Obama and his ties to William Ayers

HUME: I suppose the question most Americans have is not whether they (Ayers and Rev. Wright) are truly close now—obviously you shed all such ties when you are getting ready to run for president—but whether Obama has shown in the past a certain tolerance of radical views about the United States of America.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,434042,00.html#

"Special Report With Brit Hume" from October 6, 2008.

ROBERT GIBBS, OBAMA COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Bill Ayers isn't involved in this campaign. Bill Ayers isn't going to be involved in this campaign except when John McCain brings it up.

BRIT HUME, HOST: So who is this guy Bill Ayers? Well, among other things, he is a guy that said in an interview with our own James Rosen back in 2004 for James' book, he said, and I quote, talking about 9/11, "Was that an act of pure terror? It absolutely was. And there are many other acts of terror carried out by our government even recently that are comparable. And there are other acts of terror that have gone on in places like Bosnia that we forgot to notice." That from James Rosen's book, "Strongman: John Mitchell and the secrets of Watergate."

Does that name ring a bell with you if you remember this from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright?

REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT, BARACK OBAMA'S FORMER PASTOR: We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.

HUME: Well, those are two Obama associates who both seem to have sort of similar views of 9/11, that it was not really worse than anything we did as a nation.

Some thoughts on all this now from Fred Barnes, Executive Editor of The Weekly Standard, Mara Liaison, National Political Correspondent of National Public Radio, and Juan Williams, Senior Correspondent of National Public Radio, all are FOX News contributors.

There doesn't seem to be much doubt, Juan, that, in political terms, William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright are undesirables. So the question that arises, and we know about Jeremiah Wright really, and we recognize that Obama once sort of sat at his feet and had him a mentor, but he has cut his ties to him.

But what about the Ayers relationship? You heard Robert Gibbs— Obama says I really didn't know the guy very well. What do we know?

JUAN WILLIAMS, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, actually, David Axelrod, one of Obama's top people, has said that they did have a relationship.

But it's one of these situations where if you look at the reality, and several people now have looked at it, including going into the files of the Annenberg Group, a school reform group in Chicago, where Obama was the head of this group but appointed, apparently, with Ayers' help, to run this school reform organization.

There were some ties, the attended some meetings. There also was a time when, I think it's her name is Alice Palmer, who was leaving the state legislature and had Obama as her chosen successor, introduced Obama at a meeting at Ayers' home. So there were some connections.

Now, does Barack Obama subscribe to those views that we just heard? I don't see any evidence of that. And does Barack in fact have a close relationship in which Ayers would act as an advisor? I don't see any evidence of that.

But there is a tie, and no doubt it will be exploited by the McCain campaign.

HUME: I suppose the question most Americans have is not whether they are truly close now—obviously you shed all such ties when you are getting ready to run for president—but whether Obama has shown in the past a certain tolerance of radical views about the United States of America.

MARA LIAISON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, I think that the difference between Wright and Ayers is huge. I think that he was in his church for 20 years. He used the book title for one of his sermons and baptized his kids. That was a close relationship.

I think the Bill Ayers relationship is exactly as it has been described—their kids went to the same school, and David Axelrod said they were "certainly friendly" because they say each other at school function, plus they sat on the Wood's Foundation board together.

But beyond that —

HUME: Well, wait a minute. You do have the fact that there was an Obama political—

LIAISON: Yes, And the first coffee was held at Ayers' house.

There is no evidence that he continued to rely on him for advice or even had some kind of close relationship with him.

I think it's legitimate to ask him, you know, about Ayers. He's completely disassociated himself from those views and condemned them. And he certainly wasn't around, he wasn't a contemporary of Ayers in any way.

I think the Wright connection is the one that has substance to it. I think the Ayers connection is pretty tenuous.

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: You know, I agree that the Wright connection is much more important. Obama was in the church for 20 years and it lasted up until just a few months ago when Wright became a clearer problem for the Obama presidential campaign.

I think the Ayers relationship was a little bigger. You did have the Chicago Annenberg Fund, and Obama was the head of it. And he funded these very radical student education projects that Ayers had. Ayers wanted to turn students into radical revolutionaries fighting oppression in America and Obama helped fund those things.