Ayers Book: Obama Was a 'Family Friend'

Politics | Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 5:11:55 pm PST

Former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers describes Barack Obama as “a neighbor and family friend” in the new edition of his book Fugitive Days.

Funny how this is only coming out now, isn’t it?

In a new afterword to his 2001 book, Bill Ayers, former leader of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground, describes President-elect Barack Obama as a “family friend” and denies he wished his group had set off more bombs in the 1960s.

Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, adds few new details about his relationship with Obama in the afterword to Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist. The book is being reissued this month.

“We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign,” he writes.

(Hat tip: Ace.)