From Top Terrorists to Top Cops

AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | May 13, 2009
from Accuracy in Media


The pay-off for supporting Obama/Biden was immediate.

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.

By contrast, the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest law enforcement labor organization in the U.S., endorsed 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

At the time of the NAPO endorsement of Obama, one police officer on the policelink.com website commented, "I looked up the organization which is not large by numbers, but I am just pissed how any Police organization can endorse a guy who is friend with a terrorist who killed police officers. This organization makes me sick. Glad these idiots don't represent me!"

Another officer said, "I'll spell out HOW they could do this-MONEY. Whenever you see an 'organization' sell its soul to the devil, it always involves money-pure and simple."

A look at NAPO's website reveals that it has a preoccupation with getting federal money from Washington, D.C. The first item is about Obama's stimulus bill increasing federal funding of "law enforcement priorities."

One of those priorities is relaxing at luxurious resorts. Photos posted on the group's website, from its annual convention last year in "exotic" Puerto Rico, show members listening to a speech from Joe Biden, as well as being on the Golf Course and in a restaurant eating and drinking. One photo shows numerous bottles of beer on a table of conference participants. A tour of the local Bacardi distillery was advertised as one of the featured attractions, with Salsa dancing to follow.

Some serious business was conducted. According to the NAPO bulletin, there was a vote among NAPO's 200 assembled delegates to endorse Obama but it did not get the two-thirds majority necessary to pass. The decision then went to the Executive Board, where a simple majority decided on an endorsement of Obama.

This narrow vote then became what NAP President Thomas Nee presented to Joe Biden on September 22, 2008, as "the support of 287,000 police officers from around the country-representative of about 2,000 organizations that have pledged their support to your candidacy, and to the candidacy of Barack Obama, as the next president and vice president of the United States."

NAPO, as well as the FOP, endorsed the terrorist-friendly Eric Holder as Attorney General. NAPO said that he had "the experience and knowledge necessary to run the Department of Justice and create a comprehensive, multilateral national crime fighting strategy..." NAPO's statement made no mention of Holder's role in the Clinton Administration of engineering the pardons of members of cop-killing terrorist groups like the Weather Underground and the Puerto Rican FALN.

But former FBI agent Rick Hahn testified against Holder, saying, "The granting of clemency in these cases stands out as one of the greatest compromises of the American Justice System in history. It is my view that anyone in this government who proactively worked to bring about the clemencies betrayed their office, the victims and the American people."

Joseph Connor, whose father was killed by the FALN in a bombing, said that Holder "played a large part in the release of those terrorists," despite warnings and recommendations to the contrary by the FBI, Bureau of Prisons and the Attorney General herself. He called Holder someone who "panders to terrorists."

The pay-off for supporting Obama/Biden was immediate. After the election, NAPO reported that president Thomas Nee and executive director Bill Johnson "were summoned to the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Obama/Biden presidential transition team" in order to "discuss NAPO's legislative and policy priorities for the new presidential administration."

The report continued, "No other law enforcement groups were invited to this meeting, providing further administration recognition of what President-elect Barack Obama called NAPO's position as 'the leader of America's national law enforcement organizations.'"

Obama's statement about NAPO being "the leader of America's national law enforcement organizations" is featured at the top of the group's home page on the Web.

"NAPO looks forward to continuing and strengthening our relationships with Attorney General Holder and Vice President Biden as we work closely with the new administration over the coming years," the group says.