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For the record, and just to be complete, here are links documenting some of Obama's many connections to William Ayers:
• Ayers and Obama worked together for years on a school reform program called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
• Ayers and Obama also served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, a separate charity organization.
• Obama had his political coming-out party in William Ayers' home.
• Ayers mentions Obama by name in a book he wrote in 1997, and mentions that the two are very close neighbors.
• Obama gave a short glowing review of that same Ayers book for the Chicago Tribune.
• Obama and Ayers were both presenters together on a panel about juvenile justice (organized by Michelle Obama).
• Both Obama and Ayers were close friends with the same person, Rashid Kalidi.
• There are also several unverified rumors swirling around that have not been documented: That Ayers may have helped to write part (or all) of Obama's autobiography; that Obama and Ayers shared an office space together for three years, on the same floor of the same building in Chicago; and that Ayers and Obama may have known each other as far back as 1981.
On April 12, 2002, Ayers said during an interview with a college radio station:
I considered myself partly an anarchist then and consider myself partly an anarchist now. I mean I'm as much an anarchist as I am a Marxist.... I'm very open about what I think and nobody here is surprised by what I think." Obama was working directly with Ayers within days of this interview being given--and for years prior and afterward.