Marathon Pundit: Chicago Annenberg Challenge: Did the Univ. of Illinois "drop a dime" on Kurtz?

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Chicago Annenberg Challenge: Did the Univ. of Illinois "drop a dime" on Kurtz?

University of California-Santa Clara law professor Steve Diamond has been hot on the trail of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records. A liberal, Diamond is no fan of Bill Ayers' so-called "progressive" activism. Diamond called in to Milt Rosenberg's Extension 720 program when Barack Obama's goons attempted to disrupt the show when Rosenberg had the audacity to have National Review's Stanley Kurtz on as a guest last month. Kurtz was invited on to Extension 720 to discuss what he discovered in the first days of his research.

The University of Illinois-Chicago houses the records, all 140 boxes of them. Kurtz, who has a Ph.D from Harvard in anthropology, was initially granted permission by UIC to inspect the paper trail of the $50 million project Barack Obama led for a few years--and one in which former Weather Underground terrorist secured the funding. But then the university said "No."

Did someone, to use gangster slang, "drop a dime" on Kurtz and contact former CAC executive director Ken Rolling--so he could prevent the release of the records?

Rolling's story was that he was surfing the web and discovered that there was discussion occurring about opening the CAC records to the public. That was on August 11.

Yet another Chicago coincidence.

From Diamond's blog:

So on August 11, Rolling told the Chicago Tribune, he saw references to CAC records and he called the library at UIC and asked if the CAC records were being made available and, if they were, to shut off public access.

The library complied.

On August 22 the University reversed its original decision and said the records were validly held by them and they made a finding aid available to the public.

Rolling then asked the University to prevent access to certain files based on his review of the records. He discussed this with the University's president, B. Joseph White, and University Counsel, Thomas Bearrows. These University executives agreed to give consideration to his request.