Documents released Tuesday by the University of Illinois at Chicago shed some light on Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, a founding member of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground.
Obama’s association with Ayers, who now teaches at the university, has become an issue in the Illinois senator’s presidential campaign. The Weather Underground took credit for several nonfatal bombings on targets that included the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, and critics accuse Obama of rubbing elbows with an unabashed 1960s radical.
The massive collection of newly released documents — 140 boxes full of them — includes agendas that clearly put Obama and Ayers in the same room for meetings of Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an educational initiative that Ayers was instrumental in starting and that Obama chaired in the 1990s.
Ayers Unrepentant for Group’s Violence in 1960s, 1970s to this day says they should have done more. Some of his group went on to kill policemen.
Obama has said of Ayers, "I am friendly with him, he is a mainstream repectable man."
