Ex-radical calls Obama a 'family friend'
But Ayers says conservatives wove a 'dishonest narrative' during campaign.
Reporting from Chicago — In a new afterword to his memoir, "Fugitive Days," 1960s radical William Ayers describes himself as a "family friend" of President-elect Barack Obama and writes that the controversy over their relationship was an effort to "deepen a dishonest narrative" about the candidate.
Ayers describes phone threats and hate e-mail he received during the campaign, and bemoans Obama's guilt by association.
During the campaign, Ayers' friendship with Obama was a favorite subject of conservative bloggers and talk show hosts who insisted the two were closer than the candidate was admitting.
Ayers seems to contradict Obama, as well as an interview Ayers gave to the Washington Post on election day. "I think my relationship with Obama was probably like thousands of others in Chicago," Ayers told the Post. "And like millions and millions of others, I wish I knew him better."
During the campaign, Obama dismissed Ayers as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" and "somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know."
A campaign spokesman told the New York Times last month that Ayers and Obama hadn't spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama became a U.S. senator in January 2005. Obama himself denounced the "detestable acts" Ayers engaged in during the Vietnam era.
In the updated version of his 2001 book, Ayers calls into question one of the more incendiary quotes attributed to him during the campaign: "I'm nowadays quoted as saying, 'I don't regret setting bombs. I wish we'd set more bombs. I don't think we did enough.'
"I never actually said that I 'set bombs,' nor that I wished there were 'more bombs.' . . . I killed no one, and I harmed no one, and I didn't regret for a minute resisting the murderous assault on Vietnam with every ounce of my being."
Now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an expert on public school reform, Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical group that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings from 1970 to 1974.
He'll appear today on "Good Morning America" to promote the reissue of his book this week. The Tribune obtained a copy of the updated material.
In it, Ayers -- who did not respond to requests for comment -- summarized his relationship with Obama: "[W]e had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fundraiser at my house, where I'd made a small donation to his earliest political campaign."
Huppke writes for the Chicago Tribune.
