Gate-Crasher Hands Bush 'Message From God'

By Lloyd Grove

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."