Two weeks ago Cliff Kincaid, president of the conservative group America’s Survival Inc., called a press conference in Washington to challenge the mainstream media to look into the hard-core left-wingers who are known to have influenced Barack Obama -- first as a teenager in Hawaii and later in Chicago. Specifically, Kincaid’s group wants a major news organization to follow up on the investigative work it has done that documents that an elderly black man who mentored Sen. Obama in Hawaii was a lifelong member of the Communist Party USA. Kincaid also would like to see a serious journalistic vetting of Sen. Obama’s relationship with the left-wing radicals in Chicago -- Bill Ayers and others -- who helped Obama launch his political career. I called Kincaid -- whose challenge to the media has yet to be accepted -- on Wednesday, June 4, at his home in southern Maryland.

Q: Can you briefly sum up what you have discovered about Obama’s ideological influences that you say need to be checked out by Big Media?

A: We think all the major candidates should be examined for their ties to foreign and hostile elements. In the case of Obama, he has gotten a very, very favorable press. The media seem reluctant to dig into his background, even though he is relatively new on the political scene. What we discovered, in two different places -- first in Hawaii, where he went to high school, and in Chicago, where he started his political career -- is that he is right in the middle of communist networks. In Hawaii, he was mentored by a member of the Communist Party by the name of Frank Marshall Davis. In Chicago, his career was launched and he was close friends with a number of communists and socialists.

Q: What specifically did your investigation find out about Davis, who Obama calls only “Frank” in his memoir “Dreams from My Father”?

A: What was very disturbing to us was the fact that Barack Obama had covered up the true identity of this “Frank” who played such a role in his life just before he went off to college (in the late 1970s). There are several references in his book to this “Frank.” We discovered that “Frank” was indeed Frank Marshall Davis, who was a member of a Soviet-sponsored communist network on the island of Hawaii. We think Obama should be asked to explain why he didn’t reveal Frank’s true identity in his book. We looked into this and had confirmed by several sources that Frank was indeed Frank Marshall Davis, and that he had a considerable influence on Obama. But we cannot really get a rational explanation of why Obama would cover up the identity of this Stalinist agent.

Q: How do you know for sure Davis was a member of the Communist Party USA?

A: We have several different sources confirming that Frank Marshall Davis was a Communist Party member. We have congressional hearings and investigations. Plus we have those who have written about Davis, including John Edgar Tidwell, who wrote a whole book -- a sympathetic book -- about Davis but discussed his membership in the Communist Party. Davis of course was asked about this when he was called before a Senate committee, but he took the Fifth Amendment rather than discuss it openly. There’s no question that he was a key member of this Moscow-sponsored communist network in Hawaii.

Q: What was the most subversive or most dangerous-to-America thing Davis ever did?

A: Davis was an unrepentant communist. He stayed with the Communist Party even after the Hitler-Stalin pact. That’s why I refer to him as “a Stalinist agent.” Other prominent black Americans who had gotten into the Communist Party had left it. For example, Langston Hughes and Richard Wright got involved in communist activities but then broke with the Communist Party because it had become an apologist for some horrible crimes not only committed by Stalin but by the Soviet system. Yet Frank Marshall Davis stayed with the party and wrote some infamous poems not only defending the Soviet Union but attacking the United States.

Q: Is there anything to lead you to believe that Davis made a concerted effort to indoctrinate Obama?

A: What we know is that Barack Obama’s grandfather introduced Obama to Frank Marshall Davis because Barack Obama needed someone to look up to. Remember, this was a time when Barack Obama’s black father had abandoned his family. Barack Obama’s grandfather thought that Davis would fulfill the role of male role model and mentor -- and that’s the role that he played.

Q: When Barack Obama got to Chicago he came into contact with '60s radicals William Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn. What is most worrisome about their possible influence on Obama?

A: It really begins even before Obama gets to Chicago because according to his book, when he goes to college -- first Occidental College and later Columbia University -- he picks among his friends Marxist professors. Obama himself admits this. He also admits attending socialist conferences. That would suggest the influence that Davis had on Obama extended into his college and university years.

Now when he gets to Chicago, we find that once again he gravitates and comes into the company of the most extreme anti-American elements, including socialists and communists. Keep in mind that the Weather Underground terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, were communist terrorists. They were not just '60s radicals. These were people who openly supported the communist enemy killing Americans in Vietnam. Some of the members in this group, including Dohrn, had traveled to Havana, Cuba, to get instructions from the communists about how to wage their campaign in the United States.

Q: What was Obama’s relationship with Ayers and Dohrn and how close was it?

A: The big question is whether there is a connection between the communist network in Hawaii that included Frank Marshall Davis and the communist network in Chicago that would also come to include Barack Obama. We know that according to the public evidence that Obama launches his political career in Chicago at the home of Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. Other people who were there include then-state Sen. Alice Palmer and a Dr. Quentin Young. Those two people are almost as significant as Ayers and Dohrn. Continued...