UPDATE: In retrospect, I spent too much time describing the anatomy of the smear and not enough dissecting it. If anybody thinks my writing wasn't clear enough or suspect my intentions as a result, my apologies. But thanks to some wonderful commenters, I can add the other side of the story (which I just didn't think I needed to do for this audience), which can be found below the original text.
I have been recently going back and forth with a very conservative friend of mine, who has repeatedly told me to look up who paid for Obama's Harvard education. She has refused to provide any evidence, cite any sources, or even elaborate in any way beyond, "Do you know who paid for Obama's Harvard education?" and "Did you ever look up who paid for Obama's Harvard education?"
So even though, as we all know, it's incumbent upon the person making the claim to provide the evidence, I looked it up anyway. And I discovered the next smear that's making the rounds and if you haven't heard it yet, you're likely to soon. Here's the story.
There's an article on canadafreepress.com, dated September 4th, that reports on an interview with Percy Sutton, the former Manhattan borough president, describing how a friend of his, Dr. Khalid al-Mansour (also known as Don Warden), had come to Mr. Sutton, telling him about Barack Obama, and asking him to write a letter of recommendation to associates of Sutton at Harvard when Obama was applying there. Sutton describes Dr. al-Mansour as "raising money" for Obama but doesn't go into any further detail, though he also mentions that this was before Obama ever ran for any office. The Canada Free Press provides a Youtube link at the bottom of their article. The CFP article then goes into great detail about Dr. al-Mansour and his connections and history, mentioning things that people worried about Obama being a "Manchurian candidate" or a radical, militant African American would find alarming, such as:
* "Although many Americans have never heard of Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour (his full name), he is well known within the black community as a lawyer, an orthodox Muslim, a black nationalist, an author, an international deal-maker, an educator, and an outspoken enemy of Israel."
* "But his writings and books are packed with anti-American rhetoric reminiscent of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's disgraced former pastor"
* "In a 1995 book, "The Lost Books of Africa Rediscovered," he alleged that the United States was plotting genocide against black Americans."
* "The first "genocide against the black man began 300 years ago," he told an audience in Harlem at a book-signing, while a second "genocide" was on the way "to remove 15 million Black people, considered disposable, of no relevance, value or benefit to the American society.""
* "According to the Social Activism Project at the University of California at Berkley, Warden, a.k.a.Khalid al-Mansour, was the mentor of Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton and his cohort, Bobby Seale."
The article also goes on at length about al-Mansour's ties to the Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal but does nothing to further elaborate on or substantiate a relationship between Obama and al-Mansour. The article also cites an aide to Sutton denying an interview to Newsmax, citing Sutton's advanced age and poor health and also describes an interview between al-Mansour and Newsmax:
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax from his home in San Antonio, Texas, al-Mansour said he would not comment specifically on the statement by Percy Sutton because he was afraid anything he said would get "distorted."
"I was determined I was never going to be in that situation," he said. "Bloggers are saying this is the new Rev. Wright — in drag! — and he is a nationalist, racist, and worse than Rev. Wright. So any statement that I made would only further this activity which is not in the interest of Barack."
But in the lengthy interview, al-Mansour confirmed that he frequently spoke on university campuses, including Columbia, where Percy Sutton suggested he met Obama in the late 1980s, and confirmed his close relationship with Prince Alwaleed.
The CFP article is cited in a blog post at Advance Indiana posted on September 5 of this year. The blog post states, in part, "Now it turns out that an influential, radical black Muslim with close ties to the Saudi royal family and an outspoken opponent of Israel helped finance Obama's law school education." (that link being to the CFP article). The blog post goes on to list the same bullet points contained in the CFP article while also expanding upon them, citing a "Newsmax investigative report." A couple of the points further raised by Advance Indiana:
* Al-Mansour's more recent videotaped speeches focus on Muslim themes, and abound with anti-Semitic theories and anti-Israel vitriol.
* At the same time he was raising money for Obama's education he was representing top members of the Saudi Royal family seeking to do business and exert influence in the United States
The blog post goes on to repeat some of the copy from the Newsmax and CFP articles, all of which appear largely or entirely identical. Both the Newsmax and CFP articles have the byline of Kenneth R. Timmerman, along with the URL of worthynews.com in the CFP article. Worthy News is a Christian News and community site. Searches for al-Mansour, Khalid al-Mansour, and Timmerman in the site's news search failed to produce any results.
Timmerman, meanwhile, is a former GOP Senate candidate in Maryland and has written several books including, "Preachers of Hate: Islam and the War Against America," "The French Betrayal of America," published in 2004, and "Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran" in 2005.
The Advance Indiana blog post, meanwhile, seems to have been copied and pasted verbatim or nearly so to several websites including StormFront.org, which links to Western Voices World News, which then links back to the Advance Indiana blog post. Stormfront is a bulletin board that describes itself as a "white nationalist community," while WVWN describes itself as "an ethics-based activist organization dedicated to the exaltation of classical European values." [Emphasis mine] It has also been posted verbatim on Freerepublic.com, ingunowners.com, the alt.conspiracy Google group, and the website of the Rick Honcho and Dr. Katie Show.
In summary, the origin of this smear seems to be an offhand comment of an elderly man, Percy Sutton, on a local New York cable news show who remarked in passing that Dr. al-Mansour was "raising money" for Barack Obama but fails to go into any detail. This comment was then picked up by a very conservative author and former GOP candidate writing for Newsmax, a known conservative opinion outlet with sketchy - at best - journalistic credentials, which was then picked up by another conservative outlet, the Canadian Free Press which inferred from Mr. Sutton's off hand remark that Dr. Khalid al-Mansour had "paid for Obama's Harvard education" without doing any investigation into the matter, or providing any other sources or evidence to back up the otherwise totally unsubstantiated claim of Dr. al-Mansour having paid for Obama's Harvard education. This was then picked up by the conservative blog Advance Indiana which further elaborated on al-Mansour's history and relationships, but with no further evidence or information about his alleged relationship to Barack Obama. Advance Indiana's blogpost was then copied and pasted verbatim, sometimes with attribution and sometimes without, to several websites, including the far-right FreeRepublic.com and at least two white supremacist websites.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, in the world of actual news organizations, Ben Smith at Politico looks into the story and contacts both al-Monsour and Sutton's estate. Ben Smith said al-Mansour
"called me back, and said he'd never met Obama, and had no idea where the story came from; his only hesitance in denying it, he said, had been in contradicting Sutton."
Sutton's estate emailed this statement,
"The information Mr. Percy Sutton imparted on March 25 in a NY1 News interview regarding his connection to Barack Obama is inaccurate. As best as our family and the Chairman's closest friends can tell, Mr. Sutton, now 86 years of age, misspoke in describing certain details and events in that television interview.
We regret this unfortunate incident and we ask good conscientious people to extend compassion and grace to Percy Sutton, a man who has served America in many capacities; an officer with the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II and as a public servant who was the first elected African-American Manhattan Borough President."
The information Mr. Percy Sutton imparted on March 25 in a NY1 News interview regarding his connection to Barack Obama is inaccurate. As best as our family and the Chairman's closest friends can tell, Mr. Sutton, now 86 years of age, misspoke in describing certain details and events in that television interview.
We regret this unfortunate incident and we ask good conscientious people to extend compassion and grace to Percy Sutton, a man who has served America in many capacities; an officer with the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II and as a public servant who was the first elected African-American Manhattan Borough President."
From the Sutton estate's statement and from watching the interview itself, it seems pretty clear that, unfortunately, Mr. Sutton's faculties were most likely not all present during the interview. Which is a tragedy and makes the way the racist right twisted his words even more disgusting.
h/t to sgwhiteinfla for the point to the Politico.
Moreover, both Barack and Michelle Obama's student loans have been mentioned repeatedly on the stump and in news articles, a list of which you can read here.
h/t to skywriter for the info.
UPDATE II: Here's a Chicago Sun-Times article that goes into detail about the many and varied jobs that Barack Obama has had.
Again, h/t to skywriter.