HOW IT WAS DONE

Guest column by Robert Chapman, retired US intelligence officer


When my Democratic candidates in the primary were knocked down to Hillary and Obama, I began to look into Obama’s background and became alarmed at what I found. But I was fascinated. What I was finding was not reported by the media. It was like being back in intelligence, similar to a counterintelligence analyst, putting pieces of information together.
With all its resources why didn’t the Republican Party investigate the background of the Democratic candidate?

The starting point is Chicago. Saul Bellows wrote of its South Side as a boiling, seething caldron of blacks. A few escape to the top and crawl out, we applaud, and hail their success, but millions of are left behind. The problem becomes bigger.

Chicago became the seat of black power in the United States and the home of the foremost black political leaders. There was no better place for political power advocacy. Among them are Louis Farrakhan, Jessie Jackson, and Jeremiah Wright--the latter for his promotion of the black liberation theology. However, importantly, there was Saul Alinsky (1909 – 1972), whom the media deliberately brushed off as of no consequence.


Saul Alinsky

He is identified by his supporters as “far left” and by others as a radical Socialist, Marxist or Communist, depending on whom you talked to. Some of my friends say he was an “out and out” Communist. One of his books, Rules for Radicals, defines his political orientation. To promote and advance his political philosophy, he organized the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) to teach community organizers the methodology to recruit and organize political communities. How many people he taught or how many, in turn, did they teach and organize is unknown but certainly it is in the thousands. Or, it could be much, much more as the IAF exists today with its national headquarters in Chicago and offices in the District of Colombia, 21 states and Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom. [The national media never publicized the national and international scope of Alinsky’s school of thought and support. While the organizations implement Alinsky’s orientation and philosophy, they bear different names, such as the Gamaliel Foundation, and are located in inner cities.]

The following are Alinsky’s statements:

• “organizing is a euphemism for revolution . . . [the] systematic acquisition of power by the oppressed segment of the population . . . A people’s organization is dedicated to eternal war. . . [The war] is dedicated to the ‘have-a-little, want-mores,’ the majority of the U.S. population.”
  
• “Penetrate institutions, churches, unions and political parties . . . a slow, patient process.”
  
• A major goal is “the redistribution of wealth.”
  
• “The most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired result.”
  
• “Foment public discontent, moral confusion and chaos to spark social upheaval, collapse of the status quo and follow the charismatic radical organizer."
  
• [Force the enemy to abide by the rules of the highest good conduct] and “express shock when the enemy cannot live up to the rules of his faith.” [Vividly followed in the 2008 election.]
  
• [Use leading questions to lead the discontented to the place where the organizer wants them to go. There is a recorded instance where Obama used this technique on a homeless man to become one of the “want, mores.” Was this the technique used in Obama’s speeches? There was little of positive substance in his interpretation of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.]

Alinsky writes instructions to form people’s organizations. The organizations must be a local level and staffed by local people. They are political fronts. The leaders must be local sympathizers.

And there is more.

Alinskyism is a mix of Marxism, Communism and Marxist-Leninism.

College

Prior to his bid for the Presidency, there was little I could find of Obama’s personal accomplishments that in any way equaled the accomplishments of other presidents. [For information on Obama’s early formative years, see the previous column “Raising Obama.”] He first attended Occidental College in California. There has been no probe into his academic record except one:

An Occidental professor was queried but had difficulty recalling Obama as a student. When he was told Obama was reading Nietzsche and similar philosophers, the professor was surprised.
Unfortunately, the university records of Obama and his wife, Michelle, were sealed, and their academic records are unknown.

From Occidental Obama enrolled in Colombia University where he received a degree in political science.

While attending Colombia he sought out leftist friends and courses taught by Communist professors. [An orientation he probably acquired while growing up in Hawaii where he was influenced by his grandfather’s buddy, Frank Davis, the island’s top communist.] He then had a job in a Ralph Nader-type off-shoot office. He tired of it and writes he answered a trade journal ad for a Chicago community organizer. He was hired by Jerry Kellman. [Kellman was a Vietnam War protester and an Alinsky protégé and now works with a Catholic Church in Chicago’s South Side.]

What was happening in Chicago was that Alinsky graduates were organizing in the Chicago ghettos but they realized and concluded they needed a black organizer to spearhead their work.
[Some thought Bill Ayers recruited Obama in New York when he attended Colombia at the same time as Obama. It will be noted Ayers played a greater role in Obama’s life than previously reported. They had a close professional and “family” relationship for close to 30 years. It is the first time in our nation’s history a president-elect had a long, personal, even a “family” relationship with a known terrorist.]

Obama returned to Chicago and was trained by the Alinsky IAF as a community organizer. He moved on to the Developing Communities Project which was tied in with other such organizations as the Alinsky method Gamaliel Foundation. There was, and is, a proliferation of such organizations in Chicago, probably because of its fertile, boiling South Side caldron.
In addition to training others and organizing communities, Obama trained other community organizations, such as ACORN, in Alinsky methodology.

Obama’s was enmeshed with far-left contacts during his community organizing. He became [closely] acquainted with Antoin Rezko who was obtaining Chicago multimillion dollar construction projects in the slum communities where Obama was organizing. He would later play a shady part in Obama’s life. If it were not for Obama’s media defense, the Rezko affair would have been enough to knock Obama out of the presidential race.

The Harvard Effect

After two years of community organizing [more accurately the Alinsky machine was a “political organization”], Obama enrolled at Harvard Law. Something is missing in the public record as to how his decision to enroll came about. Was the idea his or was he recommended by someone. To my knowledge Harvard Law is difficult to get in to. Did he have an influential Chicago sponsor or did he enter through affirmative action as did his wife, Michelle?

It was reported that while attending Harvard, Obama kept his foot into Alinsky methodology and traveled to Los Angeles to attend an eight-day Alinsky training course. [There is no record who paid for the trip but I assume it was the IAF.] The trip reveals the size and scope of the IAF and that while in Harvard, the IAF considered Obama a key member. I found only one report of this trip.

After his first year in law school, Obama returned to Chicago to spend the summer as a trainee at the high-brow law firm of Sidley Austin where he met Michelle Robinson who became his wife.
The high point for Obama’s career was his election as the President of the Harvard Law Review which he parlayed into his presidential campaign. However, as background of how this occurred, during a period of intense struggle between liberal and conservative students, Obama was a compromise candidate who was elected on the ninth ballot. It is customary for the President to write for the Review but there is no record of any writing by Obama.

Return to Chicago

After Obama was elected President of the Harvard Law Review, Rezko offered to hire him. The record is he refused but on his return to Chicago, he chose to work for the leftist law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland--not Sidley Austin, where he was a summer trainee. [From Obama’s background, it was natural for him to choose a leftist firm rather than a stogy, conservative one.] However, Miner, Barnhill & Galland was the firm which handled Rezko’s business. On query, Miner, Barnhill & Galland said [in defense of Obama] he handled only four or five of Rezko’s transactions. Nevertheless, while Obama rejected Rezko’s job offer, he worked for the firm which handled Rezko’s legal transactions [which may have been the job Rezko offered him as there appears a patent connection in the job offer and Obama’s work for Miner, Barnhill.]

It is difficult to follow exactly what Obama did in Chicago. It is not known whether he quit Miner, Barnhill & Galland while he was engaged in numerous foundations. A principal one was the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where he and Ayers worked together and shared successive chairmanships for six years. The objective was to improve education and the Annenbergs put up a huge amount of money estimated to be $1 million, or $1.5 million or more. It is believed most went into the black South Side where Reverend Michael Phleger’s church received a considerable grant. [He was the guest Catholic priest who ridiculed Hillary Clinton from Rev. Wright’s pulpit.]

During the campaign Obama promised that during his first year in office he would grant $500 million [additional?] to faith-based programs.

The Church

As Obama organized the black communities, colleagues suggested if he was going to deal with black people he best join a church. He chose the Trinity United Church of Christ.

Trinity is the foremost church, the advance spearhead of the Black Liberation Theology. [See prior column “Black Liberation Theology’ for a fuller explanation and Rev. Wright’s connection to James Cone.] In summary, the theology, which is Marxist in origin, advances the ideology that there is a “center,” where people live with wealth and a shadowy “periphery” where the unfortunate and the poor reside. The ideology calls for the redistribution of wealth. It is the same redistribution theme that runs through Alinsky's ideology.

Obama and his wife attended Trinity for 22-23 years. One would assume attending a church and hearing the sermons, he would agree with the message, particularly as Obama himself was teaching Alinsky’s wealth distribution ideology. Additionally, Trinity’s pastor, Wright, is a friend of the Obama family, having married Barack and Michelle, baptized their two daughters, and was the spiritual advisor for Obama’s presidential campaign until he was let go after Wright's “damn America” sermon became known.

Michelle is more of an open book. She was more openly discontented with white society. She wrote her Princeton thesis on her black isolation in the university milieu, and she openly speaks of being in the “periphery.” There seems no doubt she is an adherent to the black liberation theology Wright taught. Although she criticizes white society she is forgetful her scholastic grades were not good enough to enter the Ivy League universities but was admitted under the affirmative action programs.

What is startling is Trinity has a membership of 8,000 of Chicago’s black elite. The members are people who succeeded financially and professionally in the United States and yet believe in the “redistribution of wealth,” thus they, too, apparently, believe they live in “the periphery.” [Probably more than 99% of Americans do not know what a church that practices the theology of black liberation is all about.]

When Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate skullduggery was involved and he won through a technicality. His role in the legislature is credited in the presidential campaign as a major accomplishment but he didn’t do anything except helped enact a bill aimed at preventing police brutality. In truth, however, Obama was the protégé of Senator Emil Jones, Jr. and with his tutelage and support Obama helped pass what would seem to be a popular bill.] Jones had a reputation for nepotism in office. Obama used him as a stepping stone and Jones was soon discarded.

Anti-War Speech

Throughout the presidential campaign, Obama’s claim to fame was he was against the military invasion of Iraq. In his speech of October 2, 2002 in Chicago he said he was against the war. He did not and could not claim he voted against the war. He was in no position to do that from his seat in the Illinois State Legislature.

There is more to the story. The speech was sponsored by Marilyn Katz [a major Obama fund raiser] and several of her cohorts [SDS] at an anti-war rally attended by about 200 people. [It is assumed the 200 were assembled through Katz and her cohorts]. It was there Obama announced he was against the war.

Marilyn Katz was the head of security for the Students for Democratic Society (SDS) during the Chicago Riots of 1968. The SDS was a non-violent but activist student movement against the Vietnam War. She is a friend of Bill Ayers while he was still a SDS member before he broke away from the SDS and founded the violent Weather Underground. [To investigate Obama and his associates the name of one colleague leads to another who are of Marxist-stripe or war protester, Marxist, etc.]

The Joyce Foundation

For eight years, Obama was a paid board member of the Joyce Foundation. The Foundation gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-gun organizations.

Political Allies

Without records it is not possible to identify all the Alinsky motivated organizations and others which were part of the Obama presidential campaign. Several are ACORN, Rainbow Push, the Arab American Action Network, with the active participation of Move-On, and many others linked to left-leaning Alinsky followers.

Of importance is ACORN with its 42,000 plus members and chapters in 110 cities and 40 states. It received Federal Government funding to register voters and is linked to Obama’s Operation Vote. The Obama campaign funded Operation Vote with $800,000 for diverse organizations to get out the vote; and when asked, the Obama campaign answered it did not know how much of Operation Vote’s money went to ACORN. [The campaign’s records would show the amount, but ACORN was under investigation for fraudulent voter registration.] As with all the other accusations, Obama’s campaign gave the questions the cold shoulder and ignored them.

The Campaign

Early in the primary campaign, a friend with intelligence-gathering knowledge reported that Obama’s campaign organization resembled the Communist Party’s cell structure of the 1930s. To some extent it was. As a founding member of the '60s radical student group, Weather Underground, Bill Ayers certainly has practical knowledge of cell structure and operation. The Weather Underground was organized with “independent, self-directing cells’ which operated independent of each other and without direction of a headquarters. The Weather Underground publication “Punch With The Red Army” stated, “No cell can remain inactive waiting orders from above. Its obligation is to act.”

While Obama and Ayers chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, they used its funds to organize Local School Councils (LSC) throughout the South Side. Resembling Parent Teachers Associations, the LSCs were empowered with the authority to dismiss the principals of their respective schools. They were in effect cells which could turn out the vote. [Ayers and others of the Alinsky school were close to Chicago Mayor Daley. There was criticism of Ayers and Obama using Annenberg’s funds for political not educational purposes.]

Ayers and Obama have a long relationship, possibly close to 30 years. Ayers cannot be written off, as the media has done, as a former revolutionary. He cannot be compared, say, to Jane Fonda, as he was a bomb maker. He has remained unrepentant and was quoted as saying that as a Marxist-Leninist oriented revolutionary, “they did not do enough,” a step above a pacifist anti-war protester. There are many reports that Ayers went to Venezuela in 2006 and joined a Chavez mass rally, shouting to the crowd, “Education is the Revolution.”

Ayers is one of the authors of the Weather Underground’s book Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism: Political Statement of the Weather Underground. The book is dedicated to listed revolutionaries including Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin who killed Robert Kennedy.

In 1970 Ayers’ wife, Bernadine Dohrn, was also a Weather Underground member. She pled guilty to criminal charges related to the violent days of Rage in Chicago in 1969 and received three years probation. Later she refused to testify in front of a Grand Jury convened to investigate a bank robbery carried out by her former comrades from the Weather Underground. For contempt of court she served seven months in jail. [The robbery probably refers to the 1981 Brinks robbery. A mix of Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army activists robbed a Brinks Armored car and, when caught in Nyack, New York, killed two policemen and one security guard.]

This is a tough bunch of people; the likes of which have never appeared before in any U.S. presidential election. With his close associations with questionable friends and supporters, Obama never would have been approved for a national security clearance. In view of his background, unlike the totality of the Obama platform and his speeches, why did Obama vote to continue the strengthened Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)?

Caucuses

When Obama won the Iowa caucus and established himself as a major presidential candidate a friend of mine suspected organized communist activity secured his win, i.e. the operation of cell organizations. Obama won all the Caucus states.

In a caucus election, a small number of voters turn out from the overall electorate. The candidate with the best grass-root organization wins.

Depending upon the honesty of precinct leadership, there is a greater possibility of voter fraud. The vote is not by secret ballot but by personal vote. There were reports of voter intimidation. From Las Vegas there were reports pro-Hillary supporters were afraid to vote.

Texas has both a state-wide election and a caucus. Hillary won the election and with a smaller vote Obama won the caucus but both shared an electoral count.

The Media

The media is of 92% liberal orientation but in the primary and the 2008 presidential election it imploded as never before, possibly to promote the historic candidacy of a black candidate. The media became a willing adjunct of the Obama campaign. At least 90% of the foregoing information on the background of Obama, his colleagues and the campaign was never reported.

The media unanimously protected Obama and his campaign from every allegation made against him, and, in turn, became an assault dog against his contenders.

In revolutions, insurgencies and coups, the rule [according to Alinsky] is to destroy present and future contenders for political power. It is done by executions, forced exile or the destruction of political reputation [as was attempted on Republican VP candidate Governor Sarah Palin]. Sometimes the destruction is done by the appointment of a contender to a powerless political office [like Hillary as Secretary of State].

During the primary, the Obama campaign and media slammed Bill Clinton. Currently, other than Obama, no Democrat of presidential potential remains on the horizon. On the Republican side, only Sarah Palin [with grass roots support] has national potential. The media has already begun the process to remove her from the scene.

The media intentionally did not do its job to protect the American public. It was a performance without precedent.

Conclusion

I have written this paper because of a conversation I heard between two Republicans. Both felt the 2008 election was a fluke. They believed within four years the Democratic coalition will disappear. The youth-inspired voters will not return to the polls and it will be the same with the blacks.

I believe differently.

Incredibly, for an organized entity, the Republican Party did not know what it was up against or what hit them at the polls.

The Democratic Party leadership did have to put together the grass roots organization to get out the vote. In my rural area, an Obama organizer from Indiana came from at least 500 miles away. Also, an Obama lawyer from the next county was present at the polling place to make certain black voters were in no way disenfranchised. It was a well-oiled machine and done well in advance of the primary. There were grass root organizations everywhere. They were in the Alinsky organizations: Project Vote, ACORN, etc. Leadership had only to direct. On the other hand, the Republican Party had to begin at the beginning and could never match the grass roots organization that already existed for the Democratic Party.

The assembled coalition was put together not by the Democratic Party but by Obama-styled “organizers.” The ideology began 50 or 60 years ago and its implementation began in protest to the Vietnam War and continued afterwards. It was slow, slow, patient, pragmatic organization mixed with hard, never before seen campaign tactics derived from Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.

The 2008 election organization and planning was not for the sole objective of winning that election but to win that election and then use the presidency to further expand and consolidate the grass roots electoral coalition. Otherwise, the patient 60 years of preparation make little sense.

So it is as we see it.

Outside of unpredictable events, we don’t know if the Republican Party is capable of organizing and defeating the post-Obama Democratic Party. The Republican Party is composed of the general, non-confrontational middle class voters, diametrically opposed to the “organizers” of the Alinsky School. To win this time the Republicans must go deep into the heart of America and organize methodically in ways never done before.

Robert Chapman
Patrick Flynn