Obama's Khalid Al-Mansour Connection

Newsmax.com  Obamas Harvard Years: Questions Swirl
--www.newsmax.com

Ken Timmerman

    Tuesday, September 23, 2008
    By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

    How exactly did Barack Obama pay for his Harvard Law School education?

    The way the Obama campaign has answered the question was simply hard
    work and student loans.

    But new questions have been raised about Obamas student loans and
    Obamas ties to a radical Muslim activist who reportedly was raising
    money for Obamas Harvard studies during the years 1988 to 1991.

    The allegations first surfaced in late March, when former Manhattan
    Borough president Percy Sutton told a New York cable channel that a
    former business partner who was raising money for Obama had approached
    him in 1988 to help Obama get into Harvard Law School.

    In the interview, Sutton says he first heard of Obama about twenty
    years ago from Khalid Al-Mansour, a Black Muslim and Black Nationalist
    who was a mentor to the founders of the Black Panther party at the
    time the party was founded in the early 1960s.

    Sutton described al-Mansour as advisor to one of the worlds richest
    men, Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

    Prince Alwaleed catapulted to fame in the United States after the
    September 11 attacks, when New York mayor Rudy Guiliani refused his
    $10 million check to help rebuild Manhattan, because the Saudi prince
    hinted publicly that Americas pro-Israel policies were to blame for
    the attacks.

    Sutton knew Al-Mansour well, since the two men had been business
    partners and served on several corporate boards together.

    As Sutton remembered, Al-Mansour was raising money for Obamas
    education and seeking recommendations for him to attend Harvard Law
    School.

    I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him,
    Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter. The friends name is
    Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas.

    Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt told Newsmax that Suttons account was bogus
    and a fabrication that has been retracted by a spokesman for the
    Sutton family.

    He referred Newsmax to a pro-Obama blog published on Politico.com by
    reporter Ben Smith.

    In a September 3 blog entry, Smith wrote that a spokesman for Suttons
    family, Kevin Wardally said that Sutton had been mistaken when he made
    those comments about Obama and Khalid Al-Mansour.

    Smith suggested the retraction put the [Obama/Al-Mansour] story to
    rest for good.

    Wardally told Smith that the information Mr. Percy Sutton imported
    [sic] on March 25 in a NY1 News interview regarding his connection to
    Barack Obama is inaccurate. As best as our family and the Chairmans
    closest friends can tell, Mr. Sutton, now 86 years of age, misspoke in
    describing certain details and events in that television interview.

    Asked which parts of Percy Suttons statements were a fabrication,
    LaBolt said all of it. Al Mansour doesnt know Obama. And Suttons
    spokesman retracted the story. The letter [to Harvard, which Percy
    Sutton says he wrote on behalf of Obama], the payments for loans all
    of it, not true, he added.

    Newsmax contacted the Sutton family and they categorically denied
    Wardallys claims to Smith and the Politico.com. So there was no
    retraction of Suttons original interview, during which he revealed
    that Khalid Al-Mansour was raising money for Obama and had asked
    Sutton to write a letter of recommendation for Obama to help him get
    accepted at Harvard Law School.

    Suttons personal assistant told Newsmax that neither Mr. Sutton or his
    family had ever heard of Kevin Wardally.

    Who is this person? asked Suttons assistant, Karen Malone.

    When told that he portrayed himself as a spokesman for the family,
    Malone told Newsmax, Well, hes not.

    According to a 2006 New York magazine profile, Wardally is part of a
    New New Guard in Harlem politics that has been challenging the lions
    of the old guard, Charles Rangel and Percy Sutton. That makes him an
    unlikely candidate to speak on behalf of Sutton.

    Sutton maintains an office at the Manhattan headquarters of the firm
    he founded, Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. ICBC owns New York
    radio stations WBLS and WLIB.

    Suttons son Pierre (Pepe) runs ICBC along with his daughter, Keisha
    Sutton-James. Malone told Newsmax that she had consulted with Suttons
    family members at the station and confirmed that no one knew Kevin
    Wardally or had authorized him to speak on behalf of the family.

    For someone claiming to be a spokesman for the Sutton family, who was
    authorized to call Percy Sutton a liar, Wardally even got Percy
    Suttons age wrong.

    Sutton is not 86, as Wardally said, but close to 88. He was born on
    Nov. 24, 1920.

    Wardally responded to a several Newsmax phone messages and emails with
    a terse one-line comment, maintaining his statement that Percy Sutton
    misspoke in the television interview.

    I believe the statement speaks for itself and the Sutton Family and I
    have nothing further to say on the topic, he wrote in an email.

    Asked to explain why it was that no one at Inner City Broadcasting
    Corp. knew of him or accepted him as a family spokesman, Wardally
    responded later that he had been retained by a nephew of the elder
    Sutton, who is in our office almost every week.

    Wardally works for Bill Lynch Associations, a Harlem political
    consulting firm. The nephew, Chuck Sutton, no longer works with the
    elder Sutton at Inner City Broadcasting, but for a high-tech start-up
    called Synematics.

    Percy Sutton doesnt go out idly on television saying things he doesnt
    mean, a well-connected black entrepreneur who knows Sutton told
    Newsmax.

    Ben LaBolts claim that Al Mansour doesnt know Obama was contradicted
    by Al Mansour himself in an extended interview with Newsmax.

    Comparing the revelation of his ties to Obama to the controversy
    surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Al Mansour said that he was
    determined to keep a low profile to avoid embarrassing Obama.

    In respect to Mr. Obama, I have told him, because so many people are
    running after him I was determined that I was never going to be in
    that situation, he told Newsmax.

    Al Mansour said he was deliberately avoiding any contact with the
    candidate. Im not involved in any way in celebrity sweepstakes, he
    said. I wish him well, anything I can do if he lets me know, Ill let
    him know what I think I can do or cant. But I dont collect autographs.
    I wish him the best, and hope he can win the election.

    He repeatedly declined to comment on the Percy Sutton allegations,
    either to confirm or to deny them.

    Any statement that I make would only further the activity which is not
    in the interest of Barack, not in the interest of Percy, not in the
    interest of anyone, Al Mansour said.

    Unanswered Questions

    Sen. Obama has refused to instruct Harvard Law School to release any
    information about his time there as a student, or about his student
    loans.

    Newsmax contacted the Dean of Students, the Director of Student
    Financial Services, the Registrar, and the Bursar of Harvard Law
    School. None would provide any specific information on Barack Obamas
    time at Harvard, except for his dates of attendance (1988-1991) or his
    year of graduation, 1991.

    A spokesman for the law school, Michael Armini, said it was Harvard
    policy not to divulge information on alumni without their approval.

    There are lots of reporters nosing around the library, he
    acknowledged. So far, none had turned up any new information.

    Law professors Lawrence Tribe and Charles Ogletree have both said
    publicly that they were impressed by Obama when he was a student.

    Sources close to the Sutton family told Newsmax that Percy Sutton
    wrote a letter of recommendation for Obama to Ogletree at Khalid
    Al-Mansours request, but Ogletree declined to answer Newsmax questions
    about this.

    Harvard Law School spokesman Michael Armini said that Harvard was very
    generous with financial aid, but only on the basis on need.

    The Obama campaign told Newsmax that Obama self-financed his three
    years at Harvard Law School with loans, and did not receive any
    scholarship from Harvard Law school.

    LaBolt denied that Obama received any financial assistance from
    Harvard or from outside parties. No - he paid his way through by
    taking out loans, he said in an email to Newsmax.

    At the time, Harvard cost around $25,000 a year, or $75,000 for the
    three years that Obama attended. And as president of the Harvard Law
    Review, he received no stipend from the school, Harvard spokesman Mike
    Armini said.

    That is considered a volunteer position, Armini said. There is no
    salary or grant associated with it.

    So if the figures cited by the Obama campaign for the Senators student
    loans are accurate, that means that Obama came up with more than
    $32,000 over three years from sources other than loans to pay for
    tuition, room and board.

    Where did he find the money? Did it come from friends of Khalid Al
    Mansour? And why would a radical Muslim activist with ties to the
    Saudi royal family be raising money for Barack Obama?

    Thats the question the Obama campaign still wont answer.

    Michelle Obama Speaks Out

    Speaking at a campaign event in Haverford, Pa, in April of this year,
    Michelle Obama claimed that her husband had just paid off his loan
    debt for his Harvard Law School education.

    In an appearance in Zanesville, Ohio, in February she bemoaned the
    fact that many American families were strapped with student loan
    payments for years after graduation.

    The only reason were not in that position is that Barack wrote two
    best-selling books, she said. The first of those best-sellers netted
    the couple $1.2 million in royalties in 2005.

    In response to Newsmax questions about the Obamas college loans, a
    campaign spokesman cited a report in The Chicago Sun claiming that
    Obama borrowed $42,753 to pay for Harvard Law School, and tens of
    thousands more to pay for undergraduate studies at Columbia.

    The same report said that Michelle Obama borrowed $40,762 to pay for
    her years at Harvard Law School.

    But a Newsmax review of Senator Obamas financial disclosures found no
    trace of any outstanding college loans, going back to 2000.

    As a United States Senate candidate, Barack Obama was required to file
    a financial disclosure form in 2004 detailing his assets, income,
    consulting contracts, and liabilities.

    Obama listed zero under liabilities in 2004 and in all subsequent U.S.
    Senate financial disclosure forms.

    Under the Senate ethics rules, he is required to disclose any loan,
    including credit card debt, of $10,000 or more. The only exception to
    the reporting requirement is mortgage debt on a principal residence.

    The Senate reports also directly contradict Michelle Obamas claim that
    the couple had only just paid off their student loans after receiving
    book royalties paid out in 2005 and 2006 well after her husband had
    been ensconced in the Senate.

    Apparently, Michelle Obama misspoke, according to the version provided
    by the Obama campaign.

    Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt now tells Newsmax that the loans Sen.
    Obama took out to pay for Harvard Law School were repaid in full while
    he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate [in 2004], and under the rules,
    the modest outstanding balance he repaid was not reportable as a
    liability on his personal financial disclosure reports.

    The Senator repaid the loans on the expectation of a significant
    increase in family income as a result of the paperback edition of his
    1995 book, Dreams of My Father, LaBolt said.

    Obama acknowledges that sales of the hard cover edition of the book
    were underwhelming. But in the spring of 2004,when Obama won the
    Democrat U.S. Senate primary in Illinois, Rachel Klayman, an editor at
    Crown Publishers in New York, read an article about Obama and became
    interested in his memoir, only to discover that Crown now owned the
    rights.

    She asked Obama to write a new forward, and Crown then decided to
    re-issue Dreams as a paperback in July 2004, just as Obama made his
    historic speech to the Democrat National Convention.

    The paperback eventually sold over one million copies, which under the
    standard industry royalty for trade paperbacks of 7.5%, earned him
    $1.2 million. However, Obama didnt report income from the book until
    2005, so its unclear how he was able to repay his student loans in
    2004.

    Responding to attacks from the Hillary Clinton campaign during the
    primaries, Obama released seven years of tax returns on March 25 of
    this year.

    The returns, dating back to 2000, indicate that the couple paid no
    interest on their student loans. The interest from such loans would
    have been deductible on their joint income tax returns.

    For 2000 through 2004, taxpayers declared student loan interest as a
    deduction on line 24 of federal form 1040. After 2004, the deduction
    can be taken on Line 33.

    But the Obamas never declared a dime of interest in student loans on
    their return, most likely because they simply earned too much money to
    be able to take the deduction under the IRS rules.

    Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt had no answer as to why the Obamas failed
    to declare the loans, stating the obvious that because interest on the
    loans was not deducted, it would not appear on the Obamas personal
    return.

    © 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.


URL:
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