"If that's true, Obama has to be the dumbest man who ever graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School," snorts Murtagh. "I don't buy that at all."
Murtagh believes the relationships between Barack, his wife, Michelle, Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine, goes back 30 years, to Michelle's time at Sidley Austin, the famous Washington, D.C., law firm that also employed Bernardine Dohrn.
Murtagh doesn't blame Obama for what Bill Ayers and his friends did and supported. He blames Obama for picking a man like Ayers as a friend and mentor -- and then covering up the friendship.
In politics things get complicated. Truth becomes hard to find.
But when you are about to elect someone commander in chief, it would be good to know he can lay his hands on some of the stuff, in case he ever needs it.
"The night they attacked our home, they also firebombed an army recruiting station out in Brooklyn and police patrol cars outside of Greenwich Village," notes Murtagh. "Three weeks later they accidentally blew themselves up. They intended to attack the officer's club at Fort Dix."
Lay your cards on the table, Murtagh wants to tell the man who would be president. "Obama's free to associate with Dohrn and Ayers; that's his right," he tells me. "But don't hide the relationship, and be forthcoming and let people decide the significance of it for themselves."