The lie about Obama's airlift

[mkultra]

Here is the truth on the airlifts from the mboya website.


http://www.tommboya.com/detail.asp?id=9


likes like the hillfolk are the ones doing the lying again.

[mkultra]

1. Heres a snip from the Mboya website

Straight from the horses mouth.

On July 26 when Tom Mboya of Kenya visited Senator Kennedy at Hyannis Port, the State Department, despite intervention by Mr. Nixon, had with finality turned down a request to provide an airlift for over 200 African students who had received U.S. scholarships.
Senator Kennedy arranged for the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation, established in the memory of his brother who was killed in World War II, to finance the airlift when other foundations were not prepared to do so. In order to keep this project out of politics, it was provided that no public announcement be made of the grant.


After the Kennedy Foundation had decided to provide the money and just before the meeting was held to make final plans, Mr. James Shepley of Mr. Nixon's office, learning of the Kennedy Foundation action and intervening with the State Department on behalf of Mr. Nixon, achieved - in a matter of hours over one weekend and one Monday morning - a reversal of the State Department's long-established negative position. Mr. Shepley's role in this has now been confirmed by the State Department's answer to Senator Fulbright.
The African-American Students Foundation, weighing the Kennedy Foundation's interest in the whole project, the value of non-governmental financing, and the Government's general hostility to the project but for Mr. Shepley's last-minute efforts, decided not to reject the private foundation grant which had already been made. It urged the State Department to use the newly allotted funds to expand its own African scholarship program.


The next day, after Mr. Shepley and the State Department had been informed of the decision to go ahead with the Kennedy Foundation grant, Senator Scott, a member of Mr. Nixon's campaign board of strategy and of the Republican "truth squad," announced and hailed the State Department grant, making no mention of the prior Kennedy Foundation action. Then the following day Senator Scott alleged that since his announcement the Kennedy Foundation had "outbid" the U.S. Government and "attempted to pluck this project away from the U.S. Government" for "blatant political purposes."


Even after the facts had been disclosed by Senator Kennedy and the African-American Students Foundation, and were acknowledged by Mr. Nixon's office and by the State Department, Senator Scott went on nationwide TV to repeat and compound his wholly false charges.
The following memorandum gives a chronological account of the facts in detail. The key facts are supported by the accompanying documents.

[Mezzo]

2. Yeah...looks like Bill Burton is apologizing for something that was really twue again!!11!!!

riiiiiiiight. But whatever it takes to get you through the day.

[mkultra]

3. the Mboya website is far more credible than some hack

Youve been suckered.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Looks like they owe an apology to Obama supporters.

... and Professor Obama himself.

[ampad]

5. Hillary and some of her supporters are so pathetic

Please people, Hillary got caught in a lie about being shot at not once but on 4 separate occasions. You can try to cover it up with silly shit all day long but it doesn't change the fact that her lie is now legendary. People will be talking about the Hillary sniper stories for years to come.

[Maribelle]

6. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but your link does not even mention 1959.

No one is denying there was an airlift in 1960, funded by the Kennedy Foundation.

But the problem is that Obama's father came in 1959 not 1960.

[stillcool]

7. So he arrived

with this airlift...

Back to Africa Again

The airlift which brought my father--Philip Ochieng--and Barack Obama, Sr. to America is back in the news again. Originally discussed this time last year after Obama, Jr.'s Selma speech--which saw the senator curiously attribute some of the events surrounding his 1961 birth to the 1964 Selma march—Obama asserted that the airlift in question was due to the efforts of John F. Kennedy. Observers threw the BS flag on that as well since Obama had already been conceived by the time JFK was sworn in as POTUS.
However, when I found out that my father had been on the same plane as Obama Senior, I did some digging and discovered that JFK had indeed been responsible for an airlift of students from Kenya before he became president. An op-ed written by my father in 2004 seemed to confirm this.

Like Obama Senior, I too went to the US on the famous Tom Mboya Airlift of 1959 . I first met Obama Senior in Tom Mboya's Nairobi office . Obama and I met up again on returning to Nairobi and remained drinking buddies for many years.

Note that my father calls the trip the ‘Tom Mboya Airlift.’ However, the 1960 article in TIME magazine calls it the ‘Kennedy Airlift.’ At first I chalked the difference up to cultural pride--of course, each nation would want to give their countryman the credit. After that, it seemed that the bit of history was settled. (Obama was on his own as far as the Selma issue went, however.)

Then, last week, I received an email from a gentleman named Gregory Gelembiuk who provided yet more info about the airlift. Mr. Gelembiuk contended that Senator Obama was deliberately lying about the Kennedy connection because the Ivy-educated senator was more used to doing in-depth research than I am, because he has access to more information than I do and because the senator has a history of, shall we say, selective recall. All are true but I was merely going by what my father had said.

http://www.luoamerican.com/baldilocks/2008/03/the-airlift-whi.html

In 1959 Mboya coordinated an “airlift” of 81 Kenyan students to the United States to attend college, and shortly after attending the “Africa Freedom Dinner,” Mboya wrote King requesting financial assistance for a Kenyan student who was to enter Tuskegee Institute in the fall. In an 8 November 1959 letter to the New York Times Mboya explained: “Nothing constitutes a greater contribution to the struggle against poverty, disease and political subjection in Africa more than the contribution made towards our peoples’ educational advancement.” With the help of the African American Students Foundation and its sponsors, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Robinson, and Sidney Poitier, Mboya raised sufficient funds to cover the students’ travel expenses.

Believing that Africans and African Americans shared “a common struggle” against colonialism and segregation King took an active interest in the education of African students. He encouraged college presidents in the United States to expand financial aid options available to Africans. He arranged for the Montgomery Improvement Association and other Montgomery organizations to fund five Kenyan students to study at American universities and pledged the SCLC and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to fund the living expenses for Kenyan student, Nicholas Raballa, who was admitted to Tuskegee Institute.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/about_king/encyclopedia/mboya_thomas_joseph.html

[mkultra]

8. it discusses the first airlift

[Texas Hill Country]

9. The kennedys did not get involved and fund it till the year AFTER obama sr

[mkultra]

10. not according to mboya

[Random Lee]

11. My garndmother lies too!

Overheard from Obama upon being asked about the incident.