Obama and the former radicals

Evidence linking him to the ex-leaders of the Weather Underground is thin. But a YouTube video is making noise.
By Bob Drogin and Dan Morain
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

April 18, 2008

CHICAGO — Democrats have tried to heal their party's angry passions ever since violent protesters disrupted the Democratic National Convention here in 1968, a shock to America's collective psyche that helped Republican Richard Nixon capture the White House.

But some of the old fault lines were visible again Thursday as Sen. Barack Obama's suddenly defensive presidential campaign sought to distance him from Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, aging academics who planted bombs in the Capitol, the Pentagon and other buildings to protest U.S. government policy. They are now widely respected community figures here.

The evidence linking Obama, who was born in 1961, to the two former militants, now in their 60s, remained thin, despite the appearance of a slickly produced, anonymously issued five-minute video titled "Obama's Terrorist Connections" on YouTube that sought to exploit the alleged tie.

Obama and Ayers moved in some of the same political and social circles in the leafy liberal enclave of Hyde Park, where they lived several blocks apart. In the mid-1990s, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, Ayers introduced Obama during a political event at his home, according to Obama's aides. Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, later contributed $200 to Obama's state campaign.

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