Barack Obama and 'Rehabilitated' Bill Ayers

From Ben Smith, Politico, October 9, 2008:

In an interview with the sympathetic conservative talk radio host this afternoon, Obama offered the clearest explanation yet of how an extremely careful politician allowed himself anywhere near a former '60s radical who would become a Republican target in this year's presidential campaign.

Obama "had assumed" from Bill Ayers' stature in Chicago, he told the Philadelphia-based Michael Smerconish, that Ayers had been "rehabilitated" since his 1960s crimes.

In the interview, which was taped this afternoon and will air tomorrow, and which you can listen to above, Obama recalled moving back to Chicago after law school, and becoming involved in civic life there.

"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him -- working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."

"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.

That may not have been an unreasonable assumption for Obama in the 1990s. Though Ayers never repented his part in the Weather Underground bombings, he had not yet become notorious for advertising them. That notoriety returned in 2001, when he published his memoir, "Fugitive Days," and reminisced about the bombings in a New York Times interview that happened to appear September 11 of that year.

So now we have yet another version of Obama's relationship with Ayers. It keeps morphing.

Smith writes that Obama's assumption that Ayers "had been rehabilitated" was reasonable in the 1990s.

No it wasn't. It's a completely unreasonable assumption that during the 1990s Obama believed Ayers had been "rehabilitated." What is Smith talking about?

In 1998, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, Ayers' wife and partner in terror, were interviewed by Connie Chung for ABC News.

Watch a portion of that interview, 7:30 into this video.

Transcript

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Factor Follow-up" segment tonight: We've been looking into the political situation in Chicago where Barack Obama rose to prominence. Obviously, his association with Reverend Wright has hurt him. And there's also been bad publicity about William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, two radicals associated with the violent Weather Underground back in the '60s. In 1998 Connie Chung spoke with Ayers and Dohrn on ABC News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONNIE CHUNG, ABC NEWS: A lot of people out there are probably saying: "I would love to hear them say, 'We were young. We were idealistic. We were foolish, and we were probably stupid. We made mistakes, and we're sorry about it. We're grown up now.'"

WILLIAM AYERS, FORMER WEATHER UNDERGROUND MEMBER: Well, I would say we were young, we were idealistic, we were foolish and we made mistakes.

BERNADINE DOHRN, FORMER WEATHER UNDERGROUND MEMBER: We made mistakes, and we'd do it again. I wish that we'd done more. I wish we'd been more militant. I wish a lot of things. But taken as a whole, we were so lucky to be born into that moment in history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

This interview took place in 1998.

How is it reasonable that Obama believed Ayers was "rehabilitated" in the 1990s?

It's not, not even remotely.

Ayers and Dohrn do a high profile interview with Connie Chung on ABC News in 1998, expressing no remorse for their militancy and waging war on the country. And we are to believe that Obama was clueless, that he assumed Ayers was "rehabilitated"?

Really?

Apparently, Obama has a different definition of "rehabilitation" than I do.

The timeline doesn't fit Obama's current explanation of his relationship with Ayers, what he knew and when he knew it.

It doesn't fit.

Ben Smith does a poor job of looking into the facts.

Smith buys Obama's story of not knowing that Ayers was unrepentant, that Ayers still was clinging to his radical anti-American beliefs and violent methods to subvert the U.S. government as surely as Obama's believes that people in small towns in Pennsylvania are bitter and "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Obama is not being truthful with the American people. He's not being forthcoming about what he knew and when he knew it.

Furthermore, Smith talks about Ayers' notorious interview published in the New York Times on 9/11, citing that as possible evidence that Obama had no knowledge that Ayers had not been "rehabilitated" prior to its publication. That interview was a revelation for him.

There are problems with that, too. Obama and Ayers worked together after that article was published.

Obama knew that Ayers was not "rehabilitated" and he continued their relationship, their "friendly" relationship.

Put aside Obama's lack of truthfulness with the American people for a moment.

Look at his own assertion that he "assumed that [Ayers] had been rehabilitated."

As president, what sort of things would Obama wrongly just assume?

What other terrorists or thugs would he assume were rehabilitated?

As president, would Obama fall back on the claim that he shouldn't be held responsible for knowing things that happened when he was eight years old or at other points in his childhood?

What depth of understanding could he possibly have about past events that have shaped our present if he takes that stance?

For example, in the case of Israel, would knowledge of the Six-Day War be above his pay grade?

Obama can't be trusted.