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CHICAGO - Vietnam-era radical Bill Ayers said Friday he doesn't know President-elect Barack Obama any better than "thousands of other Chicagoans" and that the two never talked about Ayers' anti-war activities.
In a television interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," the college professor disputed the contention that in the new afterword of a paperback edition of his 2001 memoir "Fugitive Days," he describes himself and Obama as "family friends."
"I'm describing there how the blogosphere characterized the relationship," Ayers said. "I would really say that we knew each other in a professional way, again on the same level as say thousands of other people."
Ayers, an education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, helped found the radical group the Weathermen that carried out bombings at the Pentagon and the Capitol.
During this year's presidential campaign, Republican John McCain's camp accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists" because of his past connections to Ayers. In addition to a meet-the-candidate event Ayers hosted more than a dozen years ago when Obama was starting his political career, Ayers and Obama served on a Chicago school reform group and a foundation board.
In fact, Ayers said he didn't even know Obama when he hosted the event at his home in the Chicago neighborhood where the two live. Ayers added that he agreed to have the meet-the-candidate event after a state senator asked him to.
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