Khalid al-Mansour spent the 1960s as a close associate and mentor to Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, the notorious founders of the Black Panther Party. Newton is best remembered for his "Burn, baby burn!" while the city of Watts was being destroyed by race riots.
News Max has this to say about Khalid al-Mansour:
U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee of California entered an official statement of appreciation of Warden and his Black Panther colleagues in the African-American Association in the Congressional Record on April 23, 2007.
“Among the founding members (of the Association) were community leaders such as Khalid Al-Mansour (known then as Don Warden); future Judges Henry Ramsey and Thelton Henderson; future Congressman and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, and future Black Panthers Huey Newton and Bobby Seale,” the Democratic representative’s statement said.
Al-Mansour’s more recent videotaped speeches focus on Muslim themes, and abound with anti-Semitic theories and anti-Israel vitriol.
“Today, the Palestinians are being brutalized like savages,” he told an audience in South Africa. “If you protest you will go to jail, and you may be killed. And they say they are the only democratic country in the Middle East. ... They are lying on God.”
In the late 1980s, a former Manhattan borough president was approached by al-Mansour about sponsoring a young Barack Obama for Harvard Law School. Percy Sutton was the founder of Inner City Broadcasting and had contacts at Harvard through speaking engagements. Al-Mansour asked him to write a letter on behalf of Barack Obama asking Harvard to admit him. Al-Mansour explained that he was raising money for Obama's educational expenses at Harvard.
“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 a reporter for NY1, in New York.
[editors note: The family of Percy Sutton has disavowed his public interview, claiming that he suffered from dementia and was not responsible for his statements]
At about the same, al-Mansour was representing billionaire interests in Saudi Arabia -- close contacts within the Saudi Royal Family. Again, from that News Max article:
In 1989, for example — just one year after Obama entered Harvard Law School — The Los Angeles Times revealed that al-Mansour had been advising Saudi billionaires Abdul Aziz and Khalid al-Ibrahim in their secret effort to acquire a major stake in prime oceanfront property in Marina del Rey, Calif., through “an elaborate network of corporate shells in California, the Caribbean and Europe.”
At the same time, he was also advising Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in his U.S. investments, and sits on the board of his premier investment vehicle, Kingdom Holdings.
Prince Alwaleed, 53, is the nephew if King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia. Forbes magazine ranked him this year as the 19th richest person on the planet, with a fortune in excess of $23 billion. He owns large chunks of Citigroup and News Corp., the holding company that controls Fox News.
Some might argue that it is unfair to hold an individual accountable for the friends and associates that they keep. In the case of Sen Obama, the number of questionable associates just keeps growing longer and longer, causing people to take notice, and wonder...
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson