This is not my first post about the unrepentent terrorist Bill Ayers (to say nothing of his thoroughly evil wife Bernadine Dohrn). I've long thought that Obama's relationship with Ayers is far more serious than his interactions with Jeremiah Wright, but unlike Jeremiah Wright, Obama has yet to denounce or repudiate Ayers.

Far from it; he's now opted for full coverup mode, and I think it's because Obama knows that his relationship with Bill Ayers has the potential to make the Jeremiah Wright affair look like a cakewalk.

We're not talking about an outspoken anti-American preacher; Ayers is a longtime, sworn enemy of the United States who regrets that the Weather Underground did not bomb enough. I find it hard to believe that anyone in a serious position to be running for president would have a close association with such a man.

This is not to say that I judge people by their associations. Lord knows I have associated with criminals, dangerous radicals I will not name, and people whose conduct would shock most of this blog's readers. I think it would be horribly unfair to attribute their guilt to me in any way or to make a judgment that I am a bad person because I have associated with bad people.

But I must make two crucial distinctions at the outset between my associations and Barack Obama's. First, I am not running for president for God's sake! I've led a colorful life fraught with tragedies and mistakes, and I'm not about to consider running for anything. If I did, depending on the importance of the office, I would expect a certain level of scrutiny, and I would assume my opponent would make the most of the negatives in my past. That's just the way it is. Or at least the way it's supposed to be. (Except, it seems, in Obama's case...)

Second, there is a distinction between associating with someone and sharing the philosophy of that person. Obama did a lot more than "associate" with Bill Ayers in the ordinary sense. They were politically associated, and the Ayers/Weather Underground variety of terrorism was absolutely, 100% driven by political considerations. When a hard core unrepentant terrorist Marxist like Ayers gets behind someone politically, makes him the Chairman of the Board of a key project (as it appears happened), and then helps launch his career in elected office, that's a lot more egregious, in my view, than if they'd merely been drinking buddies at a local bar.

There's association, and then there's association. The sort of association which is being covered up is precisely the type of association which should worry the hell out of every voter in the country.

Back in April (doubtless thinking this would all blow over and would never be an issue) Barack Obama made two different statements about Bill Ayers.

From what Obama said at the debate, you'd think he barely knew who Ayers was:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English 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.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me 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, George.

In an interview with Chris Wallace ten days later, Obama remembered Ayers' field, but characterized him as "a 60 plus year old individual":

Now, Mr. Ayres is a 60 plus year old individual who lives in my neighborhood, who did something that I deplore 40 years ago when I was six or seven years old. By the time I met him, he was a professor of education at the University of Illinois.

We served on a board together that had Republicans, bankers, lawyers, focused on education, who worked for Mayor Daley. Mayor Daley, the same Mayor Daley probably who when he was a state attorney prosecuted Mr. Ayres's wife for those activities, I (INAUDIBLE) the point is that to somehow suggest that in any way I endorse his deplorable acts 40 years ago, because I serve on a board with him.

That "60 plus year old individual" should have been a tip-off. What on earth does Ayers' age have to do with anything? As it happens, I'm a "50 plus year old individual." And Charles Manson (of whom the Weather Underground were unabashed admirers) happens to be a "70 plus year old individual."

Why say something like that unless the goal is to obfuscate rather than illuminate?

I think the evidence is becoming overwhelming that the goal is (and has all along been) a coverup.

After reading Stanley Kurtz's entire account about the University of Illinois's "last-minute decision to block access to the documents," I was shocked that a taxpayer-funded library would be assisting a coverup involving a matter of extreme national importance as to how closely a future president worked with an unrepentent terrorist and avowed enemy of this country.

When Obama made his first run for political office, articles in both the Chicago Defender and the Hyde Park Herald featured among his qualifications his position as chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation where Ayers was a founder and guiding force. Obama assumed the Annenberg board chairmanship only months before his first run for office, and almost certainly received the job at the behest of Bill Ayers. During Obama's time as Annenberg board chairman, Ayers's own education projects received substantial funding. Indeed, during its first year, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge struggled with significant concerns about possible conflicts of interest. With a writ to aid Chicago's public schools, the Annenberg challenge played a deeply political role in Chicago's education wars, and as Annenberg board chairman, Obama clearly aligned himself with Ayers's radical views on education issues. With Obama heading up the board and Ayers heading up the other key operating body of the Annenberg Challenge, the two would necessarily have had a close working relationship for years (therefore "exchanging ideas on a regular basis"). So when Ayers and Dorhn hosted that kickoff for the first Obama campaign, it was not a random happenstance, but merely further evidence of a close and ongoing political partnership. Of course, all of this clearly contradicts Obama's dismissal of the significance of his relationship with Ayers.

This much we know from the public record, but a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is likely to flesh out the story. That document cache contains the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The records in question are extensive, consisting of 132 boxes, containing 947 file folders, a total of about 70 linear feet of material. Not only would these files illuminate the working relationship between Obama and Bill Ayers, they would also provide significant insight into a web of ties linking Obama to various radical organizations, including Obama-approved foundation gifts to political allies. Obama's leadership style and abilities are also sure to be illuminated by the documents in question.

Please consider contacting the president of the University of Illinois system, B. Joseph White, to 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 e-mail link for White here. Telephone, fax, and mailing addresses for White's offices can be found here .

414 Administrative Office Building, MC-760
1737 W. Polk St.
Chicago, IL 606l2
Phone: 312-413-9097
Fax: 312-413-8301
364 Henry Administration Building, MC-346
506 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: 2l7-333-3070
Fax: 217-333-3072

B. Joseph White
President
bjwhite@uillinois.edu

I was referred to Thomas Hardy in the University Relations Deparment. He stated that the records were "provided as a gift" and that the University had not known that anyone had been looking at them until recently. Whereupon the University "realized that a deed of gift had not been finalized." They are (says Hardy) "not sure what circumstances were and why the deed was not provided," but he said they "would work to get documents finalized," either by working with donor or if things cannot be worked out, they'll return the documents to the donor. The University's position is that it does not own the documents, and thus cannot make them available.

I don't know the law in this area, but it strikes me that if something is put in a publicly-funded library for a period of years, at some point it ought to cease being private property. I also doubt very much that the University goes out of its way to check for a "deed of gift" document every time someone wants to look at an item in its repository.

Furthermore, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a non-profit charity, not someone's personal business records. Presumably, there's some sort of duty of accountability anyway -- regardless of where the records are located.

Stanley Kurtz has an update here which reflects pretty much the same position as what Mr. Hardy told me.

Kurtz also links Steve Diamond's most recent post on the subject. Diamond -- who has been repeatedly credited as the first to expose the close and lengthy working CAC relationship between Ayers and Obama is all over the University's lame "deed of gift" claim as a legalistic subterfuge:

...it's not the crime, it's the cover up and now the University of Illinois has provided the cover up.

Ironic, that a public university would attempt to prevent a legitimate author and journalist - with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard to boot - from accessing documents legitimately housed in their library. Ironic, and possibly illegal.

The flimsy manufactured excuse - most likely provided to the library by the University's general counsel - is that the University does not have a "deed of gift" which the university contends is required for it to, legitimately, claim possession of the archived material.

Unfortunately, this is a bad reading of the law.

...the larger question here is - why the concern? why the alarm bells? why the cover-up? is it simply because Dr. Kurtz is with National Review, the conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley?

One remaining possibility, of course, is that somehow word that there was interest in the materials was leaked to Bill Ayers, who conceived of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, co-authored the original successful $49.2 million grant proposal, and then co-chaired the key operative body of the CAC, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative. The original CAC offices were housed in the same building as Ayers' office, rent free courtesy of the University. That was also where Ayers housed his Small Schools Workshop, headed by his old SDS buddy, the Maoist Mike Klonsky, which received a $175,000 grant from, you guessed it, the CAC, whose board was chaired by Barack Obama.

Ayers has been pretty mum of late and maybe quite nervous about the possibility that a close look at the day to day records of the CAC will reveal more about what I have already found out: that he and Barack Obama had a close working relationship during the life of the CAC. The CAC actively and aggressively intervened in a major political war going on in Chicago in the mid 90s over school reform - against the goals of the powerful Chicago mayor, Richard Daley.

(Emphasis added.)

As the saying goes, the coverup is worse than the crime. But if Diamond is right, what's being covered up might be pretty bad.

Unfortunately for Senator Obama, what might only stink in Chicago - a relationship with an ex-terrorist who had an authoritarian agenda in mind for Chicago school kids - is far more damaging on the national political scene.

If Obama assisted Ayers and his radical efforts, little wonder there's a coverup. He'd better pray that the coverup works, because if middle America ever gets wind of it, he'll never be elected president. Nor should he be.

There's a lot more to this than guilt by "association." It's called involvement.

What's being covered up might be more damaging than the coverup itself.

(I know the usual rule is that the coverup is worse than the crime, but I think this might be an exception.)

ADDITIONAL NOTE: For most of the above links to Steve Diamond's posts, I'm indebted Tom Maguire, who has been all over this, and who credits Diamond for breaking the story.

MORE: Another thing that should have been a tip-off was Obama's characterization of Ayers as a "professor of English." Not only is Ayers well known as a professor of Education, but their their long association together -- in the field of education -- makes it virtually impossible for Obama to have forgotten Ayers' field.

I suppose it's possible that Obama misspoke, and said "English" when he meant "Education." But the idea that he didn't know Ayers' field was is laughable.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire has more on the coverup, and thinks Obama might not want the public to know anything about the Obama-Ayers educational effort because it was a flop:

...why the cover-up? My guess is that the Obama campaign recognizes that education reform is a hot topic with voters everywhere. Obama, the man with limited executive experience, might not want to highlight his executive belly-flop here, undertaken in partnership with a hard left unrepentant domestic terrorist. But that is just a guess.

I think it's obvious that Obama does not want voters to know about his close working association with Ayers or the fact that their joint effort ended in failure. But if Steve Diamond is right, might not success have been even worse?

Can't this still be spun to Obama's advantage? I'm not running the Obama campaign for him, but maybe the voters should be happy that thanks to Barack Obama's "help," an unrepentant terrorist failed to take over the Chicago public school system!

UPDATE: Don't miss Tom Maguire's Pajama's Media piece, "Obama, Ayers and the Annenberg Challenge Cover-Up."