Tribune Covers For Obama's Terrorist Friends
By Cliff Kincaid
May 8, 2008
Page 3 of 4
Grathwohl includes this conversation with Ayers in his 1976 book, Bringing Down America: An FBI Informer with the Weathermen. The park police station bombing in San Francisco was "a success," Ayers is quoted as saying, "but it's a shame when someone like Bernardine Dohrn has to make all the plans, make the bomb, and then place it herself. She should have to do only the planning."
What a shame that Dohrn had to do all the dirty work. But it's probably safe to assume that Ayers either helped her or knew about it in advance.
Grathwohl reveals that Ayers himself knew how to make bombs and didn't care about people being killed. At one point, he says, Ayers displayed a diagram of a bomb, with dynamite and a fuse. The plan was to bomb a police station but an objection was raised that it would also destroy a nearby restaurant. "We'll blow out the Red Barn restaurant," Grathwohl said. "Maybe even kill a few innocent customers - and most of them are black."
"We can't protect all the innocent people in the world," Ayers replied. "Some will get killed. Some of us will get killed. We have to accept that fact."
Grathwohl says the Weather Underground also considered using kidnappings and assassinations in order to bring about their communist revolution in the U.S. Possible kidnapping targets were Vice President Spiro Agnew and presidential aide Henry Kissinger.
Time Will Tell
For more than a week I have gone back and forth with reporter Ford and the office of the Tribune ombudsman, or consumer advocate. His name is Timothy McNulty. I talked to his assistant and left messages on his telephone answering machine. Ford told me at one time that McNulty was on jury duty, which had left the issue unresolved. Eventually, the public editor's office told me that they are under no obligation to disclose when or if they will correct anything.
Yet, the paper insists that "Publishing information quickly and accurately is a central part of the Chicago Tribune's news responsibility and a value shared in all our publications...We take our readers' concerns about accuracy seriously and will promptly investigate when we are alerted to possible errors."
The reluctance to correct the record may have something to do with an April 18 Chicago Tribune editorial, "Guilt by Association," which said that while Ayers and Dohrn should be repentant about their terrorist activities, "they have done good work in Chicago" and that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was correct when he said that linking them to Obama was "playing guilt by association." (web site)
Why should Obama be harshly judged because he hangs around with criminal terrorists? The paper advised people to get back to the "real campaign."
But has the Tribune become part of the Obama campaign? It turns out that Obama campaign strategist Axelrod worked for the Tribune for eight years as a reporter. It also turns out that Ayers has been a contributor of columns to the Tribune. He has written for the paper on at least five occasions about educational matters.
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