Falwell: The company he kept

Although I haven't much time to write, I would like to weave together three separate pieces about Jerry Falwell and the company he kept.

Moon. This comes from Moonwatcher Robert Parry:

Falwell sought to conceal his relationship with Moon, sometimes denying (falsely) that he had benefited from Moon's financial help or that he had been photographed with the cult leader. Other times, Falwell sought to justify his acceptance of Moon’s largesse.

“If the American Atheists Society or Saddam Hussein himself ever sent an unrestricted gift to any of my ministries,” Falwell said in response to a question about Moon’s financial assistance, “be assured I will operate on Billy Sunday’s philosophy. The Devil’s had it long enough, and quickly cash the check.” [See “Moon-Related Funds Filter to Evangelicals,” Christianity Today, Feb. 9, 1998]

Falwell’s acceptance of Moon’s mysterious money was first disclosed at Consortiumnews.com in fall 1997. In a pattern common to Moon’s financial operations, the Korean cult leader stepped in when a leading American conservative, in this case Falwell, was facing potential financial ruin.

Obviously, Falwell hoped that his reference to Billy Sunday would function as a catch-all "get out of jail free" card.

Israel: By way of Xymphora, we come to this history of Christian Zionism:

[Israeli Prime Minister Menachem] Begin developed a close relationship with leading fundamentalists, such as Falwell, who later received a Learjet from the Israeli government for his personal travel and in 1981 was honored with the Jabotinsky Award in an elaborate ceremony in New York. When Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, Begin made his first telephone call to Falwell, asking him to “explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombing.” Only later did he call Reagan. Falwell also converted former Senator Jesse Helms from a critic of Israel into one of its staunchest allies in the US Senate, where he chaired the influential Foreign Relations Committee.

And:

After a series of visits to Israel in 1979 and 1980, Jerry Falwell became a leading proponent of the political alliance between the Israeli radical right and the American Christian fundies. In gratitude for his pledge to work for permanent Israeli annexation of ‘Judea, Samaria, and Galilee’ (i.e., the West Bank) and the rebuilding of the Third Temple of Solomon on Jerusalem's Temple Mount – where two of the holiest sites in Islam now stand – Falwell received a ‘gift’ of a Lear jet from the Begin government.

The most important figure here, in my view, would be former riverboat captain Hal Lindsey. Once the Christian rightists saw the sales figures for The Late, Great Planet Earth, they copied the template -- religiously, one might say -- and sailed to power on the good ship Apocalypse.

We still don't know just how and when the Likudniks joined forces with this movement, and perhaps even helped to fund it. We need the testimony of folks who knew what was going on behind the scenes, back in the 1970s.

The 9/11 connection: This last bit is very mysterious and very haunting. For quite some time now, Daniel Hopsicker has been doing his damnedest to draw attention to this connection. (See here.)

Hopsicker has written many stories about Huffman aviation -- the spooked-up "flight school" tied to both Mohammed Atta and drug running, run by a mystery man named Wally Hilliard. First, let's have a reminder of just who Hilliard is:

Besides playing host to Mohamed Atta, Hilliard’s most notable recent aviation involvement was as owner of a Learjet surrounded by machinegun-toting DEA agents on the runway of Orlando Executive Airport in July of 2000--the same month Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi began training at his flight school--and discovered to be carrying 43 pounds of heroin aboard. Officials later described the haul as the largest seizure of heroin in Central Florida history.

And now the Falwell connection:

But Hilliard's Huffman Aviation, the Venice flight school which trained both pilots who crashed airplanes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, has recently been embroiled in controversy in Falwell’s Lynchburg, VA. hometown.

As the MadcowMorningNews reported last February, a previously-unknown company housed inside Huffman was awarded a large government contract at the airport in Lynchburg under circumstances that had left aviation observers there uneasy...


We met a former Hilliard executive who told us that at one time he been assigned the task of dunning the founder of Liberty University and Pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church to repay the note...


“I talked to Falwell’s accountant, who was very apologetic,” the former Hilliard executive stated. “He said there was plenty of money to pay off the loan, except any time there was money left in the account at the end of the month Jerry stripped it out.”

“Falwell’s accountant told me 'if I can pay you in chunks off the books so Jerry doesn’t see it, I can get it handled.'...


Asked how much he had lent the Baptist minister, Hilliard's reply was, “More than I want to tell you about.”

Not long ago, I spoke to a preacher's daughter who confirmed that, for her father, spreading the word of the Lord was largely a matter of loot. I wonder how many other preachers are similarly motivated?