Barack Hussein Obama's communist connections

Barack Obama's communist connections

Wes Vernon
Wes Vernon
May 26, 2008

The frontrunner for this year's Democrat presidential nomination burst upon the scene from out of nowhere only in recent months. Two or three years ago, Barrack Hussein Obama was an unknown outside his Chicago bailiwick and in some other Illinois quarters. Even his time in the Illinois State Senate was unremarkable.

So what do we know about him?

As this column has noted (see "Violent chickens roost on candidates' shoulders" — April 21, 2008), Senator Obama has some Marxist skeletons in his closet.

These include a Hawaiian "poet" named Frank Marshall Davis (whose identity Obama tried to hide when referencing him in his book). Davis had some considerable influence on the young Obama when they both lived in Hawaii. Obama himself says as much in his book, referring to his early mentor merely as "Frank." It took some recent digging to confirm that Davis was in fact that influence. Did Obama really think that the very act of hiding the man's true identity would make no one curious?

Davis has also been identified as a member of the Communist Party. When the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1956 asked him to affirm or deny his membership in the party, he refused to respond, citing the Fifth Amendment. Adding to that is the fact — revealed in the news conference referenced below — that Davis began his communist career in Chicago and was a friend and associate of the singer Paul Robeson and the longshore union official Harry Bridges, both secret Communist Party members.

Were it not for the Internet and talk radio, you would not know of this — or other Obama associations — that should prompt media curiosity involving a candidate for President of the United States.

We also have cited Obama's ties to the pro-communist terrorist couple William Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, unrepentant for their records of violent activity in sixties and seventies. They escaped prison on a legal technicality.

But we have just scratched the surface

Comes now Herbert Romerstein, whose professional background in security and intelligence matters we have mined on previous occasions. He knows where the bodies are buried in this town. And Cliff Kincaid's America's Survival, Inc., has wisely utilized the wealth of information Romerstein possesses.

At a news conference here in Washington on May 22, Kincaid and Romerstein released two documents that are chockablock with names, dates, places — page after page detailing the "Obama connection" to communists, socialists, and violent radicals. One deals with Obama's associates in Hawaii, the other is focused on his background in Chicago.

Romerstein provided the wealth of knowledge required for this undertaking. Kincaid provided the shoeleather for up-to-date sleuthing, including a trip to Chicago.

The beginning

The Feb. 22 issue of Politico — a Washington sheet basically for political insiders — added momentum to an already-major investigative project on the part of America's Survival.

On that day, it ran a story spotlighting what might be called Obama's political "coming out" 1995 reception at the home of Ayers and Dohrn. Politico did not reveal any extensive background of those present. However, with the encyclopedic memory of Romerstein — whose personal library pinpoints the activities of thousands of America's enemies — America's Survival helpfully filled in the blanks.

Then-State Senator Alice Palmer announced to those gathered at the Ayers/Dohrn residence that she was stepping down to make a run for Congress and introduced Obama as her chosen successor.

Who is Alice Palmer?

Palmer is much more than the "influential liberal" described by Politico.

Ten years before the aforementioned meeting, Alice Palmer was an official of a notorious Communist front group (so identified by the FBI), the U.S. Peace Council, an affiliate of the World Peace Council, an international Soviet front. It goes without saying that during that era of the eighties, both of these mouthpieces for Moscow were working feverishly to undermine President Reagan's arms buildup which played a major role in the downfall of the Soviet Union. That was the time of the worldwide Soviet-inspired nuclear "freeze" movement in 1983, when Palmer was also mentioned as a participant on the World Peace Council's Prague assembly.

In 1986, Palmer wrote an article for the People's Weekly World, a house organ for the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). In that dispatch, Palmer favorably recounted her experiences attending the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

(Note: Because Palmer later tried to reclaim her place in the State Senate, Obama moved to have her taken off the ballot. Thus this year, according to America's Survival, she is supporting Senator Hillary Clinton for President.)

Red press rejoices

Frank Chapman, a member of the U.S. Peace Council Executive Committee, wrote what could be called a gloating letter to the People's Weekly World right after Obama's victory this year in the Iowa Democrat Party caucuses. Therein, he said the following:

"Obama's victory was more than a progressive move: It was a dialectical leap ushering in a qualitatively new era of struggle. Marx once compared [the] revolutionary new era of struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface. This is the old revolutionary 'mole,' not only showing his traces on the surface but also breaking through."

So who is the mole?

A "mole" on whom Karl Marx would have smiled benignly if he were here? Chapman writes exuberantly as if he believed there was a "mole" in the Obama campaign. Perhaps Obama himself? Is anybody in the mainstream media just mildly curious?

As for Ayers and Dohrn

Apologists for William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn (whose links to Obama were an issue during his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign) liked to say that the violent doings of their Weather Underground didn't kill anyone other than their own members in accidental explosions.

Not so. Undercover informant Larry Grathwohl testified before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1974 that Ayers emphatically said Dohrn placed a bomb on the window ledge of a police station in San Francisco that killed a police sergeant. That young officer had his whole life ahead of him, but as America's Survival puts it, "to Ayers and Dohrn, he was a 'pig.'"

Oh, yes, and here is an example of the nature of terrorists who pose as "bleeding-heart liberals:"

Grathwohl reveals in his own book that — as plans were made for the San Francisco police station bombing — he pointed out to Ayers that the explosion could also "kill a few innocent customers at a restaurant next door," adding "most of them are black."

Replied Ayers (according to Grathwohl's account): "We can't protect all the innocent people in the world."

And there is more.

The cast of characters in this drama grows.

In an interview with this column, Romerstein elaborated on a comment he made at the America's Survival news conference. The veteran intelligence authority cited a former Obama advisor, Robert Malley.

You may have heard in the news earlier this month that Malley suddenly cut his advisory ties to the Obama campaign after acknowledging he had talked with Hamas, which is on the State Department list of terrorist organizations. You also may recall that Hamas advisor Ahmed Yousef was quoted as saying, "We like Mr. Obama. We hope he will win the election." Not surprisingly, Senator John McCain made an issue of that, adding that his hoped-for presidency would be Hamas's "worst nightmare." It was then that Malley disappeared from the Obama scene.

Here's what has not been widely reported: Malley is Program Director for the International Crisis Group, lavishly funded by billionaire George Soros, whose number one aim in life is to steer America and the world sharply leftward. He reportedly would like to see a national convention by 2020 to write a new constitution for the United States.

Robert Malley's father, Simon Malley, according to Romerstein and the Discover the Network, was an important figure in the Egyptian Communist Party, was pro-Soviet, passionately anti-Israel, and anti-West. He was booted out of Egypt and later out of France for awhile, to be welcomed back later when the more leftwing government of the socialist Francois Mitterrand took over in Paris.

Romerstein and others believe that the effect of many of Robert Malley's policies and approaches to the Middle East are antithetical to the best interests of the United States. Whatever the intent, critics argue, the net result — to whatever extent of Malley's influence — is a plus for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other enemies of the United States. An example cited is his view of the 2000 Camp David Summit, in which he participated as a negotiator. Malley rejects the opinion that all the blame for that conference's failure rests with PLO terrorist Yasser Arafat.

Martin Peretz, in the New Republic, described Malley as "a rabid hater of Israel," and described several of Malley's articles in the New York Review of Books as "deceitful."

Many Americans thought the Clinton administration's security and foreign policies were at times — to put it kindly — bizarre. Malley served in some important posts in that White House, including as assistant to National Security Director Sandy Berger.

So who is Barack Obama?

At the end of the America's Survival news conference, Kincaid said America's Survival (A) has no intention of feeding this information to the Clinton or McCain campaign, (B) has no connection in any way with any political campaign, and (C) was hoping the media would approach questions on Obama's background with the same kind of investigative digging evident in "a very good" Washington Post story that very day dealing with the McCain campaign's relations with lobbyists.

So again, who is Barack Obama?

We have only skimmed some highlights here on the Obama connection to Marxist radicals. There is much more to tell. We will revisit the issue — not necessarily in consecutive columns, but at the very least, to the extent that the mainstream media choose to ignore the issue.

In the meantime, some comments by Romerstein in our own interview with him are worth pondering:

"Obama speaks in slogans and never explains the thinking that goes into his statements. That's what we need to know: To what extent do these people influence him — the communist Frank Davis, the neo-communists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the anti-Semitic pro-Arab terrorist groups that he met with in Chicago. To what extent do they influence his thinking, and will he repudiate those people?"

Wes Vernon is a Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist.