The U.S. Secret Service is looking into reports that a crowd member yelled,"Kill him!" while Gov. Sarah Palin was talking about Sen. Barack Obama during her Clearwater rally Monday.
The incident reportedly occurred after Palin questioned Obama's patriotism because of his acquaintance with William Ayers, a Chicago university professor who was an anti-Vietnam War radical in the 1970s.
Apparently the only public evidence of the "kill him" shout is a Washington Post news story Tuesday by reporter Dana Milbank, who covered the rally.
Milbank later was quoted in an interview with the Politico Web site as saying he thought the shout may have been a reference to Ayers, not Obama.
Milbank was quoted Thursday saying he had been contacted by the Secret Service about the matter. A Secret Service spokesman confirmed that the agency was aware of the report and looking into it.
Spokesman Ed Donovan said no Secret Service agent heard the threat, nor was it reported by local law officers or the public.
Federal law makes it a crime to threaten to kill, kidnap or harm a presidential candidate.
Milbank reported Tuesday the shouted threat came after Palin, quoting the New York Times, told the crowd Ayers was "one of Obama's earliest supporters," and "was a domestic terrorist and part of the group that launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol."
The Obama campaign confirms that Obama knows Ayers, who today lives in Obama's Chicago neighborhood and held a campaign coffee for an Obama state Senate campaign in 1995.
Milbank also reported that crowd members shouted obscenities at reporters in a press area during Palin's speech, and that one crowd member shouted a racial epithet at a black sound man and told him, "Sit down, boy."
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