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tv   The Kelly File  FOX News  July 25, 2014 6:00pm-7:01pm PDT

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>> again, thanks for watching us tonight. i am bill o'reilly. please always remember the spin stops right here. we're definitely looking out for you. good evening everyone. i'm megyn kelly. welcome to our "kelly file" special on bill, a man who admits to bombing this country repeatedly. the state department, the pentagon, the u.s. capital among other crimes during the 1970s. and he got away scot free. because this is america he wound up as a college professor who even helped a president launch his political career. over the years he managed to redefine himself not as a domestic terrorist but as a revolutionary, a kid who merely vandalized, not one who inspired murder. he is a man who took chances with other people's lives. and took every chance to dodge
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the tough questions until one day he agreed to come to fox news and sit down with yours truly. >> barack obama and domestic terrorist bill airs, friends. they've worked together for years. but obama tries to hide it. why? >> he was one of the most controversial figures of barack obama's 2008 presidential campaign. >> our opponent is someone who sees america as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country. >> the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when i was 8 years old somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense to me. >> a man everyone wanted to talk to, but whose silence was deafening. >> what's your relationship with
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barack obama? >> bill ayers, an unrepenting terrorist whose group bombed america over and over again. >> let's remember what you call a violent past, that was at a time when thousands of people were big murdered by our government every month. and those of us who fought to end that war were actually on the right side. >> the son of a prominent illinois businessman, ayers came of age in the 1960s, drawn to the disobedience of the day and drawn -- >> while actively engaging in the war against the imperialist. >> in 1965 at age 20 he joined the left wing students for a democratic society or sds. in late '69 they held protests in chicago, full of rage about
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the war, race relations and the wealthy. they ravaged the city's business district, six people were shot and dozens more arrested. later that year a seminole moment, black panther leader fred hampton was shot and killed by chicago police. out of that moment the group the weathermen were born. a radical spin-off of sds. the mission the violent overthrow of the united states. shortly thereafter a san francisco police station is bombed and an officer killed. police later say the weathermen did it. next comes the bombing of a new york judge's home. the group then plots to bomb a military dance, but their explosives go off too soon destroying a new york city townhouse. found buried in the rubble 60 sticks of dynamite. the fbi concludes had the explosives detonated, they would have leveled everything on both sides of the street.
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three members of the weathermen are killed in that blast including ayers girlfriend, identified by a single remaining finger. the weathermen go into hiding and change their name to the weather underground. still, the attacks continue. >> now we are everywhere. and next week families and tribes will attack the enemy around the country. we are not just attacking targets, we are bringing a pitiful helpless giant to its knees. >> soon the group takes credit for more bombings. ayers believed to be involved in at least three of them. new york city police headquarters in 1970, the bombing of the u.s. capital in '71, the bombing of the pentagon in 1972. around this time ayers falls in love with fellow weatherman leader bernadine dorn. by 1973 the u.s. involvement in vietnam is ending. but ayers and dorn don't surrender until 1980.
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they only resurfaced because they had learned the most serious charges had been dropped due to government misconduct in the investigation. an incredible stroke of luck for the pair. within a year their former weathermen comrades were at it again. this time robbing a brinx truck in a crime that left three people dead. ayers and dorn settle in chicago, enter academia and later go onto befriend barack obama, hosting a fundraiser for the then-illinois senate candidate. when their friend becomes a presidential candidate, ayers stays mostly quiet but emerges soon after the election sounding far from remorseful. >> i've been quoted again and again as saying i don't regret it, and frankly, and saying we didn't do enough and i don't think we did enough. now for the first time ever bill ayers walks into the fox news headquarters to face tough questions about his past and his future. so we have to talk about you and
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your domestic terrorist past. let's start with this, how many bombings are you responsible for? >> weather underground i think took credit for just slightly over 20 in a period when there were 20,000 bombings in the united states against the war. >> and how about you personally? >> me personally i've never talked about it, never will. >> okay. you could have hurt some people. >> absolutely. >> you acknowledge that? >> absolutely. >> you claim you never did, but you acknowledge the risks. >> there was terrible risks. and we actually did hurt, three of our own people died in the townhouse in 1970. and that was an incalculable horrible devastating loss. and what they were planning to do would have been more devastating. it's a tragedy personally to us and to me, but yeah. >> we'll get to that in a minute. that was a nail bomb they were putting together. the weather underground began in 1969 with protests over the -- >> 1970. >> okay. over the vietnam war. but it became more and more
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militant as the years past, the early '70s. in 1970 you declared a state of war against the u.s. government and urged your comrades, as you call them, to be more violent. >> there's no way to be committed to nonviolence in the middle of the most violent society that history's ever created. i'm not committed to nonviolence in any way. >> why was more violence the answer? >> you know, i don't think -- i wouldn't argue more violence was the answer, but i do think -- >> but those are your people. >> what she said is i'm not committed to nonviolence. >> but you are upping the violent rhetoric as well. >> there's no question our rhetoric was outstripped a lot of what was going on. there's no question. but here's the reality. i was arrested opposing the war in vietnam in 1965. over the next five years -- over the next three years -- five years, i was arrested many times in demonstrations and actions, sitting in at draft boards, all of it in attempt to bring a screaming warning we were killing 6,000 people a week. and when the war dragged on after 1968 when a majority of people had come to oppose the
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war largely through the efforts of people like martin luther king, the black freedom movement, that's coming home and telling the truth and the antiwar movement, those things came together. and a majority opposed the war. then the question was how do we stop it if it won't stop. and with a crisis for democracy and crisis of the antiwar movement. in my own family one of my brothers went to canada, deserted the army. and i think he's a war hero for doing that. one of my brother went to the communes, one joined the democratic party, tried to build a peace wing. >> you think bowe bergdahl is a hero too. >> if he deserted, i think that was heroic too. i did blog about that. i think throughout history we should build monuments to the unknown deserters. the people who look at the craziness they're asked to participate in and say i'm not part of this. >> i hear you now saying, those sound bites, your now wife, she wasn't then but is now, but to
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put it in context as they and you and your group are calling for more violence, what we saw in february of 1970, february 16th, was san francisco police officer brian mcdonald, a 4-year-old father of two and husband was killed when a bomb went off at his police station and eight other police officers were injured in that blast. now your wife, bernadine dorn has been accused of that crime. do you deny it? >> absolutely deny it. absolutely nothing to do with it. but if it were -- so this is one of the things that keeps recycling. >> let me tell you how it does and i'll give you the floor. larry grat wall, he claimed you visited him in buffalo in 1970 and complained that bernadine dorn had to do it herself, that bombing, because others "weren't active enough in committing violence." and the san francisco police union recently accused the weather underground of this murder. >> complete lies. and larry grat wall was in sds but never the weather underground.
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>> the precursor. >> yeah. the student movement. he was lying and the police union doesn't know what they're talking about. >> bernadine dorn was not a fan of the police and referred to them typically as pigs. >> well, that again was the inflated rhetoric at the time. yes, the black panthers did that, we did that, yes. >> i mean, that sort of rhetoric is sort of what catches people's attention when she's calling them pigs and celebrating bad things happening to the police at the same time one gets murdered. and then you allegedly went and told larry she did. >> never happened. but look, it's true that the rhetoric was inflated. it's also true you take a situation like chicago today, the police are a violent, out of control enterprise in chicago today. the shooting of unarmed people again and again. the stopping of people in the street. the endless arrests. >> do you refer to them as pigs today? >> no, i don't. we hang out with them at the coffee shop and talk to them, but we disagree. when you look at the chicago police department, which has
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been involved in torture and this is documented, been involved in torture which has freed people off of death row in the last five years because of a systematic practice of torture and forced confessions and so on. and these police officers are -- every one of them isn't guilty, but every one of them is part of the conspiracy of silence, absolutely. >> five days after that san francisco bombing that took the life of officer brian mcdonald, the weather underground bombed john murtoug's home. >> that's also not true. >> that's not true? he was a judge, a trial court judge in new york state who was hearing a case involving the panther 21. and your group objected to the way he was handling that case. and you came out -- >> supporting the panther 21, there's no question. >> that's right. and then his home got fire bombed in the middle of the night. he had a young 9-year-old boy in there who has been public about this bombing. in this book with bernadine, you say as follows, i'm quoting now, two weeks before the townhouse explosion -- which is a dimpt
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bomb, four members of this group fire bombed as an action to support the panther 21 whose trial was just beginning. to many people this is a very good action. within that group the feeling developed that because this action had not done anything to hurt the pigs' materially it wasn't very important. >> i didn't write that. >> it's in your book. >> which book? >> it's your book with bernadine. it's from one of your communiques. >> it's not my communique. >> it's your wife. >> no, i think it was -- >> no, it's your wife. not only that a former weather underground kathy wilkinson further offered her own rusation of what happened and she claimed while the weather underground was in it perpetrated that crime. >> she may have claimed it, but that's not true to my knowledge. >> she wasn't telling the truth either? >> i don't think so. >> john also believes you, the weather underground, perpetrated that crime a number of times.
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i want to give you a chance to respond. your 9-year-old little boy asleep in your bed, and what happens? >> actually, early in the morning on washington's birthday four bombs went off. two in the front of the house. there were two in the front that went off, there were bombs placed under the gas tank of our car, in the back of the house. the first two went off. notion that bill ayers and weather underground were about property damage, make it sound like they were egging cars, that's absurd. as far as i'm concerned every one of them have blood dripping from their hands. >> not true. it was always property damage in our activities. always. and so it's just not true. >> do you deny that terry robins was responsible for that bombing? >> i have no idea if he was. >> you were very close. >> we were very close. i have no idea that he was, but i don't think he was. he's gone -- >> he's one of the guys who blew himself up. >> that's exactly right. one of the things i think is interesting about these activities of 40 years ago, i
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don't think it's bad to kind of stir through them and try to understand them. >> you've written about them extensively in your book. >> absolutely. i don't think there's anything wrong with that, but i think it would be fair and balanced to also look at the violence that was and is going on perpetrated by the government, by the official agencies and organs of the government. >> let me tell you what i hear when i hear that. i hear you saying you sound like, with respect, osama bin laden. >> what? >> in order to evaluate my actions, which have hurt a lot of people -- i know you deny it, but there's evidence that the weather underground was involved in these situations. >> but when john says there's blood on your hands, what blood is he talking about? is he talking about his father? >> he's talking about the san francisco police officer, the three weather underground individuals who were killed. >> right, but we had nothing to do with san francisco. >> that's what you claim. but there of course is evidence to the contrary. >> if there's evidence to the contrary, why isn't somebody brought to trial? >> he's talking about the armored car incident. >> we were already aboveground. >> we'll get to that in a minute.
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there is evidence of it. and there was a former member of the weather underground who came out and said this is murder. what you guys got to the point where you considered murder. and you acknowledge that yourself. it got to the point where this property damage wasn't good enough for you. still ahead, ayers reacts to evidence that the weather underground went way beyond vandalism. including accusations from former members of his own group. watch how that goes next.
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back now to my exclusive interview with bill ayers, the man behind one of the most violent radical groups of the 1970s. and his reaction to the evidence that despite his claims his group went way beyond vandalism. you guys got to the point where you considered murder. you acknowledge that yourself. it got to the point where this property damage wasn't good enough for you. and you decided on mass murder planning to bomb a military dance. >> terry had decided it had to go further. and thank goodness it didn't. which i also said at the same moment. >> you understand, professor,
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that what began for your group as outrage over mass killings then turned into a plan to kill hundreds of americans? did you not see the moral high ground? >> absolutely. but that was true for few people. and it's one of the things we split on. so i write about it extensively in "fugitive days." you should read it. it's an extensive explanation. and i don't defend it. >> as i hear you sitting, you don't sound remorseful. >> you want me to be remorseful for something i didn't do rather than the things i did do. >> this is your group, professor ayers. >> no, that's not true. >> yes, it is true. this is the weather underground that was going to bomb military officers. >> we criticized it then and now. and we said it's wrong. it was wrong. it is wrong. >> professor, the only reason it didn't happen is because the bomb blew up on those who were making it. and when it blew up, your girlfriend was killed. >> that's right. >> and you later described her death as valiant. >> well, i later described imaginary -- nobody knows what
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happened, but what i imagined in "fugitive days" is her trying to stop that horrendous event from tame e taking place. so that's how i describe it. i don't say she was valiant. i don't say that. >> you describe her death as valiant. >> no, i talk about her trying to stop what would have been a horrendous thing. >> that's your imagination. how do you know she was against that bomb? >> i don't know. >> she was in the townhouse when it exploded. >> that's exactly right. no one knows. you don't know. john murtaw doesn't know. we were destroying property. and in the course of discussion some people thought we should go much further. but we didn't. >> your critics say when you make that argument you sound like adolf hitler. >> you want to talk about who's in that grand tradition of destroying thousands, millions of people, it's the american war in vietnam. where john mccain was in fact dropping bombs from the air on civilians. and he did it consistently. >> and when the weather underground went into a
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townhouse and put together a bomb with nails in it -- >> terrible thing. >> -- and allegedly killed a police officer. >> no. >> and bombed the home of a federal judge with a 9-year-old boy in his bed. >> we didn't kill a police officer. >> deny, but there's evidence to the contrary. >> if there were evidence to the contrary, why isn't somebody on trial? >> doesn't mean they can prove it without a reasonable doubt. >> but the san francisco police department says you did it. >> and john is also not true. but he has his opinion. but nobody was hurt or killed. the townhouse, as i said, was a terrible, terrible deviation. >> on a communique issued by the weather underground claims credit for the home bombing. >> meanwhile 6,000 people a week are being murdered. >> you madepoint. what about the ends justify the means. >> is that not the slippery slope -- >> the end doesn't justify the means. >> it absolutely not, unless you say the united states is saying the ends justify the meeps,
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which they often do say. >> you got to the point where your group had to go underground after the townhouse bombing. >> we decided to go understood ground. we didn't have to. >> while underground you stole, you lied, you hid, right? any disagreement? you stole. >> yes. >> you did. you wrote about it in your book. >> we stole ids. >> you stole purses, you stole wallets. you stole money. >> some. >> you ripped off dead babies identities. >> right. >> and yet the violence continued. just because you went underground doesn't mean the violence stopped. >> what violence? >> you bombed the -- let me list it. march 1st, 1971, you bomb the u.s. capital. may 19th, 1972 you bombed the pentagon. january 29, 1975, you bombed the state department. that's what i mean by violence. >> yeah, that's actually destruction of property. so you could call it violence, but to equate it to the murder of human beings is nonsense. >> you realize people could have been hurt.
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>> i said people could have been hurt and thank god they weren't. and we made every attempt not to. and they weren't. >> but you appreciate the recklessness of that. who are you to potentially invade the lives of those individuals who may have been in or around this building? >> i don't say it wasn't reckless and i don't say it wasn't illegal. >> it's not about legality. >>. you could have murdered somebody with those bombs. >> and we didn't. actually, the people who were conducting the war in vietnam did actually murder people. >> so the answer is to then make yourself a murderer as well? >> to the ends of the fight against communism justify those mean sns. >> you're answering a question with a question. >> i am. you account for your reporting. >> this is all from your book, sir. >> yeah, i know, but you talk about lies. nothing's more clear than the systematic lying of the american government to get us into war after war after war. >> you keep dodging. >> i'm not dodging. i'm pointing to the real criminals. >> and not taking accountability. >> i've said again and again and
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i've said it in print, what i'm responsible for, what i'm not responsible for. but it's hard to get me to admit that i'm responsible for something i didn't do. >> well, you did these bombings. the weather underground, you admitted the weather underground did 20 bombings. that's your group. >> and i would not apologize for destroying property in defense of stopping 6,000 people. >> and this crosses over to somebody being injured, you deny. >> no, i think that would have been a real problem. >> next, what happened wen ayers and his wife, bernadine dohrn resurfaced? plus, their plan to defeat the american empire. factors like dn negatively impact good bacteria?
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welcome back to our "kelly file" special. bill ayers, the founder of the radical weather underground admits his group bombed 20 targets including the pentagon, u.s. capital and the state department. all he says to protest the vietnam war. and other left wing causes of the '70s. in order to face the consequences of their actions, ayers and dohrn went underground in 1970 and didn't resurface for ten years. in 1980 you and bernadine dohrn resurfaced. when she turned herself in, bernadine promised to spend her
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energy to defeat the american empire. you say you had resolved by that point not to hurt anybody, but your comrades -- but your comrades did not apparently get the let's be more peaceful memo. i say this because kathy wilkerson, she was with you, correct? >> she was with us. >> she wrote after the fact the process by which weather leaders changed of glorifying violence in january 1970 to moderation wassin visible to almost all weather members. certainly the assumption of building a clandestine fighting force was full steam ahead. if ayers says things were different in the west, most participants did not know this. what did you do to communicate to the people in your group no more violence? >> i don't agree with kathy. so i don't know what to say about it. i mean, we were a loose organization. we were not a disciplined organization. but we changed dramatically in 1970, there's no question. you can read the communique and understand. >> i read the communique, which
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said you bombed the murtagh house. >> well, there are many communiques including after the townhouse explaining the change of direction. >> at the townhouse it said you bombed the murtagh which now you are denying on this set. do you take responsibility for riling people up with your incendiary rhetoric and then setting them upon the american public with a commitment to violence? >> no, no, no. we did not set ourselves upon the american public. where did we set ourselves upon the american public? >> you were calling for more violence. you were riling people up. kathy wilkerson is talking about if there was some decision to get more peaceful, it was not communicated to the troops. you were the leadership. >> no, riling up -- the people who riled up the response that they got over the five years in the early 1970s was the government itself riling us up. >> it wasn't bill ayers? >> no, i absolutely thought we should do more. we should be more effective. >> and that meant more violence. >> it didn't always mean more
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violence. >> but it did sometimes. >> no. you're using violence in a con flated way. >> you want these 20-year-olds to understand the nuance principles of militancy, i didn't mean -- i want to bomb property but i don't want to kill people and i can trust all these people to follow my edicts. >> throughout the left at that time the catholic left, the -- people were destroying property again and again and again. >> once again you put blame to somebody else. i'm talking to you about you. >> i know. >> when other people do bad things, we hold them accountable. >> i understand. >> today i have you at the table. >> i understand. and i'm saying we should have done more to stop that genocide dal war and that included bombing more properties. >> my question about what you did to tamp down the violence is we should have done more to amp it up. >> we should have done more to stop the war. and that means being more effective on every level including more draft boards, destroying more draft files, hammering nuclear warheads,
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which we did all of that. >> i feel the audience now has a feeling for where you were at this point in your mind. >> right. >> this is when you've resurfaced from being underground. and within a year of that, october 20th, 1981, was a triple homicide. david gilbert of the weather underground, kathy bodine and jude judy clark partnered with the black -- army. they killed two cops along with a security guard. you were very close with gilbert and bodine. >> still am. >> i know it. kathy learned that some of her very criminal tactics while she was with the weather underground. she was in the townhouse when that bomb went off. >> that's true. >> you adopted her child because she and her husband were going to jail. he's still in jail. >> biological father, that's right. >> she got out after 20 years because she pleaded guilty. no question she did it. >> she pled guilty, absolutely. and she paid the price for that. and it was a terrible, dreadful,
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miscalibrated, horrible action and they paid the price. >> so you don't see her as valiant too? >> she's a wonderful person, but no. >> what they did had anything to do with what they learned or heard while in the weather underground? >> absolutely not. >> you had nothing to do with. >> absolutely not. what we did have to do with adopting their son and raising him to the wonderful person he is today. that was part of what we did, yeah. >> and your wife, bernadine dohrn was asked to cooperate in that investigation. >> that's right. >> she refused. >> absolutely. >> she spent seven months in jail because she refused to help the police in their investigation. >> she refused to speak to a grand jury. that's quite different. >> why would she do that? >> because the grand jury is the star chamber that takes you behind closed doors without the benefit of a lawyer and asks you to speak to -- now wait. if they pulled you in and said, megyn, we're going to talk to you about a bunch of stuff, bill oert mainly, if you don't have
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anything to hide -- >> i would say two cops are dead and so is a security guard and i will help the government whoever did it put them behind bars. >> that's not what they said. they said we're not going to show you the evidence. we're not going to say whether you're a target of this. all we're going to do is ask you a bunch of questions. >> nine children lost their father that day. >> i agree with you. >> why didn't your wife help? >> i agree with you. i think it was a terrible, terrible crime. that's not what we're disagreeing about. grand juries are a terrible overreach of the u.s. government. terrible. and they should be resisted. and everybody who thinks about it has resisted them. i mean, they were used against monica lewinsky, against many, many people. >> they are part of the justice system. >> they should be resisted. >> the question is whether your wife felt she did in 1970 when she seemed perfectly fine with murder. she said about the charles manson murders of a pregnant woman and six others, "offing those rich pigs with their own forks and knives and eating a meal in the same room, far out.
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the weathermen dig charles manson." this is your sweetheart? this is your soul mate? >> this is nonsense. this is something again that gets recirculated. >> you deny she said that? >> absolutely. what she said is american culture is so obsessed with the craziness and still goes on today. >> that's not how "new york times" reported it. did they lie too? >> the "new york times"? they lie daily. are you kidding? don't they, dennis? thank you. >> communique lied, there's a long list of people who have told terrible lies about the weather understoground. >> i'm completely candid about the weather underground. you can read about it in any of my books. you certainly don't believe that "new york times" gets things right every time. >> even kath think add milted about how much the weather underground dig him. >> that's not true. what she said was here we are in a genocide war here we are murdering black panthers and what is the news media focused on? this crazy guy who stuck a fork
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in somebody and she was mocking it. and it was reported as if she was supporting him. she doesn't support him. it doesn't matter if there's an endless echo chamber that you help perpetuate. >> is it true that the weather underground had a serious discussion before it went underground about whether they should kill all white babies as a university of arizona professor claims. here he is. >> no. >> i remember going to the last aboveground weather -- it was the weather men or the weather underground, the last aboveground convention. and sitting in a room and the question that was debated was, was it or was it not the duty of every good revolutionary to kill all newborn white babies? >> because they would ultimately join the revolution. >> it's absolutely nuts. there's no truth to it. and so it's hard to kind of have a conversation with you --
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>> i'm just asking. i don't know whether that man's telling the truth or not. >> no truth to it. >> okay. when you became a parent, did it soften you at all to the reality of what you had done, potentially endangering other people's parents and children? >> it was the best thing that ever happened to me becoming a parent. did it soften me, i don't know what that means. but, you know, it's the best thing i've ever done is to raise three remarkable young men. >> so the big question still, how close was ayers to barack obama? have they spoken since mr. obama became president and bill ayers was in the headlines? and would bill ayers bomb america today? that's next. ♪ [ cat meows ] ♪ ♪ da-da-da-da-da, bum-da, bum-da ♪ ♪ bum-da, bum-da ♪ the animals went in two by two ♪ ♪ the sheep and the frog and the kangaroo ♪ ♪ and they all went marching, marching in two by two ♪ ♪
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ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain; it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach, and abnormal vision. to avoid long- term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. this is the age of taking action. viagra. talk to you doctor. welcome back. as we said at the beginning, bill ayers was able to reinvent himself landing a prestigious college job and ultimately helping launch the political career of our current president.
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here's that part of our interview. ultimately you wound up in chicago, you got a job teaching with the university of illinois. do you see any irony in accepting a government paycheck and winding up -- >> absolutely not. what's the irony? >> the government regime, wanting to throw down the government as you put it. >> look, we all live in the actual world. so even the things we're critical of, this is the world we live in. should i not make a living? i mean, i'm asking you, seriously? >> no, it's fine. your wife miraculously got a job teaching law -- or teaching at northwestern. >> very successfully. >> amazing. they must be offering classes in what you can learn from your future clients. but are you surprised you got those job offers, you and she? >> not really. >> she was on the fbi's ten most wanted list. >> i know. so was angela davis. you know, a lot of great people have been on that list. angela davis is also a professor. but the great thing -- no, the thing is i got my doctorate when i was 43 years old.
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i interviewed at several universities. the best offer i got was university of illinois, i took it. we moved to chicago, we had three kids. she started a center for children and families and eventually northwestern law school wanted to be a port of it. >> many members of weather underground are in academia. president obama, how much ideology do you share? >> zero. today, i wish i knew him much better and wish he'd listen to me. >> did he evercontact you once you became the story in his presidential race? >> absolutely not. and i did not contact him. though i wish i were because i have a lot of advice for him. >> you want him to go further to the left? >> oh. i want him to stop droning people. i want him to close guantanamo. i want universal health care. don't you think we deserve universal health care? seriously. medicare for all. >> you say in your book that you can't quite imagine putting a bomb in a building today, but
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you can't imagine entirely dismissing that possibility either. what would it take to make you bomb this country again? >> well, you know, you're taking that sentence in a funny way. but what i'm saying is it seems so long ago. what i'm saying in that passage is it seems so long ago and so far away, like another world. on the other hand as violent and nuts as we can be as a country, i can't completely say no, i would never, ever rise up in opposition in a very militant and serious way. i can't say i wouldn't. i doubt it. i'm 70 years old. it's unlikely. but i think that i wanted to say there exactly what bernadine said on tape, which is, no, i'm not committed to nonviolence as an ideology. frankly, neither are you. because we live in the most violent society around. and we commit war crimes day in and day out. and often as a matter of policy. and yet that seems perfectly fine with you. >> bill ayers, thank you for being here. >> thank you, megyn. up next, the final part of
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my exclusive sit-down with bill ayers as the professor and conservative filmmaker debate american exceptionalism. [ female announcer ] we help make secure financial tomorrows a reality for over 19 million people. [ alex ] transamerica helped provide a lifetime of retirement income. so i can focus on what matters most. [ female announcer ] everyone has a moment when tomorrow becomes real. transamerica.
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we met bill ayers when he agreed to join filmmaker right here on our set for a special about d' souza's new film about america. here is part of their debate on american exceptionalism. why do you think it is so few liberals say they're proud to be american? >> i have no idea. >> are you? >> i'm not a liberal, if that's what you mean. >> are you proud to be an american? >> i'm not proud to be an american. and i don't buy the american exceptionalism at all. the reason why i'm not proud is because of the damage we do around the world is so serious and so ongoing. so if you look anywhere in the world, look all through latin america, ordinary people on the street admire cuba for one reason, they stood up to america. they stood up to, you know, kind of imperial advances. >> we've stood up to people too, germany. >> i understand. and that was us at our best. and after 9/11 --
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>> why don't you think about the good when you think about what america is? >> i do often think about the good. but i wouldn't call myself an american exceptionalist and i would challenge that in anybody because i'm a human being. i believe we should be struggling with the question what does it mean to be human in the 21st century. what is it that's required of us? we are all human. america is 5% of the world's population. we should be -- we should think of ourselves as a people among people. not as an exceptional people. because as soon as you start saying american exceptionalism, then you say actions that are done by us versus other people are different depending on who does them. >> this is not an unusual attitude. >> exceptionalism doesn't mean a different moral standard applies. by and large foreigners who come to america are going all the way back to tokeville, i've grown up in a different culture, i know america's exceptional because i see things in america that you wouldn't see anywhere else in the world. right now if you took the power america has of the world's sole
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super power and gave it to russia or china, they would use it far more expansively, more brutally and more to gain themselves. america's benign in the way it exercises its power. the american idea of wealth creation is being embraced in india, in china, all over the world. it's lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. so ironically this american formula that we are moving away from at home under obama is being enthusiastically embraced all around the world. >> we're benign in iraq, for example. you say we use our power benevolently in iraq, for example. those are benign uses -- >> we went into afghanistan because the taliban supplied monkey bars to the guys from 9/11 who attacked us directly. >> why didn't we go and get the guys who attacked us directly instead of overthrowing -- >> because the moment we got -- >> which is incidentally the entire history of the last 50 years of american foreign policy is we go in under the guise of being beneficent and benign and
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under the lies of one president after another. and then we get booted out. and what did we do? we blame the brown guy. so it's al malaki. >> you think we're blaming al malaki because he's brown? >> i think we always blame our clients. that's what i'm saying. >> that's a generalization. do you think we're blaming al malaki for the mess in iraq because he's brown? >> i think we blame our clients and our clients happen to be brown. so i hope al malaki's -- got a bullet in the head from kennedy. we hadn't failed, we were perfect. the same is true -- >> america has made mistakes, have made mistakes in vietnam. i think the iraq war in retrospect -- hold on a minute. in retrospect the iraq war was a mistake. but there's a difference between making a mistake and doing something that's inherently wicked. anyone else who went into iraq and did this would have reimbursed itself by taking the
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iraqi oil. instead we've spent all this money in iraq and then we turn over the keys of the oil fields to iraqis, it's your oil, sell it, burn it. and iraq costs us money. imperialists typically go abroad to make money. >> no. you're saying iraq is using it the way it sees fit and shell and mobil has nothing to do with it. unbalanced people like halliburton made gazillions of money -- >> but that's not responsible. >> america on balance lost. >> okay. let me ask you this. at the end of the cold war all of eastern europe is free, russia now no longer has a communist government. are all those countries better off or worse off because we won the cold war? >> i don't think we won the cold war. i think you're dreaming about that. >> is it a good thing? >> well, i think the end of authoritarian governments is always a good thing. but i also think that this
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notion that somehow we go out in our beneficence spend a trillion dollars a year on military budget, have 150 military bases, those are not for beneficent purposes. >> for the rest of that debate go to facebook.com/thekellyfile. like the page, leave a comment to tell us what you think. and we will be right back. ♪ don't miss a step... ♪ nothing's missed with tenatwist ♪ ♪ don't miss a beat... ♪ nothing's missed with tenatwist ♪ ♪ oooh discover the fearless protection of tena. so absorbent even when you twist not a drop escapes. ♪ nothing's missed with tenatwist ♪ that's keeping you from the healthcare you deserve..
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i got to be pretty good at managing my symptoms, except that managing my symptoms was all i was doing. when i finally told my doctor, he said my crohn's was not under control. he said humira is for adults like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn's disease. and that in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection.
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if you're still just managing your symptoms, ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. we'd love to know what you think of our exchange with ayers. was he just a 1970s radical trying to do good by calling attention to what many believed was a controversial war in vietnam? or does this man belong in jail? and what about his wife, bernadine dohrn? does she have blood on her hands? and what is she doing at northwestern law school? go to facebook.com/thekellyfile. fol le me on twitter. let me know what you think. thanks for watching everybody.
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i'm megyn kelly and this is a "kelly file" special on weather understood ground co-founder bill ayers. welcome to "hannity" this is a fox news alert. there's new evidence that russia is firing artillery across its border into ukraine. i'm eric boeing in tonight for sean. according to u.s. officials russia in a clear escalation is now aiming directly at ukrainian military targets. for the very latest we turn to fox's own steve harrigan on the ground in ukraine. >> reporter: we can hear steady firing on the outskirts. any idea, any prediction that the russians would pullback after there could be a cease-fire after the downing of the civilian jetliner were wrong. we've seen an intervention, direct intervention of forces from i