| | Ayers: Idea of 'secret link' with Obama 'just a myth'
Conservative blogs pounce on 'family friend' descriptionFormer 60s radical William Ayers has broken his silence to speak to ABC News, and the message he wants to deliver is that he and Barack Obama only knew each other only in the professional and public sphere, they never discussed radical politics together, and there is no "secret link" between them.
Ayers, the former Weather Underground member who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, avoided speaking out all through the presidential campaign, even as his name was being used to accuse Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists." But on ABC's Good Morning America on Friday, he frankly answered Chris Cuomo's often antagonistic questions.
"I became an issue unwittingly and unwillingly in the campaign, and I decided that I didn't want to answer any of it at that moment, because it was such a profoundly dishonest narrative," Ayers told Cuomo. "I knew Barack Obama, absolutely --- and I knew him probably as well as thousands of other Chicagoans. ... I wish I knew him better."
Cuomo asked, "But thousands of other people were not asked to help start his political career in their home, right? That's an intimacy."
"I was asked by the state senator to have a coffee for Barack Obama," Ayers replied. "I think he was probably in twenty homes that day. ... That was the first time I really met him."
"It seems that there's an evasiveness here," Cuomo insisted. "Somebody's in your home, you are introducing them to a political community that you have connections with. You're vouching for someone. ... Certainly you must have spoken with Barack Obama about things, you must have gotten to know him before you did that."
"No, actually I didn't get to know him before I did that," Ayers responded. "I did know him in the context of being on a board together, and that relationship was public, always in a large kind of context."
In a new afterword to a book originally published in 2001, Ayers states of Obama, "We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I'd made a small donation to his earliest political campaign."
This "family friends" statement has been pounced on by conservative blogs as an indication of a closer relationship than previously acknowledged. However, Ayers told Cuomo, "I'm describing there how the blogosphere characterized the relationship."
"Far from being a demerit on his record," Ayers stated of Obama, "the fact that he's willing to talk to a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life, listen to a lot of opinions and still have a mind of his own is something we should honor and admire."
"But then you have to come clear," Cuomo demanded, "about saying 'And I'm one of those people. Barack Obama either sought me out or I sought him out to discuss my ideas, my radical ideas, and then he made his own decision.' If that's true, okay. But it can't be that and 'we never discussed any of this.'"
"It's not at all true that he sought me out to 'listen to my radical ideas' or that I sought him out," Ayers replied. "The truth is we came together in Chicago, in the civic community, around issues of school improvement, around the issues of the rights of poor neighborhoods to have jobs and housing and so on. And that's the full extent of our relationship."
"So this idea that we need to know more," continued Ayers, "like there's some dark, hidden secret, some secret link, is just a myth And it's a myth thrown up by people who wanted to kind of exploit the politics of fear. And I think it's a great credit to the American people that those politics were rejected."
Cuomo also brought up the issue of Ayers' actions in the 60s, saying, "When you're measuring the content of a man's character who wants to be president of the United States, certainly information about his friendship/coffee/association with a man who has the past that you have -- creating violence against the United States -- you must understand how that would be a concern."
"I don't agree with either part of that," Ayers replied. "I think the dishonest narrative is one to demonize me. Let's remember that what you call a violent past, that was at a time when thousands of people were being murdered by our government every month. And those of us who fought to end that war were actually on the right side."
"There were despicable acts going on," Ayers continued, "but the despicable acts were being carried out by our government. I never hurt or killed anyone. ... I don't think we did enough. Just as today, I don't think we've done enough to stop these wars, and I think we must all recognize the injustice of it and do more."
A conservative blogger who blogs under the slogan "We are all Joe the Plumber now," was skeptical about Ayers statements, however, and convinced that Cuomo "hadn't done enough homework to know when Ayers was lying to him" and hopes that "one day Ayers may encounter a reporter who has researched the material and is interested in pushing for the truth."
This video is from ABC's Good Morning America, broadcast Nov. 14, 2008.
Download video via RawReplay.com
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the school where Ayers is a professor. He teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago
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