Obama Had Close Ties to Top Saudi Adviser at Early Age

Toby · #1 (**permalink**) 09-05-2008, 09:10 AM

Obama Had Close Ties to Top Saudi Adviser at Early Age

Wednesday, September 3, 2008 5:58 PM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman Article Font Size

Quote:

New evidence has emerged that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was closely associated as early as age 25 to a key adviser to a Saudi billionaire who had mentored the founding members of the Black Panthers.

In a videotaped interview this year on New York’s all news cable channel NY1, a prominent African-American businessman and political figure made the curious disclosures about Obama. (See Video Clip Below)

Percy Sutton, the former borough president of Manhattan, off-handedly revealed the unusual circumstances about his first encounter with the young Obama.

“I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him,” Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter.

“The friend’s name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas,” Sutton said. “He is the principal adviser to one of the world’s richest men. He told me about Obama.”

Sutton, the founder of Inner City Broadcasting, said al-Mansour contacted him to ask a favor: Would Sutton write a letter in support of Obama’s application to Harvard Law School?

“He wrote to me about him,” Sutton recalled. “And his introduction was there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends up there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?”

Sutton said he acted on his friend al-Mansour’s advice.

“I wrote a letter of support of him to my friends at Harvard, saying to them I thought there was a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly,” Sutton told NY1.

Sutton did not say why al-Mansour was helping Obama, how he discovered him, or from whom he was raising money on Obama’s behalf.

A Sutton aide told Newsmax that Sutton, 88, is ailing and is unlikely to do additional TV interviews in the near future. The aide could not provide additional comment for this story.

As it turned out, Obama did attend Harvard Law School after graduating from Columbia University in New York and doing a stint as a community organizer in Chicago.

The New York Times described how transformative his Harvard experience became for the young Obama: “He arrived there as an unknown, Afro-wearing community organizer who had spent years searching for his identity; by the time he left, he had his first national news media exposure, a book contract and a shot of confidence from running the most powerful legal journal in the country.”

The details of Obama’s academic performance are well known: At Harvard, Obama rose to academic distinction becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduating magna cum laude.

Less known are the reasons al-Mansour, an activist African-American Muslim, would be a key backer for a young man from Hawaii seeking to attend the most Ivy of the Ivy League law schools.

Newsmax.com – Obama Had Close Ties to Top Saudi Adviser at Early Age