Filed by Nick Juliano

The Raw Sto­ry

A bizarre Capi­tol Hill cer­e­mo­ny a few years ago in which the eccen­tric con­ser­v­a­tive pub­lish­er the Rev. Sun Myung Moon declared him­self the Sec­ond Com­ing was orga­nized with help from a senior advis­er to John McCain’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.
Adver­tise­ment

Char­lie Black, a Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist and McCain con­fi­dant, lent his name to the coro­na­tion cer­e­mo­ny and invit­ed a few friends, accord­ing to new­ly dis­closed e‑mails.

“What is clear from this email is that top Mccain advi­sor Char­lie Black is admit­ting that he helped plan, and would have attend­ed, an event where a con­vict­ed tax fraud would have been crowned King Of Amer­i­ca and declared him­self the Messiah–all on U.S. Gov­ern­ment fed­er­al prop­er­ty (on March 23, 2004),” writes author Cliff Schecter, who pub­lished the e‑mails on his blog Fri­day.

In the e‑mails, which were also obtained by RAW STORY, Black said he became involved because of his rela­tion­ships with exec­u­tives at the Wash­ing­ton Times, the con­ser­v­a­tive, Moon-owned news­pa­per, and its char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion.

“I think the din­ner com­mit­tee list includ­ed a num­ber of us ‘sec­u­lar’ con­ser­v­a­tives,” Black writes in one e‑mail to author John Goren­feld, who has explored Moon’s influ­ence in Wash­ing­ton in his book Bad Moon Ris­ing.

Black said he did not know Moon per­son­al­ly and was unable to attend the coro­na­tion cer­e­mo­ny, which Goren­feld details here. (The full e‑mails are reprint­ed below.)

Dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, Moon declared, “I am God’s ambas­sador, sent to Earth with his full author­i­ty,” accord­ing to a con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous account in the New York Times.

Black­’s rela­tion­ship with the event seems rel­a­tive­ly tan­gen­tial, but this cam­paign sea­son has shown that tan­gen­tial rela­tion­ships can cause headaches for can­di­dates. Moon is among the most con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures on the right, although he gets rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle notice in the main­stream press.

Schecter, who recent­ly pub­lished a book crit­i­cal of the GOP nom­i­nee, The Real McCain, out­lines some of Moon’s most out­ra­geous views: that he is the sec­ond com­ing of Jesus, that cross­es and cru­ci­fix­es under­mine God’s mes­sage and that Jesus failed in his mis­sion.

“One won­ders,” Schecter mus­es, “what many in the media would do if Rev­erend Jere­mi­ah Wright called Jesus a “fail­ure,” pro­claimed he (Wright) was the “Mes­si­ah” called in by God to clean up Jesus’ mess and staged mock funer­als for Chris­t­ian cross­es.”

Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion church is con­sid­ered a cult by many observers. Con­sid­er­ing him­self to be the Mes­si­ah, Moon claims to have com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the dead, includ­ing Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stal­in, who he claims to have “reformed” from beyond the grave. The church has been accused mon­ey laun­der­ing, and Moon has used it to spread anti-Semet­ic and anti-gay teach­ings.

Black has been a long­time play­er in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. His ties with the Bush fam­i­ly go back to 1972, when he and Karl Rove were jock­ey­ing for con­trol of the Col­lege Repub­li­cans in a cam­paign so dirty that George H.W. Bush, then head of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, had to step in and sort mat­ters out. Black then worked for Ronald Rea­gan’s and George H.W. Bush’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns from 1976 to 1992. He served as an advis­er to George W. Bush’s cam­paigns in 2000 and 2004 and is often quot­ed in news sto­ries as an unof­fi­cial White House spokesman.

Until March of this year, Black served as the chair­man of the lob­by­ing firm BKSH & Asso­ciates. The firm has rep­re­sent­ed AT&T as it dealt with the fall­out of its involve­ment in Pres­i­dent Bush’s war­rant­less wire­tap­ping pro­gram and coached Black­wa­ter CEO Eric Prince before con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny regard­ing secu­ri­ty con­trac­tors killing inno­cent Iraqis. It pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Iraqi exile Ahmed Cha­l­abi, who was a key source of faulty intel­li­gence lead­ing up to the Iraq war.

Black­’s e‑mails are reprint­ed below:

On Apr 28, 2004, at 10:34 AM, CHARLIE BLACK wrote:
John,

I lent my name and sent invi­ta­tions to a few friends. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I had a con­flict and could­n’t go to the event.

Char­lie

From: John Goren­feld
To:“CHARLIE BLACK”

cc:
Sub­ject: Re: Moon event at Dirk­sen Sen­ate Office Build­ing, 3/23
05/06/2004 09:31 PM

Dear Mr. Black,

Thanks for your reply.

It’s kind of an amaz­ing event, with Moon being coro­nat­ed as the king and declar­ing him­self the Mes­si­ah at a fed­er­al build­ing. Can you tell me how you got involved with invit­ing peo­ple? Is this an annu­al event, or just a one-time thing?

sin­cere­ly,

John

On May 7, 2004, at 11:16 AM, CHARLIE BLACK wrote:

I don’t know if it is annu­al, but they have done sim­i­lar events. I don’t know Rev­erend Moon, but work with the man­age­ment of the Wash­ing­ton Times and their foun­da­tion occa­sion­al­ly on con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. I think the din­ner com­mit­tee list includ­ed a num­ber of us “sec­u­lar” con­ser­v­a­tives.

Char­lie Black
BKSH & Asso­ciates
(202) xxx-xxxx