Why is Obama Hiding the Truth About William Ayers? Follow the Money

No Quarter ^ | April 26, 2008 | Larry Johnson

[2ndDivisionVet]

Barack Obama is not telling the truth about his relationship with Bill Ayers. There is more to this story than is already known, but Obama and his campaign are working hard to obfuscate and cover up the matter. Why? Because Barack Obama has had a close personal and business relationship with Bill Ayers that predates his run for the Illinois State Senate, and it is incumbent on the Senator from Illinois to come clean.

In fact, Barack worked for Bill Ayers for at least eight years and the press, so far, has not investigated this matter.

I predicted on this blog four months ago that Barack’s relationship with an unrepentant terrorist would become a heated issue in the presidential contest. Although Obama insists that he barely knows Ayers, this is not true. Democrats, beware — the problems of Obama’s associations with Ayers will create serious problems in the fall campaign if he is the candidate. Republicans take heart — if Barack is the nominee, your only problem will be deciding whether or focus your campaign attack ads on Obama’s questionable ties to the corrupt Tony Rezko, the racist Jeremiah Wright, the terrorist group Hamas, or the unrepentant bomber, William Ayers.

Can it be true that Obama is hiding the reality of the relationship? I will let you, the reader, decide for yourself.

In the ABC News debate in Philadelphia on April 16, Obama was asked about Ayers for the first time in a prominent public forum. It’s important to read the entire exchange in order to see that George Stephanopoulos’s question was precise in seeking information and that Obama’s answer was dismissive of the query and certain in refuting any close tie.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Senator, if you get the nomination, you’ll have to beat back these distractions.

And I want to give Senator Clinton a chance to respond, but first a follow-up on this issue, general theme of patriotism, in your relationships. A gentleman named William Ayers. He was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.

And, in fact, on 9/11, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” An early organizing meeting for your State Senate campaign was held at his house and your campaign has said you are “friendly.”

Can you explain that relationship for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won’t be a problem?

OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense, George….

So this kind of game in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, that somehow their ideas could be attributed to me, I think the American people are smarter than that. They’re not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn’t.

Nice try, Barack. He conveniently forgot to mention what was already on the blogs — that Ayers held the first fundraiser at his home to help launch Obama’s state senate campaign in 1995; and that the two men have sat on the board of a private foundation in Chicago, the Woods Fund, for years, giving grants to, among others, a radical Palestinian activist named Rashid Khalidi.

But William Ayers was not just some guy who “lives in Barack’s neighborhood.” He is a well-known and controversial Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And Obama wants you to believe that he knew nothing of Ayers views or politics even though Barack participated in public forums with him there? I don’t think so.

But that is not all. Barack also was essentially an employee of Bill Ayers for eight years.

In 1995, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created to raise funds to help reform the Chicago public schools. One of the architects of the Challenge was none other than Professor Bill Ayers. Ayers co-wrote the initial grant proposal and proudly lists himself on his own website as the co-founder of the Challenge.

And who did William Ayers, co-creator of the Challenge, help select as the new director of the board for this program? Barack Obama. Barack Obama was the first Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. This appointment came at a crucial time in Barack’s life. He was on the verge of challenging longtime state Senator Alice Palmer for her job. When Barack decided to run, it is no surprise that he turned to William Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn for help in organizing the campaign and in hosting his first fundraiser in the district.

Obama served on the board for eight years until the Challenge ended in 2003. Bill Ayers was intimately involved in the Challenge over this same time period.

Now, let’s revisit Obama’s claim about Ayers in the ABC debate:

“Not someone I’ve accepted endorsement of, it’s not someone I exchange ideas with on a regular basis…”

That is a lie. Both parts of Obama’s statement are obviously false. Obama not only evaded Stephanopoulos’s question, he was deliberately deceptive and misleading.

Ayers helped select Obama to exercise a leadership role on the Annenberg Challenge. And Obama wants us to believe they never talked? Never exchanged ideas? Never identified issues to raise and policies to pursue? What is Barack hiding?

Senator Obama, how did you become acquainted with William Ayers? When and how did you and Bill meet?

Maybe Barack met Bill Ayers through his wife, Michelle Obama? That is one possibility. Michelle started working at the Sidley Austin law firm in Chicago in in the summer of 1988 (and stayed there until 1991). Who else worked there? None other than Bill Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn, who worked at Sidley from 1984 through 1988. Indeed, she is widely thought in Chicago to have gotten this position due to the influence of her father-in-law, Thomas Ayers, former CEO of Commonwealth Edison, who was one of the law firm’s biggest clients.

In the aftermath of the ABC debate, no one in the mainstream media has dared probe into this relationship. The most informative article to appear since then has been written by Steve Diamond, law professor on the faculty of Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California, on his blog, on April 22. None of what he reports has appeared in any major media outlet.

Here are key excerpts from Diamond’s report:

So, who “sent” Obama? The key I think is his ties…to the family of (in)famous former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers – not just Bill Ayers, but Bill’s father Tom Ayers and his brother John as well. Obama was a community organizer from about 1985 to 1988, when he left for Harvard Law School. . . .

Active in the local control-from-below side of this effort was Bill Ayers who had returned to Chicago in 1987 as a professor of education at the University of Illinois’ Chicago Circle campus, after surfacing from the underground, as well as Barack Obama’s Developing Communities Project (DCP). . . .

Thus, Bill Ayers was a vigorous advocate of local control along with a related concept called “small schools,” most likely because he believes it gives him the potential to build a political base from which to operate. He has discussed these ideas in speeches and writings on his blog. As he said in a speech he gave in front of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in late 2006: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!” . . . .

In the fall of 1988, however, Obama left the city to go off to law school. My best guess, though, is that it was in that 86-88 time frame that Obama likely met up with the Ayers family. I will explain why I believe that in a minute. Interestingly, after his first year in law school Obama returned in the summer of 1989 to work as a summer associate at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. This in and of itself is a bit unusual. Very few top-tier law students work for big law firms during their first summer. The big law firms discourage it because if you work for them in the first summer you are likely to work for a second firm the following year and then the firms have to compete to get you.

So, why or how did Obama — at that point not yet the prominent first black president of the Harvard Law Review (that would happen the following year) — end up at Sidley?

Coincidentally, or not, Sidley had been long time outside counsel to Commonwealth Edison. The senior Sidley partner who was their key outside counsel, Howard Trienens, was a member of the board of trustees of Northwestern alongside Tom Ayers (as well as Sidley partner Newton Minow). Coincidentally, or not, Bernardine Dohrn worked at Sidley also, hired there in the late 1980s, many contend, through the intervention of Tom Ayers, even though she is not a member of the bar (as far as I can tell) because of her past jail time for Weather Underground activities. . . .

It is highly unlikely that a 30-something second-year lawyer would have been plucked from relative obscurity out of a left wing law firm to head up something as visible and important in Chicago as the Annenberg Challenge by Bill Ayers — unless Ayers had not already known Obama very well. Obama likely proved himself to Ayers in the battle for local school control when at the DCP in the 80s.

One guess as to why Obama does not play up his educational experience more thoroughly now -– it certainly could be of use to him one would think in beefing up his “I have the experience to be President” argument -– is that it would lead to a renewed discussion of the Bill Ayers connection, which is clearly toxic for Obama. This likely explains why Obama tried a kind of head fake when asked about Ayers in the recent TV debate. Obama said Ayers was a “professor of english.” Yet, Obama chaired the Annenberg Challenge for three years and served on its board for another three years, working closely with Ayers on grants to Chicago schools. And he did not know that Ayers was a professor of education? That strains credulity.

One final curiosity: Here’s yet another bizarre incident involving Ayers, reported in The New Yorker in 2001. Did Obama happen to be at this neighborhood event? We imagine he wouldn’t recall.

Dohrn teaches law at Northwestern University and is, at fifty-nine, still notably glamorous. Ayers, who is fifty-six, teaches education at the University of Illinois at Chicago; his business card reads “Distinguished Professor, University Scholar, Educator, Activist, Peacemaker, Flash-of-Lightning.” The night I got to Chicago, the couple was giving a party, timed to coincide with the booksellers’ convention, which was being held downtown… Ayers’s memoir, titled “Fugitive Days,” is coming out this fall, and he was handing his guests promotional stick-on tattoos of the Weatherman symbol–a three-colored rainbow crossed by a lightning bolt. He showed me a larger version of the symbol tattooed on his upper back.

It is of vital importance to clarify Barack’s relationship with Ayers. This is not a casual relationship. It is not a recent relationship. And, as reported in an earlier piece on this blog, Ayers has not changed his tune of political radicalism. I don’t challenge his right to believe such things, but Ayers certainly does not reflect the views of most Americans, both Democrats and Republicans. Why is Barack lying about this relationship? That is the question voters deserve to have asked and answered.

[counterpunch]

No, he shouldn’t have.
He should have latched onto it from the very start, and exposed the political roots of it. He should have exposed that it isn’t Christian theology at all, but rather thinly veiled Marxist ideology.

[skinkinthegrass]

Hillary hasn’t jumped on the Obama-Ayers connection.
she really can't "burn all the bridges" to her Socialist-Marxist/Stalinist past.....it defines her whole being....did I said that?

[Kenny Bunk]

a clue-by-four, which still leaves Sean unphased#:

It would take a lot more than a "clue-by-four#" to get through Hannity's hair-do and affect his brain.

#1. that's "unfazed." "unphased" is an electrical term .. which still leaves Hannity's brain unfazed.
#2. I am sorry to report that the brilliant "clue-by-four" has been stolen by a shameless plagiarist: me.

[muawiyah]

Obama is friends with more than one ~ Bill’s got a wife ~ she’s got convictions to show for it. There are undoubtedly others.

[muawiyah]

Algore is actually very easy to beat. He's done nothing for local party people for a long time. Dems have a habit of not supporting those who have not supported them somewhere.

Remember, almost all Dems are in it for the money.

[skinkinthegrass]

So I believe the Democrat ticket is going to be Gore/Obama...I think this ticket would be very tough for McCain to beat...This is a very troubling thought.

[freespirited]

The author, Larry Johnson, is a big Hillary supporter, but I have to say, I’m impressed with his research. IIRC, he was the first to point out that Obambi has three skeletons in his closet: Ayers, Wright, and Rashid Khalidi.

I think he really has nailed something here about how Obama landed at Sidley. Very good detective work.

[freespirited]

So I believe the Democrat ticket is going to be Gore/Obama.

The RAT party will explode if Obambi is denied the presidential nomination.

[Kenny Bunk]

The RAT party will explode if Obambi is denied the presidential nomination.

But what if it's Obama's idea? The guy lies pretty good.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Al Gore is well on the way to being a billionaire. Why would he give that up for a $400,000 a year gig?

[counterpunch]

Algore is actually very easy to beat. He's done nothing for local party people for a long time. Dems have a habit of not supporting those who have not supported them somewhere.

Remember, almost all Dems are in it for the money.

That's correct. And Obama is rolling in money, and has spread around a lot of money. More than Hillary has. All the elected Democrat super-delegates are salivating at the prospect of getting a slice of Obama's leftover primary election war chest once we enter the general election. They are not, however, looking forward to the the prospect of the Clintons back in power, where they can exact revenge on all of the disloyal Obama supporters who stabbed Hillary in the back. And there are a great many of them, and in high places.

This is why Obama will be the nominee, no matter how badly he crashes and burns from here on out.
 

[Kenny Bunk]

Algore is actually very easy to beat.

Wait just a cotton-pickin' minute! Easy to beat?

A genuine Oscar Winner. A genuine Nobel Prize Winner. A Carbon-Offset Trader. The Pope of the Orthodox Church of Global Warming. This is not the pompous drooling fool that lost to George II in the Supreme Court, where he took the dispute. He's grown, He's matured. He's gained gravitas. He hates the Clintons. He's available.

And if it had not been for this great American, Al Gore, you and I would not be speaking through cyberspace on his Internet.

Oh yeah, he's got money and knows where to get more.

[skimask]

Sometimes I think this guy is the “Manchurian Candidate”. Something that has been planned for a long time.

[skinkinthegrass]

Why would he give that up for a $400,000 a year gig?

well...
short answer: Its all about the power
the long answer: Its the idealogical Elitism.
...Communism, didn't fail.....only Soviet/Sino Communism did....We are American Socialist-Marxist (Stalinists), We just can't fail...We (the Elite) are supremely qualified...to guide (shepherd) the "little people/lambs"....the sheep (think Animal Farm).

[Kenny Bunk]

....prospect of the Clintons back in power, where they can exact revenge

If that happened, Bill Richardson would have to go into the Witness Protection Program.

But if Obama could be convinced to cheerfully take the VP slot as a "co-president," and could sell it in the 'hood, that just might work. They get the dough (left-overs are Obama's property, legal fair and square), and they keep the Black vote on the plantation.

Such a deal! And look at the credit Obama would get as a hero of the party. OK, so he's president next time. He's young. He'll get over it.

Alternate scenario: a real scandal bomb drops on the Golden-Tongued Anointed One, something with low down dirty sex and drugs ... what happens then?

[counterpunch]

IMHO, Mrs. Clinton may also be unelectable. So I believe the Democrat ticket is going to be Gore/Obama. Ostensibly, the idea might even come from Obama, in the name of party unity.

No, you have to look at this 3 dimensionally. There are a lot of hidden layers to it. First of all, Al Gore wouldn't take the grueling day-to-day job of president now. He was, as it turns out, the real winner of election 2000, because he has international influence in the areas he's interested in, without the burden of having to deal with all the areas he's not. He sets his own schedule and can take as much money for his work as he wants, from whomever he wants. And most importantly to Gore, he is insulated from criticism, something he would lose once he was back in political office. What Gore is doing is all upside for him.

But beyond that, you need to understand, that the super-delegates want to win the 2008, election, they really do... but it's not a matter of life and death. They are more interested in their own political fates, and taking the nomination from Obama, no matter how poorly they know he will do now, would be political suicide for them.

Hillary would begin Stalinist purges of the party. Blacks would hemorrhage. "Young people" would be disillusioned. The news media would castigate them. All of that money Obama has to throw around would dry up.

The Democrat party hacks put their own survival ahead of someone with a 'D' by their name winning an election.

But even all of this aside, the harsh reality of it is that both candidates will be so close to having the necessary delegates to win, that no one else could be selected. There is not a 3-way tie here. Delegates will break one way or another, either to Clinton or Obama, and one of them will win on the first ballot.
If by some impossible turn of events neither candidate is nominated on the first few ballots, and delegates of one candidate blink and decide to break off and form an Al Gore coalition, enough delegates from their side would switch to the other in order to block it, handing the nomination to the candidate whose delegates won the game of chicken.
 

[Kenny Bunk]

.....Sidley. Very good detective work.

Sounds to me that Bernadine Dohrn got to Michelle Obama, who's reputed to run Barak Hussein. Bill runs Bernadine, or vice versa, they run Michelle, Michelle runs Barak.

Well, that's solved. Waddawedo now?

Question: During all those years when Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were on the run, was it the wealthy Tom Ayers that supported them and knew where they were when the FBI didn't?

[Kenny Bunk]

...and delegates of one candidate blink and decide to break off and form an Al Gore coalition,...

Just a feeling on my part, but I "feel" that this contingency plan may have already been set in motion.

But one thing is for sure, and that is that the Democrats have captured our bandwidth. Prhaps we really ought to be worrying about what to do with McCain.

Now there's an interesting situation....+

[midway]

This gift just keeps on giving!

http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/news/index.php?item=382&cat=30

Catalyst’s 10th Anniversary Prom

by Catalyst
October, 1999

Here’s to You

Catalyst’s
10th Anniversary Prom
Save the date!

Saturday, February 12, 2000
Grand Ballroom, Navy Pier

Honorary Committee
Joanne Alter, Founder
Working In The Schools

Arnita Boswell, Founder, Board Member
National Hook Up of Black Women

Julie Chavez, Managing Director
Bank of America Illinois

Ronald Gidwitz, Partner
GCG Partners

Sandra Guthman, President
Polk Bros. Foundation

Leon Jackson, President
Multi-Fac Corporation

R. Eden Martin, President
Civic Committee, Commercial Club of Chicago

Richard Morrow, Retired Chairman and CEO
Amoco Corporation

Adele Simmons, Vice President
Chicago Metropolis 2020

Rev. Kenneth W. Smith, Senior Fellow
Chicago Community Trust

Christina Tchen, Partner
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom

Planning Committee
Susan Ansai, literacy coordinator
North Lawndale Learning Community

Chryssa Atkinson, communications director
Chicago Annenberg Challenge

***********************************
John Ayers, executive director
Leadership for Quality Education
[brother of weatherman Bill Ayers]
***********************************

Willie Coles, senior program officer
Steans Family Foundation

James Deanes, director
CPS Office of School and Community Relations

Stephanie Gadlin, director of community affairs
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition

Gabe Gonzalez, executive director
Northwest Neighborhood Federation

Wanda Hopkins, advocacy trainer
Parents United for Responsible Education

Susan Klonsky, consultant
Small Schools Workshop

Rochelle Lee, president
Rochelle Lee Fund

Diana Nelson, public affairs director
Union League Club

Rose Nicholson, assistant principal
Robeson High School

********************************
Michelle Obama, assistant dean
University of Chicago
********************************

Idida Perez, executive director
West Town Leadership Project

Robert Quashie, account supervisor
Edelman Public Relations

Juan Rangel, executive director
United Neighborhood Organization

Timothy Russell, supervisor
Sara Lee Foundation

Norma White, vice president
Chicago Teachers Union

To order tickets, call our promline:
(312) 427-4830, ext. 1-300.

[counterpunch]

There is no way said contingency plan could be set in motion.
There are only two candidates, and not enough uncommitted delegates left to have any kind of impact. This unexpected mystery candidate would be in a very distant 3rd place and not go anywhere.

These brokered convention type deals can only take place in a crowded field where no one candidate can muster enough votes to reach 50%+1.
So let's remain rational here. Your scenario is pure fantasy.