Obama says that he has no knowledge of Ayers terrorist past

Tuesday, 07 October 2008 20:55

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said that he has no knowledge of William Ayers'' terrorist activities during the violent Weather Underground movement.

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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said that he has no knowledge of William Ayers'' terrorist activities during the violent Weather Underground movement.

"When he went (in 1995) he certainly didn''t know the history," chief Obama strategist David Axelrod told CNN.

"There''s no evidence that they''re close. There''s no evidence that Obama in any way subscribed to any of Ayers'' views. And Obama''s been very clear about condemning the despicable acts that Bill Ayers committed 40 years ago when Obama was eight-years-old," the New York Times quoted Axelrod, as saying.

Ayers co-founded the Weather Underground, which took credit for multiple bombings and targeted the Pentagon and the Capitol. Ayers was acquitted of charges against him and later joined the faculty of the University of Illinois in Chicago.

John McCain''s running mate, Sarah Palin, hammered Obama over his connections to Ayers last weekend, when she said Obama "pals around with terrorists."

Speaking at events in Florida, Palin pointed to Axelrod''s latest comments, saying, "Today they''re saying for the first time that Barack Obama didn''t know back then about Ayers'' radical background."

"Wait a minute," Palin said. "He didn''t know a few months ago that he had launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist?"

Obama, in an interview on the Tom Joyner radio show, said: "Mr. Ayers is somebody who lives in Chicago. He''s a professor at the University of Chicago, Illinois, teaches education, and he engaged in these despicable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old. I served on a board with him." (ANI)