CHAPTER IV: APPRENTICESHIP WITH FOUNDATION-
FUNDED TERRORISTS: AYERS AND DOHRN
“We must be alert to the CIA agents who would promote the polarization of our society. We
must examine the evidence which indicates that fake revolutionaries, who are inciting
insurrection in our cities, have had their pockets and minds stuffed by the CIA.” – Vincent
Salandria, 1971.
“How could we have done the FBI’s work better for them?” –Mark Rudd, Weatherman leader.
“You don’t have to be a cop to do a cop’s work.” – Ward Churchill, ex-Weatherman
“God, what a great country. It makes me want to puke.” – Bill Ayers, Weather UndergroundPublic opinion is now broadly aware of the close personal relationship and friendly affinity
which has existed for two decades between the candidate Obama and the rehabilitated but
unrepentant and defiant Weatherman terrorist bombers, William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. As
David Axelrod told the Politico, “Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same
school ... They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school
together.”^32 Ayers has written about his involvement with the group’s bombings of the New York
City Police headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. Obama’s
quest for elective office started in 1995 with a fund-raising meeting held at the home of Ayers and
Dohrn. A $200 campaign contribution from Ayers is listed on April 2, 2001 by the “Friends of
Barack Obama” campaign fund. The two appeared speaking together at several public events,
including a 1997 University of Chicago panel entitled, “Should a child ever be called a ‘super
predator?’” and another panel for the University of Illinois in April 2002, entitled, “Intellectuals:
Who Needs Them?” Ayers and Obama are friends. Ayers was the key man in giving Obama his
first big visible and public break in the foundation world, his job as the chairman of the board of the
Annenberg Chicago Challenge.
The basic facts of the meeting at the Ayers-Dohrn abode are these: ‘In 1995, State Senator Alice
Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals
at the home of two well-known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known
nationally as two of the most notorious — and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the
1960s anti-war movement. Now, as Obama runs for president, what two guests recall as an
unremarkable gathering on the road to a minor elected office stands as a symbol of how swiftly he
has risen from a man in the Hyde Park left to one closing in fast on the Democratic nomination for
president. “I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to
learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr.
Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the
informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her
successor.” Obama and Palmer “were both there,” he said. Obama’s connections to Ayers and
Dohrn have been noted in some fleeting news coverage in the past. But the visit by Obama to their
home — part of a campaign courtship — reflects more extensive interaction than has been
previously reported.’^33
The period between 1991 and 1995 is the time when Obama assembles his network with its
various components – the politically connected lawyer Allison Davis, the mafioso slumlord Tony
Rezko, and the terrorists turned education operatives in the service of the foundations, Bill Ayers