The Betrayal of the Church - Appendix I, II, & III

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This section is an attempt to inform the reader where large amounts of church tithes are distributed and to give an adequate description of organizations receiving those funds. Most major denominations do not provide a financial disclosure detailing their expenditures, so the information has had to be obtained back to front-in other words, to find out how the organizations are funded instead of decoding church budgets. Because most of the organizations in question do not reveal their funding sources and budgets, the funding information presented here tends to jump years. It may have been possible to discover funding for an organization for 1981, but not 1982, or to reveal funding for 1982 and 1984, but not for 1983. There are many instances in which funding for only one year was confirmed or denominational giving was confirmed, but it was impossible to confirm the amount.

Any information about grants provided by the National Council of Churches has been particularly hard to obtain, as they refuse to open their books to investigating organizations. In contrast, the United Methodist Church now provides a detailed financial disclosure report every year. This accounts for our detail on United Methodist funding.

This is by no means a complete list of unsuitable organizations funded by the church, but only some of the more blatant examples. If all were listed, they would fill the whole book, not just one appendix.

One further note: except for instances involving personal quotations, particularly serious charges, or large bodies of material from one source, this appendix is not footnoted. Sources of information have been too numerous to list. Most quotations drawn from organizational material are not footnoted, although there has been an effort to identify the publication. Addresses of each organization have been provided, when possible.

IMPACT is a Washington lobbying organization composed of church and quasichurch groups who lobby exclusively for left of center causes. IMPACT also has twenty-one state offices scattered around the country and about fifteen thousand members nationwide. The organization is sponsored by agencies Of sixteen mainline denominations - including those of the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America, the Roman Catholic Church, the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., the United Methodists, the American Baptist Church, U.S.A., the Reformed Church, and the Episcopal Church-who finance the organization through grants. And the price is not small.

The United Methodist Board of Global Ministries paid almost $60,000 to be an IMPACT member between 1981 and 1983 and gave another $17,158 to IMPACT grass-roots organizations. The United Methodists gave a total (including local chapters) of $14,500 in 1984. Each sponsoring agent has a place on the board of directors. Some of the causes IMPACT has lobbied for are the ratification of the SALT II treaty, defeat of the MX missile program and the Strategic Defense Initiative, cutoff of funds to the Nicaraguan contras, and budget increases for federal poverty programs.

IMPACT has much influence, chiefly because it mobilizes its grass-roots membership to fiercely lobby on issues which it thinks important. IMPACT makes sure all fifteen thousand members, and the sponsoring agents, know when issues will come up before Congress and who to lobby in order to influence the vote. The results of these tactics are obvious. Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Florida) floated a proposal to the Senate budget committee, in 1983, to cut federal food stamps. Chiles dropped the proposal after his office was flooded by calls from angry Florida constituents. Those constituents had been alerted by IMPACT.1

The Religious News Service quoted Florida church activist Karen Woodall on the matter. "We have a telephone tree, and so we contacted our key contacts around the state and they called their contacts, saying it was urgent that they call Senator Chiles' office. Then we called other religious groups that also have telephone trees, and set up an appointment in Washington to reinforce those calls." An aide to Chiles told the News Service that the activists had "really turned on the heat."2

There is nothing wrong with participatory democracy, which requires lobbying, but it is a different matter if churches are spending money on a lobbying organization which does not reflect the views Of a majority of its members.

IMPACT's address is 110 Maryland Avenue, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002.

NACLA, the North American Congress on Latin America, advocates Cuban-type socialism and is blatantly anti-American. Its ideological draft statement admits NACLA sought the support of those "who not only favor revolutionary change in Latin America but also take a revolutionary position toward their own society. . . . " The organization supports El Salvador's Marxist guerrillas and Nicaragua's Sandinista government, a fact the organization admits.

Many of the North American Congress staff members have written books which are used by university Latin America Studies Departments. This is unfortunate because the Congress is the conveyor of inuch false information. In a 1982 Congress publication, Target Nicaragua, the writers claimed that anti-Sandinista forces were responsible for the deaths of Miskito Indian leaders. Further investigation, however, reveals that the Sandinista government, not the contras, have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Indians, the theft of their lands, torture, and thirteen "relocation" camps where nine thousand to fifteen thousand Indians are presently being kept against their will.

In interviews with past and present Congress members for Helen Shapiro's "NACLA Reminiscences: An Oral History," from NACLA Report on the Americas, one Congress activist said he believed NACLA was conceived with two purposes. "One was Latin America specifically, but the other more general one was the political use of information . . . consequently, along with demystifying research, NACLA also had a contrary emphasis of developing expertise on the left."

NACLA founders and employees rarely differ from the organization's attitudes. Founder John Gerassi served as director of the U.S. branch of the Bertrand Russell International War Crimes Tribunal. The Tribunal accused the U.S. of Vietnamese genocide. He has also been a regular contributor to the National Guardian, the Communist weekly, and wrote a book titled Ven Ceremos, the Speeches, and Writings of Che Guevara.

The Presbyterian Hunger Program gave NACLA $10,500 in 1980 for a Agribusiness Project of the North American Congress on Latin America. It then promptly produced a publication titled Agribusiness in the Americas, which stated that "It is only in societies organized along socialist lines - where production and distribution is organized by the principle of social equality rather than private profit - that the Possibility of ending hunger exists. China is a dramatic example."

The Congress was credited by Philip Agee - a former CIA agent who has made a career out of revealing names of active intelligence officers - with having helped him undermine the CIA. Agee is now suspected of being an agent of the KGB and is persona non grata in this country. CIA station chief Richard Welch was murdered in Athens after Agee published his name in Counter-Spy. The Congress was on the original steering committee for the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the American branch of the El Salvadoran Marxist guerrillas. (See listing later in this Appendix.)

NACLA's address is 151 W. 19th Street, New York, N. Y. 10011.

MONEY - In fiscal year 1983 the Lutheran Church U.S.A. gave NACLA $8,000, the National Council of Churches gave $8,000, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers gave $7,000, and the Presbyterians gave $5,000. From 1976 through 1981 the Congress was given grants totaling $26,500 by the Presbyterian hunger money. Ironically, according to its own financial statements, NACLA participates in the capitalism it so much despises. It owns,shares in several corporations. In 1984 the Methodists contributed $1,000 more to North American Congress coffers.

The Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, is proleftist and acts as a liaison between radical groups in Central America and church groups, congressmen, labor unions, and the media, often bringing Latins to testify before Congressional committees. The organization has grown in influence and specializes in influencing Congress with reports, publicity, and seminars.

Former civil rights activist Bruce Cameron, formerly one of the most effective lobbyists on Capitol Hill for leftist human rights organizations, said, at one time, that WOLA was "nothing but a shill for the Sandinistas."3 Cameron, who now supports the anti-Sandinista rebels, has recanted his statement but maintains that some WOLA employees and other human rights organizations and activists are biased on behalf of Marxist-Leninist regimes. "There's a litmus test they have established for themselves," Cameron says of WOLA and of the human rights "community" in general. "They can't move toward the center, but they can move all the way to the left." The "community" is also intolerant of dissenters. When Cameron began to air his new views, he lost his position at the Foreign Policy Education Fund and the Human Rights Political Action Committee.4

The credibility of Cameron's statements is verified when WOLA's actions are examined. WOLA and the Institute for Policy Studies (to be discussed later in this Appendix) can be credited for bringing, before the 1979 overthrow of Somoza, Nicaraguan government official and erstwhile priest Ernesto Cardenal to the U.S. to speak on behalf of the Sandinista movement. He was ostensibly attending an Institute for Policy Studies Latin American Round Table program, designed to aid in the formulation of alternative U.S. policy toward Latin America.

In 1985 WOLA, in conjunction with Representative Samuel Gejdenson and attorneys for Reichler and Applebaum, the Nicaraguan government's official registered agent in the United States, released a report on alleged contra atrocities. The report was assembled by attorney Reed Brody and law student Jim Bourdeloin, who spent four rnonths in Nicaragua. The National Forum Foundation charged in May 1985, however, that the report was compiled with the full cooperation of the Sandinistas, and the attorneys' transportation through the countryside, as well as their housing and office space were all provided by the Nicaraguan government.5

The report was submitted to the House Foreign Affairs Subcomtnittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs and the aforementioned groups. A second fact-finding group was then assembled for another trip. it included, among others, WOLA representatives, Rep. Gejdenson, the attorneys, the former chief council to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under the chairmanship of Frank Church, interpreter Valerie Miller, a two-year resident of postrevolutionary Nicaragua and author of a book on the infamous literacy campaign, and human rights lawyer-activist Donald Fox.6

Fox later admitted that his Nicaraguan-born wife, now a U.S. citizen, went to Managua with the group in order to visit her family at WOLA's expense. Mrs. Fox's brother is a high-ranking official in the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry in Rome.7

The group naturally uncovered no discrepancies in the original report, and only bothered to corroborate ten of the almost one hundred and fifty affidavits. When the group returned to Washington they called, with much publicity, for a congressional investigation into the alleged contra atrocities. Nobody mentioned the help they received from the Sandinista government.8

Brody later admitted getting help in living and working arrangements from the Sandinistas, but denied Sandinista interference as he searched for witnesses. The Reagan Administration later revealed, however, that four incidents which he claimed had been carried out by the contras had, in fact, happened before the contras were an organized force; six atrocities were perpetrated by a contra, but one who had acted on his own and later been executed by his own people. A religious couple that Brody claimed had been murdered by the contras were actually murdered by Nicaraguan secret police.9

Two former WOLA employees must certainly have been sympathetic to the Sandinistas. Kay Stubbs and Sophia Clark are now employed by the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry.

WOLA boasts of having, on its board of directors, among others, rules and an official of the U.S. Catholic Conference. Thomas Quigley, the official, is also heavily involved with the Inter-Religious Task Force on El Salvador and Central America. WOLA itself was on the original steering committee for the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the following organization.

WOLA's address is 110 Maryland Avenue, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002.

MONEY - Executive director Joe Eldridge, an ordained United Methodist minister, has had salary paid by the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries and $99,000 of the $420,000 WOLA budget comes, or has come in the past, from the United Methodists, American Baptist Churches, U.S.A., The American Lutheran Church, The Episcopal Church, The Mennonite Central Committee, The National and World Council of Churthes ($19,100 in 1981 from the National Council and $5,860 from the World Council), the Presbyterian Church, and seventeen different Catholic orders and organizations. In 1981 it received $41,500 from the Maryknoll Fathers alone. In 1984 the United Methodists contributed $1,850. In 1980 WOLA received $35,000 from the Maryknoll Fathers, $10,250 from the Capuchin Missions, and $7,500 from the World Council of Churches.

CISPES, or the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, is a Communist-created organization formed to gather support for El Salvador's Marxist-Leninist guerrillas. It has an interesting history because it is the only organization known to have open ties to Marxists-Leninists. The organization was created in February 1980 by Farid Handal, brother of Shafik, El Salvador's Communist Party chief and a sometime member of the guerrilla organization which is seeking to overthrow the government. The Handals are Palestinians who have ties to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which, in turn, supplies the Salvadoran guerrillas with arms."10

Handal created CISPES as a result of Soviet resolve to create foreign support for the insurgents in El Salvador. The details of his February trip to the United States were found among papers captured at a guerrilla safe house in El Salvador, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence subsequently published excerpts.11

According to the papers, Handal first consulted with the Cuban Mission to the United Nations who offered to help Handal and advised him to consult with "progressive" Congressmen, among them Ron Dellums of California, to make his trip appear more "natural and in that way protect my visa." Handal reported that Dellums is "Black, but very progressive." Dellums has long been associated with radical organizations. The United States Information Agency released documents captured in Grenada after the invasion that reveal Dellurns had a close tie with the Marxist-Leninist Bishop government. Two of Dellums's staff traveled to Cuba shortly after the invasion and allegedly broadcast anti-American statements over Radio Havana."12

Handal wrote in his report that Dellums's "political counselor made known that my visit could not have arrived at a better moment. They were interested in better understanding the situation in El Salvador because they were ready to do battle against the hawks who have today strengthened their position and influence in the Senate and Congress of the U.S.A. . . . Monday morning the offices of Congressman Dellums were turned into our offices. . . . Everything was down there." Handal also officially met with the Congressional Black Caucus.13

He then met with members of the Directorate of the American Cor-nmunist Party and with the person "responsible for the U.S. Peace Council." The "peace council" is, according to American intelligence, a Soviet front organization.14

That person was Sandy Pollack. and she proposed a national conference under the auspices of the U.S. Peace Council, the National Council of Churches, Amnesty International, the Washington Office on Latin America, and unions. "The objective of the conference is to establish a support mechanism for the solidarity committees and to help create solidarity committees in those states where they do not exist yet." After having met with representatives of the National Council of Churches, Handal wrote that "they were eager to collaborate."15

When the Reagan Administration issued a White Paper on El Salvador in 1981, which included a report on Handal's trip to the United States, Philip Agee, the CIA defector, organized a news conference; he then denounced the documents, claiming they were forged by American intelligence. The fact that Agee claimed the documents are forgeries is almost proof in itself that they are genuine.16

CISPES has more than lived up to Handal's expectations, having created a strong pro-Marxist (and anti-American) network that constantly lobbies Congress. There are over one hundred and twenty affiliate CISPES committees around the country.

In keeping with methods used by its founder, in 1980 CISPES circulated a forgery labeled "Dissent Paper on El Salvador and Central America." It was supposedly a State Department document from officials who disagreed with department policies about Central America. The authors supposedly warned that support for the El Salvadoran government would end with disaster and America would eventually be forced to use military might. The forgery was later printed (and presented as authentic) in the newsletter for the Religious Task Force on El Salvador, the Institute on Policy Studies and mentioned in columns by Anthony Lewis of The New York Times and Flora Lewis of the same publication. Flora Lewis later apologized to her readers and said she had been fooled about the document.17

CISPES associates, at least, seem willing to risk everything for what they believe. Carroll Ishee, formally with the African Liberation Support Committee of Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco, was killed in the summer of 1984 while fighting with the Salvadoran guerrillas. His wife is Levaun Ishee, a Southeast regional coordinator for CISPES.18

CISPES has had considerable success recruiting help for the guerrillas among influential Americans. In 1983, three hundred of New York's affluent attended a $100 per plate benefit dinner for, supposedly, medical aid for the "liberated" areas of El Salvador. The $30,000 would be used in projects supervised by the guerrillas. The dinner was organized by CISPES and aided by a committee of entertainers and other celebrities headed by television actor Ed Asner. Speakers included Harry Belafonte, guerrilla member Mario Valasquez, and former Congresswoman Bella Abzug.

CISPES has also cosponsored events with the National Council of Churches, Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH, and numerous religious organizations. Bruce McColm of Freedom House, a conservative think-tank and information broker, has charged that the United States Peace Council (the Soviet front organization) has also helped finance CISPES.

CISPES is located at 930 F Street, Washington, D.C. Its mailing address is Box 50139, Washington, D.C.

MONEY - CISPES was granted over $2,000 by the United Methodists between 1981 and 1983 and $500 in 1984. The United Methodist financial disclosure statement described CISPES as a "broad coalition organ of churches and individuals opposed to intervention in El Salvador. Its purpose is to educate the U.S. public regarding the reality of the situation in El Salvador." Many major denominations have also contributed.

EPICA, The Ecumenical Program for Inter-American Communication and Action, was given funds by the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, in 1982, to produce a booklet that was to be titled A Population Primer on Grenada. The title was later altered to Grenada: The Peaceful Revolution. In one chapter called "The Election Question" the text reads, "General elections would threaten the revolutionary process by inviting outside interference through financial contributions or covert manipulations." EPICA was, naturally, one of the loudest voices protesting the U.S. invasion in 1983.

The National Council of Churches has contended that EPICA's anti-American publications provide "a forum for Christians in other countries to speak to Christians here." After a study of EPICA publications, however, the Institute on Religion and Democracy concluded that almost everything in them was written by United States residents. EPICA is frankly pro-Sandinista and pro-Cuban.

Interestingly enough, EPICA founder Phillip Wheaton has contributed to Counter-Spy. Wheaton met with Farid Handal when Handal visited the United States when first organizing CISPES, a fact that he later admitted. EPICA was on the original CISPES steering cornmittee.

EPICA is located at 1470 Irving St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20010.

MONEY - EPICA was given, in 1981, $19,260 by the National Council of Churches, $2,500 by the World Division of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.

The Center for Constitutional Rights was founded in 1966 by three leaders of the National Lawyer's Guild, William Kunstler, Morton Stavis, Arthur Kinoy. Also taking a hand were the late Ben Smith, a registered agent of the Cuban government, and Peter Weiss. Weiss served from 1962-1972 as president of the American Committee on Africa, the principal U.S. support group for the African Marxists-Leninists. The National Lawyer's Guild is the largest U.S. affiliate of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the Soviet-controlled front for lawyers. The Association was organized with the assistance of the Soviet government in 1936 as a front operated by the Communist Party, U.S.A. The U.S. government also recognizes the Guild as a Soviet front organization.

The 1974-1975 annual report describes the Center's mission as a struggle against "illusory democracy," and Kunstler has described the Center's work as "endeavoring to bring down the system through the system."19

Favorite tactics include attempts to provide legal defense to accused terrorists - everyone from members of the Baadar-Meinhoff gang to the Marxist-Leninist Puerto Rican Socialist Party. The defense in such cases is used not only to defend the accused, but to attack the United States. When the Center defended Puerto Rican Socialist Party member Delfin Ramos, who was charged with possession of stolen explosives, the Center defense team stated that they were "representing Ramos in such a way as to not only expose the government's political motivations for the prosecution, but to reveal the oppressive nature of the colonial relationship. . . ." This organization has instituted legal suits designed to help the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas of El Salvador and the Cuban government and has published material touting the Sandinistas of Nicaragua. One of the articles published in the Center's newsletter, Fight The Right, in May 1981, was titled "Reagan's Reign of Terror."

The Center's address is 853 Broadway, New York, New York, 10003.

MONEY - The United Methodist Board of Global Ministries padded the Center's $170,000-plus (as of 1981) budget with $5,500. In 1982 they reduced funding to $3,445, but in 1983 increased funding to $14,302. The amount for 1984 went up to $23,000. It should not surprise anyone that the board is helping finance the Center because Global Ministries official Peggy Billings has been on the Center's board of trustees.

Clergy and Laity Concerned was very active in the nuclear freeze campaign and works against every U.S. weapons system ever devised. In an undated fund and membership raising letter, Clergy directors accused the U.S. of "playing politics with food - not only tolerating but encouraging repressive governments that starve their poor . . . our government gets involved because we are assured cheap labor, access to national resources in these countries, and unopposed exports of agricultural products to the United States."

The statement went on to imply that the United States is responsible for the infant death rate in the Dominican Republic. Clergy's attitude is not surprising if you know that in its 1970 description of themselves, Clergy said it was involved in a struggle "against American imperialism in every corner of the world." Several of CLC's leading members, however, signed an ad attacking Joan Baez because she dared to criticize Vietnam for its human rights record after the fall of South Vietnam.

The description of Clergy in the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries' grant book says, "It establishes nationwide campaigns which prove to be powerful tools in changing government policies. It analyzes and works to change the misuse of American corporate government and military power."

The United Methodist Board of Global Ministries apparently thinks so well of Clergy that it encourages Clergy to teach Sunday school. In 1982 the Board gave Clergy $2,000 to provide children's programs for annual interchurch seminars held every Sunday for a month. "Training sharing with religious educators in the Eugene (Oregon) area; cooperation with vacation church schools on peace and justice themes; and workshops for church school staffs from indilidual congregations."

A Clergy document titled "History of Clergy and Layrnen Concerned about Vietnam" (the original name) stated, " From its inception, Clergy has been deeply indebted to the National Council of Churches for its cooperation and assistance. Clergy has had offices in National Council of Churches facilities, has used NCC printing and addressing equipment and services, and has utilized the non-profit organization tax exemption of the NCC. In addition, the NCC has been extremely understanding about money due them from Clergy during times of financial difficulty." The paean and the help is not difficult to understand if you know that the NCC originally founded Clergy.

The organization's address is 198 Broadway, New York, New York, 10038.

MONEY - Between 1981 and 1983 the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries granted the American branch of Clergy $40,800 (Clergy has a half-million dollar budget) and gave a further $8,610, in 1983, to the Philippines branch of the Clergy and many thousands more to Clergy state offices. Clergy was also given $11,000 by the Presbyterian Hunger Program. In 1984 the United Methodist Church contributed $30,500 for one year alone.

A Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy has fifty-five members, a majority of which are churches or quasi-church groups. Not all, however. A Coalition Disarmament Working Group has had, as members, the Institute for Policy Studies Militarism and Disarmament Project, a far-left thinktank with questionable connections (see elsewhere in this Appendix); the U.S. Peace Council, which is, as previously stated, according to American intelligence, a Soviet front; the National Center to Slash Military Spending, run by Pauline Rosen, a veteran Communist Party activist; the National Lawyer's Guild, another Soviet front according to U.S. intelligence; Women's Strike for Peace, a Soviet front; and two unions expelled from the AFL-CIO as Communist Party fronts, the United Electrical Workers and the West Coast International Longshoremen and Warehouseman's Union of Harry Bridges.

The Coalition is much like Clergy and Laity Concerned. They deplore all American involvement in Central America and their newsletter boasted, in 1984, that "we are very close to shutting down the U.S. covert operations against Nicaragua . . . together we can stop this dirty, secret war and make a major change in U.S. foreign policy. . ." The newsletter went on to ask the reader to contact one of "swing votes" in the Senate. Such tactics are very successful because legislators are unable to tell that the grass-roots support which has been mobilized is part of a radical organization. The Coalition has also campaigned against almost every defense program ever funded by Congress.

In the Coalition's "Disarmament Guide" the writers state, the next time you hear exaggerated stories about Soviet intentions and 'worse case' scenarios, think how frightening the world must look to a Soviet military planner - faced with an economically and technologically superior adversary (the U.S.) which perpetually pushes for an advantage in the arms race, which has intervened militarily or through its intelligence agencies in Indochina, the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Iran, to name but a few."

The organization's address is 720 G Street, Washington, D.C. 20003.

MONEY - The Coalition was given over $28,000 between 1981 and 1983 from various agencies of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries and $8,100 for 1984.

The Religious Task Force on Central America is a relentlessly pro-Sandinista, pro-El Salvadoran guerrilla organization whose steering committee is composed almost entirely of Catholic clergy and officials, including Tom Quigley, an official of the U.S. Catholic Conference (see Chapter Eight).

The organization, which receives church funds, attacks the Nicaraguan bishops for their anti-Sandinista attitudes. A typical paragraph from their literature is as follows, "The Nicaraguan Bishops' Pastoral Letter on Reconciliation, which was read in most parishes on Easter Sunday and included a call to dialogue with those who have taken up arms against the government, has provoked a wave of protest here. . . . Many were angered by the fact that the bishops, when they address the theme of reconciliation, fail to mention that the suffering and violent death of so many Nicaraguans is a direct consequence of U.S. support for the counter-revolutionary movement. . . ."

According to sources in Nicaragua, the only protests that were heard over the Bishops' 1984 Easter Sunday letter were those of the Sandinista government. The Task Force was on the original CISPES steering committee.

The Task Force address is 1747 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.

The Inter-Religious Task Force on El Salvador and Central America, founded by the National Council of Churches, wrote a background study on El Salvador which states that the Democratic Revolutionary Front, the Marxists-Leninists, arconsidered "the legitimate representative" by a majority of the people of El Salvador. This statement is not true. The guerrillas have very little support from Salvadorans. The Task Force was an original member of the CISPES steering committee.

The organization's address is 475 Riverside Drive, Room 622, New York, New York, 10115.

MONEY - The Task Force was funded in 1981 by the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries for $4,950. The agency gave them $500 in 1982, $3,000 in 1983, and $7,150 in 1984. In 1983 the National Council gave the Task Force a $1,000-grant to compile and mail information for "Central America Week" which churches were urged to observe in March 1983.

Theology in the Americas, or TIA, had a conference in Detroit in 1980 which dealt with exploring a "creative socialist alternative" in America. However, TIA's main thrust is liberation theology. The United Methodist Board of Global Ministzies' description of TIA, in its 1983 list of grants, says, "TIA continues to challenge the theological mainstream by basing theological reflection within the struggles of the poor and oppressed." To prove its appreciation the board gave TIA $67,115 from 1981-1983 and $13,200 in 1984. TIA was given $1,400 by the Latin American Division of the National Council of Churches in 1981.

TIA's address is room 1244-AA, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, New York 10115.

The Indochina Consortium of the World Council of Churches spent over $1 million dollars in 1979 and 1980, including approximately $100,000 from the Presbyterian Hunger Program, to support the "long term plan of setting up a new economic zone in Lam Dong." Church World Service, part of the National Council, sent $400,000 to this project, $10,000 of which was contributed by the Disciples of Christ. The new economic zones are forced resettlement camps which often offer nothing but starvation to the people settled there. The Vietnamese consider the new economic zones a death sentence, and hundreds of thousands became "boat people" and died on the high seas trying to avoid them (and other horrors).

The funding of these "new economic zones" are the equivalent of the Episcopalians and the National Council of Churches donating funds to Nicaragua's "relocation" camps for Miskito Indians, which they did do. The Episcopalians gave $10,000 in 1985. The funds Might give a degree of comfort to the people in the camps, but it is highly questionable whether American Christians should help totaiitafian governments build prisoner-of-war camps.

CAREE, Christians Associated for Relationships with Eastern Europe, is one of the most interesting organizations which has received church money. It is affiliated with the National Council of Churches Europe Committee of the Division of Overseas Ministries. According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the West German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, CAREE's close working partner, the Christian Peace Conference, is a Soviet front organization. The CIA believes that Christian Peace Conference president Bishop Karoly Toth of the Reformed Church of Hungary is a KGB agent.

CAREE began its life as the U.S. Committee for the Christian Peace Conference. The group changed its name to CAREE in 1972, after a crisis caused by the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Despite the name change, however, the Conference is very much CAREE's partner organization. Members of both organizations are present on each other's boards and committees and send delegations to sister gatherings, work together on projects and mutually contribute to the other's financial well-being.

CAREE's 1984 annual meeting was chaired by Christoph Schmauch, also a member of the Christian Peace Conference's International Secretariat and a native of East Germany. Schmauch also runs the World Fellowship Center in Conway, New Hampshire. (That organization was founded by a member of the World Peace Council and the Peace Council is, according to the U.S. Government, a Soviet front. Founder Willard Uphaus was once sentenced to a year in jail for not producing records of guests who had met at the Fellowship Center.) CAREE's annual meeting was also attended by Philip Oke, the United Nations representative to the Christian Peace Conference, and Bruce Rigdon, a member of the Conference working committee and a staffer at the National Council of Churches. Rigdon is chairman of the new National Council's Committee on U.S.A.-U.S.S.R. Church Relations, which sends delegations from the U.S. to the Soviet Union, usually church bureaucrats and leadership, which generally corlie back with praise for religious freedom in the Soviet Union.

CAREE, sponsors Christian-Marxist dialogues both in the U.S. and and internationally and organizes exchanges with individuals teams from Eastern Europe churches, including the U.S.S.R.

Had the State Department not labeled the Christian Peace Conference a Soviet front organization, average readers of Peace Coliference material would probably have come to that conclusion on their own. The Conference invariably (like the World Council of Churches) takes the Soviet line. Some of the more blatant examples are found when reading Conference literature.

The Peace Conference statement on Afghanistan is typical. The subtitle reads, "The achievement of the April revolution in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan needs our international solidarity." The text claims that the Soviets were invited into Afghanistan by a reformer government because "the forces of the old feudal regime have attempted to stop and reverse the progressive development. . . . In view of these promising tendencies in Afghanistan we consider all attempts to disrupt this development from some of its neighboring countries as being oriented against the interests of the Afghan people and constituting a dangerous threat to peace in Asia and the world at large."

The rest of the statement is similar, blaming the U.S. for its attitude on the invasion, claiming American attitudes lead to "dangerous international tensions" and urging the U.S. to take its "responsibilities" seriously by ratifying the SALT II treaty and cancelling new weapons systems.

CAREE's office is located at 475 Riverside Drive, New York City.

MONEY - The United Church of Christ, the United Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Mennonites, the National Council of Churches, and the U.S. Catholic Conference have all donated funds to CAREE. The United Methodists gave $1,500 in 1984.

The Institute for Policy Studies is an effective and subversive "think-tank" whose mission seems to be discrediting American policies any way it can - advising total disarmament, forcing the dismantling of U.S. intelligence agencies, attacking American culture, defending the Soviets (as mere reactionaries to American aggression), and touting terrorist groups.
The multimillion-dollar agency "can be described as an enormous intelligence operation practicing both covert action and subversion. It is itself an adaptation of the multi-national corporation, and serves as an 'imperial' nerve center, with endless subsidiary operations that in turn influence and shape a whole series of ostensibly independent groups."20

Radical associates of the IPS and their activities have been so extensive it is impossible, in an appendix, to list them all. Among the highlights, however (almost all culled from Rael Jean Isaac's "America the Enemy - profile of a Revolutionary Think Tank," published in 1980 by the Ethics and Public Policy Center) have been things as diverse as:

Orlando Letelier: Letelier was an associate at IPS and also the former ambassador to the United States from Chile under Allende's government. He was found to be an apparent Cuban agent after his death. Columnist Jack Anderson revealed soon after Letelier's murder by car bomb that papers were found in his briefcase which proved he had received $1,000 a month from Havana for his work. Interestingly enough, during the 1980 trip to establish CISPES, Farid Handal met with Isabel Letelier of the IPS, widow to Orlando Letelier.

Typical of IPS, following Letelier's death, the Institute appointed Tariq Ali to Letelier's former position at the Transnational institute, IPS's European office. Ali is the British leader of the Trotskyite Fourth International, an organization which maintains contacts with international terrorist organizations. So unsavory are Ali's activities that he has been barred from entering the U.S., France, India, Japan, Turkey, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Bolivia. He has been quoted (in Newsweek, January 14, 1974) that "We are dedicated to achieving socialism all over the world and not through peaceful revolution." Interestingly enough, other Transnational Institute employees have been Michael Klare, a leading member of the North American Congress on Latin America (which we have already examined), and Basker Vashee, who was a member of ZAPU, a Marxist guerrilla group which operated in Rhodesia.

IPS co-founder Marcus Raskin is a member of the Organizing Committee for the Fifth Estate, which published Counterspy. Counterspy is the anti-U.S. intelligence publication which published names of U.S. intelligence personnel. In Agee's Inside the Company: CIA Diary, he wrote of the debts he owed to several people who gave him information. One of those people was Michael Locker, who later became a director of an IPS spin-off group and a member of the IPS Ad Hoc Working Group on Latin America.

Not content to merely help a traitor, IPS has also produced two of its own films which seek to discredit American intelligence. The 1979 IPS catalog billed one as revealing "heretofore unknown information about CIA practices and policies."

IPS fellow Saul Landau has made two propaganda films a Cuba, Report from Cuba, and Fidel. According to the Council for Inter-American Security, the proceeds from its premiere showing in San Francisco in 1969 went to the Black Panther Defense Fund.

IPS has helped support the Middle East Research and Information Project(MERIP), which in turn supports the major Middle East terrorist groups. Employees of the IPS are editors of MERIP Reports. MERIP has used IPS facilities for its meetings, and IPS fellow Eqbal Ahmad has fund-raised for IPS. IPS has also offered courses on the Middle East taught by MERIP staffers.

Despite these highly public activities, there has been no hue and cry about IPS activities. It employs about seventy-five full-time scholars, visiting fellows, research and staff assistants and has a budget of about $2 million dollars. IPS enjoys prestige in Washington and has produced a flood of studies and publications that are targeted for Congressmen. They usually advise the cutting of defense programs.

As in all leftist organizations, IPS associates and directors are closely allied with like-thinkers. Peter Weiss, associated with the Center for Constitutional Rights, is vice-chairman of the Samuel Rubin Foundation, the principal source for IPS funding, and also the chairman of the IPS board of trustees. When Samuel Rubin died in 1978, IPS founder Raskin said he had been one of those who dared to "call themselves revolutionary." Cora Weiss, wife of Peter Weiss, is head of the Riverside Church of New York's "peace" program, which was discussed in Chapter Two.

Policy Studies' address is 1901 Q Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.

MONEY - IPS received $20,000 in 1979 from the United Presbyterian Hunger Program and was granted $23,800 by the United Methodists, for various projects, between 1981 and 1983. It received $13,120 from the Methodists in 1984.

A spin-off of IPS, the "anti-Zionist" Middle East Research and Information Project has also had grants bestowed upon it. The project was given $8,500 by the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries between 1981 and 1983 and $555 in 1984.

The American Friends Service Committee, which was originally a Quaker organization, describes itself as "non-sectarian," but rooted in Quaker belief. It is, in actuality, a pacifist organization which works tirelessly for disarmament. "AFS staff and volunteers work in communities across the country to enlist local citizens in the campaigns for disarmament, to challenge national priorities, and demand conversion from nuclear weapons production to peacetime production," their brochure states.

The brochure continues, "AFSC's grassroots peace education network the most potent network of its kind in the U.S." Since spent by the Friends for those programs, potence is rches feel the need to give to an organization which is ent is a mystery. Unless, of course, they are just lending a kind of moral support.

In January 1984, the Committee issued a news release that charged "political repression" had been growing in the Caribbean since the United States invaded Grenada. The release claimed that "news coverage of important political events is sparse. Indefinite detention without charges and without trial is permitted under Grenadian law and some 35 persons are currently under political detention."

Those charges - made shortly before American troops were withdrawn from Grenada - may or may not be true. What is interesting is that the Friends not only said nothing about horrible human rights abuses under Marxist-Leninist Maurice Bishop's regime, but actually supported it. Those abuses were much worse than the unsubstantiated charges made by the Friends. Under the Grenadian Marxists-Leninists, all independent news media were forced to close, editors were jailed, and the jails were full of political prisoners that Bishop, with the help of Cuban friends, tortured.

According to the Heritage Foundation, the Friends cannot plead ignorance. They charge that Friends members were in Grenada six months prior to the invasion, in position to see what the revolutionary government was doing. The Friends, however, made no report on the abuses of Bishop's regime and according to documents seized by American troops during the invasion, they had ties to Bishop's regime.

Service Committee headquarters is located at 1501 Cherry Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19102.

MONEY - The Friends received $98,000 of its 1984 $18.4 million budget from churches, including the United Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Church of the Brethren, and various Catholic orders. About $151,000 came from Quaker organizations.

The Board of Global Ministries' national division in 1983 gave the Fellowship Of Reconciliation, a pacifist organization that opposes American defense policies, $2,700. According to the description, it works for peace, civil liberties, social justice, and through the development of nonviolent alternatives in resolution of conflict. The women's division gave $200, but described the organization as an agency opposed to capital punishment.

Reconciliation is located at Box 271, Nyack, New York 10960.

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility's main assertion has been that international corporations, and big business in general, are somewhat akin to robber barons. The Center has noted ". . . four root causes of hunger: unjust economic systems, insufficient food production, population growth and patterns of consumption among the affluent." The organization, discussed in detail in Chapter Three, is a coalition of seventeen Protestant denominations and one hundred and seventy Catholic orders.

MONEY - The ICC was granted $195,634 by Global Ministries in three years, from 1981 through 1983 and $58,887 in 1984. It is also financially supported by every other mainline organization.

The Interfaith Center is located at 475 Riverside Drive, New york, New York 10115.

The National Conference of Black Lawyers was granted $2,000 between 1981 and 1983 from Global Ministries and $10,000 alone in 1984. But the conference is affiliated with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, which the CIA says is a Soviet front organization. Lennox Hinds, the conference director, is the permanent representative for the Democratic Lawyers to the United Nations. Not content with that, United Methodists gave $10,000 to the Affirmative Action Coordinating Center in 1983 to "plan, formulate and implement programs and policies to assure affirmative action and equality in employment." The Affirmative Action Center was established by the National Conference of Black Lawyers.

The Conference is located at Georgetown University Law Center, 600 New Jersey Avenue, Washington, D.C. 20001.

Agricultural Missions, a department of the National Council of Churches, got over $114,000 in 1982 and 1983 from United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries and received $37,906 in 1984 from different Methodist agencies. According to a Global Ministries report, however, Agricultural Missions' main function is supporting "local indigenous movements that tended toward total liberation of rural people - spiritual, economic and political."

Missions staff are liberation theologians at best. In their 1981 annual report, missions staff maintain that the cause of underdevelopment are "powerlessness of people and colonialism." The mission sees it, duty as "decolonialism," which means "Liberation both from the objective conditions of colonialism, i.e., the exploitative relationship between countries, as well as from its subjective manifestation. . . . Agricultural Missions has two constituencies: 1. the rural poor who are engaged in their own liberation and 2. churches and church agencies in North America. . . .We have arranged face to face contacts between the churches and persons who are directly involved in people's liberation struggles."

Missions is located at 475 Riverside Drive, New York, New York 10115.

The Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Movement was given $300 by the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries in 1983. As mentioned in Chapter One, that organization had much success in 1984 when New Zealand, which had been heavily lobbied, forbade American ships carrying nuclear arms from their ports.

Maybe the church tired of the Pacific issue because in 1984 the Methodists gave $10,000 to the Nuclear Free Zones in the Religious Community. Whether this organization means they won't allow MX missiles in the sanctuary or Pershing missiles near the parsonage is unclear.

The National Council of Churches, the United Methodist Church (through the Women's Division of Global Ministries), the Presbyterians, and the Episcopal Hunger Program joined forces to fund a group called the Institute for Food and Development Policy. The Presbyterians had given, as of 1983, $52,500. The Institute "resource guide" on hunger, published with a grant from Agricultural Missions of the National Council, states that only in Socialist countries has hunger been "effectively" overcome.
The Religious Task Force Mobilization for Survival got a total of $4,500 in 1982 and 1983 from the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries and $1,000 in 1984. The group supports disarmament activities.

As important as money is, it does not tell the whole story alliances between church, bureaucracies and leftist organizations are also highly influential. The Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy is, according to its newsletter, affiliated with the American Baptist Churches U.S.A., Department of Church and Society of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Church Women United, U.S. Peace Section of the Mennonite Central Committee, Washington Office of the Church of the Brethren, National Assembly of Wotnein Religious, and the National Council of Churches.

It also enjoys affiliations with the National Federation of priest' Councils, National Office for Jesuit Social Ministries, Sisters Of Joseph of Peace, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Board Of Homeland Ministries and Office of Church in Society of the United Church of Christ, Board of Church and Society and Global Ministries (Women's Division) of the United Methodist Church, U.S. Washington Office of the United Presbyterian Church, Washington Office for the Episcopal Church.

It was also affiliated, of course, with many left-of-center organizations, such as the American Friends Service Committee, Center of Concern, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Fellowship of Reconciliation, War Register's League, and the Washington Office on Africa.

Witness for Peace advisory members include Richard Barnet of the Institute for Policy Studies, Angela Berryman of the American Friends Service Committee, and George Webber of Clergy and Laity Concerned.

These alliances are not just on paper, but are active associations. For instance, during the November 1983 March on Washington, which was primarily a protest against the AdministratioD's Central American policies, most of the following groups marched together and/or officially endorsed the march: the National Council of Churches, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarians, United Methodists, Church Women United, the Jesuits Province of New York, the Maryknoll Fathers and Sisters, the National Office of Jesuit Social Ministries, and the U.S. Catholic Mission Association.

Also marching or endorsing the march were the U.S. Catholic Conference, two different orders of Catholic sisters, Sojourners, the Washington Office on Latin America, Clergy and Laity Concerned, EPICA, the North American Congress on Latin America, the Institute on Policy Studies, the Cuba Resource Center, the American Friends Service Committee, the Communist Party, USA, Communist Workers Party, CISPES, and the National Council of Soviet American Friendship.

EPICA, the National Council of Churches, and the Washington Office on Latin America cosponsored a 1980 Democratic Revolutionarv Front (the El Salvadoran guerrillas) speaking tour.

Worse, under the sponsorship of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and the National Lawyers Guild, CISPES, The Washington Office on Latin America, the North American Congress on Latin America, and TransAfrica supplied speakers for "War Cfimes Tribunals on Central America and the Caribbean." It was America who was being tried.

Held in October 1984 at Columbia University, the "trial" was divided up into different "crimes": "The conspiracy to deny the peoples of the region their right to self-determination," "Planning and waging aggressive wars, overt and covert," etc., etc. The first paragraph of the news release reads, "Nearly forty years after the Nuremberg Trials a group of Americans are once again examining evidence of war crimes and atrocities. This time, however, it is the U.S. government that is being charged with violations of international law."

America, of course, was found guilty.

The alliances are so strong that one organization has even been known to advertise another, or to work in tandem. The Justice and Peace Office of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, who constantly work against American presence in Central America, put out an "action alert" in August 1983. In it, justice and peace officials asked that their readers "write, call or visit" their senators while at home for the summer recess urging them to ban all covert aid to the contras, and urged the reader to also "make use of your local media." But for further details, the alert said to contact the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy.

Most left-of-center organizations have boards of directors and advisory committees which are full of officials from other left-of-center organizations, creating a united front instead of separate entities. The Washington Office on Latin America's (WOLA) Board of Directors and Advisory Council has, among others, officials from the NCC, the American Friends Service Committee, the Board of Global Ministries, Maryknoll Fathers, and other Catholic orders, and the ubiquitous Thomas Quigley (U.S. Catholic Conference). Isabel Letelier, of the Institute for Policy Studies, is also a member.

CAREE, an organization whose associations are so suspicious that they should give most people pause, boasts of having had as members former Methodist bishop and National Council of Churches president James Armstrong and Bryan Hehir, an official at the U.S. Catholic Conference. When asked about his membership, Armstrong said he had only lent his name, but had never been involved in CAREE and knew little about it.

Appendix I | Appendix III

Letter from Kalmin Smith
Regarding his Tour of Nicaragua
Through the West Michigan Conference
of the United Methodist Church

October 14, 1985

". . .There were a few other incidents that happened on the tour that I failed to mention in our conversation that may be of interest to you:

". . .We spent much time with the faculty and administration of the Latino Americano Biblico Seminario in San Jose. Those individuals had nothing positive to say about the Methodists of Costa Rica. They stressed liberation theology and economics. They were angry that the Methodist congregations of Costa Rica were reluctant to accept their graduates who were trained in liberation theology. Indeed, they admitted that because liberation theology is unpopular with local congregations, their enrollment was less than half of what it had been. Victorio Aroya who teaches sociology at the seminary and who supports liberation theology explained that the seminary was fundamentalist until the 1960s when the 'student body broadened.' Since then it was expelled from the Evangelical Alliance of Costa Rica because of its tilt toward liberation theology and accusations that the seminary had links to violent leftist groups. Victorio was bitter that Methodists in Costa Rica emphasized individual salvation rather than 'social justice.' (It is important to note that the Methodist bishop told us Costa Rican Methodists emphasize helping others through schooling, distribution of food and other aid to the poor, etc. When the critics of Methodists in Costa Rica say Methodists aren't for social justice, they mean Methodists don't like Marxist ideology.) He was also bitter that the most popular preacher in Costa Rica is Jimmy Swaggart through his television ministry. Victorio also complained that 'Evangelicals (Protestants) in Central America are receiving money from the U.S. to support pastors who are non-political.' He made it clear that he prefers American dollars be directed toward preachers who actively share his political views.

"On October 18 we visited the Instituto Teologico de America Central Intercongregacional which is a Catholic seminary. I asked the priest in charge of the seminary if liberation theology brings nonbelievers to Christ or if its emphasis on materialism and Political action pulls persons away from the church? The priest responded in Spanish. He said that liberation theology does not make new Christians and that many who accepted liberation theology had left the church for political activities. That statement was translated in the same way by the three individuals in our group who were fluent in Spanish. Yet one member of our group who is extremely pro-liberation theology and pro-Sandinista insisted that those three individuals had translated incorrectly. This individual speaks no Spanish at all. This incident told me more than I really wanted to know about the leftist world view of some of the members of our group. Clearly, they wished only to hear their preconceptions affirmed.

"On Sunday, October 21, we attended the 'people's church' Santa Mafia de Los Angeles (in Nicaragua). I found the Mass and the church interesting because this particular church has long been associated with the Sandinistas and the revolution. The head priest is Uriel Molina who is one of the leaders of liberation theology in Nicaragua. We were told that the people's churches were the churches of the people and presumably the most popular with them. Yet, this church wasn't much more than half full and that included three bus loads of Americans, most of whom seemed enthusiastic supporters of the Sandinistas. I was appalled by the political murals in the church which displayed weapons and violent acts. The priest (not Molina) based his homily on the biblical story where Jesus said to render to God what is God's and to Caesar what is Caesar's. According to the priest, while God is paramount, there is to be no separation of church and state. Therefore Christians should be involved in the Sandinista revolution since giving oneself to Caesar (the Sandinistas) was the same as giving oneself to God.

"Anti-Semitism seems to me to be widespread in the Sandinista government. Everywhere we went, I asked what happened to the Jews? Surprisingly, this seemed to irritate some of the 'liberal' traveling companions who found it indelicate to ask such questions of our hosts. The outspoken anti-Semitism of Joel (the tour guide) was particularly troubling and there was some discussion about this among the members of our group on October 22. On October 23, we visited the Seminario Teologico Bautista (Baptist Seminary). I once again raised that irritating question about Jews. The response of the students and faculty with whom we met was that the seizure of the Jewish synagogue was a legitimate act by the Sandinistas because the synagogue was used as a rallying point for counterrevolutionary forces. They expanded on that subject to say that many churches were centers of resistance to the revolution and that Sandinista mobs understandably took the churches and the temple to express their dissatisfaction. To me, this seemed to be a rationalization or even normative prescription for violent acts against religious groups and individuals who disagree with a government. Despite these astonishing comments about the relationship between religion and politics, our visit to the seminary ended with a tearful statement by one of the pastors in our group in which he told the Nicaraguans that he was a Christian before he was an American and that he would share their grievances in America with his congregation. I agree with that pastor that the fundamental principles of Christianity should limit the action of states. But he seemed to miss the point that the seminarians we talked to clearly were Sandinistas first and Christians second.

"One other insight of our visit to the Baptist Seminary seems important to me. We were told that for a time the Seminary exclusively taught liberation theology, but when that happened, local congregations in Nicaragua refused to accept its graduates. So now, they provide a 'balanced' approach to theological studies. I don't understand how so many Americans convince themselves that liberation theology is the theology of the people when we have received repeated testimony that the people reject clergy trained primarily in liberation theology.

"We also met with Miguel D'Escoto on October 22. One of the other groups we saw at the Catholic church was also there. I noted that the Americans there jumped up and applauded when he entered the room as though he were our President or our Bishop. Most of the questions directed toward him were such soft balls as 'Why does the U.S. fear the Sandinista Revolution?' I asked D'Escoto if he believed Mondale would have a different policy toward Nicaragua than Reagan. He responded that the Democrats would be 'more open' toward Nicaragua and he was certain that Mondale would never invade Nicaragua. He specifically urged us to vote for Mondale and against Reagan. Later that evening Joel angrily promised that the Latin population in the U.S. would begin terrorist operations if the U.S. invaded Nicaragua. Even later Joel said that he did not advocate terrorism against the U.S. but he was just describing what he believed would happen.

"On October 24, we met with Rene Nunez, Secretary General of the Sandinista Front at the Ministry of the Interior which is the department responsible for police-type functions including the secret police. We were joined by another group and, while waiting for Nunez, a few members of our group amused themselves by asking the other group to guess which of us was a Republican. Needless to say, I was Offended to be singled out by my fellow Methodists while sitting in the headquarters of the secret police of a country hostile to our own. At that meeting, one of the clergy in our group found it necessary to make an insulting comment about the U.S. Ambassador in the presence of Nunez.

"On October 25, we visited the Central American Historical Institute. At the Center we met Kathy Gander (a Canadian)and Ria Riesner (an American). Both women expressed pride that their Washington office was involved in briefing Walter Mondale for his foreign policy debate with President Reagan. This institute claims to be the source of independent and objective information. Kathy Gander said they were journalists after truth and not partisans. But at the end of our interview, Ria Riesner announced a rally to be held at the U.S. Embassy to protest U.S. policy and support the Sandinistas. She invited us to participate. Some of our group did participate in that rally. I asked Ria Riesner if her invitation gave the lie to their claims to be independent and objective purveyors of truth. She said 'no.'

"We did visit La Prensa as a result of my complaining (along with a few others) about the lack of balance on the tour. As our bus pulled out of the driveway, we met a parade of about 500 Sandinista-organized individuals marching to La Prensa to protest the paper. They carried plastic FSLN flags and had obviously been organized by the government or the party which is the same thing. La Prensa had not been permitted to publish by the government on Monday of the week we visited the office. It is continuously censored@ne wonders who should rightfully protest to whom. Of course, anyone protesting at FSLN headquarters would be jailed or beaten or chased away very quickly. But not surprisingly, several members of our party shouted and cheered to the marchers to show their solidarity with the Sandinistas. Some flashed the V (victory) sign and begged for Sandinista flags. This shameful event was a repeat of what happened the first full day we were in Nicaragua when we were caught up in a larger demonstration. What would the United Methodists of Michigan think if they had seen that sight? Christ's church will undoubtedly survive the foolishness of these uninformed Americans. But the short-term impact on the United Methodist Church can only be negative.

"One other incident of interest. We met with Peggy Hiener. She and her husband serve as United Methodist missionaries in Nicaragua. Both work for CEPAD. Her husband works in forestry but was in the States at the time we visited. I asked Peggy if she ever evangelized. She said 'no.' If someone brings up the subject of religion, she will talk with them. Otherwise, no. Frankly, this admission astounded me. Later, I had the opportunity to read several of the letters that Mr. Hiener sends to the States for circulation in Methodist churches, Many of them read more like Sandinista propaganda than the kind of letters from missionaries I am used to reading. . . ."

Appendix I | Appendix II

Letter from Robert Gillette
East European correspondent for the Los Angeles Times,
currently stationed in Warsaw, regarding Soviet
efforts to influence Americans

August 20, 1985

". . You asked how does the KGB convince American religious groups, or their delegations, that there is freedom of religion in the Soviet Union.

"Simple American gullibility - an unwillingness to believe that seemingly sincere, hospitable, mature adults would lie to them - is part of the answer, although probably only a small part. As the Marquis de Custine, the French traveler, wrote after touring Russia in 1839, 'Any traveler who lets himself be indoctrinated by the locals could traverse the length and breadth of (Russian) empire and return having done nothing but tour a sequence of facades.'

"There is a risk, however, of giving the Soviet authorities more credit than they deserve for 'indoctrinating' innocent Americans. Many of the Americans in question - members of religious or peace delegations (which contain a sizable component of clergy) - appear unusually open or vulnerable to manipulation, far more so than a randomly selected group of Americans might be. A few, for whatever reasons, are simply old-fashioned fellow travelers.

"Their psychology, or mindset, is complex. But it probably explains to a large extent why they have gone to the trouble and expense of visiting the Soviet Union in the first place. (Billy Graham is a special case, as noted below.) Many of these visitors - but not all - are the latest in a long line of 20th century Americans and West Europeans who have distinguished themselves by a capacity to tour a totalitarian society and find little or nothing objectionable about it. Among their predecessors are Vice President Henry Wallace, who visited a forced labor camp in Siberia in 1944 and found it splendid, and U.S. Ambassador Joseph Davis, who pronounced the purge trials of the 1930s a model of jurisprudence.

"From my contacts with American religious and peace groups, often at Soviet-sponsored press conferences which they held at the end of their tours, several characteristics stood out, especially among the organizers and leaders. Chief among these features were large egos, a loss of faith in American institutions, and an abiding fear of nuclear war that seemed to numb the critical faculties of otherwise intelligent people.

"Some appear simply to have lost all semblance of faith in the good intentions, let alone the truthworthiness, of the American government and the press. Sweeping assertions of a kind that these people would reject out of hand if offered by an American, such as President Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire,' are rather willingly accepted when offered by the 'victims' of such attacks.

"These visitors are quick to accept, for instance, Soviet assertions that the American press paints a uniformly distorted (that is, negative) view of life in the Soviet Union. They show little evidence of having read much, or carefully, about the country. But when it nevertheless fails to conform to a simplistic image they carry in their minds - when they see no guns on the streets to oppress the people, and a few splendidly restored churches open for services - it is not hard for their Soviet hosts to persuade them that the totality of what they have read has been deliberately distorted. Oppression, of course, is not easy to see from the window of a tour-bus, but these people seem not to appreciate this.

"Their hostility was often quite evident during the courtesy briefings the U.S. embassy would give on Soviet affairs. Journalists, some of whom had lived in the Soviet Union for three or four years and spoke fluent Russian, were dismissed as hopeless cold warriors by casual visitors who spoke no Russian and whose total exposure to the Soviet Union consisted of a two-week guided tour.

"In addition to an eroded faith in America, members of these touring groups also bring with them a deep fear of nuclear war which their Soviet hosts play upon, often quite crudely, but not without effect. Concomitant with this fear is an intense need to believe that the Soviet Union is, as it insists, a benign and peaceful nation concerned only with its own security and with making a better life for its own citizens. Were this not so, some American visitors have said, there would be 'no hope' for the future.

"Their obsession with the threat of war, and its effects on their Powers of perception and reasoning, call to mind Milovan Djilas' explanation for the blind veneration of Josef Stalin that guided him and most other faithful communists until the 1950s. In his 'Conversations with Stalin,' the former Yugoslav leader wrote that:

"'In actual fact what happened to the Yugoslav Communists is what has happened to all throughout the long history of men who have ever subordinated their individual fate and the fate of mankind exclusively to one idea: unconsciously they described the Soviet Union and Stalin in terms required by their own struggle and its justification.'

"Official Soviet church organizations have enhanced their own image of usefulness in the eyes of the state by conveying an image of reason and peaceableness to foreign visitors, some of whom seem almost desperate to seize upon this happy vision. To conclude that there is also freedom of religion in the Soviet Union is but a small step further.

"Given this mindset, it also requires no great logical leap to accept the primacy of preventing nuclear war over certain values that have traditionally set Western nations apart from Russia - freedom of faith and expression, the rule of law, the dominance of individual liberty over the rights of the state. Soviet churchmen and others contend that this is all quite irrelevant in face of imminent nuclear war. They had reduced their debatable thesis to catchy slogans about preserving the 'sacred right to life' as the leading imperative of the age, thus sidestepping questions about the quality of that life.

"In so doing, state-controlled Soviet church organizations, in reaching out for contact with Western groups like the U.S. National Council of Churches, are peddling the old 'Better Red than Dead' viewpoint in new, more sophisticated packaging.

"I found with startling regularity that visiting American clerics had not only accepted much of this slippery reasoning but reacted with an offended tone when the subject of human rights activists like Andrei Sakharov came up in our conversations. Sakharov, as it happens, contends that civil liberties and arms control - and thus the 'sacred right to life' - are inextricably linked. For unless the Soviet people can learn something about their own government's foreign and military policies, and speak freely about them, they can have no hope of influencing these policies. And in the absence of public pressures on the Kremlin, Sakharov contends, there is little hope for meaningful arms control. Few of the American clerics I encountered in Moscow seemed sympathetic with this view, however.

"So the task before Soviet officials is not, for the most part, a'Very challenging one: tell the visitors what they long to hear, play on their obvious fears, on their suspicion of American institutions, and stroke their egos.

"In many instances, groups of visiting Americans these days consider themselves not simply tourists but emissaries building bridges of understanding where professional diplomacy has failed. Their hosts are only too happy to reinforce this self-image, and also to point out that the role of 'citizen diplomat' carries with it certain obligations.

"For one thing, to find fault with the Soviet Union, and certainly to bring up such internal matters as human rights issues, is to identify oneself as 'anti-Soviet' and therefore not truly interested in peace. over and over, visitors are told that Western accusations of religious and political oppression are groundless slanders propagated by the opponents of detente. To dignify such charges by repeating them is not only insulting behavior for 'guests,' but contrary to the spirit of detente.

"Sometimes a small number of dissenters would appear in the American groups, who privately expressed dismay at the fallibility of their companions. But they tended not to be represented among the leadership, and in the interest of group harmony they usually kept their silence. The majority, on the other hand, react defensively to suggestions that they are being treated to a propaganda show, while some dismiss the possibility with a light-hearted joke. I recall one American woman last year who arrived at the offices of the official Soviet Peace Committee in Moscow to take part in a news conference wearing a button that read, 'Another KGB Dupe.'

"For more sophisticated visitors, who recognize that religion is not entirely free in the Soviet Union, there is another, more sophisticated approach.

"In a quiet moment, a Soviet cleric - a functionary of the state, but a cleric nonetheless - will draw the visitor aside to explain in hushed and private tones how valuable this kind of contact is to the various Soviet churches, and how it reinforces their legitimacy in the eyes of the state. For verisimilitude, the cleric may let it be known that he personally opposes the war in Afghanistan, that the church is working in its quiet way to press for disarmament, and so on.

"It is probably true that these contacts are good for the Soviet churches, but only when Soviet churchmen can demonstrate the even greater usefulness of the church as an instrument of state propaganda.

"For there is a small request that goes with these quiet assurances to American visitors. 'Please,' they say, 'don't spoil priceless contacts among us by raising issues of human rights. Of course we have Problems, much exaggerated in the Western press, but we're working on them in our own quiet way. Don't make it harder for us.'

"This is a soft and seductive pitch. Its purpose is to draw American religious groups into a conspiracy of silence. Combined with an assiduous stroking of egos at exhausting rounds of banquets, seminars and guided tours, it often seems to work.

"Moreover, visiting Americans, with little apparent appreciation of the strictures placed on religious practice, are often surprised and dazzled by the splendor of an 18th century Orthodox church, it's professional choir and Sunday services. So you see, they're told, fresh from a banquet in which their hosts have toasted peace and the unity of mankind, we do have freedom of religion.

"In fact, the Soviets abandoned the wholesale closure of churches as counterproductive after Khrushchev closed some 10,000 houses of worship before his ouster in 1964. The official policy now takes a longer view, seeking to encourage a natural process of decay or attrition. It is roughly akin to the girdling of a tree with an iron band of restrictive laws, while the soil is poisoned by compulsory instruction of atheism in the schools and through youth organizations.

"Most of the ways in which this is done should be familiar: By denying the church its normal social and spiritual role in the community, outside the church proper, by prohibiting religious instruction for children under age of 18; by severely restricting the supply of religious literature (especially the Bible and Koran); by arresting those who seek to proselytize; by penalizing white-collar professionals and students (though generally not peasants and blue-collar workers) who are found to attend services, and in many other ways - few of them visible to the casual visitors.

"That many faiths - especially the more fundamental Protestant faiths - have nevertheless managed to grow in this hostile environment is a matter of concern, and a source of discouragement, to the authorities, who tend to blame it on clumsy and ineffectual atheist propaganda. (See the Los Angeles Times, 16 May 1982, p. 1. Please note crucial typo: at one point it should read that "young men and women are now (as opposed to not) turning back toward religion. . . . ")

"You also ask whether Soviet Baptists feel betrayed by Billy Graham. I don't know - I haven't interviewed any recently - but they certainly have good reason to feel that way. The report you cite is completely plausible.

"As I noted above, Billy Graham is a special case. Graham's behavior on his two trips to the Soviet Union was regarded by many in the foreign diplomatic community as craven, but consistent with his apparent goal: to win Soviet approval to preach to large audiences in a 'Christian Crusade,' and to obtain permission to have some of his books published in the Soviet Union.

"To these ends, Graham and his aides have sought to assure sovie officials that he not only would avoid giving any offense, but could be of positive help to the authorities in dealing with recalcitrant Pentecostalists and other sects that have refused to submit to official controls.

"According to a Western diplomat who spoke at length with, a Graham aide after his most recent trip to the Soviet Union, Graham has told Soviet officials that he would 'understand' if certain passages in his books are deleted in Soviet editions. Graham, the aide said, went on to note that his writings could help the Soviet authorities deal with 'emotional' fundamentalists because his books counsel against emotionalism and in favor of compliance with the law. The morality of the law seems not to matter.

"I saw Billy Graham in action in Moscow in 1982. The courage of his admirers, and the behavior of the man they admired, made for quite a contrast.

"One of the more vivid memories I have from four years in the Soviet Union was the bright, cool Sunday morning when Graham spoke at Moscow's only Baptist church. Uniformed and plainclothes police had blocked off Maly Vuzovsky, the narrow side-street where the church is located. Admission was by invitation only. A fair number of bona fide church members were there (some with tape recorders) and so were burly KGB security people, all dressed alike.

"Outside, behind a metal barrier, some 300 people had gathered in hopes of catching a glimpse of Graham, and perhaps hearing a word from the man whose books they read - at great risk - in illegal, handtyped 'samizdat' editions. Oddly enough, they were all from outside of Moscow. Some had come from as far as Siberia, spending days on the train and a sizable part of a month's salary to hear Billy Graham preach. Among them were sturdy, ruddy-cheeked farm people from the Ukraine and Byelorussia and a contingent of nervous but determined teenagers from Tula, south of Moscow.

"Why no one from Moscow itself? Because the Voice of America had broadcast Graham's schedule, and thereupon the Soviets had changed his appearance from afternoon to morning. Muscovites, unaware of the schedule change, assumed they could show up a few hours beforehand and still catch a glimpse of the great American evangelist. But those who came from afar, with no place to spend the day (or the previous night) except in a train station, went directly to the church and were prepared to wait the entire day for a glimpse of Billy Graham. They did not get it.

"To pass the time, they sang hymns. The police repeatedly ordered them to be quiet, and they simply ignored the police. Graham, meanwhile, was about 50 yards away, inside the church, delivering a sermon in which he urged the worshippers to obey their government. (He professed later not to have seen a banner unfurled in the balcony in front of him appealing for world attention to Baptists imprisoned in Soviet labor camps.)

"Outside, the crowd began asking whether Graham would come out to see them. I told several that I didn't know, but that I would try to find out. Slipping back into the church through a side entrance, I found Graham's advance man and told him of the several hundred followers waiting patiently outside, singing hymns. Would Graham acknowledge their presence?

"The aide said he didn't know, but that 'we're running 20 minutes behind schedule, and security is tight.'

"Security from what, he didn't say.

"Shortly, Graham emerged from the same side entrance, out of sight of the crowd. I approached him as he stepped into the back seat of his black Chaika limousine, identified myself and told him (as I wrote in my notebook) that '300 of your followers from all over the country are waiting to see you just down the street at the police barriers. They've been singing hymns for an hour now, they read illegal editions of your books, and they want to know if you will step down and see them. Will you?'

"'Oh?" Graham replied, with a quick smile. 'I didn't know that,' "Then he closed the car door and settled back into the seat, as the car shot off in the opposite direction.

"Graham's attitude toward Western correspondents during that visit was one of barely disguised hostility. We spelled controversy, and controversy was the last thing he wanted. Among other things, we kept asking him if he planned to visit the seven Siberian Pentecostalists who at that point had been living almost four years as religious refugees in a ground-floor room of the American embassy, where they had fled seeking exit visas in 1978. Graham avoided the question at first, but finally consented to visit and pray with them.

"But not before extensive negotiations with the Pentecostalists on the circumstances under which this meeting would be conducted. Anxious to avoid offending his Soviet hosts, Graham insisted that the meeting be brief, and that Western journalists be barred from taking pictures of the scene. These tough little Siberians, who had endured 20 years of harassment by the Soviet authorities, did not give in easily. As they parlayed with Graham's aides, the evangelist himself waited tensely, and not at all happily, upstairs in the office of the deputy chief of mission, Warren Zimmermann.

"When the meeting finally took place, after more than half an hour of negotiation, the curtains in the refugees' little ground-floor window were draw in compliance with Graham's demand that prying news cameras not be allowed to record the scene. A brief reading of passages from the Bible ensued in chilly atmosphere, and the session ended after a few minutes.

"I was not in the Soviet Union during Graham's most recent visit. But according to diplomats and colleagues who followed his progress, it was much the same, as Graham sought to avoid 'controversy' at all costs.

"According to a diplomat who spoke later with his aides, Graham had a narrow brush with controversy at a small church in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, but emerged unsullied.

"At one point in the service, a woman raised a banner calling attention to religious believers imprisoned for their faith. 'Fortunately,' the aide confided, 'the (Soviet) security people got to her quickly, and she went down without a scream.'

"That comment, I think, says all one needs to know about Billy Graham in the Soviet Union.

". . .I would also recommend reading Robert Conquest's book, Kolyma: the Arctic Death Camps (Viking Press, 1978, ISBN 0-67041499-0). See Chapter 8, 'A Clownish Interlude' for classic examples of Soviet deceptions practiced on distinguished visitors.

The Betrayal of the Church Copyright © 1986 by Edmund W. Robb and Julia Robb. Published by Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Westchester, Illinois 60153
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

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