Little Barry Obama Didn't Know that William Ayers Was an Unrepentant Domestic Terrorist

The Obama campaign is now spinning the yarn that Barack didn't know about William Ayers past as an unrepentant domestic terrorist intent on blowing up the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol (from Protein Wisdom):

CNN’s John Roberts: “I just want to try to get to the heart of it so that people at home can understand. Our Jim Acosta talked with your senior strategist David Axelrod about this. In 1995, William Ayers held kind of a get-to-know you event at his place where he was introducing Barack Obama to the political culture there in Chicago when he was running for the State Senate for the first time. David Axelrod said that at that meeting Senator Obama was not aware of Ayers’ radical background. Is that true?”

Obama Senior Strategist Robert Gibbs: “Look, if that’s what David said, that is true. Look, again, this is a relationship, excuse me, that Barack Obama has condemned the actions of Bill Ayers. This is somebody that The New York Times said Barack Obama’s not close to, and, again, John, this is a way of distracting the American people from what’s important.”

Okay, then I have a couple of other questions:

1. When DID he find out about Ayers past?
2. Why did he continue to associate with him after that?
3. If The New York Times said Barack Obama was not close to William Ayers, why did Chicago Mayor Richard Daley earlier in the campaign describe them as "friends"?

Sorry, not buying it.