Obama at Columbia-- the unexceptional student no one remembers

According to the New York Times, Obama "suggests in his book that his years in New York were a pivotal period: He ran three miles a day, buckled down to work and 'stopped getting high,' which he says he had started doing in high school.

Yet he declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."

Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the newspaper in October 2007, "He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life."

Obama claimed to be a part of the Black Student Organization and anti-apartheid activities. But according to the New York Times, several well-known student leaders did not recall his involvement.

The Columbia University chapter in Obama's life remains blank, according to the New York Sun.

"The Obama campaign has refused to release his college transcript, despite an academic career that led him to Harvard Law School and, later, to a lecturing position at the University of Chicago," the Sun reported in September 2008.

"The shroud surrounding his experience at Columbia contrasts with that of other major party nominees since 2000, all whom have eventually released information about their college performance or seen it leaked to the public."

According to the New York Sun, a program from Columbia's 1983 commencement ceremony lists Obama as a graduate. University spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated with a major in political science but without honors. Nonetheless, he was later admitted to Harvard Law School.

(Maybe this is why Obama bowed to the Saudi king....)

Khalid al Mansour is reputed to have been Obama’s financial patron, influence to get him into Harvard

From NewsMax.com

Who is Khalid al-Mansour?
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

Who is the “mystery man” former Manhattan Borough Chairman Percy Sutton named as having aided Barack Obama financially at Harvard Law School?

Signs of al-Mansour’s work exists in Malaysia, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and spans four decades in the United States, Newsmax discovered while scouring hundreds of sources for the story it reported on the revelations Wednesday.

His life story could have been written as a Horatio Alger-style rise from rags to riches. He sees himself as something of the “return of Antar,” a mythical black poet-warrior of pre-Islamic times. His real-life exploits range from a surprise one-on-one meeting with the prime minister of India as a college student to mentoring Black Panthers’ founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in the early 1960s.

Saga Starts With Meeting Saudi King

Al-Mansour’s rise to fame and fortune began with an introduction to the Saudi king in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1977.

“I was asked by a Saudi friend – he was a student down in Newport (Calif.) –to go home with him to Riyadh,” al-Mansour told Newsmax.

His friend was a member of the royal family and planned to ask the king for money to help with his studies in the United States. But the king was in no mood to be generous.

“He was mad. And then my friend told me that the basis of his anger was that OPEC was being sued,” al-Mansour said. “This was a very nasty conspiracy that involved some of the biggest respected political names in America. The king didn’t know all of that, but he knew he wasn’t happy.”

Al-Mansour’s friend told the kin he was a lawyer. “The King didn’t know if I was a good lawyer or bad lawyer, but said, ‘Will you do it?’ I said, ‘I’d have to study it.’ He said, ‘Just take it, and get out!’”

The king required that only one lawyer represent the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. “So you win or you lose, based on the outcome because no one’s going to listen to any excuses. You’re either a loser for life, or a winner for life,” al-Mansour said.

Al-Mansour was a winner – big time.

Changed Name After Studying Islam

Born the 11th of 12 children as Donald Warden to a polyglot father who often spoke glowingly about Islam, al-Mansour decided to change his name in 1964 after learning Arabic and studying Islam.

“I found that Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, if you put ’em together, it means that, if I’m eternally the slave of God, and I follow the right path, I will always be victorious. I liked that. So that became my name.”

He met and befriended Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the world’s 19-thealthiest person, when the prince was studying at Menlo College in California in the late 1970s. Al-Mansour’s law partner was representing the prince in a court case in California.

After getting a degree in business administration from Menlo in 1979, Prince Alwaleed went back to Saudi Arabia determined to become extremely successful, al-Mansur recalled.

The two began to work together, and the prince asked him to help him invest in Africa. “He said, let’s make our focus turning Africa around. He has never told me until today where this idea came from, but it became an obsession.”

Al-Mansour says he and the prince flew from country to country as he introduced the prince to heads of state. “It was easy for me, because I knew all the presidents.”

Mum on Relations with Obama

Al-Mansour deflected several attempts to get him to answer direct questions about his relationship with Obama and the Percy Sutton revelations it reported Wednesday.

“In respect to Mr. Obama, I have told him, because so many people are running after him, and when stories get printed they usually get distorted and then he has to spend a lot of time trying to unravel them – and then after the experience of Rev. (Jeremiah) Wright whom I’ve never met, but I’ve followed the media coverage – I was determined that I was never going to be in that situation. I never discuss Barack Obama,” al-Mansour said.

“I wish him the best, and hope he can win the election, and if he wins the election, that he adopts this campaign for education,” he said.

Al-Mansour wants Obama to launch an education and program” for black and Hispanic students, using his rock-star popularity to motivate young people, parents, and teachers to improve achievement standards.

Percy Sutton Revelations

Al-Mansour said is is aware of Percy Sutton’s revelations that identified him as raising money for Obama’s law school education when the presidential candidate was 25.

“But I’ve never confirmed it,” he said. “What you have since I’ve been out of the country is bloggers saying this is the new Rev. Wright — in drag! and he is a nationalist, racist, and worse than Rev. Wright. I’m not getting into that. Any statement that I make would only further the activity which is not in the interest of Barack, not in the interest of Percy, not in the interest of anyone. For the bloggers to not even have the courtesy to call me to ask what’s happening is a clear sign to me. There’s no need. There’s no benefit. So why do it?”

Asked specifically whether he had “spotted” Barack Obama while he was an undergraduate at Columbia as a promising student he wanted to help get into Harvard Law School, al-Mansour pleaded a faulty memory.

“I give a lot of speeches on college campuses, in the US and abroad. So I meet people all the time…. But I can’t say that I remember that.”

Nor would he confirm or deny that he had called Sutton, as Sutton reveals, asking him to help Obama get into Harvard.

“I’m not going to say that,” al-Mansour said. “That lends itself regardless of the answer and regardless of the truth to the type of sensationalism that I don’t consider productive to the goals that I have. I don’t see how this will promote education. I don’t see how this will promote a global respect. I don’t see how it deals with the basic issues we’re faced with in the country. I try to limit my comments to those kinds of issues, to avoid the tendency of the press to sensationalize both positive and negative.”

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