GOP Offered $10K to Prove Ayers Authored Obama Book

Goal was to prove Ayers penned 'Dreams From My Father'
By Katherine Thompson,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 2, 2008 1:12 PM CST
GOP Offered $10K to Prove Ayers Authored Obama Book
Rep. Chris Cannon, the GOP incumbent in Utah's 3rd District, recommended computer testing to compare Bill Ayers's memoir with Barack Obama's, to see if Ayers had written Obama's work.   (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

A Republican congressman and his brother-in-law approached an Oxford philosophy don in an attempt to prove that Barack Obama's autobiography had been ghostwritten by William Ayers, the Times of London reports. Peter Millican says he was offered $10,000 to analyze Obama's Dreams From My Father and Ayers' Fugitive Days for similarities.

Utah Rep. Chris Cannon says he merely doubted that Obama had written his own memoir, and thought “If Ayers was the author, that would be interesting.” Cannon's brother-in-law contacted Millican, but backed off when the professor said that the charges looked "very implausible" and insisted that the results be made public, no matter what they showed.
(More Barack Obama stories.)

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