With some very nice people across America absolutely convinced that President Obama is either a Communist or a Muslim — or perhaps both, this is refreshing. A Russian government-supported website, Russia Today, implies that Obama’s rise to power is due to his family’s connections with the generally-considered-to-be-conservative Central Intelligence Agency.

The Washington, D.C.-based media watchdog group Accuracy in Media is a tad skeptical.

According to AIM, Russia Today, which AIM calls a Russian government propaganda agency, “has been making the rounds for a year claiming that Barack Obama or his family members have had CIA connections. Now, the American Thinker, a premier conservative news site, has taken the bait.”

AIM goes on to say that in a July 15 post, Thomas Lifson cites an article on the site of the Claremont Institute.

But the Claremont piece he is promoting and which is titled, “The Chosen One,” admittedly relies on the work of “Self-styled investigative journalist Wayne Madsen,” whose “credibility is certainly checkered.” In addition to serving as a regular on Russia Today, which recently hired suspected Russian spy Ekaterina Zatuliveter, Madsen has produced a number of scoops that don’t pass the smell test.

Madsen’s past bombshells include:

• that Obama was a member of a gay bath house,
• President Bush had an affair with Condoleezza Rice, and
• that Bush aide Karl Rove arranged a political assassination.

AIM continues:

We first wrote about Madsen back in 2006, when he accused White House aide Karl Rove of having personally coordinated the assassination of a Lebanese political official, Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. In fact, U.S. and U.N. officials, acting through a special tribunal, have charged the Iranian-supported terrorist group Hezbollah with planting the 2005 car bomb that killed al-Hariri.

Another time, Madsen said President Bush himself was:

• a member of a Christian “blood lust cult,”
• who “sees no other option than death for those who become his enemies”
• “revels in indiscriminate blood-letting.”
• “constantly ‘embeds’ himself with the military at Goebbels-like speech fests” and
• “makes constant references to God when he refers to America’s ‘victory’ in Iraq, as if God endorses his sordid killing spree.”

So, the accusation that Obama is a CIA creation should perhaps be regarded accordingly.