Obama’s Socialist Allies Defeated in Wisconsin

About a week after President Obama gave a Medal of Freedom to Dolores Huerta, the honorary chair of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Associated Press (AP) wire service ran a story casting doubt on the claim that Obama himself was a socialist. This is the same news organization which in 2008 carried a story that failied to mention the smoking-gun evidence that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a Communist Party member.

If you are suspecting at this point that the AP found Obama not guilty of being a socialist, you would be correct. This kind of whitewash is what we have come to expect from this influential news organization. It is fairly typical of a media that love Obama but don't want to tell the truth about him or his associates and allies.

The Medal of Freedom happens to be the nation's highest civilian honor. So Obama's giving the award to a DSA figure is not an insignificant event. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis issued her own statement describing Huerta as a "mentor, adviser and wonderful friend."

The White House described Huerta as "a civil rights, workers, and women's advocate," ignoring her association with DSA. For an inquisitive media, which mostly don't exist these days, the natural question is: Is there some reason why the White House would want to avoid mentioning Huerta's DSA connection?

It could be that Obama wants to avoid the term "socialist," in the same way that AP protected him from it. It could have something to do with the fact that a former leader of DSA, Kurt Stand, is currently serving a long prison sentence for his 1998 conviction for spying for Communist East Germany and the Soviet Union. The case is old but not forgotten among those who monitor threats to U.S. security. It was a major case of espionage against the United States.

As such, would it raise too many eyebrows for the President to favorably mention an organization that had produced an enemy agent? And would it raise questions as to whether or not the President himself had ever associated with such a group?

All of this demonstrates the fact that the talk about Obama and socialism goes far beyond philosophical or ideological questions about one's economic ideas. This is not just an academic discussion. The term "socialism" is associated with organizations, some benign but some openly hostile to the United States. Stand received a sentence of 17 years and six months for espionage.

Stand had two criminal associates-his wife, Theresa Squillacote, who had worked at the Department of Defense as an attorney with high-level security clearances, and James Clark, a private investigator who at one time had a secret Department of Defense clearance. An official summary of the case from the Office of the Secretary of Defense & Defense Intelligence Agency is interesting and notes that their radical days began in-of all places-Wisconsin. It says, "Clark, Squillacote, and Stand attended the University of Wisconsin in the 1970s where they were affiliated with leftist groups, specifically the Progressive Student Forum and the Young Workers Liberation League, the youth arm of the Communist Party U.S."

Stand is also described by the U.S. as a "regional labor representative." There is much more to this affiliation. The great journalist, Eric Breindel, had written about the case, noting that Kurt Stand became a left-wing labor activist who'd helped John Sweeney unseat AFL-CIO chief Lane Kirkland, a staunch anti-communist. Sweeney was a member of DSA as well. We have pointed out that when John Sweeney became president of the AFL-CIO, the communists and their fellow travelers were officially welcomed in. He hired veterans of the Venceremos Brigades such as Karen Nussbaum and Karen Ackerman. These were the groups of radical young people who had gone to Communist Cuba for indoctrination sessions back in the 1970s. Some went for training in guerrilla warfare. The trips were arranged by Bernardine Dohrn of the terrorist Weather Underground.

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FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism. He can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

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