http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/occidental-activist-i-thought-obama-was-gayObama, a 19-year-old sophomore at Occidental at the time, was with diminutive Pakistani roommate Mohammed Hasan Chandoo.
“I really had the feeling that Obama was Chandoo’s ‘boy toy,’” Drew told WND.
Drew, who earned a Ph.D. from Cornell, is an award-winning political scientist who taught political science and economics at Williams College.
In previously published accounts of his meeting –dating from the 2008 presidential campaign – Drew made clear his conclusion that Obama and Chandoo were both Marxist revolutionaries. Contrary to Drew, who remarked he was not as radical as Obama, Obama believed a violent, communist revolution was coming to the U.S.
In the interview with WND, Drew focused on his suspicion the two were romantically involved.
“The first time I saw Barack Obama and Hassan Chandoo together, I thought they were a wealthy gay couple,” Drew said.
“In fact, they looked so gay that my girlfriend, Caroline Boss, whispered to me, ‘They’re not gay.’ So, that confirmed to me I wasn’t the only one who thought Barack Obama and Hassan Chandoo looked like they were in a very close, intimate relationship.”
John Drew and his college girlfriend, Caroline Boss
Drew admits he was confused about Chandoo’s sexuality, considering it possible the Pakistani was bisexual, especially after he learned Occidental classmate Margo Mifflin was Chandoo’s girlfriend at the time.
“I remembered Mifflin from my senior year at Occidental when we had both participated in various protest events on campus,” Drew commented. “I had the impression that Mifflin was living with Chandoo and Obama in Chandoo’s apartment in Pasadena.”
WND has made repeated unsuccessful attempts since 2008 to contact Chandoo and another Occidental roommate, Pakistani Wahid Hamid, including an attempt made for this article.
WND also received no response to a request to the press office of the Democratic National Committee, as directed by the Washington, D.C., office of the Obama 2012 presidential campaign.
Christmas break
The 1980 meeting took place during Christmas break at the Portola Valley, Calif., home of Boss’s adoptive parents, near Stanford University.
At the time, Boss was a senior at Occidental. Boss and Obama had become friends through classes they took together in the spring and fall of that year.
From the first moments he saw Obama and Chandoo together, Drew suspected they were lovers.
“They were very close to each other physically,” Drew said, recalling watching them arrive at the Boss residence in a luxury car.
“I don’t know how else to describe it, but they looked like two young men who had a very close, intimate, emotional attachment,” he said. “I never saw them hugging or kissing, but I saw them standing very close to one another. It looked like they were very in tune with each others needs.”
Drew said Obama and Chandoo arrived at the Boss residence in the late afternoon and stayed with Drew, Caroline Boss and her family through dinner at a local restaurant.
“I had the feeling Chandoo put Obama on this pedestal where Barack Obama was just this great-looking guy, with wonderful educational experience from Punahou Academy. And I just got the feeling that Chandoo considered Barack Obama to be almost one of his prize possessions.”
In Drew’s piece for the American Thinker, he emphasized the importance of Chandoo’s relative affluence in his relationship with Obama:
When I first saw Obama, I remember I was standing on the porch of Boss’s parents’ impressive home as a sleek, expensive luxury car pulled up in the driveway. Two young men emerged from the vehicle. They were well-dressed and looked like they were born to wealth and privilege. I was a little surprised to learn they were Boss’s friends from Occidental College until she articulated the underlying political connection. “They’re on our side,” she said.
Drew noted that the “taller of the two was Obama, then only 19, who towered over his five-foot-five companion, Mohammad Hasan Chandoo – a wealthy, 21 year old Pakistani student.”
“Chandoo had a full dark beard, neatly trimmed mustache, and was dressed in expensive clothes,” Drew wrote. “Nevertheless, Obama was the more handsome of the two. At six foot two, Obama carried himself with the dignity and poise of a model. The diminutive Chandoo, in contrast, came across as more of a practical businessman type.”
He pointed out Obama “displayed a visible deference to Chandoo when they were standing together at the vehicle.”
In the interview with WND, Drew affirmed the economic disparity between the two was an obvious component of the relationship.
“On that ‘boy toy’ angle,” Drew said, “I think that Barack Obama enjoyed a much more lavish, luxurious and pleasant life style at Occidental College because of his connection to Hassan Chandoo than he did at Columbia without the direct financial support of Chandoo.
“Obama enjoyed a lot of benefits from having a wealthy Pakistani friend while he was at Occidental,” said Drew.
Obama has claimed that at end of his sophomore year at Occidental, he took a trip around the world in which he and Hamid stayed for three weeks at the home of Chandoo’s wealthy and politically important family in Karachi.
Drew told WND that on that December 1980 day, Chandoo went to lengths to put Obama on a pedestal, making sure from the first moments of the visit that it was known that Obama was a graduate of Punahou Academy in Honolulu, presenting it as an exclusive and prestigious private college preparatory school.
“I can’t remember Obama praising Chandoo in the way Chandoo sung the praises of Obama,” he said.
Unmarried Obama wore wedding ring?
Drew told WND he was not aware at the time of his 1980 meeting that Obama was wearing a gold-band ring on the wedding ring finger of his left hand.
He first learned of it in two articles WND published showing Obama was wearing the ring from his years at Occidental College, from 1979 to 1981, through 1990, when a satirical issue of the Harvard Law Review referred to it.
Despite Drew’s credibility, he was not interviewed by sympathetic Obama biographers David Remnick for his 2010 book “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama” or David Maraniss’s 2012 book “Barack Obama: The Story.”
Author Paul Kengor discusses Drew’s testimony that Obama was a Marxist-Leninist at Occidental in his 2010 book “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century,” beginning on page 445, and in his 2012 book “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis – The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor,” beginning on page 10 and resuming more extensively on page 249.
Author and WND columnist Jack Cashill mentioned Drew’s testimony of Obama’s Marxist views on page 224 of his 2011 book “Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America’s First Postmodern President.”
Author Stanley Kurtz discusses Drew’s contention that Obama was a “pure Marxist-socialist” at Occidental in his 2010 book “Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism,” on pages 9-10 and again on pages 88-91.
