from the Cape of Good Hope to New York City. And if trav­el­ers want­ed to get mar­ried in the tun­nel, there’d be places to do that, too.

A multi­na­tion­al con­struc­tion project that had no fund­ing stream or his­tor­i­cal prece­dent and that was pro­posed by a self-described mes­si­ah who believed he had posthu­mous­ly healed Adolf Hitler might strike some peo­ple as a bit ambi­tious. But in 2005, when Moon, the late South Kore­an-born con­ser­v­a­tive media mogul and founder of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, embarked on a world tour to pro­mote his idea, he brought along an unusu­al companion—Neil Bush, the younger broth­er of Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and Flori­da Gov. Jeb Bush.

As Jeb Bush now aims to become the third mem­ber of his fam­i­ly to be elect­ed pres­i­dent, he’ll have to nav­i­gate the lega­cy not just of his polar­iz­ing old­er broth­er, but also that of his younger broth­er, whose busi­ness exploits have dogged—if not tainted—the fam­i­ly for decades. In 1988, Neil Bush was embroiled in the sav­ings and loan scan­dal after his busi­ness went bel­ly-up and cost US tax­pay­ers $1 bil­lion.

His recent invest­ments have dove­tailed neat­ly with his broth­ers’ work. In 1999, Neil, backed by “junk bond king” Michael Milken and a Sau­di prince, pushed a for-prof­it edu­ca­tion tech ven­ture called Ignite! Learn­ing that sold “cur­ricu­lum on wheels” con­soles to schools. Much of the mon­ey for those pur­chas­es would come from W.‘s No Child Left Behind law, which man­dat­ed a new test­ing regime in pub­lic schools. (Neil has said his focus on edu­ca­tion was inspired by his own dyslex­ia.) When his moth­er, Bar­bara, wrote a check to assist stu­dents who had been dis­placed by Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na, she stip­u­lat­ed that the mon­ey be spent on her son’s cur­ricu­lum on wheels, accord­ing to the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle. Neil also got a big hand from his friend, the Rev. Moon. The Wash­ing­ton Times Foun­da­tion, which was at the time oper­at­ed by Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, spent $1 mil­lion to pro­mote Ignite prod­ucts in North­ern Vir­ginia.

Adver­tise on MotherJones.com

None of Neil Bush’s busi­ness exploits were as pie-in-the-sky as Moon’s extreme trans­porta­tion makeover. Moon pro­posed his idea in Sep­tem­ber 2005 as a means of unit­ing the world and con­fronting the demon­ic forces that sup­pos­ed­ly con­trolled its bod­ies of water. “For thou­sands of years, Satan used the Bering Strait to sep­a­rate East and West, North and South, as well as North Amer­i­ca and Rus­sia geo­graph­i­cal­ly,” he explained at the time.

The Bering Strait is frozen eight months a year; tem­per­a­tures can drop to more than 80 degrees below freez­ing. The region is basi­cal­ly emp­ty. And the US and Rus­sia haven’t been on great terms for a few dozen decades. But Moon was unde­terred. “Some may doubt such a project can be com­plet­ed,” he said in a 2005 speech to the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion in New York. “But where there is a will, there is always a way—especially if it is the will of God. The sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy of the 21st cen­tu­ry ren­der it pos­si­ble to con­struct a tun­nel under the Bering Strait.” This was­n’t Moon’s first pro­pos­al for a world-his­tor­i­cal engi­neer­ing ven­ture. In 1981, he’d con­vened a group of sci­en­tists to unveil a plan for a bridge that would con­nect Japan and Chi­na.

Neil Bush, an investor with no polit­i­cal ambi­tions, joined Moon on sev­er­al stops on his year­long tun­nel-pro­mot­ing tour. He trav­eled with him to Mani­la, where they vis­it­ed with Pres­i­dent Glo­ria Maca­pa­gal-Arroyo at the Mala­cañang Palace, and he fol­lowed along to Taipei, where he watched Moon make his pitch to an audi­ence that includ­ed the vice pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Chi­na. In an email to Moth­er Jones, Neil Bush said he did not sup­port the tun­nel plan but had trav­eled with Moon because he sup­port­ed “efforts by faith lead­ers to call their flock into ser­vice to oth­ers.” Moon’s pro­pos­al nev­er picked up much polit­i­cal momen­tum, though, and he died in 2012.

Evi­dent­ly, Neil Bush remained a fan of Moon. “As con­tro­ver­sial as Rev. Moon was in the Unit­ed States, I got to know him as a man whose heart was focused on bring­ing togeth­er peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faiths to bridge divides,” he told the Wash­ing­ton Times when Moon died. “His call on peo­ple of faith to serve oth­ers is an impor­tant lega­cy

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/arnaud-de-borchgrave-swashbuckling-newsweek-foreign-correspondent-dies/2015/02/15/52609204-b552-11e4-a200-c008a01a6692_story.html

Arnaud de Borch­grave, who inter­viewed states­men and despots across time zones and war zones as a swash­buck­ling for­eign cor­re­spon­dent for Newsweek mag­a­zine, and who lat­er led the Wash­ing­ton Times as edi­tor dur­ing the newspaper’s ear­ly years, died Feb. 15 at a hos­pice in the Dis­trict. He was 88.

The cause was can­cer, said his wife, Alexan­dra Vil­lard de Borch­grave.

Born a Bel­gian count, Mr. de Borch­grave was report­ed to have been 13th in line to the throne in his native coun­try. He gave up his aris­to­crat­ic title, although per­haps not the air of influ­ence and access, and became a U.S. cit­i­zen and high-pro­file, globe-trot­ting jour­nal­ist.

He began his career short­ly after World War II as a reporter with the Unit­ed Press wire ser­vice and quick­ly made the leap to Newsweek, then owned by Vin­cent Astor and lat­er pur­chased by The Wash­ing­ton Post Co. under the lead­er­ship of Pres­i­dent Philip L. Gra­ham.

Mr. de Borch­grave became Newsweek’s Paris bureau chief in 1951 and went on to a career as a rov­ing cor­re­spon­dent, para­chut­ing into hot spots and send­ing dis­patch­es from Africa, the Mid­dle East and Europe at the height of the Cold War.

Arnaud de Borch­grave was a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent for Newsweek mag­a­zine before becom­ing edi­tor of the Wash­ing­ton Times. (Har­ry Naltchayan)

Ever flam­boy­ant, he told Esquire mag­a­zine that he kept “the starched com­bat fatigues of 12 nations” at his pied-a-terre in Gene­va, Switzer­land, where he lived con­ve­nient­ly near the air­port. By his esti­mate, he cov­ered at least 17 wars.

In Viet­nam, Mr. de Borch­grave accom­pa­nied French para­troop­ers at the bat­tle of Dien Bien Phu, accord­ing to a New York mag­a­zine pro­file. He was cred­it­ed with doing sev­en tours in Viet­nam and report­ed­ly sus­tained two wounds in the South­east Asian war.

In the Mid­dle East, he cov­ered Arab-Israel con­flicts includ­ing the Six-Day War of 1967, where he said he donned an Israeli uni­form and rode in a lead tank, and the 1973 Yom Kip­pur War, when he reached the front line sport­ing Egypt­ian cam­ou­flage.

He cul­ti­vat­ed the con­nec­tions to score inter­views with world lead­ers includ­ing Gol­da Meir and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, Gamal Abdel Nass­er and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, King Hus­sein of Jor­dan, Hafez Assad of Syr­ia and Moam­mar Gaddafi of Libya in his bar­racks.

While many jour­nal­ists pre­ferred to keep a cer­tain dis­tance from their sub­jects, Mr. de Borch­grave seemed to nur­ture extra­or­di­nar­i­ly close con­tacts. He said he devised a secret code with future king Juan Car­los of Spain that would give Newsweek a heads up on the death of long­time and long-ail­ing dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Fran­co.

“The mes­sage that he would send me,” the jour­nal­ist recalled, was, ‘Char­lie is on his way to Rome and wants to see you.’ ”

His exploits — at times recount­ed as lore — made Mr. de Borch­grave the sub­ject of news pro­files that explored his cachet and rep­u­ta­tion for extrav­a­gance. A self-described “sun wor­shiper,” he quipped that he was “lucky that most of the world’s crises have been in trop­i­cal cli­mates.”

“Peo­ple were always talk­ing about ‘the tan’ and the way I went to the best par­ties. But black tie, white tie or com­bat fatigues, I was work­ing,” he told the Chica­go Tri­bune in 1985. “I’d come up with an excuse to go to the bath­room every 30 min­utes at a par­ty to make notes on what I’d been told. . . . Sure, there were pic­tures in fan­cy mag­a­zines with the Aga Khan on his yacht off Sar­dinia. But, my god, I was work­ing!”

Newsweek reward­ed Mr. de Borch­grave for what was, by all accounts, his prodi­gious out­put. “There were three report­ing bud­gets: for­eign, domes­tic and Arnaud,” a for­mer cor­re­spon­dent once said, accord­ing to an account in the New York­er mag­a­zine.

He once sub­mit­ted an expense report for new suits to replace old ones that, accord­ing to the sto­ry, had been dam­aged when a bul­let entered his hotel room and pen­e­trat­ed his suit­case. Anoth­er time, after report­ing on the Indo-Pak­istan con­flict, he said he charged Newsweek sev­er­al hun­dred dol­lars for “sher­pas for man­han­dling our Jeep across a land­slide.”

Mr. de Borch­grave main­tained his elite sta­tus despite an uneasy per­son­al rela­tion­ship with Katharine Gra­ham, who suc­ceed­ed Philip Gra­ham, her hus­band, at the helm of The Wash­ing­ton Post and Newsweek after his sui­cide in 1963.

Mr. de Borch­grave “played a large and use­ful, if ambigu­ous, role abroad for Newsweek,” she recalled in her mem­oir, “Per­son­al His­to­ry” (1997). “He was a dash­ing fig­ure, a charmer of sorts who knew many of the mon­archs, rulers, and lead­ers, and a fine reporter. And he was good for the mag­a­zine,” she wrote, adding that “he also lived very well off it.”

In 1980, Mr. de Borch­grave was fired from Newsweek in what was wide­ly described as an edi­to­r­i­al dis­agree­ment stem­ming from his cov­er­age of the Sovi­et inva­sion of Afghanistan. When the mag­a­zine reject­ed his ini­tial dis­patch, which com­pared the incur­sion to Nazi Germany’s march into Czecho­slo­va­kia, he report­ed­ly cir­cum­vent­ed the top edi­tor and com­plained to the com­pa­ny pres­i­dent.

After leav­ing the mag­a­zine, Mr. de Borch­grave teamed with Robert Moss, a jour­nal­ist from the Econ­o­mist mag­a­zine, to pub­lish a newslet­ter, “Ear­ly Warn­ing,” which report­ed intel­li­gence news the two men con­sid­ered under-cov­ered in the main­stream media.

He and Moss co-wrote a best­selling nov­el, “The Spike” (1980), out­lin­ing a sce­nario — not entire­ly fic­tion­al, in Mr. de Borchgrave’s view — in which Sovi­et agents infil­trat­ed West­ern media to dis­sem­i­nate com­mu­nist dis­in­for­ma­tion. They fol­lowed that book with anoth­er cau­tion­ary best­seller, “Mon­im­bo” (1983).

In 1985, Mr. de Borch­grave became edi­tor of the Wash­ing­ton Times, the news­pa­per launched three years ear­li­er with the back­ing of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, a reli­gious group with mil­lions of fol­low­ers but often described as a cult.

While the Times trailed The Post in cir­cu­la­tion, it had a loy­al read­er­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly among Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and con­ser­v­a­tives who wel­comed it as an alter­na­tive to oth­er media out­lets.

Mr. de Borch­grave was cred­it­ed with encour­ag­ing ener­getic report­ing from his staff, but at times made unortho­dox jour­nal­is­tic deci­sions. Dur­ing his tenure, the news­pa­per helped raise funds, includ­ing $100,000 from its par­ent com­pa­ny, to sup­port the Con­tra rebels fight­ing the left­ist San­din­istas in Nicaragua.

A per­sis­tent charge — includ­ing from an edi­to­r­i­al-page edi­tor who resigned in protest — was that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church med­dled in the newspaper’s affairs. On one occa­sion, the paper pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al in which Mr. de Borch­grave called on Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan to par­don Moon, who had been con­vict­ed of tax eva­sion.

Mr. de Borch­grave dis­missed alle­ga­tions of church inter­fer­ence as “twad­dle.” In 1991, he stepped down as edi­tor, lat­er becom­ing chief exec­u­tive of the wire ser­vice by then known as Unit­ed Press Inter­na­tion­al. In sub­se­quent years, he was edi­tor at large at the Times and UPI, which was pur­chased in 2000 by the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church news affil­i­ate.

Arnaud Paul Charles Marie-Philippe de Borch­grave d’Altena was born Oct. 26, 1926, in Brus­sels. Lat­er, jour­nal­ism col­leagues dubbed him the “Short Count” for his unim­pos­ing phys­i­cal stature. He said that he lied about his age to serve in the British navy dur­ing World War II.

In the lat­er years of his career, in addi­tion to his jour­nal­is­tic work, he was an advis­er at the Wash­ing­ton-based Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies.

In 2012, Mr. de Borch­grave received unfa­vor­able atten­tion for sim­i­lar­i­ties in his writ­ing to oth­er pub­lished sources. “Every­body makes mis­takes and I take respon­si­bil­i­ty for mine,” he said in a state­ment at the time. “I will redou­ble my efforts to attribute with pre­ci­sion.”

Mr. de Borchgrave’s mar­riages to Dorothy Solon and to Eileen Ritschel end­ed in divorce. A son from his first mar­riage, Arnaud de Borch­grave Jr., died in 2011. Sur­vivors include his wife of 45 years, the for­mer Alexan­dra Vil­lard of Wash­ing­ton; a daugh­ter from his sec­ond mar­riage, Trisha de Borch­grave of Lon­don; a sis­ter; and two grand­daugh­ters.

Mr. de Borch­grave bemoaned the lack of sar­to­r­i­al style among many jour­nal­ists, adding that good taste was a pro­fes­sion­al asset.

“I saw this in Moroc­co once,” he recalled in an oral his­to­ry. “I had a Chester­field coat with a black vel­vet col­lar. Looked like a diplo­mat. Nass­er was com­ing in his yacht to Casablan­ca and get­ting togeth­er with all these Arab heads of state, and the media was dressed, as you know, how the media dress­es. I was dressed like an ambas­sador. And I man­aged to get in with the ambas­sadors. I did that over and over again.”

Man­hat­tan DA look­ing into the rela­tion­ship between Newsweek and Olivet Uni­ver­si­ty:

http://www.newsweek.com/newsweek-manhattan-da-olivet-university-david-jang-fired-new-york-media-813949