Valerie Jarrett on First Meeting the Obamas, Voter Suppression, and Beto O’Rourke

In her new book Finding My Voice, out April 2, the Obama Foundation adviser takes readers on her journey from growing up in Chicago to being one of the Obamas' most trusted confidants in the White House. Here, she shares with Marie Claire some of the most formative experiences on her path to success.

Marie Claire: You lived in Iran until you were five. How did that shape your worldview?

Valerie Jarrett: We ended up in Iran because my father, who is African American, was unable to find a job at a teaching medical center in the United States in the 1950s. So he and my mom moved to Iran. It really was a metamorphosis for him because he was no longer an African American doctor, he was an American doctor.

How did that experience shape my view of the world? I am confident that when I walk into a room and I meet new people, regardless of their background, geography, race, religion, or gender identity, I can find something in common with them. We lived with other families from all over the world on a hospital compound. I learned how to speak French because I had a French playmate, and I learned Farsi because we were in Iran, and I learned English because my parents spoke English. Even with a language barrier, you can sit down with someone and find something in common.

The Silvermaster-Margolin-Sender connection is one link between the network used by the KGB in World War II and Obama’s network in Chicago. Another link is through a spy ring known as the Soble apparatus. . .One pair of agents in Soble’s network was Alfred and Martha Stern. Alfred K. Stern was born in 1897 and graduated from Harvard. In 1921, he married Marion Rosenwald, an heiress of the Sears Roebuck fortune, which was being used to fund Communist causes. After the couple had two children together, they divorced in 1936, and Alfred received a million-dollar divorce settlement. In 1938, Alfred married Martha Dodd, daughter of America’s ambassador to Nazi Germany, William Edward Dodd. Martha had been recruited to the KGB after her father took their family to Berlin in 1933. After the couple married, they began using their wealth and influence to promote left-wing causes. . .in 1943, KGB agent Vasily Zubulin persuaded the Sterns to invest $130,000 in a Soviet front company run by KGB recruit Borris Morros, a Russian immigrant with contacts in Hollywood. The next year, Soble replaced Zubulin as Morros’ KGB contact, bringing the Sterns into Soble’s network. . .Alfred and Martha Stern were subpoenaed by HUAC in 1953. They fled to Mexico to avoid testifying. They were convicted of espionage in absentia in 1957. . .The legacy of the Stern financial network has several significant points of intersection with the Obama administration’s network. One Alfred K. Stern contact who was of interest to the FBI was Robert Rochon Taylor, maternal grandfather of Obama chief advisor Valerie Jarrett. . .In 1939, Taylor served on the Sponsoring Committee to the Illinois Conference on Social Legislation, according to the records of International Labor Defense (ILD), a Soviet front group that provided legal aid in high-profile cases to attract recruits. Taylor was acquainted with William Patterson, Communist mentor of Frank Marshall Davis, helping Patterson organize the 1939 Chicago Conference on Race Relations. Taylor also sat alongside prominent Communists on the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, the Chicago branch of the ACLU. In 1945, Alfred K. Stern attempted to contact Taylor at a hotel in New York. The FBI informant who reported this information stated that Stern and Taylor were old friends from Chicago. Taylor and his Chicago address appeared on a list of names and addresses Stern maintained, another informant observed. In 1948, Stern referred a contact to Taylor for employment in the Chicago area. In 1950, Taylor and Stern became business associates through a company called Midwest Development Company, the FBI’s files record. The FBI observed that Stern was in contact with both Taylor and his son-in-law James Bowman, future father of Valerie Jarrett.. . .FBI files note that while Bowman was in residency at Chicago’s Provident Hospital between 1948 and 1950, he belonged to the Association of Internes and Medical Students, a Communist front group designed to attract medical workers. In 1950, Bowman married Taylor’s daughter Barbara. . .In 1955, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took a direct interest in Bowman due to his simultaneous involvement in the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan) while he was in contact with Stern. The FBI instructed its Chicago office to provide a report detailing pertinent contacts between Taylor and Stern, who had fled the country to evade authorities. After leaving the military in 1955, Bowman and his wife grew upset over discriminatory pay and decided to try seeking employment outside the United States. In 1956 they moved to Iran, where Bowman and other American physicians helped found Nemazee Hospital as part of a project where American physicians and agricultural experts sought to help developing nations’ health and farming systems. The project was funded by Iranian businessman Haj Mohammad Nemazee, who had made his fortune in his family’s opium trade. During World War II, Nemazee lived in America, where he set up the Iran Foundation. He was attached to the Iranian embassy in the 1950s. His son Hassan Nemazee would later become a major fundraiser for the Clintons, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama before being convicted of bank fraud in 2009. Bowman’s daughter Valerie was born in Iran at Nemazee Hospital in 1956. She lived in Iran until she was five, when the family moved to London before returning to Chicago in 1961. After earning degrees in psychology from Stanford and law from the University of Michigan, in 1983 Valerie married William Jarrett, son of journalist Vernon Jarrett. Vernon Jarrett was born in Paris, Tennessee in 1918. After graduating from Knoxville College, he moved to Chicago in 1946 to work as a journalist at the Chicago Defender, the most important black-oriented newspaper of the day. He belonged to several Communist front groups in the 1940s, and the Party assigned him to its propaganda division, with the task of communicating Communist messages to middle-class audiences. . .: Obama’s Russia Problem: Obama's Links to Soviet-era Spy Rings and Terrorist Networks

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