The Acquitted Elite

He once rubbed elbows with cop-killing terrorists. But on Tuesday Barack Obama was surrounded by representatives of the National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO) as he honored 33 U.S. law enforcement officers, including some who had risked their lives to capture terrorists. Our media didn’t highlight or even mention the obvious contradiction.

Attorney General Eric Holder, who was also at the event, released known terrorists into the streets of America when he was involved in the Clinton pardons of members of the Weather Underground and Puerto Rican FALN. Holder’s law firm, Covington & Burling, represents terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay.

President Obama has vowed to move them from Cuba, possibly into the U.S.

Jim Kouri, the fifth Vice President and Public Information Officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told AIM that NAPO is a left-leaning group that is out-of-step with most police officers and that he pays little attention to it.

But it’s clear that the group has a direct pipeline to the White House because of its support for increased federal funding-and some would say control-of local police departments. 

At a Rose Garden ceremony honoring the National Association of Police Organization’s “Top Cops” award winners, Obama was joined by Vice President Joe Biden and talked extensively about getting federal dollars, including some from the “stimulus” bill, to police departments.

There used to be a time in America when law enforcement was considered a local responsibility.

“You know how devastating crime can be; how it can shatter lives and undermine whole communities,” Obama said. Yet, Obama’s political associate, Weather Underground terrorist and University of Illinois Professor Bill Ayers, was a member of a group responsible for more than 30 bombings in the 1970s, many of them directed at police and police stations. One of those bombs killed a police officer and wounded eight others at the Park Police Station in San Francisco on February 16, 1970. The case is still open and evidence continues to be gathered against Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn.

On Wednesday night, Ayers and Dohrn are scheduled to be at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore to discuss their new book, Race Course Against White Supremacy. In the book they mention that they named one of their children after a Black Panther killed in a shoot-out that took the life of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster.

Nevertheless, NAPO endorsed Obama for president in 2008 and Democrats John F. Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. This is an excerpt of one of his columns, which can be read in its entirety here.