Sarah Palin’s statement at Saturday’s Carson rally that Barack Obama was one to “pal around with terrorists” is not the first time that claim has been made. In fact, The New York Times story she cited was written to address previous claims, including this YouTube video.

Obama has crossed paths more than once with William Ayers, founder of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground. The two are hardly close associates, and Ayers is by most accounts long reformed.

But judge for yourself. Here’s Palin statement from yesterday, followed by key excerpts from The New York Times story. (If you may need to click on the prompt below to view the rest of this entry.)

Palin’s statement in Carson:

“I was reading today a copy of The New York Times. And I was really interested to read in there about Barack Obama’s friends from Chicago. Turns out one of his earliest supporters is a man who, according to The New York Times, was a domestic terrorist. And part of the group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that targeted the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol….’

“Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.”

The New York Times story:

* In 1995, “at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper, Barack Obama met Mr. Ayers, by then an education professor. Their paths have crossed sporadically since then, at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama ’s first run for office, on the schools project and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors.”

* “A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called ‘somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.’”

* “Mr. Obama’s connections with a man who once bombed buildings and who is unapologetic about it may seem puzzling. But in Chicago, Mr. Ayers has largely been rehabilitated.”

* “Federal riot and bombing conspiracy charges against (Ayers) were dropped in 1974 because of illegal wiretaps and other prosecutorial misconduct.”

* ”’He’s done a lot of good in this city and nationally,’” Mayor Richard M. Daley said in an interview this week, explaining that he has long consulted Mr. Ayers on school issues. ”’This is 2008. People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life.’”

* “Steve Chapman, a columnist for The Chicago Tribune, defended Mr. Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his longtime pastor, whose black liberation theology and ‘God damn America’ sermon became notorious last spring. But he denounced Mr. Obama for associating with Mr. Ayers… whom he said the University of Illinois should never have hired.

”’I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on terrorist bombings,’ Mr. Chapman said.
‘If you’re in public life, you ought to say, “I don’t want to be associated with this guy,”’Mr. Chapman said. ‘If John McCain had a long association with a guy who’d bombed abortion clinics, I don’t think people would say, “That’s ancient history.”’”

* “Most of the bombs the Weathermen were blamed for had been placed to do only property damage, a fact Mr. Ayers emphasizes in his memoir. But a 1970 pipe bomb in San Francisco attributed to the group killed one police officer and severely hurt another. An accidental 1970 explosion in a Greenwich Village town house basement killed three radicals; survivors later said they had been making nail bombs to detonate at a military dance at Fort Dix in New Jersey. And in 1981, in an armed robbery of a Brinks armored truck in Nanuet, N.Y., that involved Weather Underground members including Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, two police officers and a Brinks guard were killed.”

You can read the complete New York Times story here.

Posted in: Candidates' OC visits • Internet activity • Obama • Palin |

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