Video: Rise of Bill Ayers: IED Maker & Obama Mentor

Most of us have heard plenty (some too much) about Bill Ayers lately. But while I was aware of the highlights of Ayers' notorious career, this 2004 documentary (The Weather Underground) efficiently wraps the rise of a true American terrorist organization in a tight package.

The Weather Underground (formerly the sexist-sounding Weathermen) was the violent splinter group of the '60's antiwar group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Just like the Jacobins usurped the French Revolution and the Bolsheviks the Russian, the Weather Underground took a predictable trajectory: grabbing the reigns of the until-then non-violent SDS and steering it towards a series of violent riots and bombings.

Bill Ayers was the leader of this internal revolution and mastermind of SDS's lurch to violence.

One of the early SDS presidents, Todd Gitlin, vividly describes this seizing of power and Ayers' murderous choices in the documentary.

A big fan of efficiency, I trimmed the documentary down further (to 7 minutes), focusing in on the Bill Ayers segments --- and sprinkled with some editorial juxtapositions.

Watch for Ayers blithely recounting his self-taught IED bomb-making skills, the Gitlin interview, and at the end, Ayers' terrorist wife Bernardine Dohrn talking about their tragic lack of house guests (video below the break):

When asked about the infamous 1995 launch of his political career in the Ayers' living room, just yesterday Obama said "I assumed that he had been rehabilitated." And Ben Smith is quite generous:

That may not have been an unreasonable assumption for Obama in the 1990s. Though Ayers never repented his part in the Weather Underground bombings, he had not yet become notorious for advertising them.

Really, Ben?

Here's Bill Ayers and Berardine Dohrn boasting about their violent past. In 1996. On local Chicago PBS station WTTW:

BILL AYERS: I'm sure there are people who think that the opposition to the war was wrong and would like to re-write that history, but the opposition to the war was right, and the opposition came from all quarters, and those who opposed it should be proud of that and should say they're proud of that. To apologize for that opposition would be, I think, a perversion. To apologize for militantly opposing racism, which I think is needed now more than ever, to me is a perversion.

...

ELIZABETH BRACKETT [interviewer]: As you look back now, the bombings, what the Weathermen did claim credit for, would you do it differently now?

BILL AYERS: Oh, I don't--I don't know that there's much--I doubt it, not if the same conditions prevailed and the same kind of--and I knew what I knew then and didn't know any more than I knew then, probably not.

...

BERNARDINE DOHRN: Resistance by every means necessary is happening and will continue to happen within the United States as well as around the world, and I remain committed to the struggle ahead. [ed -- did I say boasting about their past? My bad.]

...

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Also central, the desire to make a fundamental radical change in society. Would they do it all again? They say, absolutely.

Again, from an interview on local Chicago PBS at the height of Obama's professional involvement with Ayers. But, hey, some agreed that the terrorist couple was unknown:

THOMAS FORAN, Former U.S. Attorney: I'd say they still are against the community; they're still anti-authoritarian; they still think that they know their own little secret of how the world should run that's different than the overwhelming majority of the people. There's no way that anybody would say either of those people had any impact in Chicago. Chicago's a big city. These people are nobodies, and to try to give them attention is an outrage.

Attention like kissing their rings in their living room? Big deal:

Obama's political career was launched with Ayers giving him a fundraiser in his living room. If a Republican candidate had launched his political career at the home of an abortion-clinic bomber -- even a repentant one -- he would not have been able to run for dogcatcher in Podunk. And Ayers shows no remorse. His only regret is that he "didn't do enough."

UPDATE: Thanks, Ace (if you arrived here from elsewhere, check out the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn interview with Connie Chung). Also thanks to Doubleplusundead and Exurban League.

Comments

[Dave in Texas]

Thanks Cuffy.

[gh]

I watched the entire movie on youtube last night.

There were two other women besides Dohrn who stated that they had no regrets and would do it again. Most of the men admitted some degree of responsibility and acknowledgement that the bombings were wrong. Ayers is completely different from the rest. He seems completely detached. Given that he is married to Dohrn and she seems to have been the real leader, it seems that he is perhaps conflicted in his behaviour ... as if he is perhaps afraid of her. I wonder if she had more to do with promoting Barack than he did ?

[mcnorman]

This is excellent. Must steal! That video should go viral asap.
This man was just as violent in college.

"I thought Ayers was joking. I got up; and went to the door. He moved quickly to block me at the doorway. He locked the door and put the chain on it. I went to the couch and sat down and told him that I had no intention of having sex with his roommate and his brother or him. He said that I had no choice but to do as he said if I wanted to get out of there. He claimed that I wouldn’t sleep with his married roommate because he was black — that I was a bigot."

http://mcnorman.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/obamas-bff-ayersthe-date-rapist-not-just-a-terrorist/

[skinbad]

"A more humane" system of government. Stalinism? Maoism? Good grief.

Well done.

[Cuffy Meigs]

Feel free to steal/embed, all. Just give me a link back to this post.

[Max]

Every American needs to watch this. There is something not being sufficiently focused on with regard to Obama’s connection with Ayers. That is this: think of the loss of credibility our nation will have in a war on terror, when its chief executive-- nay, it's Commander in Chief-- has ties to, indeed launched his political career in the home of, a confessed and unrepentant domestic terrorist. The American people need to reflect soberly on the moral effect such an association will have on the legitimacy of our war against terrorism. If people don’t think that every terrorist state and organization in the world won’t make hay with that, they are delusional. It doesn’t even matter if Obama agrees or condemns Ayers’ actions. The association is sufficient for the terrorists to exploit. Period. No one seems to be addressing the “why does it matter” aspect (beyond simply bad judgment). I’ve been doing my best to keep up with most of the articles on this subject through RCP, but I don’t think anyone has really driven this home. I really think this is the angle that needs to become a drum beat, and just hammered home until election day. It’s not guilt by association, it’s irreparable damage to our nation’s moral credibility in time of war against terrorist states and organizations.

[Bruce]

Posted this and some comments on my blog, Cuffy. For some reason the TrackBack isn't showing.

Wordpress ... sheesh:(

[JimK]

I just want to comment on the rifle that is being displayed in the video. It's a Mossberg 151M made in the late '40's or early 50's. It was a tube fed semi-auto with the magazine tube running thru the buttstock forward to the breech. It was a Mossberg's top of the line 22 at the time and it's unfair to compare it to terrorist scum.

[IreneFingIrene]

Hey Cuffy,

This made it to NoQuarter which has become a PUMA, anti-Obama blog.

Great job.

[alwaysamarine]

This is the first time I've ever seen this site. Even if I never see it again, it was worth it. The video about Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground was very eye-opening. I had heard a little about them over the years but I was just a baby during their heyday. I never really had a full picture of the scope of their activities and the depth of their hatred for our nation and our way of life. I definitely didn't know they were responsible for that many bombings. These people should be put away for life...and I wouldn't trust anyone stupid enough to vote for Obama after learning of his connections to them to tie their own shoes!

[Chip]

You're starting to sound like Joe McCarthy............."he has links to a KNOWN COMMUNIST (Terrorists/Muslims/.........WHITE people!)".

Get a grip, people! You wanna play "Seven Degrees of Seperation" and it's doubtful any of us don't look like we pal around with axe murderers.

Get off the guilt by association bandwagon...........most of America (okay, most of SANE America) has rejected it.

[Cuffy Meigs]

Get up to speed, Chip. We're off the guilt by association bandwagon and on the guilt by participation bandwagon.

[Chip]

Do you think you come a little closer, without actually having to say it, that it's actually his color that scares you?

[Cuffy Meigs]

Far from it. And you're thisclose to getting your racist ass banned from my blog.

[Chip]

Racist, Nah. I suspect the reality is the ban would be for not drinking the kool aid. Ah the joy of being a blogger; you get to only preach/debate to the converted if you choose.

But perhaps, before I go, you could take a stab at how this guilt by association game spares Sen. McCain from his endorsement and "association" from Rev. Hagee and his non-mainstream thoughts from the pulpit...............or the more incidious (and decades old) relationship with the last guy to cause an economic trainwreck in Charlie Keating.......or, on and on.

[Cuffy Meigs]

I'd stack a buffoonish preacher and a dirty businessman against an IED-making, America-hating domestic terrorist any day of the week. Please.

[Chip]

Interesting set of values.

Bill Ayers never really amounted to a tinker's squat. And while what he did was, in no way defensible, we live in a country of laws and the government had it's crack at him in court and lost. There's no credible evidence that he advises Obama, that he influences Obama, or in any way affects the American landscape. He's this election's Willie Horton.............no more, no less.

I'll accept your thoughts on Hagee.........but buffoon Reverends don't only come as Republican.

But dismissing Charles Keating as simply a "dirty businessman"...........or the Phil Gramm advisors.............in an environment where these two actually did affect the American landscape in a way that Al Qeada terrorist could only dream of is a bit myopic. Bringing America to its economic knees doesn't always come bundled in a bomb.

[Cuffy Meigs]

Bringing America to its economic knees doesn't always come bundled in a bomb.

You are absolutely correct on that point.

[Chip]

A bit simplistic.............. but not totally wrong. An inept Congress unwinding its regulatory responsibility is a large part of the problem. But when you're parsing out blame, don't fail to report that it was Phil Gramm, McCain's economic "tutor", who pushed through the law exempting "swaps" from the insurance regulations and created as large, if not larger, part of the problem with bad subprime mortgages. And, like it or not, the Republicans controlled Congress for some 14 of the last 16 years and there was no shortage of "just give it an up or down vote" and threats of the "nuclear option" on stopping minority actions. In that environment, it's a bit disengenuous to claim the minority party in Congress is the sole cause of the current economic woes.

But, alas, we stray from the election strategy that so proudly brought us Willie Horton, Swiftboating................and now, Bill Ayers............as a diversionary (and waaaay unequal)issue from the #1 issue of this election.

[Clyffe]

This guy was a slime bag. I don't know if this guy did it, but I was within a half block of a selective service building bombed in 1970. I will never forget the low frequency shockwave and how it felt in my chest. What I don't get is why this concern about this after so many of our government officials have been arming and aiding terrorists for years. Both parties, Carter started the Afghan policy and Reagan-Bush continued them. Our current President allowed the departure of dozens of potential witnesses after 9-11. There has been bi-partisan treason for years and now everyone is upset over very old news. Look at the ties Bentson, Connally, Bert Lance, Clark Clifford had. Somehow if a guy is a millionaire people look the other way. Everyone worries about terrorists and they are laughing. They don't have to destroy us, we destroy ourselves. Those were crazy days, I am glad they are gone, but they were small fry. Read up on the BCCI case in the 1990's if you want to find wholesale treason. Clyffe

[Soul Bro]

"This is the guy Obama says is just a guy from the neighborhood. Of course his minions believe that, without question, because he is after all the Messiah. But who is this piece of shit, really, and thanks to Obama is but a tick away from ..."
- Cuffy Meigs

This "piece of shit" was on the board founded by Republican Leonore Annenberg, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as the State Department's Chief of protocol.

So I guess it's not just Obama who pals around with terrorists...

[Cuffy Meigs]

Soul Glo, you are quoting one of my Trackbacks not me.

But let me help you out: William Ayers IS a piece of shit. And Annenberg giving this piece of shit money is unacceptable as well.