By Diana West

Published: Friday, October 12, 2012, 9:00 p.m.
Updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2013

I tweeted recently about shocking news in The Daily Caller that Attorney General Eric Holder, as a Columbia University student and leader of the Student Afro-American Society (SAS), participated in the armed takeover of a vacant campus ROTC office. The takeover lasted five days in the spring of 1970. The online news site added: “Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and, if so, with what sort of weapon.”

Holder, himself, has acknowledged participating in a separate takeover of a college dean's office until SAS demands were met — for starters, transformation of the ROTC office into the Malcolm X Lounge. The Columbia Daily Spectator of April 23, 1970, published the group's reasons, including: “Columbia's general contempt toward the beliefs of Black students,” “Columbia's lack of concern for the welfare of Black people,” “the general racist nature of the American society” and “the right of Black self-determination.”

That same semester, Holder's Afro-American student group also had declared its “full support of the Black Panther Party as a vanguard organization for the liberation” of black people, the Columbia paper reported on March 12, 1970. Earlier, New York City police had arrested 21 Black Panther Party members, charging them with plotting to bomb various New York establishments, including a department store and a police station. The SAS, other campus revolutionary groups and leftist professors were quick to sponsor “teach-ins” and raise bail for the “Black Panther 21.”

So about that tweet of mine: “Holder's radical past comes out. Jaw-dropping. Even lawless campus thuggery no bar to becoming AG. Then, seven delayed-reaction minutes later, it dawned: “Oh, I forgot — we already have an old Panther supporter as SecState!”

Sure enough, back in the spring of 1970, while Eric Holder was occupying buildings and supporting Black Panthers in New York City, Hillary Rodham was actively monitoring and supporting the defense of eight Black Panthers accused of murder and torture in New Haven. Quite a nexus of revolutionaries, the Obama Cabinet.

Anyone else from the barricades? Too old for the New Left, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta nonetheless has leftist credentials, including a long-term association with Hugh De Lacy, a Communist Party member and contact of notorious communist agents. As a U.S. representative, Panetta wanted most-favored-nation status for the USSR and the Eastern bloc, and he opposed Ronald Reagan's anti-Sandinista policy.

Have these top Obama administration leaders at Justice, State and the Pentagon ever disavowed or even explained their affinities for violent revolutionaries and sworn enemies of the Constitution? Have they ever been asked? No.

A radical left message lives and beats at the heart of the Obama administration. It makes me wonder: Will these chickens ever come home to roost?

Diana West is the author of “The Death of the Grown-up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization” and blogs at dianawest.net.

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