Former radical distances himself from Obama

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Vietnam-era radical Bill Ayers said Friday he doesn't know President-elect Barack Obama any better than "thousands of other Chicagoans" and that the two never talked about Ayers' anti-war activities. In a television interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," the college professor disputed the contention that in the new after word of a paperback edition of his 2001 memoir "Fugitive Days," he describes himself and Obama as "family friends." "I'm describing there how the blogosphere characterized the relationship," Ayers said. "I would really say that we knew each other in a professional way, again on the same level as say thousands of other people." Ayers, an education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, helped found the radical group the Weathermen that carried out bombings at the Pentagon and the Capitol.