Marching as to War

Mikey Weinstein is suing the Air Force over alleged proselytizing. (Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)

The Weinsteins were married 29 years ago in the Air Force Academy's modernist chapel, its 17 gleaming spires lined up like fighter jets shooting into the sky. It was a Jewish ceremony, but the clergyman under the huppah was a Protestant chaplain. Back then, Weinstein says, military chaplains "were like Father Mulcahy in 'M*A*S*H,' type O universal blood donor chaplains" who gave equally to all, who tried to serve the troops, not convert them.

Weinstein writes, travels and exercises as frenetically as he speaks. He corresponds by e-mail with U.S. soldiers, sailors and airmen around the world who report incidents of proselytizing and religious pressure. He lectures at synagogues and Rotary Clubs.

He is writing a book, tentatively titled "With God on Our Side," for publication by St. Martin's Press in the fall. He may soon make his film debut, too: He was followed through Arlington by documentary maker Oren Jacoby, who is adapting James Carroll's best-selling history of the church and the Jews, "Constantine's Sword."

Last year, Weinstein exchanged vitriolic e-mails with the Rev. Ted Haggard, pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs and president of the National Association of Evangelicals. The private messages became public when one of Haggard's associate pastors gave them to a blogger, hoping to embarrass Weinstein by publishing his torrent of incomplete sentences punctuated with !!! and ??? together with Haggard's calm, composed replies.

Since then, Weinstein, who boxed in his academy days, has repeatedly offered to go three rounds in the ring with Haggard, a former football player. "We'll do it for charity. That can include the Christian Children's Fund and also, I think, the United Way and the United Jewish Appeal," Weinstein says. And though he is smiling, he is not kidding.

On the morning of the Arlington fundraiser, he spends 61 minutes on an elliptical trainer. By his reckoning, it is Day 2,572 in a row without missing a cardiovascular workout.

The Allies

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In spite of his pugnacity -- or maybe because of it -- Weinstein has enlisted a growing number of big-name allies.

The guest of honor at the party in Arlington is Joe Wilson, a career diplomat whose criticism of the Bush administration's rationale for war in Iraq led to the unmasking of his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA officer and, ultimately, to perjury charges against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff.

He and Weinstein are natural allies, Wilson explains, "because I'm fighting the neo-cons, and he's fighting the theo-cons."

The party, held in the posh apartment of a Weinstein cousin, is the first event organized for the new foundation by David Rosen, once the campaign finance director for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and now Weinstein's chief fundraiser. After deliberating for just five hours, a jury acquitted Rosen last year of underreporting the cost of an August 2000 Hollywood gala in honor of Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Among the guests in Arlington are several members of Weinstein's advisory board, which he has stocked with retired senior officers and decorated combat veterans that he says the Pentagon cannot simply dismiss as "Chardonnay-sipping liberals." Its luminaries include retired Air Force Gen. Robert T. Herres, who was the first vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; retired Vice Adm. Bernard Kauderer, former commander of the Pacific submarine fleet; and retired Air Force Col. Richard Klass, who won a Silver Star as a pilot in Vietnam.

Some of them think Weinstein is over the top. And they like it.

"It's sort of like Howard Dean and the 2004 campaign," Klass says. "It took someone like him to get out in front and bring the issue to people's attention. If this is going to be a long, hard slog -- which I'm afraid it is -- maybe some years down the line we'll need someone who's more politic than Mikey. But at this stage I think it absolutely requires hell-raising. . . . You can't have a man in a gray flannel suit as the point man on this issue right now."

The military has been a path of upward mobility for Weinstein's family, as for so many others. His father grew up poor, enlisted in the Navy as a teenager and got into the Naval Academy through its prep school; one of his close buddies in the class of 1953 at Annapolis was H. Ross Perot.

Weinstein himself was born on an Air Force base. The military gave him his entire education, including at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law. After 10 years in the JAG corps and three years in the Reagan White House, he went to work for his father's old friend, becoming general counsel of Perot Systems Corp. in 1988. During the 1990s, Weinstein launched a series of his own ventures. Last year, he rejoined Perot as a director of business development.

Judging by his taste in cars, Weinstein appears to have plenty of disposable income, but he declines to discuss his finances: "I'm wealthy in the love I have for my family, that's all I'll say."

He is more forthcoming about the battle's emotional toll. His sons have stopped giving interviews to the media. Bonnie, who has multiple sclerosis, has been diagnosed with a painful, stress-induced jaw disorder. Since anonymous callers began leaving threats on their home telephone, they now live with two attack-trained German shepherds. But Mikey is not about to duck a fight.

"When somebody threatens me," he says, "I usually tell them to pack a picnic lunch and stand in line."