Obama Biographer on Letters to 44’s Ex He Hopes the Public Never Sees

In his biography “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama,” author David Garrow shared insights into former President Barack Obama’s early life and relationships.

His book also questions some narratives in Obama’s book “Dreams From my Father.”

Garrow claims Obama expressed a wish for letters written to his ex-girlfriend Sheila Miyoshi Jager to remain private. These letters showcase the nature of their relationship during his tenure at Harvard Law School.

“Barack made it clear to me that he hoped I would never read them, I can put it that way,” Garrow said in an interview with Fox News. “I think if the letters to Sheila ever become public, I think that will be a signal event.”

“Those letters would detail just how extremely serious and extremely intense a relationship that was and that it continued off and on into his Harvard Law School years.”

During an interview with Tablet magazine, the author discussed his revelation that Obama’s breakup with Jager was not over his embrace of black racial consciousness, as he claimed in his novel.

Garrow said Jager revealed during an interview the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a black man.

Nor did their blowout argument occur after viewing a play about the American black experience. Jager said they argued after attending an exhibit about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann at Chicago’s Spertus Institute.

Steve Cokely, a black Chicago mayoral aide accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans before Obama and Jager’s visit to the Spertus Institute.

After seeing the exhibit, and in light of Cokely’s claims, Jager reportedly told Garrow their affair ended after they argued over Obama’s refusal to condemn black racism.

She acknowledged that Obama’s embrace of a black identity created tension between them but insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments.

It was not Obama’s blackness that bothered her, she reportedly told Garrow, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.

Garrow called Obama’s “Dreams from My Father” almost all a work of fiction. He also described the 44th president as too lazy to be a good Supreme Court justice.

The author concluded Obama’s presidency will be considered a failure in the long run because of its foreign policy shortcomings.