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Obama and the former radicals
Evidence linking him to the ex-leaders of the Weather Underground is thin. =
But a YouTube video is making noise.
By Bob Drogin and Dan Morain
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

April 18, 2008

CHICAGO =E2=80=94 Democrats have=20

tried to heal their party's angry passions ever since violent
protesters disrupted the Democratic National Convention here in 1968,
a shock to America's collective psyche that helped Republican Richard
Nixon capture the White House.

But some of the old fault lines were visible again Thursday as Sen.
Barack Obama's suddenly defensive presidential campaign sought to
distance him from Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, aging
academics who planted bombs in the Capitol, the Pentagon and other
buildings to protest U.S. government policy. They are now widely
respected community figures here.

The evidence linking Obama, who was born in 1961, to the two former
militants, now in their 60s, remained thin, despite the appearance of
a slickly produced, anonymously issued five-minute video titled
"Obama's Terrorist Connections" on YouTube that sought to exploit the
alleged tie.

Obama and Ayers moved in some of the same political and social
circles in the leafy liberal enclave of Hyde Park, where they lived
several blocks apart. In the mid-1990s, when Obama was running for
the Illinois Senate, Ayers introduced Obama during a political event
at his home, according to Obama's aides. Ayers, a professor of
education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, later contributed
$200 to Obama's state campaign.

Obama and Ayers met a dozen times as members of the board of the
Woods Fund of Chicago, a local grant-making foundation, according to
the group's president. They appeared together to discuss juvenile
justice on a 1997 panel sponsored by the University of Chicago,
records show. They appeared again in 2002 at an academic panel
co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.

Ayers and Dohrn, an associate law professor at Northwestern
University, did not return phone calls or e-mail Thursday about their
relationship with Obama, their leadership of the militant Weather
Underground or their decade as fugitives from the law.

But friends, neighbors and colleagues rose to their defense after
Obama's Wednesday night debate in Philadelphia with rival Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, in which Obama was publicly
quizzed about his relationship with Ayers for the first time.

Clinton noted that the two men had served on the foundation board and
warned that "this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be
raising."

Laura S. Washington, chairwoman of the Woods Fund, called it
"ridiculous to suggest there's anything inappropriate" about Ayers
and Obama serving on the nine-member board of directors. The Woods
Fund issued $3.4 million in grants to local arts, housing and civic
groups last year from an endowment of about $70 million, she said.

Obama joined the board in 1993 and stepped down in 2002, three years
after Ayers was appointed, she said. The board met four times a year
to discuss policy and new grant proposals, she said.

"Bill Ayers is very respected and prominent in Chicago as a civic
activist," Washington added. "He has a national reputation as an
educator. That's why he's on our board."

Obama's latest predicament stirred Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley to
issue a strong defense of Obama and Ayers, which Obama's campaign
passed on to reporters.

"There are a lot of reasons that Americans are angry about Washington
politics," Daley's statement said. "One more example is the way Sen.
Obama's opponents are playing guilt-by-association, tarring him
because he happens to know Bill Ayers."

Daley said Ayers "worked with me in shaping our now nationally
renowned school reform program."

"I don't condone what he did 40 years ago, but I remember that period
well," the mayor said. "It was a difficult time, but those days are
long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our
country to keep re-fighting 40-year-old battles."

Hyde Park, on Chicago's South Side, is home to the University of
Chicago, an arts center, museums and other cultural institutions.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's home and the headquarters of
the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH are within a few blocks of
Obama's red-brick home. The neighborhood's politics are vibrant and
decidedly liberal.

As a result, what is normal in Hyde Park may sound odd elsewhere in
America.

Adolph Reed Jr., a political scientist at the University of
Pennsylvania, knows both Ayers and Obama from his days in Chicago. He
plans to vote for Clinton in Pennsylvania's primary Tuesday. But he
called the Ayers-Obama link a "bogus story."

Reed nonetheless predicted that the relationship would "haunt" the
candidate and "be used to attack him from now until his place in the
race ends."

In the debate Wednesday, Obama described Ayers as "a guy who lives in
my neighborhood, who's a professor of [education] in Chicago, who I
know, and who I have not received some official endorsement from.
He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

He added: "And the notion that . . . knowing somebody who engaged in
detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow
reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

Obama later pointed out that Clinton's husband commuted the sentences
of two former Weather Underground members, which Obama called "a
slightly more significant act" than his simply knowing Ayers.

Shortly before President Clinton left office in 2001, he granted
clemency to Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, who were serving
prison sentences after having been caught decades earlier with 740
pounds of dynamite and weapons.

Rosenberg also had been indicted, but never tried, for her alleged
involvement in the botched 1981 robbery of an armored car in upstate
New York that left three people dead, including two police officers.

bob.drogin at latimes.com

dan.morain at latimes.com

Drogin reported from Chicago and Morain from Sacramento.


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