McCain criticizes LA Times for protecting Obama by not releasing tape

Thursday 30th October, 04:42 AM JST

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio —

Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin accused the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday of protecting Barack Obama by withholding a videotape of the Democrat attending a 2003 party for a Palestinian-American professor and critic of Israel.

The paper said it had written about the event in April and would not release the tape because of a promise made to the source who provided it.

McCain and Palin called Rashid Khalidi a former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, a characterization that Khalidi has denied in the past. Both candidates said guests at the party made critical comments about Israel.

Khalidi is a professor of Middle East Studies at Columbia University and a longtime friend of Obama’s. Khalidi has publicly criticized Israel, but he and Obama have both said they hold very different opinions on Israeli issues.

McCain also has ties to Khalidi through a group that Khalidi helped found 15 years ago. The Center for Palestine Research and Studies received at least $448,000 from an organization that McCain chairs.

On Wednesday, McCain said 1960s radical Bill Ayers had attended the same party in 2003. McCain and Palin have criticized Obama for his ties to Ayers and questioned what the videotape of the party might show.

“Among other things, Israel was described there as the perpetrator of terrorism rather than the victim,” Palin said at a rally in Ohio. “What we don’t know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he professes to support.”

In a story published in April, the Times said Obama spoke out at the event on the need for common ground on the Israel-Palestinian issue. Obama has said during the campaign that his commitment to Israel’s security is “nonnegotiable.”

“More than six months ago the Los Angeles Times published a detailed account of the events shown on the videotape,” Jamie Gold, the newspaper’s reader’s representative, said in a statement. “The Times is not suppressing anything. Just the opposite—the LA Times brought the matter to light.”

McCain and Palin cited the paper’s position as evidence of media bias. The Times has endorsed Obama’s candidacy.

“If there was a tape of John McCain in a neo-Nazi outfit, I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different,” McCain said in an interview with Hispanic radio stations.

Palin said the Times should win a Pulitzer Prize for “kowtowing.”

“It must be nice for a candidate to have major news organizations looking out for their best interests like that. Politicians would love to have a pet newspaper of their very own,” she said.

Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor dismissed McCain and Palin’s complaints as a “recycled, manufactured controversy” meant to distract voters.

“Barack Obama has been clear and consistent on his support for Israel, and has been clear that Rashid Khalidi is not an adviser to him or his campaign and that he does not share Khalidi’s views,” Vietor said.

Khalidi taught at the University of Chicago until 2003. Obama and his wife, Michelle, often socialized with Khalidi and his wife, Mona, and the Khalidis hosted a political fundraiser for Obama in 2000.

The Woods Fund charity gave money to the Arab-American Action Network, run by Mona Khalidi, while Obama served on the charity’s board. Ayers also served on the board.

The Center for Palestine Research and Studies conducted regular public opinion surveys in the West Bank and Gaza with financial support from various foundations and from the International Republican Institute, an organization that promoting democracy around the world. McCain was the IRI chairman when it gave $448,873 to the research group in 1998, according to IRI’s tax return.

Under McCain’s leadership, the IRI gave at least $838,494 to Khalidi’s group in 1988 and 1999, according to the IRI’s tax returns.

Ayers was a founder of the radical group the Weather Underground, which set off bombs at the Capitol and the Pentagon in protest of the Vietnam War nearly 40 years ago. McCain has criticized Obama for having had a friendly relationship with Ayers, with whom Obama worked on two community organizations several years ago, and for downplaying their ties.

Obama has noted that he was a child when Ayers, now a university professor, was with the Weather Underground. The Democratic candidate has condemned Ayers’ radical past and violent activities.

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Latest 15 of 112 Total Comments Show All

ImperiumMundi at 10:08 PM JST - 1st November

Rashid Khalidi was with the PLO? What evidence do you have for that?

there is all kinds of evidence. i doubt you're actually interested though, since a simple search would turn up plenty.

Tom Friedman report in the New York Times, June 9, 1982:

"The Israelis are out to "crush the P.L.O.," said Rashid Khalidi, a director of the Palestinian press agency, Wafa. He said they hope that by doing so, they will undermine the international recognition the P.L.O. has gained and eliminate its demands for an independent Palestinian state as a rallying point for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmE2YjgxZTNmZjU5ODVmMmQ2NTJmMDg3MGEwOGUxMjM=

there is also an ayers-khalidi link. in his book khalidi thanked ayers for use of his home while writing one of his books.
SezWho2 at 02:03 PM JST - 2nd November

WilliB,

The LA Times could do that. And in so doing it would jeopardize its reputation as a trusted confidant and arguably diminish its prospects for receiving future information.

That they don't release it is proof that it keeps the confidentiality of its sources. The Times further claims that it has promised its source not to release the tape. If that claim is true, not releasing the tape is further evidence of its trustworthiness. You claim that the footage would be embarrassing to Obama. You have offered no evidence other than your assertion that the LA Times refusal to release somehow indicates that their must be embarrassing information on the tape.

There has never been and will never be an unbiased press. If there were, no one would pay for it.
SezWho2 at 02:33 PM JST - 2nd November

ImperiumMundi,

A simple search would turn up many pieces of "evidence", but most of them boil down to two: UPI reporter Friedman's 1981 characterization of Khalidi and Aaron Klein's tedious 2008 attempt to establish some kind of guilt--never mind that the crime was never articulated--by examination of a chain of first and second order degrees of separation.

It means very little that Khalidi was a director of WAFA--if in fact he was. WAFA was the press organization for the PLO, but being a director of WAFA in Beirut still does not imply "working for the PLO" in the sense of taking orders from the PLO. Every organization that strives for credibility seeks outside directors. No one has offered any evidence that Khalidi worked for the PLO.

Links between Ayers and Khalidi are even more beside the point--not that you made a point.
ImperiumMundi at 02:47 PM JST - 2nd November

that they don't release it is proof that it keeps the confidentiality of its sources. The Times further claims that it has promised its source not to release the tape.

what does the source have to fear?

obama must have some pretty scary people on his side if the l.a. times needs to protect a source simply for being present at a dinner for a supposedly harmless academic ensconced in one of our most famous universities.

really makes you wonder.
WilliB at 04:53 PM JST - 2nd November

SezWho2:

" That they don't release it is proof that it keeps the confidentiality of its sources. The Times further claims that it has promised its source not to release the tape. If that claim is true, not releasing the tape is further evidence of its "

No, that is a feeble excuse. Nobody asks them to release the name of the source (and by now, the grapevine agrees that it was Ali Abunimah anyway).

This was not some kind of secret mafia tape; this was an official event, a farewell party... how innocent can you get? On the face of it, there should be no reason for a news organization to keep it from the public.

There is no doubt that the only reason the LA Times is refusing to even release a transcript of the audio of the event is that they don´t want to embarrass their candidate.

People who where there have confirmed off the record that yes, when Obama toasted the ex PLO operative, he dropped his guard and came out with some "honne", accusing Israel of genocide and questioning Israels right to exist. Very much along the lines of Ahmedinejad, who he wants to have unconditional talks with.

And for that reason, my friend, we will NOT see this tape. No way. The LA Times will sit on it, no matter how much that damages their integrity. Trust me.
SezWho2 at 08:38 AM JST - 3rd November

ImperiumMundi,

Perhaps the source has nothing to fear. Perhaps the source does. That is not the point. The point is that if the Times came by this information under the condition that it not release the tape in question, it should not do so.
SezWho2 at 08:47 AM JST - 3rd November

WilliB,

I see that you have chosen to counter what you typify as a "feeble excuse" with what I would call "verbose speculation".

Who are the people that have confirmed that Obama said and did the things you claim? It was not a secret event. Many were there. Where are the other tapes? the other photgraphic records? the testimony of named individuals who claim some sort of wrong-doing on Obama's part? Where is the investigative reporting that demonstrates that the Times is guilty of collusion--and to what misdeed?

Criticize, if you like, the Times' decision to take possession of a tape under the condition that it not make it public or even under the condition that it not make it public until after a certain date. However, what is really feeble is to criticize it for keeping a promise.
ImperiumMundi at 02:16 PM JST - 3rd November

three more sources, some from the late 70's, all describing khalidi as an employee of the p.l.o. when it was a terror organization.

i think this seals it. here is yet another terrorist obama has very troubling long and established ties to.

from the site of writer martin kramer http://sandbox.blog-city.com/khalidi_of_the_plo.htm

note that one of the sources identifying khalidi as working for the p.l.o. is an l.a. times article of 1976.

and note that it was again conservative bloggers uncovering what the mainstream media is uninterested in looking for or too terrified to disclose.
frontandcentre at 01:07 PM JST - 4th November

Pathetic - no other word for it. Conservative bloggers invent whatever suits their latest stupid prank or narrow-minded prejudice.

Funny how the same people trying to exploit another extremely tenuous link ignore the fact that Bush himself has authorised funding for the Palestinian state. Surely more significant?

Plus what about giving billions in military assistance to Israel, whose armed forces then use it to kill hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, in strikes that are so indscriminate as to be dubbed "terrorism" by many observers.

Enjoy your new "terrorist" president, by the way. Ha ha ha
frontandcentre at 01:34 PM JST - 4th November

BTW, anyone who is dumb enough to worry about these supposed one-brief-meeting based "friendships" that your new president is supposed to have with "terrorists" is dumb enough to think that Palin would make a good vice president anyway.
ImperiumMundi at 02:31 PM JST - 4th November

BTW, anyone who is dumb enough to worry about these supposed one-brief-meeting based "friendships" that your new president is supposed to have with "terrorists"

obama and ayers shared the same office for years. khalidi's wife babysat obama's kids. do you know anything about chicago? know anything about hyde park? it's like a little island within that city. obama, rev wright, farrakhan, ayers, khalidi were part of the same radical community. for years. decades.
frontandcentre at 03:11 PM JST - 4th November

Even if all of the things that you say are true, which I don't believe that they are, so what? America obviously needs a radical change from the disastrous path that it is currently taking, and plainly it's going to get one.

Enjoy
ImperiumMundi at 03:23 PM JST - 4th November
Even if all of the things that you say are true, which I don't believe that they are, so what?

so what? in light of a tissue thin resume what else do you have to go on other than associations?

this guy has no paper trail:
1. Occidental College records — Not released
2. Columbia College records — Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper — ‘not available’
4. Harvard College records — Not released
5. Selective Service Registration — Not released
6. Medical records — Not released. obama's m.d. simply summed his condition up in one page letter.
7. Illinois State Senate schedule — ‘not available’
8. Law practice client list — Not released
9. University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
10. Record of baptism— Not released or ‘not available’
11. Illinois State Senate records—’not available’
Sarge at 03:38 PM JST - 4th November

Imperium - You forgot:

Birth certificate - sealed by the Hawaii Governor ( she's a Republican )
goodDonkey at 12:39 AM JST - 5th November

I just voted at my precinct. I liked it better when I could pull that big Democratic lever. Now I just push a button for straight Democratic ballot.