"I never killed or injured anyone." -- William Ayers in The New York Times, December 6, 2008.

The New York Times has no shame.

On June 9, 1970, New York City's police headquarters was bombed. Seven people were injured. Thousands of dollars of property damage was inflicted.

The Weather Underground--Ayers' group--was behind this bombing. We do not know if Ayers himself planned, assisted, and/or conducted the bombing. (We know that Jane Alpert was involved.) Personally, I believe that Ayers knew in advance about this bombing that injured several New Yorkers. Maybe in Ayers' mind this was a "protest of the Vietnam War," but this was a violent attack on New York City.

Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were also probably behind the February 16, 1970 bombing of a San Francisco police department substation that killed Sergeant Brian McDonnell.

I was born upstate in Rockland County, where, on October 20, 1981, a Brinks robbery took place, killing Officer Waverly Brown and Sergeant Edward O'Grady. Bill Ayers is not directly responsible for these murders, but his fellow Weather Underground members were.

Ayers' 1974 Weather Underground manifesto, PRAIRIE FIRE, was dedicated to Sirhan Sirhan, murderer of New York State Senator Robert Kennedy.

Maybe the New York Times "forgot" all of these things. Maybe the New York Times didn't think they needed to be mentioned.

Ayers' relationship with President Elect Barack Obama is less important than the above, but Ayers lies here, also:

"President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn’t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better. "

We know  that Obama and Ayers sat on at least TWO boards together--the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund. "Sometimes passed in the bookstore"--that's rich! Obama blurbed an Ayers book in the Chicago Tribune. They lectured together. They shared the same office at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, IL 60607, for at least three years. This is not "guilt by association" with some guy met in passing in a neighborhood bookstore. This is an association, the same as if someone joins a church, or a country club, or the KKK, or whatever. 

The New York Times shames itself with this opinion. The names of every New Yorker injured by the Weather Underground must follow, in a future opinion that tells the truth.

LINK:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/opinion/06ayers.html?_r=1

Op-Ed Contributor

The Real Bill Ayers