My Confession of Terrorist Ties

by Rich Eggleston
October 6, 2008

Fellow Fitchburgers:

Well, given the conduct of the McCain-Palin campaign, I guess it's time to confess my ties to domestic terrorism before they run an ad about me, or worse yet, hustle me off to Guantanamo Bay and throw away the key.

My ties to former Weatherman radical Bill Ayers are almost as strong as presidential candidate Barack Obama's.

It turns out my father, Bill Eggleston, worked for many years for Ayers' father, Thomas G. Ayers, who was CEO of Commonwealth Edison, the power company in Chicago. They didn't work closely together, but undoubtedly greeted each other in the elevators in the Edison Building at 72 W. Adams St. in Chicago's Loop. They may even have talked about their children, who were nearly the same age.

At the time, of course, no one could have known that Bill Ayers would grow up to marry Bernardine Dorn and join the radical movement, and later become Barack Obama's neighbor and an advocate for public education, a dangerous radical concept. Worse yet, Bill Ayers is now a professor at the University of Chicago, a dangerous radical institution.

During the 1960s, I admit that I had dangerous radical thoughts. I thought the war in Vietnam was wrong and the guy in the White House was a dangerous criminal. To this day, I'm a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was never convicted of anything, though.

Neither was Bill Ayers, though he was charged. I don't know what evidence the feds had against him, but I know it was obtained through illegal wiretapping, because that's why the charges were thrown out. This was long before Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, and illegal wiretapping became legal.

Like Bill Ayers, I've been rehabilitated by the passage of time. As the Phil Ochs song proclaimed, "I believe in God and Senator Dodd and keepin' ol' Castro down." Bill Ayers may feel the same.

But by the standards of attack politics, he is still fair game. A campaign that has seen attacks on Barack Obama because of statements by his former minister can surely stoop low enough as to attack a man based on who lives in his neighborhood.

I wonder who lives in John McCain's neighborhood. Or, rather, his seven neighborhoods.

Rich