A
new book by Richard Miniter contends that it was Valerie
Jarrett, Obama’s top adviser, who repeatedly urged President Obama
not to take out Osama bin Laden, prompting Obama to cancel the
mission three times.
Kudos to Miniter for this revelation. A year ago, I
had written a feature article for American Spectator
on Valerie Jarrett. One piece of information I had, but couldn’t
confirm, was precisely this. Good work by Richard Miniter.
Even then, there’s much more to the rich background on Jarrett
and Obama — not to mention the third leg of the current troika
that gave us “hope and change,” David Axelrod.
As readers of this site are aware, I’ve just published a
book on Barack Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. No
president in the long history of this republic has had a mentor
like Obama’s. Frank Marshall Davis was a literal — and I mean
literal — card-carrying member of Communist Party USA. I
publish Davis’s Communist Party number (47544) on the cover of the
book, and fill an appendix with declassified FBI documents and
Soviet archival material. Those documents reveal a Davis so
suspicious that he was placed on the federal government’s Security
Index, which meant he could be immediately arrested if war broke
out between the United States and USSR. With that sort of
pro-Soviet influence throughout his adolescence (1970-79), Barack
Obama would have trouble getting a security clearance for an
entry-level government job, let alone sit in the Oval Office.
Nonetheless, Obama sits in that Oval Office today thanks to four
factors: the American voter, a scandalously biased media, a
skillful election strategy charted by David Axelrod, and the
careful nurturing of Valerie Jarrett.
And most remarkable, Axelrod’s and Jarrett’s backgrounds and
mentors connect to Obama’s background and mentor in a most
intriguing way. It’s a stunning story, hard to believe. Follow
closely:
Frank Marshall Davis, like Obama, found himself, his career, and
his political calling in Chicago. It was there in the 1940s that he
first began working for communist front-groups, joined the
Communist Party, and wrote for and became the founding
editor-in-chief of the Chicago Star, the city’s Communist
Party newspaper — where Davis kicked off the newspaper with a
column (July 6, 1946) pledging to advance “fundamental change.” In
these capacities, Davis, Obama’s mentor, would work with the
political ancestors of David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett.
I lay that out at length in the book, with all the
documentation. Here, I will try to be brief and to the point.
In 1940, Frank Marshall Davis got involved in one of the worst
communist fronts: the American Peace Mobilization. Congress called
the group “one of the most notorious and blatantly communist fronts
ever organized in this country” and “one of the most seditious
organizations which ever operated in the United States.” The
group’s objective (in 1940) was to stop the United States from
entering the war against Hitler. Why? Because Hitler had signed a
non-aggression pact with Stalin, and American communists, being
loyal Soviet patriots who literally swore allegiance to the USSR,
saluted Stalin.
One of the first examples I found of Frank Marshall Davis
getting noticed by Congress was a 1944 Congressional report listing
his involvement in the American Peace Mobilization. That same
report also cited the involvement of a fellow Chicagoan named
Robert Taylor. Taylor was the grandfather of Valerie Jarrett.
Taylor also served with Davis on another communist front, the
Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, whose members masqueraded as
civil-rights crusading “progressives.” The two served on the board
together.
Both Taylor and Davis would have frequently encountered another
politically active Chicagoan, Vernon Jarrett. Vernon Jarrett and
Frank Marshall Davis worked together on the small publicity team of
the communist-controlled Packinghouse Workers Union, which Frank
Marshall Davis publicly called for nationalizing. Vernon Jarrett
would one day become Valerie Jarrett’s father-in-law.
So, here we have Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, working
with the literal relatives of Valerie Jarrett — all serving
together in Chicago’s Communist Party circles in the 1940s.
And what about David Axelrod?
Axelrod is a native New Yorker who, in the 1970s, found himself
and his political calling in Chicago, where he went to college and
worked for newspapers as a political journalist. (See my March 2012
Spectator profile of David Axelrod.) There, Axelrod
was mentored by the Canter family, namely David Canter. The Canter
family’s Soviet/communist roots were deep. David and his family had
lived in Moscow just before Chicago. His father, Harry Canter,
worked there as an official translator of Lenin’s writings. Harry,
who had been secretary of the Boston Communist Party and ran for
governor of Massachusetts on the Communist Party ticket, did this
as a literal employee of Stalin’s government.
After that service to the Soviets, the Canter crew headed to
Chicago, a hot-bed for American communists. They worked with Frank
Marshall Davis in writing communist propaganda for the Packinghouse
Workers Union, in teaching at the communist Abraham Lincoln School,
in marching in Chicago’s May Day parades, and in the pages of the
Chicago Star. In fact, when Davis and his comrades sold
the Chicago Star to something called the Progressive
Publishing Company in September 1948, Harry Canter was one of the
small group of board members doing the purchase.
There are several key names here. Let me sum up:
Frank Marshall Davis mentored Barack Obama. The Canter family
mentored David Axelrod, who got Obama elected president. Vernon
Jarrett’s daughter-in-law is Valerie Jarrett, and Robert Taylor was
Valerie Jarrett’s grandfather. Jarrett is Obama’s top presidential
adviser. In other words, Obama’s political ancestor worked with the
political ancestors of Axelrod and Jarrett.
Oh, and they all called themselves progressives.
Amazing, but true. You can’t make this up. The ghosts of
Chicago’s political past are alive and well in Washington today.
Today’s political family at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can be traced
back to the political family of Chicago in the 1940s. It’s all in
the (political) family.
This is the fundamental change an uninformed electorate
— thanks especially to a woefully biased media — elected in
November 2008.
Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove
City College and author of the new book, The Communist:
Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s
Mentor.
