Obama's Adviser Robert Malley: Thrown Under The Bus...And Out The Other Side?

Mark Hemingway quotes from an Investors Business Daily article that indicates that an Obama adviser who resigned--didn't:

It seems the Obama campaign has a habit of disowning publicly but embracing privately when it comes to controversial advisors. The story is behind a paywall which you can access if you're an IBD subscriber, but here's the relevant bit:

Last month, his coordinator for Muslim outreach, Mazen Asbahi, a Chicago lawyer, quit after reports that he belonged to the board of an Islamic investment fund that included a radical imam.

Asbahi has not stopped working on behalf of Obama, though. He appeared at the luncheon to say that despite his official exit he was still "110%" behind Obama and that he was participating in campaign conference calls on Muslim outreach.

Stepping down was a "strategic decision," he told the audience. Asbahi declined to answer IBD questions clarifying his current role.

When Mark Hemingway refers to "a habit of disowning publicly but embracing privately when it comes to controversial advisors," he is referring to stories that Robert Malley was not really fired as an Obama adviser:

Last December, when the Obama campaign put out a press release listing Robert Malley as a campaign advisor, there was a small uproar. Though Malley had worked on Middle East issues for the Clinton campaign, he was viewed with a great deal of suspicion by the Jewish community — Malley's father, journalist Simon Malley, was a friend of Arafat's and generally seen as a PLO sympathizer.

Well, after he left the Clinton administration he wrote a series of essays for the New York Review of Books that were widely viewed as anti-Israel. Marty Peretz called Malley "deceitful" and said he is "a rabid hater of Israel. No question about it."

After it became known Malley was working on the campaign and the ensuing backlash, the Obama campaign immediately issued a statement saying Malley was only giving the campaign "informal advice."

Then in May, the London Times reported that Malley — who wasn't supposed to be working on the campaign — had been sacked from a post on the campaign's Middle East advisory council because he had recently held meetings with Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Well now sources are reporting "Aides said Obama had sent senior foreign policy adviser Robert Malley to Egypt and Syria over the last few weeks to outline the Democratic candidate's policy on the Middle East."

That Malley would be working on Middle East policy for the new administration is troubling enough, but the fact they've now repeatedly been dishonest about his involvement in the campaign makes it much worse.

The problem is that due to Malley's vague--deliberately or otherwise--role in the Obama campaign, the articles referred to could have easily overstated what Malley's position at the time actually was--or if he was acting on Obama's behalf at all. Allahpundit notes:

This piece in Forbes confirms that Malley did meet with Syria — but in his role for the International Crisis Group. The only evidence that he was there at Obama’s behest appears to be an assumption made by Syrian state media that he was still working for the campaign.

At some point, maybe Obama's campaign will actually be an open book. In the meantime, we are left with trying to piece things together.

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