Further elaborating on the activities of a Weather Underground splinter group when Obama was attending college in New York City, Murtagh editorialized "for Barack Obama to attend Columbia shortly after these events, being in New York at that time and not know who the Weather Underground was, frankly, makes him the dumbest man that ever graduated from Columbia and Harvard Law School." When Brian Kilmeade replied "we know he’s not," Murtagh agreed.
The transcript follows.
STEVE DOOCY: This headline from 1970 says it all, four bombs at Murtagh home. The notorious terror group the Weather Underground claiming responsibility for an attack on the family of a New York state Supreme Court justice. The bombing was lead by radical Bill Ayers, the same guy screen right who eventually formed a relationship of some sort with Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama.
BRIAN KILMEADE: Yonkers city councilman John Murtagh was just nine years old when the blast went off inside his house. John this is a personal story for you.
JOHN MURTAGH: Clearly it is. I was nine years old at the time. My father was the judge presiding over what was called the Panther 21 trial, members of Panther party who were charged with attempting to bomb landmarks in New York. On a February night in 1970, while my parents, my brother, sister and I were asleep in our house, the Weather Underground launched the attack on our family and set off at least three, possibly four bombs, one of them under the gas tank of the family car.
DOOCY: Car bomb.
MURTAGH: Looking to kill us.
DOOCY: So when I read one of the things you wrote earlier in the spring, the headline was that Bill Ayers tried to kill my family.
MURTAGH: Well, Bill Ayers, the founder of the Weather Underground, Kathy Wilkerson, who is a former member of the Weather Underground, still lives here in New York, she wrote a memoir two years ago in which she acknowledged that it was the New York cell of the Weather Underground that launched the attack on my family. Three weeks later, at Bill Ayers direction, they were assembling bombs at Greenwich Village in order to attack the officers’ club at Fort Dix, New Jersey and they blew themselves up.
DOOCY: Right, they blew the nail.
MURTAGH: Exactly.
KILMEADE: So what do you think when you hear about this Bill Ayers back in the news and his links or lack thereof with Barack Obama?
MURTAGH: Well, you know, Barack Obama constantly says "I was only eight years old when this happened." That’s kind of his throw away line. I’m not questioning what Barack Obama was doing when he was eight years old. I’m questioning his behavior as an adult to choose his friend, mentor, and long time personal and professional colleague, a gentleman who engaged in acts of terror against families, against government buildings and whose organization crossed the lines of at least three if not more police officers.
DOOCY: Now, we’ve had the Obama camp on a number of times and they dispute the relationship and everything else. They say it goes back to when they simply served on boards and they only met at a couple of board meetings plus that get together at that guy’s, Bill Ayers’ house. But why is it you think- because this is something that happened- why is it that you think the relationship between Bill Ayers and Barack Obama goes back 20 years?
MURTAGH: Bill Ayers’ wife, Bernadine Dorn, also one of the original leaders of the Weather Underground. And the woman who took credit for the bombing at our home and other New York targets. Bernadine Dorn was an attorney by training. She couldn’t get admitted to the Bar because of her crimes. Bill Ayers’ family got a job at a large Chicago law firm from Sydney Austin in the 1980's. She was a contemporary at the law firm in the 80's with Michelle Obama. It was the firm where a year later-
DOOCY: They had known each other around the water cooler?
MURTAGH: Sure, and a year later it’s where Michelle and Barack Obama met. So I believe if the senator where to come clean and tell his full story, we’d find this relationship well predates the fundraiser in Ayers’ home and goes back to the 80's.
DOOCY: I have never heard that connection before.
KILMEADE: I just can’t believe that a university would hire this guy with this type of background.
MURTAGH: You’d have to ask the University of Illinois to explain that.
DOOCY: Let, let me ask you one more question. You know, the Obama camp called me up and said "look they lived in the same neighborhood, but Barack Obama did not know Bill Ayers’ history at the time of that meet and greet where they launched his career in his living room."
MURTAGH: You know, Barack Obama was a student at Columbia in the early 1980's. He lived in New York at Columbia at a time that a splinter group of the Weather Underground murdered two police officers here in New York as part of a failed banking heist. Frankly, for Barack Obama to attend Columbia shortly after these events, being in New York at that time and not know who the Weather Underground was, frankly, makes him the dumbest man that ever graduated from Columbia and Harvard Law School.
KILMEADE: Which we know he’s not.
MURTAGH: Absolutely not.
