When Sen. John McCain implied recently that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas was supporting Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama in the presidential race, he was borrowing a page from the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com, which has been trying mightily for months to connect Obama to terrorism.

McCain said he thought it was “a legitimate point of discussion” that a Hamas leader had made complimentary comments about Obama in a radio interview. When Obama accused McCain of dirty pool, one of those who rushed to the Arizona Republican’s defense was Aaron Klein, the Jerusalem bureau chief for WorldNetDaily, who had conducted part of an April 13 radio interview with Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef.

Klein sent out a release May 9 saying that McCain shouldn’t be criticized for merely pointing out Yousef’s statement about Obama.

That might seem like splitting hairs, especially since Klein and WorldNetDaily have for months been running anti-Obama commentaries not only trying to link him to terrorist groups but also publicizing other bizarre — and unsubstantiated — charges. WorldNetDaily was started a decade ago by Joseph Farah, an associate of wealthy conservative activist Richard Mellon Scaife and founder of the right-wing Western Journalism Center.

A February WorldNetDaily piece by Klein titled “Obama Worked with Terrorist” bases its charge on a 2001 grant made by the Woods Fund, a Chicago charity on which Obama served as a board member, to the Arab American Action Network, which Klein condemns for supporting immigrants and hosting a 2005 art exhibit about the post-1948 Palestinian diaspora. The piece also noted that Obama served on the Woods Fund board with former 1960s radical William C. Ayers, a relationship that has since become the focus of mainstream news coverage.

WorldNetDaily hasn’t gotten as much mileage out of other charges it has aired, though: that Obama raised money for Palestinian refugees in the 1990s; that “terrorists worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election victory,” as Klein argued in a March piece; or that Obama is the presidential choice of the New Black Panther Party, a black separatist group.

But in an e-mail exchange from Jerusalem, Klein says that it’s absurd to say, as some liberal bloggers have of late, that WorldNetDaily has an anti-Obama agenda. “WND has one agenda: fierce independent reporting that exposes the truth,” he says. “Isn’t it fair to report that the man running for our highest office has some questionable advisers and affiliations? What is not fair is when liberal bloggers call out any reporter who dares expose the truth about their favored presidential candidate.”