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Gate-Crasher Hands Bush 'Message From God' By Lloyd Grove Friday, February 7, 2003; Page C01 The Rev. Richard "Rich" Weaver, nicknamed "Handshake Man" because of his knack for getting up close and personal with the high and mighty, struck again yesterday morning. The Post's David Montgomery reports that the 57-year-old Weaver, a nondenominational Christian minister from Sacramento, crashed the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton, breezing through the ballroom entrance without a ticket and handed President Bush what he later described as an eight-page typed "message from God" about Iraq.
"It's just God, buddy," Weaver told Montgomery. "They asked everyone else for a ticket. They didn't ask me." With his conservative blue suit, neat haircut and hearty, gregarious manner, Weaver easily passed through the metal detector. "I don't try to sneak in," Weaver explained. "I just go where I feel like God wants me to go." This is Handshake Man's third noteworthy caper, though he claims to have met five presidents, including George Bush the elder. Weaver made headlines two years ago when he slipped past authorities outside the Capitol and handed a note to the just-inaugurated President Bush, exhorting him to "stand for Christ daily without political compromise." He got past the Secret Service and the U.S. Capitol Police even though the police had studied a video of Weaver shaking hands with Bill Clinton at his second presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 1997. Weaver told Montgomery that Secret Service agents even visited him in Sacramento several weeks ago and asked if he had any plans to meet the president again. "If God tells me to," Weaver quoted himself as answering. The Secret Service wouldn't confirm Weaver's account. Yesterday Handshake Man found himself in a crowd that included 56 senators, 240 House members, first lady Laura Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CIA director George Tenet. He freely mingled with his fellow breakfast-goers, whipping out a disposable camera to have his picture taken with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and several other politicians and religious leaders. He found a seat at Frist's table, mere feet from the head table where Bush sat. "Someone stayed home," Weaver shrugged. "I just pinched myself and said, 'God, you did it again.' " Weaver told Montgomery that at one point he unhooked a rope in front of the head table, approached the president and handed him the letter, which warned: "If America does not repent, there will be 50,000 casualties and a six-month war" with Iraq. Bush had a look of attentiveness and "peace," Weaver added. The exchange caught the attention of the Secret Service, and a small army of agents accompanied Weaver to his hotel room after breakfast and grilled him about his escapade. He was not charged with anything. After the interrogation, Weaver met with Montgomery in the Hilton lobby, and agents hovered nearby. Then they trailed the pair onto Connecticut Avenue NW when Weaver decided to get his snapshots developed at a nearby RiteAid. "Mr. Weaver, where are we going?" asked a polite man with a wire in his ear. "We're going to the drug store to pick up my pictures," Weaver said. The agent and a partner stood watch in the RiteAid as Weaver thumbed through his prints. Weaver told Montgomery: "They're thorough as all get-out. They're wonderful people." Secret Service spokesman John Gill declined to comment on Weaver. But he said the president was never in any danger and security had not been breached, because everyone had passed through a metal detector, among other security measures. As for the posse of agents who followed Weaver's every move for hours after the breakfast, Gill said: "Anytime somebody exhibits an unusual direction of interest toward one of our protectees, we would follow up on it. We don't have the luxury of doing otherwise."
Around 1:30 p.m. yesterday, Weaver had to leave for Reagan National Airport airport to catch his plane home. He was going to take the Metro, but the Secret Service offered him a ride. When last seen, Handshake Man was being frisked, then put in a car by government agents.
Friday, January 26, 2001; Page B01 The Secret Service and the U.S. Capitol Police were no match for God, said the Rev. Richard C. "Rich" Weaver, the mysterious handshake man who stepped forward yesterday and credited the Lord with getting him into a restricted area so he could accost President Bush and give him a spiritual pep talk on Inauguration Day.
It was the same stunt he pulled four years ago at President Bill Clinton's second inauguration, only this time the U.S. Capitol Police and the Secret Service were on the lookout for him. In preparation for Saturday's festivities -- where law enforcement agencies said security was the tightest ever for an inauguration -- the Capitol Police had shown officers a video of Weaver's handshake with Clinton so he could be easily recognized. "The guards let me in like nobody's business," said Weaver, 55, a nondenominational Christian minister. "It happens all the time. It's so funny, it's almost eerie. But this stuff is no big deal to God. God can close people's eyes so they don't see you." The president of the Spiritual Revolution Through Christ Inc. outside Sacramento said he has been able to meet presidents and other politicians, celebrities and athletes over the last 25 years. He said he does it to provide spiritual guidance, so that they might be role models for young people. Weaver, who is jovial and energetic in person, was already pursuing his Christian mission in the early 1970s when, as a campus evangelist, he was active in the "Jesus Revolution" in California, according to contemporary news accounts. A knowledgeable source said the Secret Service has had dealings with him on three occasions, including one prior to Clinton's second inauguration that the source declined to specify. Spokesmen for the Capitol Police and Secret Service remained tight-lipped about the embarrassing "unscheduled handshake," saying the release of details would compromise security. Because the intruder committed no crime, the agencies also withheld his identity. A source familiar with the incident confirmed that Weaver was the intruder. Former Secret Service director Eljay Bowron said Weaver's casual demeanor when he walked up to Bush may have prevented alarms from going off among agents. "Obviously, in an ideal world for the Secret Service, this wouldn't have happened," said Bowron, who saw a video clip of the incident. "I'm sure that they feel embarrassed." Bowron, who was director from 1993 to 1997 and oversaw Clinton's second inauguration, said he vaguely remembers Weaver approaching Clinton. He described him as a familiar type known to agents as a "nuisance approacher" rather than a physical threat. "If they were going to worry about each one of those individually, they'd have to put a fence around the whole city," said Bowron, executive vice president of the Vance International security firm in Oakton. The Washington Post interviewed Weaver yesterday by telephone and in person in a suburb of Sacramento, where he was also photographed. Weaver said he had a blue ticket for standing room at the swearing-in, which would have required him to pass through a checkpoint but not a metal detector. Later, Weaver and law enforcement sources said, he passed through a checkpoint with a metal detector leading into a restricted section of the Capitol grounds. Weaver said he wandered into the Capitol and mixed with members of Congress and other VIPs before going outside and meeting Bush. The 15-second encounter was captured on videotape shown on television programs Wednesday. The scene is striking. Weaver strides up to Bush, shakes his hand and gives him something (identified by the White House as a medallion). Bush tries to move away, and Weaver touches the president's right elbow. Weaver reaches into his pocket and pulls out something that resembles a camera. Afterward, Weaver said, Secret Service agents took him into the Capitol and asked how he got so close. The agents "are the most awesome people I've seen anyplace in the country, and I've dealt with them several times," Weaver said yesterday. While under questioning, he feared that the agents might feel they had failed in their jobs. He tried to buck them up: " 'It had nothing to do with you. God's bigger than all you guys,' " he recalled saying. "It really encourages them when I tell them that." Weaver offered this account of how he got so close to Bush. Capitol Police and Secret Service officials declined to confirm any detail except the handshake. It started three weeks before the inauguration when Weaver felt a strong inner sense that God wanted him to deliver a message to George W. Bush. He typed it on a blue card, which he then laminated: "Your miracle election is to remind you to stand for Christ daily without political compromise. Keep Christ first and God will give you another miracle election in four years." He brought the card and a medallion with an image of former president George Bush on it. Weaver said the elder Bush had given two such medallions to him at a reception at Ronald Reagan's first inauguration, when he said he also met the younger Bush. On the morning of Inauguration Day, Weaver said, he got a blue standing-room ticket from a woman who had an extra one. He saw a group of men who looked important, and he overheard one saying he knew a special entrance. Weaver fell in with the group as it entered the Capitol grounds. He asked a guard where a bathroom was and was directed through a metal detector. He now found himself in a VIP area. He took a seat 20 rows away from Bush to hear the inaugural address. Afterward, he walked into the Capitol, then upstairs. An officer challenged him. He said he only wanted to find an exit. The guard escorted him down in an elevator and directed him to a door. Weaver stepped outside to find himself near the president. After handing over the medal and card and telling Bush that Jesus loves him, Weaver reached into his pocket for something else. "That was my camera," he said. "I was going to take a picture of him. I decided that wasn't too appropriate." Jim Mackin, a spokesman for the Secret Service, emphasized that Weaver passed through a metal detector. Pressed about the harm Weaver still could have inflicted, Mackin said: "There are other measures I can't elaborate on, but I certainly understand the questions being raised... In answering some of these questions, we would lend assistance to this happening again." A retired Secret Service agent who once protected President Ronald Reagan said agents are trained not only to protect the president's life but also to protect his dignity. "You don't want to embarrass the protectee. That's a big issue in your training," said the former agent, who asked not to be identified. "You could lose your job if you just dove in front of someone who looked like they shouldn't be there but turned out to be the president's old friend who forgot his pass. That man with President Bush looked like he belonged there." The former agent said it was not a surprise that the interloper did not get into legal trouble. The same thing has happened before. "If we charge him with something, it would only blow it up," the former agent said. "We just want to get it over with and get him out of there." Staff writer Petula Dvorak and research editor Margot Williams in Washington and special correspondent Liz Garone in Sacramento contributed to this report. |
