A long-hidden photo of then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama posing at a congressional caucus meeting with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan was revealed Thursday — roughly 13 years after it was taken.
The journalist who snapped the pair at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting in 2005, Askia Muhammad, told the Trice Edney News Wire that he “gave the picture up at the time and basically swore secrecy” out of concern that it could have “made a difference” and damaged Obama’s political future.
“After the nomination was secured and all the way up until the inauguration; then for eight years after he was president, it was kept under cover,” Muhammad said. “It absolutely would have made a difference.”
Muhammad on Thursday said a “staff member” for the CBC contacted him “sort of in a panic” after he took the photo.
“I sort of understood what was going on,” Muhammad told the website Talking Points Memo, which published the photo Thursday.
“I promised and made arrangements to give the picture to Leonard Farrakhan,” the minister’s son-in-law and chief of staff.
He said he gave away “the disk” from his camera but “copied the photograph from that day onto a [computer] file.”
“Realizing that I had given it up, I mean, it was sort of like a promise to keep the photograph secret,” Muhammad said.
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