Man, this is so friggin wierd. You can't make this stuff up:

   Percy Sutton knew Al-Mansour well, since the two men had been business partners and served on several corporate boards together.As Sutton remembered, Al-Mansour was raising money for Obama's education and seeking recommendations for him to attend Harvard Law School."I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him," Sutton told NY1 city hall reporter Dominic Carter. "The friend's name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas."Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt told Newsmax that Sutton's account was "bogus" and a "fabrication that has been retracted" by a spokesman for the Sutton family.
   He referred Newsmax to a pro-Obama blog published on Politico.com by reporter Ben Smith. In a September 3 blog entry, Smith wrote that "a spokesman for Sutton's family, Kevin Wardally" said that Sutton had been mistaken when he made those comments about Obama and Khalid Al-Mansour.
   Smith suggested the retraction "put the [Obama/Al-Mansour] story to rest for good."Wardally told Smith that the "information Mr. Percy Sutton imported [sic] on March 25 in a NY1 News interview regarding his connection to Barack Obama is inaccurate. As best as our family and the Chairman's closest friends can tell, Mr. Sutton, now 86 years of age, misspoke in describing certain details and events in that television interview."Asked which parts of Percy Sutton's statements were a "fabrication," LaBolt said "all of it. Al Mansour doesn't know Obama. And Sutton's spokesman retracted the story.
   The letter [to Harvard, which Percy Sutton says he wrote on behalf of Obama], the 'payments for loans' — all of it, not true," he added. Newsmax contacted the Sutton family and they categorically denied Wardally's claims to Smith and the Politico.com. So there was no retraction of Sutton's original interview, during which he revealed that Khalid Al-Mansour was "raising money" for Obama and had asked Sutton to write a letter of recommendation for Obama to help him get accepted at Harvard Law School.
   Sutton's personal assistant told Newsmax that neither Mr. Sutton or his family had ever heard of Kevin Wardally."Who is this person?" asked Sutton's assistant, Karen Malone. When told that he portrayed himself as a "spokesman" for the family, Malone told Newsmax, "Well, he's not."According to a 2006 New York magazine profile, Wardally is part of a "New New Guard" in Harlem politics that has been challenging the "lions" of the old guard, Charles Rangel and Percy Sutton. That makes him an unlikely candidate to speak on behalf of Sutton. Sutton maintains an office at the Manhattan headquarters of the firm he founded, Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. ICBC owns New York radio stations WBLS and WLIB.
   Sutton's son Pierre ("Pepe") runs ICBC along with his daughter, Keisha Sutton-James. Malone told Newsmax that she had consulted with Sutton's family members at the station and confirmed that no one knew Kevin Wardally or had authorized him to speak on behalf of the family. For someone claiming to be a "spokesman" for the Sutton family, who was authorized to call Percy Sutton a liar,
Wardally even got Percy Sutton's age wrong. Sutton is not 86, as Wardally said, but close to 88. He was born on Nov. 24, 1920. Wardally responded to a several Newsmax phone messages and emails with a terse one-line comment, maintaining his statement that Percy Sutton "misspoke" in the television interview. "I believe the statement speaks for itself and the Sutton Family and I have nothing further to say on the topic," he wrote in an email. Asked to explain why it was that no one at Inner City Broadcasting Corp. knew of him or accepted him as a family spokesman.
   Wardally responded later that he had been retained by a nephew of the elder Sutton, who "is in our office almost every week." Wardally works for Bill Lynch Associations, a Harlem political consulting firm. The nephew, Chuck Sutton, no longer works with the elder Sutton at Inner City Broadcasting, but for a high-tech start-up called Synematics. "Percy Sutton doesn't go out idly on television saying things he doesn't mean," a well-connected black entrepreneur who knows Sutton told Newsmax.
   Ben LaBolt's claim that "Al Mansour doesn't know Obama" was contradicted by Al Mansour himself in an extended interview with Newsmax. Comparing the revelation of his ties to Obama to the controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Al Mansour said that he was determined to keep a low profile to avoid embarrassing Obama. "In respect to Mr. Obama, I have told him, because so many people are running after him… I was determined that I was never going to be in that situation," he told Newsmax.
   Al Mansour said he was deliberately avoiding any contact with the candidate. "I'm not involved in any way in celebrity sweepstakes," he said. "I wish him well, anything I can do if he lets me know, I'll let him know what I think I can do or can't. But I don't collect autographs. I wish him the best, and hope he can win the election."He repeatedly declined to comment on the Percy Sutton allegations, either to confirm or to deny them. "Any statement that I make would only further the activity which is not in the interest of Barack, not in the interest of Percy, not in the interest of anyone," Al Mansour said. Sen. Obama has refused to instruct Harvard Law School to release any information about his time there as a student, or about his student loans.