Point of fact: Obama did not start his campaign in Ayers house, he started his State Senate Campaign at a Holidy Inn. Ayers did not say "he wished he bombed more" in 2001 - he said "He wished he'd DONE more to end the Vietnam War". Over the last 20 years, Ayers and Obama have met about 6 times. The interviewer, this being on ABC which is pretty much as Right-Wing as FOX , threw a ton of B.S. at him - but he handled it very, very well once he was finally able to speak and address the heart of this "Guilt By Association" mess at about 7:15 into the video.
Ayers: "Everyone one of us should talk to lots and lots of people, especially our political leaders. Far from being a demerit on his record, the fact that he (Barack) is willing to talk to a lot of people, from a lot of different walks in life, with a lot of different opinions and still have a mind of his own is something we should admirer and honor.
"It's not all all true that he sought me out to listen to my radical ideas, or I sought him out, we came together in Chicago, in the civic community over issues of school improvement, and fighting for the rights of poor neighborhoods to have jobs and housing and that's the full extent of our relationship. So this idea that we need to know more, that's there's some dark hidden secret, is just a myth. It's a myth thrown up by people who wan to exploit the politics of fear, and I think it's a great credit to the American people that those politics were rejected."
He may come off a bit strong when he says "the Crimes of the Vietnam Era" were being commited by the U.S. Government, but let me just point out that Ayers was never successfully prosecuted largely because of >criminal acts committed by the FBI which tainted the case.
From the Weather Underground Wiki Page:
In April 1971, The "Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI" broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania.[31] The group stole files with several hundred pages. A majority of the files targeted radical left wing groups, and some individuals, for criminal or subversive activities. By the end of April, the FBI offices were to terminate all files dealing with leftist groups.[32] The files were a part of an FBI program called COINTELPRO.[33] However, after COINTELPRO was dissolved in 1971 by J. Edgar Hoover,[34] the FBI continued its counterintelligence on groups like the Weather Underground.
In 1973, the FBI established the 'Special Target Information Development' program, where agents were sent undercover to penetrate the Weather Underground. Due to the illegal tactics of FBI agents involved with the program, government attorneys requested all weapons- and bomb-related charges be dropped against the Weather Underground. The Weather Underground was no longer a fugitive organization and could turn themselves in with minimal charges against them.[35]
Ayer himself never hurt anyone. It was cases like his that led to the creation of the FISA court, to prevent law enforcement from repeating programs like COINTELPRO, which used illegal wiretaps, planted evidence and even blackmail against other 60's radical and well known "socialists" - people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and John Lennon.
Vyan
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