Chapter IV: For the Slumlord's Defense, Barack Obama, Esq.

via Getty Images and ap A security company

owned by now-jailed political fundraiser 

Tony Rezko sought help from Obama

and then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in an effort

to gain a lucrative contract in Iraq, 

according to a report published in 2007.

Chapter IV: For the Slumlord's Defense, Barack Obama, Esq.
From the Washington Examiner

Writing in his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," Obama said he became "a civil rights lawyer" because "to lend meaning to a community's suffering and take part in its healing -- that required something more."

There was indeed "something more" to Obama's legal career, but it wasn't civil rights litigation at the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, where he was employed for a decade.

"He spent about half his time working with Bill Miceli and my former partner, Allison Davis, and that team," senior partner Judson Miner told The Washington Examiner. Most of the entries on Obama's client list for the firm from that period were in real estate, construction and finance.

Miceli and Davis were the partners in charge of the firm's housing and real estate practices. Davis would later leave

Chapter IX: The Arab American Network Behind Obama

Ray Hanania, a Chicago-based Arab-American

journalist and activist, described the network 

in a 2007 interview with Chicago magazine as

"a small cluster of activists." Chief among them

was Obama mentor Tony Rezko, above. Stuart

Levine, right, Rezko's former partner and the

government's star witness in the Rezko trial, 

testified that Obama met Nadhmi Auchi at a 

private Rezko reception held at Chicago's

Four Seasons hotel.

Chapter IX: The Arab American Network Behind Obama

President Obama's controversial relationships with radical figures like Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi have been well-publicized in recent years.

Prior to his academic career in the United States, Khalidi worked for Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization when it was classified by the State Department as a terrorist group.

Less well-known is a cluster of Chicago businessmen who formed an Arab-American network at the heart of Obama's political apparatus. Ray Hanania, a Chicago-based Arab-American journalist and activist, described the network in a 2007 interview with Chicago magazine as "a small cluster of activists" in the business