Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  Over two decades later, Jackson would assert that “it was in a presidential debate with Walter Mondale at Columbia University in 1984” when he first met Obama. “After the debate he introduced himself and said ‘This is doable, we can do this, and a black man can run and win the White House.’” Robert T. Starks, “Jackson’s Tears from All the Years,” N’Digo Profiles, December 2008, pp. 16, 18. Remnick, The Bridge, p. 490, quotes Jackson as saying that years later Obama told him he had seen the debate.

  48. Genevieve Cook journal, 3, 8, and 9 April 1984; Obama to Alex McNear, 14 April 1984, McNear Papers.

  49. Susan Arterian Chang e-mail to DJG; DJG interviews with Peggy Mendelow and Dan Armstrong (who also recounted Tom Ehrbar’s comment concerning Dan Kobal); Bill Millar’s 2007 comments on Dan Armstrong’s www.analyzethis.net blog; Issenberg, “Obama Shows Hints of His Year in Global Finance,” BG, 6 August 2008; Financing Foreign Operations—Interest Rate & Foreign Exchange Rate Updater, 30 April, 15 and 31 May, 15 and 30 June, and 15 and 31 July 1984; Business International Money Report, 20 April, 18 May, and 15 June 1984; Business International Weekly Report, 20 April, 5 May, and 8 June 1984. Public reports of ties between the CIA and BI’s network of foreign-based correspondents predated Obama’s time there. John M. Crewdson, “CIA Established Many Links to Journalists in U.S. and Abroad,” NYT, 27 December 1977, pp. 1, 40, reported that BI, “a widely respected business information service . . . had provided cover” for at least four CIA agents twenty years earlier. See also Angelo M. Codevilla, “The Chosen One,” Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2011, pp. 52–58, at 55.

  50. Genevieve Cook journal, 16 and 30 April 1984; Sim Heninger to Phil Boerner, 2 April 1984, Boerner Papers; DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook, Sim Heninger, and Phil Boerner; Genevieve to Barack unsent letter, 6 May 1984, Genevieve Cook journal, 8, 9, 16, and 26 May 1984, Cook Papers; Ann Dunham to Alice Dewey, 13 February 1984, Dunham to Leatrice Mirikitani, 26 March 1984, Dunham to Alan Howard, 26 March 1984, Ann Dunham Sutoro to Ph.D. Committee, “Review and Update on Activities Relating to Ph.D.,” September 1984, Dunham Papers; Scott, A Singular Woman, pp. 257–62. See also Christine Finn and Sarah Baxter, “Long-Range Love of Barack’s Absent Mother,” Sunday Times, 23 November 2008, p. 24.

  Years later, Obama would offer conflicting comments about his attitude toward his mother at this time. In 1995, citing her and his grandparents, he would say, “I never pushed them away”; in 2008 he would acknowledge “that there were tensions” and that he was “rebelling or pushing away from her and my grandparents.” Monica Mitchell, “Son Finds Inspiration in the Dreams of His Father,” HPH, 23 August 1995, p. 10; Wolffe, Renegade, pp. 31 and 149.

  51. Genevieve Cook journal, 1, 4, 8, 10, 11, 19, 20, 24, 25, 27, and 29 June 1984; DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook, Hasan and Raazia Chandoo, and Beenu Mahmood; Sohale Siddiqi interview with Jim Gilmore. On 640 2nd Street, see James Barron and Peter Baker, “In Brooklyn Brownstone, President Found a Home on the Top Floor,” NYT, 2 May 2012, and Barron, “Obama? Just the Forgettable 1980s Boyfriend of a Landlord’s Tenant,” NYT, 7 May 2012.

  52. Genevieve Cook journal, 30 June 1984, 1, 15, and 25 July 1984, 5, 19 and 22 August 1984, trio of small photo booth pictures, summer 1984, Cook Papers; DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook and Hasan and Raazia Chandoo; Obama, DFMF, pp. 128–29. On the film, see Janet Maslin, “Redgrave in James’s ‘Bostonians,’” NYT, 2 August 1984. On the San Ysidro mass murder, see “Coast Man Kills 20 in Rampage at a Restaurant,” NYT, 19 July 1984, p. A1.

  53. Genevieve Cook journal, 22, 24, 27, 30, and 31 August 1984, 1 and 5 September 1984; DJG interviews with Alex McNear, Genevieve Cook, Mike Ramos, Phil Boerner, and Paul Herrmannsfeldt. On Alex’s subsequent life, her eventual ex-husband Bob Bozic, and her daughter Vesna, born in 1991, see Nick Paumgarten, “The Ring and the Bar,” New Yorker, 30 January 2012, pp. 28–34, and Alex Vadukul, “After Last Call,” NYT, 24 January 2016.

  54. Business International Money Report, 5 October 1984, p. 314; DJG interviews with Cathy Lazere, Michael Williams, Jeanne Reynolds Schmidt, Maria Stathis Batty, Gary Seidman, Dan Armstrong, Lou Celi, Brent Feigenbaum, Beth Noymer Levine, Lisa Shachtman Hennessey, and Genevieve Cook; Susan Arterian and John Geanuracos e-mails to DJG; Jeanne Reynolds’s comments on analyzethis.net, 9 July 2005; Obama, DFMF, pp. 135–38, 210–11; Obama in Mendell, Obama, p. 62, and in John Corr, “From Mean Streets to Hallowed Halls,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 February 1990, pp. C1, C4; Genevieve Cook journal, 2, 10, and 13 December 1984; Janet Maslin, “Murphy in ‘Beverly Hills Cop,’” NYT, 5 December 1984, p. C25. In 2001 Obama would tell Julieanna Richardson that “for a year I worked as a financial journalist to pay off my student loans and as soon as I had those paid off” he sought more appealing work. Brent Feigenbaum would recall beginning at BI with a salary of $19,500 after rejecting Lou Celi’s initial offer of $17,500.

  Also note “How a Master Plays the Game: The World Bank Approach to FX, Interest Rate Swaps,” BIMR, 16 November 1984, pp. 361–63, based on an interview with World Bank “swap operations” manager Cyrus Ardalan. The only one of the Financial Action Report series to appear in OCLC is the subsequent one by Cathy A. Lazere and Brent H. Feigenbaum, Improving Financial Management in France (Business International, 1985), 128 pp. Also see Business International Research Report, Kenya: Foreign Investment in a Developing Economy [Geneva]: Business International S.A., April 1980, 166pp., a document not produced by BI’s New York office nor updated in 1984. See as well Business International Weekly Report, 27 July, 10 August, 14 September, and 2 and 16 November 1984; Financing Foreign Operations—Interest Rate & Foreign Exchange Rate Updater, 15 and 31 August 1984, 14 and 28 September 1984, 15 and 31 October 1984, 27 November 1984, and 11 December 1984; and The BIMR Handbook on Global Treasury Management (Business International Corporation, August 1984), a lengthy (227 pp.) topical reprinting of BIMR’s weekly articles. No one recalls Barack attending the “BO Annual Picnique August 1984,” whose custom T-shirt featured a number of quasi-humorous lines including “If I don’t get my own Wang . . .” and “They’re no longer with the company.”

  On David Opiyo’s death, see also Auma Obama, And Then Life Happens, p. 145; Zeituni Onyango e-mails to DJG; and especially Mark Obama Ndesandjo, An Obama’s Journey, p. 81.

  55. Barack Obama to Genevieve Cook, 1 January 1985, Cook Papers; Ann Dunham notebook, esp. pp. 57, 61, 93, 103, Dunham/Solyom Papers; Scott, A Singular Woman, pp. 263–65. On the Terkel book, see Loudon Wainwright, “I Can Remember Every Hour,” NYTBR, 7 October 1984, pp. 7, 9. Bobby Titcomb would later volunteer that “after high school . . . I had struggles of my own and Barack supported me through those tough times.” Emme Tomimbang, “Barack Obama: Hawaii Roots,” 8 February 2008. On Adi Sasono and Ann’s personal life, see Julia Suryakusuma in Judith Kampfner, “Dreams From My Mother,” BBC Radio World Service, 16 September 2009; Scott, A Singular Woman, pp. 235–41; Ian Buruma, “A Free Spirit,” NYRB, 26 May 2011 (“her liaisons with Indonesian men”); and Barack’s reference to his mother displaying “a certain recklessness” in Amanda Ripley, “The Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” Time, 21 April 2008, pp. 36ff.

  56. Genevieve Cook journal, 25 January 1985; Obama, DFMF, pp. 138–39; Ralph Nader et al., Action for a Change: A Student’s Manual for Public Interest Organizing (Grossman, 1971), Bob Belfort to TVAJ Campaign Students and Staff, “Campaign Update,” 24 January 1985, NYPIRG Papers; DJG interviews with Barack Obama, Arthur Barnes (Obama’s description “fits me to a tee”), Eileen Hershenov, Chris Meyer, Tom Wathen, Diana Mitsu Klos, Alison Kelley, Jay Halfon, Neal Rosenstein, Rebecca Weber, and Michael Gecan; Ann F. Lopez e-mail to DJG; Ben Smith, “Becoming Obama,” Politico, 30 January 2007; Hershenov in Patrick Whelan, The Catholic Case for Obama (Catholic Democrats, 2008), p. 51n4; Jason Fink, “Obama’s Years in New York Left Lasting Impression on Colleagues,” AM New York, 9 November 2008; [Rosenstein], “President Barack Obama’s Work History as an Organizer with the New York Public Interest Res
earch Group,” [January 2010], NYPIRG Papers; course and departmental records, CCNY, spring semester 1985. NYPIRG’s 1985 CCNY telephone number, 212-234-1628, remained unchanged even thirty years later. On NYPIRG’s TVAJ legislation, see also Robin Topping, “Trying to Quell the DES Nightmare,” Newsday, 20 January 1985. On Jeffries, see particularly Richard M. Benjamin, “The Bizarre Classroom of Dr. Leonard Jeffries,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Winter 1993–1994, pp. 91–96, and Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe Jr., The New Scapegoats: Colored-On-Black Racism (iUniverse, 2005), pp. 58–60, 68–71. This author has no memory of such a February 1985 request, but he knows what his response would have been.

  57. Genevieve Cook journal, 4 and 5 February, 15 and 31 March, and 22, 23, and 28 April 1985; DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook, Andrew Roth, Keith Patchel, Tim Jessup, and Pete Vayda. The resulting Richard Lloyd album was Field of Fire. Phil Boerner attended a reading by well-known poet Allen Ginsberg at Columbia on Tuesday, March 26, and believes it very likely that Barack went with him. See also Ted Kenney, “Beat Poet Ginsberg Returns to Columbia,” CS, 27 March 1985, pp. 1, 4.

  Obama’s comments in later years about where he lived in New York City were often highly inaccurate. On one occasion in 2007 he said he once lived in Park Slope, implicitly referencing Genevieve’s 2nd Street apartment, and “a little in Brooklyn Heights,” perhaps a reference to his stays with Hasan Chandoo. “I don’t remember the exact address” but “I subletted for about three months in Brooklyn Heights, near the Promenade.” That is inaccurate, but memories of buying bagels and the Sunday New York Times near the Clark Street IRT station almost certainly date from times when he stayed with Hasan either at his Eagle Warehouse apartment or later in Brooklyn Heights proper. See Dana Rubenstein, “Barack and Roll: Obamamania Hits Brooklyn Heights,” The Brooklyn Paper, 28 July 2007; Michael Saul, “He Wants Army of Bams,” NYDN, 23 August 2007; and “Barack Obama at Cooper Union,” audacityofparkslope.org, 27 March 2008. A 2008 Obama campaign statement had Barack in April–May 1985 living in Park Slope and June–July 1985 in Brooklyn Heights, perhaps a mislocating of Genevieve’s Boerum Hill apartment on Warren Street. Referencing 622 West 114th, that statement acknowledged “we actually only have 1 actual address, otherwise just streets or neighborhoods,” but the site where that information appeared in a thread dated 18 August 2008, www.commongroundpolitics.net, has since disappeared from the Web.

  58. Bob Belfort to TVAJ Students and Staff, “Campaign Update,” 7 March 1985, Tom Wathen to All Staff, “Staff Meeting,” 26 March 1985, Belfort to TVAJ Students and Staff, “Campaign Update,” 11 April 1985, NYPIRG Papers; “NYPIRG Opposes Reagan Budget Cuts,” The Paper [CCNY], 3 May 1985, p. 7; Genevieve Cook journal, 6 May 1985; S.B. 5494, 1 May 1985, NYPIRG Papers; Chris Meyer, “Higher Education in 1985” flyer, Frances Fox Piven Papers, Smith College, Box 85 Fld. 4; Bob Belfort to TVAJ Students and Staff, “Campaign Update,” 9 May 1985, NYPIRG Papers; Jeffrey Schmalz, “Filing-Period Extension Expected in Toxic Suits,” NYT, 8 May 1985, p. B2; NYPIRG CCNY, “A Community Forum: Federal Budget Cuts ’85–’86,” 8 May 1985, Piven Papers, Box 11 Fld. 5; Jeffrey Schmalz, “Longer Period for Toxic Suits Wins Backing in State Senate,” NYT, 23 May 1985, p. B2; Gene Russianoff and Peter Skeie, Back to Go: A Study of Subway Service (NYPIRG, August 1985), 31pp. (thanking Barack Obama, Alison Kelley, and Diana Klos among many others); Schmalz, “Cuomo Shifts on Toxic-Substance Bill,” NYT, 10 December 2005, p. B3; “Cuomo Cites Two Bills as Key for Legislature,” NYT, 7 May 1986, p. B2; Schmalz, “New York Officials Reach Liability Insurance Accord,” NYT, 20 June 1986, p. B3; Cuomo’s 30 July 1986 signing remarks in Product Safety & Liability Reporter, 1 August 1986, p. 528; Martha H. Cotiaux, “A Crucial Deadline for New York Toxic Victims,” NYT, 5 June 1987; Ben Whitford, “Coal and Clear Skies: Obama’s Balancing Act,” Plenty Magazine, 31 October 2008; Fink, “Obama’s Years in New York”; [Rosenstein], “Obama’s Work History”; DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook, Alison Kelley, Eileen Hershenov, Chris Meyer, and Tom Wathen; Obama, “Community Revitalization, Nebraska Wesleyan University Forum, 9 September 1994; Obama, DFMF, p. 139; Obama’s 20–21 October 1999 cable television interview with Joe Green; Obama’s June 2002 interview with Chinta Strausberg; and Obama’s 16–17 August 2003 interview with Frank Avila and Morgan Carter on CAN-TV Channel 19, Chicago.

  Obama would later write of traveling to Washington to deliver the CCNY students’ letters to New York members of Congress, although no contemporary documents or other possible participants attest to such a trip. See Obama, TAOH, p. 43 (misdating it as 1984), and Remnick, The Bridge, p. 121. In May 1985 NYPIRG was also mounting a campaign against milk prices in New York City. See “NYPIRG Survey Shows New York City Shoppers Are Paying Premium Milk Prices,” 8 May 1985, “Milking Us Dry: A Survey of Milk Prices in New York City,” May 1985 (noting that “New York is the only state that limits competition amongst milk distributors”), and Paul Herrrick to NYC Outreach Staff, “Milk Licensing,” 13 June 1985, NYPIRG Papers.

  59. Genevieve Cook poem, 9 May 1985, Genevieve Cook journal, 13, 14, and 23 May 1985, Cook poem written on PS 133 “Dear Parents” notice, 11 June 1985, on the back side of which is an unsent “Dear Ida” letter, 19 June 1985, Genevieve Cook journal, 20 and 28 June 1985, Cook Papers; DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook.

  60. DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook, Andy Roth, Keith Patchel, Jerry Kellman, Hasan and Raazia Chandoo, and Beenu Mahmood; Obama’s 2001 interview with Julieanna Richardson; Obama’s 7 February 2004 interview with David Axelrod; Obama’s 25 June 2005 remarks in “Bound to the Word,” American Libraries, August 2005, pp. 48–52, at 51; Obama, “A Politics of Conscience,” United Church of Christ, Hartford, 23 June 2007; “Barack Obama Revealed,” CNN, 20 August 2008; Kellman in Byron York, “The Organizer,” National Review, 30 June 2008; Obama, DFMF, pp. 140–43; Obama in Erin Meyer, “Discovering Hyde Park,” HPH, 14 February 2007, p. 4; Obama, University of Massachusetts at Boston Commencement Speech, 2 June 2006 ($1,000 to purchase a car for which he paid $800); Kellman in Bob Secter and John McCormick, “Portrait of a Pragmatist,” CT, 30 March 2007, in Mike Litwin, “Obama’s ‘Change’ Could Be More Than a Coined Phrase,” Rocky Mountain News, 29 August 2007, in Serge Kovaleski, “In Organizing, Obama Led While Finding His Place,” NYT, 7 July 2008; Kellman’s 24 July 2008 interview with Jim Gilmore; Kellman in Tim Harper, “The Making of a President,” Toronto Star, 16 August 2008, p. A1; Kellman’s 25 August 2008 DNC Speech, Denver; “Barack Obama Tribute” video, DNC, 28 August 2008; Kellman in Jennifer Liberto, “Origin of Obama’s Run Is on the South Side,” St. Petersburg Times, 26 October 2008, p. A1; Kellman on The Takeaway, WNYC, 5 November 2008; Genevieve Cook journal, 16 and 26 July 1985.

  Eighteen years later, Obama would assert, “By the time I was 20, I was no longer engaged in any of this stuff” and “By the time I was 20, I don’t think I indulged again.” An accurate answer would have been twenty-three rather than twenty. Bernard Schoenburg, “Painting of Ex-Gov. Ryan,” SJR, 9 November 2003, p. 17, and Schoenburg, “Frank Talk About Drug Use in Obama’s ‘Open Book,’” SJR, 16 November 2003, p. 17. Four months later Obama would say that he used cocaine “a few times” and in high school and at Oxy “primarily smoked pot”; three months further on he would say “when I was a teenager, 16, 17, 18, I experimented with drugs.” “Candidates for U.S. Senate Make Last Push,” (AP), CDH, 12 March 2004, p. I-12; and NBC Nightly News, 28 July 2004. Ryan Lizza would notably write that “While Obama was in search of an authentic African American experience, Kellman was simply in search of an authentic African American.” “The Agitator,” TNR, 19 March 2007, pp. 22ff.

  61. Barack Obama to Genevieve Cook, 14 August 1985, Cook Papers; DJG interviews with Genevieve Cook and Robert Elia; Obama, “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City,” Illinois Issues, August–September 1988, pp. 40–42; Obama, DFMF, pp. 135–36; Obama Commencement Addresses at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, 2 June 2006, and Northwestern University, 16 Ju
ne 2006; Obama remarks to College Democrats of America, Columbia, SC, 26 July 2007; Obama remarks at Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, IA, 5 December 2007; Obama Commencement Address, Wesleyan University, 25 May 2008. Cf. Willie Morris, North Toward Home (Houghton Mifflin, 1967). Avner Falk, The Riddle of Barack Obama, p. 149, terms Obama’s move to Chicago “the turning point in his” life.

  On Robert Elia, also see Joe Pinchot, “Property Being Stolen, Hermitage Man Says,” Sharon Herald, 22 November 2006, and his sister’s obituary, “Rose Elizabeth O’Hare,” Sharon Herald, 29 March 2009. On Dr. King’s 27 January 1956 experience, see Garrow, Bearing the Cross, pp. 56–58. On Coffin Point, see Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Houghton Mifflin, 1918), p. 290; Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), passim; Michael O’Brien, Henry Adams & the Southern Question (University of Georgia Press, 2005), pp. 118–19; Charles R. Babcock, “Soviet Secrets Fed to FBI for More Than 25 Years; Infiltration by Two Brothers Detailed in Book on Dr. King,” WP, 17 September 1981, p. A1; and DJG, The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.: From “SOLO” to Memphis (W. W. Norton, 1981).