William Ahers [1]

Now that the election is over, there is little attention being paid to William Ayers and his connection/relationship with Senator Barrack Obama. During the recent campaign, the main stream media (MSM) continually ignored Mr. Ayers' history as a member of the 1960's radical terrorist group, the Weathermen, and paid little credence to the questions that had arisen concerning the extent of his relationship with Senator Obama.

Although Mr. Ayers had assumed a decidedly low profile during the campaign when Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin began talking about his connections with Senator Obama, with the election over he is now, once again a very public figure.

In addition to his job as a Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, he is also very busy marketing a new edition of his book Fugitive Days and speaking out in his own defense in the pages of a democratic socialist newsweekly, In These Times. Recently, Mr. Ayers told a Manhattan panel discussion audience that he was tired of being used as cannon fodder in America's political wars.

By choosing this vehicle, Ayers is skillfully engaging in his own sanitized rewriting of history. His effort is to paint himself as just another honest dissenter, a man whose valiant socialist principles have caused the media to unfairly demonize him as a terrorist. All he did in his memoir, he writes, is to go back to those of “exhilarating and difficult years resistance against the American war in Vietnam".

In light of the above and as a means of countering Mr. Ayers attempt to whitewash his own misdeeds I intend to use my next several blogs to document a few things regarding Mr. Ayers and his friends that you would not otherwise hear about from the MSM.

Prior to starting this series of blogs, and as a matter of due diligence, I need to inform you that I do share a personal issue with Mr. Ayers. On June 9th, 1970, Mr. Ayers, as a leader of the "Weather Underground Group", participated in the bombing of the New York City Police Headquarters located at 240 Centre Street (between Centre and Grand Streets) in Manhattan's Little Italy neighborhood. At that time I was a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps assigned to the Fleet Marine Force Pacific's 17th Counterintelligence Team, however, my Father, a New York City Police Officer, was assigned to the New York City Police Department's Communications Division at Police Headquarters. Fortunately, he was not on duty at the time of the explosion. When I recently heard Mr. Ayers describe his terrorist actions with the Weather Underground during this time as "exhilarating", I thought to myself, "this is still a dangerous individual" despite the facade of his self professed and twisted version of his history with this group. Mr. Ayers is also well respected by the academic liberal icons of Chicago society who state that his involvement in education and his professorship at the University of Illinois are evidence of his "rehabilitation." According to his friends, Mr. Ayers' past is simply a footnote of history and should not only be forgiven but also forgotten.

I have a specific disdain for Mr. Ayers for several reasons. Obviously, as far as I am concerned, he attempted to murder my father with his bombing of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, one of a myriad of terrorist acts for which Mr. Ayers was never brought to justice. The case against Mr. Ayers was mishandled by the FBI and thrown out. In later years Mr. Ayers remarked about this screwup on the part of the FBI - "Guilty as sin, free as a bird! What a great country!" , Mr. Ayers' subsequent metamorphosis into a liberal socialist with academic credentials and an avowed interest in the education of our nation's children also scares me. To think that this man could have the ear (either directly or indirectly) of a sitting President of the United States is something I find incomprehensible.