1959 Memo shows Great Britain and U.S. Feared Barack Obama Sr.'s Anti-Americanism

The policies of the Obama administration have been incredibly damaging to the country. High unemployment, defense cuts / disarmament, soaring debt and deficits, rising gas prices, stricter regulations, higher taxes, runaway spending, etc. The list goes on and on. Many have concluded that it's intentional. The debate has been raging about whether this is all the result of his intentions or his incompetence.

Well, depending on how much of his father's views he shared, we may have our answer in the form of a 1959 memo from a British diplomat, who expressed serious concerns about Barack Obama, Sr.

Via the Daily Mail:

Mr Obama Snr had grown up in Kenya under British rule and aroused the fears of both colonial officers and American officials when he won a chance to study in Hawaii. The officials felt Kenyan students were ‘academically inferior’ with a ‘bad reputation’ for turning anti-American.

A memo from a British diplomat in Washington to Whitehall – released today by the National Archives in West London – sets out their concerns about the young Kenyans.

Dated September 1, 1959, it says: ‘I have discussed with the State Department. They are as disturbed about these developments as we are. They point out that Kenya students have a bad reputation over here for falling into the wrong hands and for becoming both anti-American and anti-white.’

In one of the Foreign Office files, the future president’s father appears on a list of Kenyan students as ‘OBAMA, Barack H’ – they shared the same name.

At the age of 23, he enrolled at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu to study economics with classmates including Ann Dunham, a 17-year-old white American from Kansas. The couple had a short marriage that led to the birth in 1961 of the future president, Barack Obama II.

Mr Obama Snr was among 100 or so Kenyan students brought to America by the African American Students Foundation.

U.S. and British officials were deeply suspicious of this outfit, observing that the AASF – though backed by singer Harry Belafonte and actor Sidney Poitier – had links to a Kenyan nationalist leader.

‘The motives behind this enterprise, therefore, seem more political than educational,’ warned a letter from the British Embassy in Washington.

Dreams From My Father, indeed.

h/t Weasel Zippers