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AmeriCorps has hired three top officials, with John Foster-Bey, who worked with nonprofit youth programs and more recently has been at the Urban Institute, tapped to run AmeriCorps' largest operation, the state and national program. David L. Caprara, a Bush I Housing and Urban Development Department official and Virginia state official and more recently head of the American Family Coalition, a Rev. Sun Myung Moon-affiliated group, was named director of VISTA; and Wendy Zenker, a long-time Department of Education official and most recently the chief operating officer at the Corporation for National and Community Service, takes over as head of the National Civilian Community Corps.
Here's more on David Caprara:
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One key to Moon’s success is a longtime political operative named David Caprara. Caprara, a Unification Church member and former assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Jack Kemp, is well connected in the nation’s capital and serves Moon in various overlapping capacities.
Caprara serves as president of the American Family Coalition, a Moon front group, as well as representing The Washington Times Foundation. He recently accepted an appointment to serve on an advisory council that Watts put together in advance of the GOP "faith-based" summit. The Washington Times Foundation then arranged to broadcast the event live via satellite to dozens of communities.
Caprara also runs The Empowerment Network, a public policy organization that promotes "faith-based" and family solutions to societal problems. Two U.S. senators, Santorum and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), serve as caucus chairmen of the organization. Its "Empowerment Leadership Roundtable" lists two men who have gone to work in Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives – Stanley Carlson-Thies and Don Eberly.
Through operatives like Caprara, Moon keeps a steady hand in Washington and thus in national affairs. Moon is able to open other doors through infusions of cold, hard cash when necessary. For example, many of the ministers who attended the "We Will Stand" events were given gold Christian Bernard wristwatches estimated to cost thousands of dollars apiece.