More Attention on Annenberg, Ayers and Obama – finally – and how YOU can help
By LisaB on August 19, 2008 at 11:45 AM in Annenberg Chicago Challenge, Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, Current Affairs
While everyone is waiting for the VP pick, I thought you might find this interesting.
It looks like Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge is getting some more attention. Stanly Kurtz from the National Review has been trying to get access to supposedly publicly available records from the Challenge housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After several assurances that he could read the records, permission was withdrawn at the last minute. Luckily, he writes about his Chicago travails.
In the process of tracing down the Obama-Ayers connection, I located a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago. These documents are the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a small foundation, founded and inspired by Bill Ayers, for which Obama served as board chairman (almost surely at Ayers’s behest). Although the library initially promised me access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, top library officials mysteriously intervened at the last minute to bar access.
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Initially, as I said, library officials said that I could examine the CAC records. I received this permission both over the phone and in writing. The subsequent denial of access came with a series of evolving explanations.
Apparently, the writer spoke with several people employed by the UIC library, all of whom assured him access would not be a problem. At the last minute, permission was withdrawn on rather thin arguments – first that the documents were “restricted” and second that the donor had not signed a “deed of gift” to the UIC. As to the first, a list of the documents had already outlined 5 “restricted” files, not the entire cache of many boxes. As to the second, the UIC would not even identify the donor.
Somewhat startling in the blogosphere, a friend of NQ, Steve Diamond, gets credit for doing the legwork on the Ayers/Obama/Annenberg story.
We already know a good deal about Obama’s service at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That information paints a disturbing picture, and one sharply at odds with Obama’s claim that Bill Ayers was just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” A number of bloggers, including, for example, Tom Maguire, at Just One Minute, have done excellent work on the CAC issue. (See here and here.) But the key reporting on the Obama-Ayers connection via the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has been done by Steve Diamond, at Global Labor and Politics. (See especially this important post of June 18, 2008.) Sad to say, the mainstream media has almost entirely ignored the issues so powerfully raised by Diamond, and discussed at length by various bloggers, even though Obama’s service at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge raises serious questions about the veracity of his account of his relationship with Ayers. Access to the CAC records promises to provide a treasure trove of documentary evidence fronting on this and many other critically important issues, from Obama’s policy views, to his political-ideological alliances, to his leadership abilities.
(Luckily for us at NQ, law professor and scholar Stephen Diamond will have a major new article here tonight. Do check back!)
The National Review article is well worth the time and is not too long. The writer follows up by soliciting help from readers. (If you are interested in helping, please go to NRO article and follow the links Kurtz provides.)
. . . please write to the president of the University of Illinois system, B. Joseph White. Ask him to take immediate public steps to insure the safety of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, to release the identity of the Collection’s donor, and above all to swiftly make the Collection available to me, and to the public at large. You can find an email link for White here. Telephone, fax, and mailing addresses for White’s offices can be found here.
Oh, and by the way, if you’re interested, The National Review also has a cover article titled “Senator Stealth.” Here’s the blurb:
The same radical, separatist, anti-American theology of liberation that was so boldly and bitterly proclaimed by Obama’s pastor is shared, if more quietly, by Obama’s colleagues at the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, an influential national umbrella group for church-based “community organizers” that specializes in ideological stealth.
Looks to me like the oppo team is cranking up. Here are the rest of the articles in the September issue of The National Review.
ARTICLES
Wicca Economics — by John Hood
The theory with a magic leader.Dr. Obama’s Prescription — by James Capretta
It isn’t one we should want to take.Life Opportunities — by Ramesh Ponnuru
Why McCain shouldn’t run away from the abortion issue.Quota Quest — by John J. Miller
Of Obama’s vulnerability on racial preferences.Meandering toward Disaster — by Andrew C. McCarthy
The perils of making a left-wing ideologue commander-in-chief.Not Ready for Prime Time — by Rob Long
When you act too cool to be president . . .Senator Stealth — by Stanley Kurtz
How to advance radical causes when no one’s looking.Who Is Barack Obama? — by Michael Gledhill
His autobiography paints a disturbing picture.Soldier for Stroger — by David Freddoso
The candidate of change helped keep Chicago politics dirty.
Ouch!!!!! Online access is restricted to subscribers. I may have to dash out and buy this issue. . . Of course, I’ll have to hope it’s in a brown paper wrapper.
by Ronald Scott
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