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Council For World Freedom: McCain's Iran-Contra Link?
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Barack Obama has his William Ayers connection. Now John McCain may have an Iran-Contra connection. In the 1980s, McCain served on the advisory board to the U.S. chapter of an international group linked to ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America.
The U.S. Council for World Freedom aided rebels trying to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. That landed the group in the middle of the Iran-Contra affair and in legal trouble with the IRS, which revoked the charitable organization's tax exemption.
The council created by retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub was the U.S. chapter of the World Anti-Communist League, an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America.
In two interviews, Singlaub said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as he launched his political career. McCain was elected to the U.S. House in 1982.
Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member.
"McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes," Singlaub said. "We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn't left out."
McCain has said he resigned from the council in 1984, though Singlaub does not recall that happening then.
"I didn't know whether [the group's activity] was legal or illegal, but I didn't think I wanted to be associated with them," McCain said in a 1986 newspaper interview.
—Associated Press
Anti-Obama Writer Is Detained in Kenya
The American author of a controversial book attacking Barack Obama was detained Tuesday by the other Obama nation.
Jerome Corsi, author of "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," was picked up Tuesday morning by Kenyan authorities shortly before he planned to host a news conference to promote his book, which Obama's campaign has dismissed as a smear campaign riddled with falsehoods.
He later boarded a plane out of the country, Kenyan police and his publicist said, amid questions about whether he left voluntarily or under duress.
Obama, whose father was Kenyan and mother was American, is wildly popular in this East African nation, which embraces the senator from Illinois as a native son.
Kenyan authorities accused Corsi of failing to obtain the proper visa needed to work in the country.
—Los Angeles Times
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