AnnenbergGate: Obama-Ayers Plumbers

[UPDATE: Note comments from Diamond below]***Wow! Read this bombshell report from John Batchelor. After revealing the existence of a plumbers unit related to the Obama campaign charged with plugging leaks of damaging Annenberg Challenge documents, Steve Diamond caves to pressure, which must be ugly. (He was not alone in being pressured, but this must be even worse, conducted in secret.) Here's one key paragraph from Batchelor:

5. In the course of this telephone conversation, Steve Diamond restated all the critical points that he had explicated in his most recent postings about Ayers and his associates working to conceal the facts of the true nature of the Ayers relationship with Obama by blocking access to the CAC documents, 1995-2001. Steve Diamond also spoke of what he described as a "plumbers" unit in the Obama camp that is led by Ayers and that is tasked to plug the leaks about the CAC years. He mentioned other names involved in the leak-plugging and the corresponding cover-up, some of them well known names. Steve Diamond made many more remarks about pressure he believed he was under because of his postings on the CAC since June 18, 2008. He mentioned one particular pressure point that worried him, and he was detailed as to who had passed on not benign advice to him to curtail postings and why. Steve Diamond mentioned prominent political names and camps, none of them Republican. With regard CAC, Steve Diamond speculated that laws may have been violated with regard the spontaneous restrictions at the University of Illinois library. He remarked about gifts to libraries, public documents, and the responsibilities of Illinois state officials. After ten minutes, I stopped questioning him. Steve Diamond said he had to prepare for a class. Steve Diamond agreed to speak again later in the evening, at 10 PM EDT, in order to confirm details.

Diamond retreated and has since pulled previous posts off his blog, but Batchelor has the screen shots.

UPDATE: Diamond's most recent posts on the subject here and here.

UPDATE: The Swamp. This time Obama campaign tries to shut up David Freddoso on WGN. Also HotAir on this.

UPDATE: Related--the Campaign Spot on the selective coverage of the MSM, namely the NY Times. How do you say cover-up:

But recall that the public cannot get access to paperwork related to grants to distributed by then-state-legislator Barack Obama (records from 1997 to 2000 aren't available); his state legislative office records (which he says may have been thrown out); he refuses to release a specific list of law clients, instead giving a list of all of his firm's clients, numbering several hundred each year; he won't release his application to the state bar (where critics wonder if he lied in responding to questions about parking tickets and past drug use); he’s never released any legal or billing records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to convicted donor Rezko; and he's never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor. Then there was the effort against Stanley Kurtz for his effort to examine documents relating to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where William Ayers hired Obama to be board chairman. Oh, and Biden has released his earmark requests for one year out of his 36 in the Senate.

They can get away with this stuff in Illinois, the Dem machine state. As Jonah Goldberg notes, the Obama campaign has never had to compete against a Republican. They are thugs and liars and America is beginning to know it, despite the best efforts of the MSM to be complicit in covering for the corrupt and craven Obamessiah.

UPDATE: Ben Smith on the Obama camp's smear of Freddoso. Freddoso is a careful researcher and I vouch for his book. Marathon Pundit. Michelle Malkin.