Like most Americans, I was a bit shell-shocked after the January 6th insurrection attack on the US Capitol. I first associated this feeling with the election campaign activities that my non-party affiliated organization, Delaware Valley Action! had participated in during the months prior to November 2020. We had been attacked by people who called us names, drove by on Broad Street with their armed vehicles, tried to push their way into our office in Forest Hall and posted Trump signs outside our campaign office qt the traffic light in Milford.
But only recently have I come to realize that the reason I had been so thunderstruck by the violence of January 6th was because the US Capitol was my workplace for a year in the late 1970s. I was hired by the International Relations (now Foreign Affairs) Committee of the House of Representatives to investigate attempts to influence US government and society by the Korean CIA (KCIA) and other operatives of the then autocratic Korean government.
The “KoreaGate” investigation looked at the various ways in which right-wing forces and media sought to influence US policy and society. This included bribery of Members of Congress and the use of the cult Unification Church (Moonies) and KCIA to launder funds, and undermine our country’s values, media and university institutions. Our sub-committee held congressional hearings in some the rooms attacked on January 6th.
“Rev” Moon later served a prison sentence growing out of our and other investigations. And now decades later, we again have a Moonie cult “church” run by one of Moon’s sons up Route 6 from Milford glorifying the AR-15 and other military weapons. A second Moon son runs an arms dealership nearby at which cult members can purchase (for $700) one of the sanctified AR-15s. The new “Rev” Sean Moon characterizes himself as Christianity’s “king” after a fight with his mother about who should be designated the next “king” and successor to his father.
The US Capitol is where I worked to preserve a US society free of intimidation and influence by the Moon cult and then autocratic government in South Korea. It’s the same building where Moon’s son, other Moonies and candidate for PA governor Doug Mastriano travelled to keep Trump in power on January 6th and spread misinformation and hysteria. I used those hallways and connecting tunnels to navigate the US Capitol. I climbed the same steps many times leading up to the hallowed halls of US democracy—the People’s House. I greeted the Capitol Police guards daily as I entered the building to go to work.
The insurrection in 2021 has hardened my commitment to work to ensure that those who supported this effort to subvert and overturn our institutions of democracy be held accountable, in Pennsylvania, Washington, DC and nationally.
Ed Gragert
Milford