Stanley Kurtz, who has been trying to investigate Barack Obama ties to unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, was denied access to the Challenge’s public records (housed at the University of Illinois — Chicago) for several days. We have no way of knowing what happened to the collection during that time, although it doesn’t seem likely that Kurtz was put off for no reason.
However, we do know more about the circumstances of the delay, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request that Kurtz filed:
In “Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?” I tell the story of how UIC’s Richard J. Daley Library reversed its initial decision to allow me access to the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The Chicago Tribune has since revealed that I was barred from the collection following an August 11 call to UIC from former CAC executive director, Ken Rolling. In the Tribune story, Rolling appears to claim that contact with UIC came at his own initiative. Steve Diamond questioned Tribune reporters further on this issue, and was told that Rolling claimed to have unilaterally contacted UIC library on August 11, after seeing reports about CAC on the Internet at about that time.
Yet August 11 happens to be the day I first contacted UIC’s Daley Library requesting to see the CAC archive. How likely is it that Rolling called UIC requesting that the documents be restricted on the same day, purely by coincidence? It seems far more likely that some as-yet-unidentified person at UIC tipped Rolling off to my request, prompting his demand that the records be embargoed.
In any case, we know that on August 11, the same day I asked to see the CAC records, Rolling quietly called on the library to close them to the public.
(Emphasis mine.) An official cover-up of possibly damaging documents relating to Barack Obama’s past. Isn’t that the sort of thing the media is supposed to be interested in?
Internet Scofflaw 