The Week

■ The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, whose Unification Church was recently (see “The Week,” NR, May 28) ruled eligible for tax exemption in New York State, was convicted of filing false returns to avoid taxes on $162,000 of personal income. Moon had declared in October, at the time of the indictment, that “I would not be standing here today if my skin were white and my religion were Presbyterian”—a point with some merit, considering how many tax cases are settled out of court. Moon will appeal. The case meanwhile offered an early test for the Washington Times, the Capital’s new daily newspaper, financed by Moonies, but produced by mainstream journalists with guarantees of editorial independence. The Times passed, with an AP dispatch (“Moon is convicted / In income tax case”) halfway down the front page, below Brezhnev, and below Begin.

■ After the Freedom of Information Act was amended and strengthened in 1971, criminals quickly discovered that they could turn it to their advantage, uncovering informants and details of investigations—whereupon, not surprisingly, informants clammed up and investigations bogged down. Local police began withholding information from the FBI and the CIA for fear that it would be disclosed. Stuart Knight, director of the Secret Service, estimated that he was receiving about half the information he had been getting before the Act became law; intelligence had eroded to such an extent in some cities that he recommended President Carter not visit them. The Senate Subcommittee on Criminal Law concluded that Congress “did not foresee the host of difficulties the Act would create for the law-enforcement community.” The reform bill now wending its way through the Senate under the sponsorship of Senator Orrin Hatch offers some relief, not much. The Attorney General would be allowed to designate investigations into organized crime or terrorism which would be exempt from Freedom of Information Act inquiries for five, in some cases eight years. A proposal to exempt foreign counterintelligence investigations as well has been dropped. Look for a stampede of Mafiosi into the KGB (terrorists already work for it).

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■ The Reverend Sun Myung Moon, whose Unification Church was recently (see “The Week,” NR, May 28) ruled eligible for tax exemption in New York State, was convicted of filing false returns to avoid taxes on $162,000 of personal income. Moon had declared in October, at the time of the indictment, that “I would not be standing here today if my skin were white and my religion were Presbyterian”—a point with some merit, considering how many tax cases are settled out of court. Moon will appeal. The case meanwhile offered an early test for the Washington Times, the Capital’s new daily newspaper, financed by Moonies, but produced by mainstream journalists with guarantees of editorial independence. The Times passed, with an AP dispatch (“Moon is convicted / In income tax case”) halfway down the front page, below Brezhnev, and below Begin.

■ After the Freedom of Information Act was amended and strengthened in 1971, criminals quickly discovered that they could turn it to their advantage, uncovering informants and details of investigations—whereupon, not surprisingly, informants clammed up and investigations bogged down. Local police began withholding information from the FBI and the CIA for fear that it would be disclosed. Stuart Knight, director of the Secret Service, estimated that he was receiving about half the information he had been getting before the Act became law; intelligence had eroded to such an extent in some cities that he recommended President Carter not visit them. The Senate Subcommittee on Criminal Law concluded that Congress “did not foresee the host of difficulties the Act would create for the law-enforcement community.” The reform bill now wending its way through the Senate under the sponsorship of Senator Orrin Hatch offers some relief, not much. The Attorney General would be allowed to designate investigations into organized crime or terrorism which would be exempt from Freedom of Information Act inquiries for five, in some cases eight years. A proposal to exempt foreign counterintelligence investigations as well has been dropped. Look for a stampede of Mafiosi into the KGB (terrorists already work for it).