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Jesse Jackson: Friend of Terrorists, Communist Stooge
Wes Vernon, http://www.NewsMax.com
Saturday, May 11, 2002
WASHINGTON – Jesse Jackson has a long record of embracing terrorists and violent leftists throughout the world. Hard-left influences in the U.S. have steered Jackson in that direction.
"Long live Fidel Castro!” ... "Arafat is a hero” ... The communist dictatorship that ruled in Nicaragua in the 1980s offered "hope” and "charity” and should smash the anti-communist freedom fighters then trying to topple it. These positions are on the record showing Jackson's support for terrorists or left-wing dictators.

This is one part of investigative journalist Kenneth R. Timmerman’s blockbuster New York Times best-seller "Shakedown” that has been overlooked in most reviews. Yet the Bush administration’s war on terrorism and focus on the "axis of evil” and other rogue nations makes it all the more relevant.

For example: Fidel Castro, says Under Secretary of State John R. Bolton, "has long provided safehaven for terrorists,” is "collaborating with other state sponsors of terror,” "has at least a limited offensive biological warfare and research development effort,” and has "aggressive intelligence operations against these United States.”

Timmerman’s book takes a close look at the main source of influence that nudged Jackson into the camp of the world's violent radicals.

Communist Stooge

In an exclusive interview with NewsMax.com, Timmerman noted that "Jackson very early on ... hired Hunter Pitts O’Dell” as his adviser on international affairs.

O’Dell "steered Jesse Jackson toward the international side of the hard-left, pro-communist, pro-Soviet movement."

"He introduced him to people like Arafat in ’79. He introduced him to Torrijos in Panama in ’77. He introduced him to Castro, to ... Assad in Syria. He orchestrated introductions to a whole series of Communist Party activists in Europe ....”

It was Hunter Pitts O’Dell who took Jesse Jackson to meet World Peace Council (WPC) in Vienna in 1985. WPC is a longtime notorious "Soviet front organization.” Its visible activities include the "nuclear freeze” movement in the 1980s.

Who is this guru with such extraordinary influence on a long-ago "civil rights leader” and two-time presidential candidate?

Former Assistant FBI Director Ray Wannal (Washington Times, 8-1-99) identifies O’Dell as "a secret member of the Communist Party’s governing body, the National Committee.”

In 1963, then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said O’Dell had worked for "a number of years as a district organizer for the Communist Party of Louisiana” before working his way into Martin Luther King Jr.’s entourage in 1961.

Even Kennedy Recognized the Communist Threat

In his interview with NewsMax.com, Timmerman said President John Kennedy took King aside in the Rose Garden and told him, "You’ve got to fire Hunter Pitts O’Dell because he’s a communist.”

"It was the involvement of Hunter Pitts O’Dell and Stanley Levison [another King adviser with a communist background] in the civil rights movement that prompted the FBI to wiretap” King’s communications, Timmerman told NewsMax.

Recently declassified documents show couriers brought back money "from the Soviets into the U.S. Communist Party. And they brought money to Stanley Levinson and to Martin Luther King Jr.,” Timmerman noted. "And that’s what really led to the wiretaps,” authorized in writing by then Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

O’Dell, Timmerman explains in "Shakedown,” was "the genuine article, a hardened Communist Party cadre with roots in the Stalinist era, whose task was to inflame, recruit, and organize for the communist cause.”

He caught the focused attention of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, as well as the New Orleans Police Department, which raided his boardinghouse room and "struck gold.” What they found was a roadmap of Communist Party plans to "infiltrate local labor unions, black churches and civil rights organizations.”

Herbert Romerstein, author of "The Venona Secrets” and an expert on communist activity in the U.S., says it was clear O’Dell was "a party plant.”

Some Democrats have taken a dim view of Jackson’s influence on their party and throughout the world.

Timmerman says a group of "Scoop Jackson Democrats” in 1988 published a paper that "pointed out all of Jackson’s ties to the international left. They pointed out his association with Hunter Pitts O’Dell who, at that point, was one of Jackson’s top campaign advisers in his presidential” bid that year.

"Lack of information” is not the problem, said author Timmerman. "Self-censorship” is.

Censorship

Higher-ups at CNN years ago spiked reporter Pat Clawson’s planned confrontational interview with Hunter Pitts O’Dell.

Similar "self-censorship” appears to be at work today on Timmerman’s best-selling book on Jackson.

Numerous NewsMax readers have reported having a difficult or impossible time finding "Shakedown" at bookstores.

The left-wing New York Times refused to review the book even though it was on its own best-seller list for weeks. Even the conservative Washington Times has not mentioned it, despite the fact that black leaders have thanked Timmerman for exposing Jackson’s "Shakedown.”