(ABC/AP Photo )
Ayers softened his stand on violence during the "GMA" interview.
"We knew it was wrong. We knew it was illegal. We knew it was immoral," he said, but the group's members felt they "had to do more" to stop the Vietnam War.
He urged people today "to participate in resistance, in nonviolent, direct action" to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ayers, 63, currently a distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, became a political pinata for McCain and Palin during the presidential campaign.
Despite Obama's attempt to portray their relationship as a distant one, Ayers, in a new afterward to his book "Fugitive Days," describes Obama as a "neighbor and family friend."
On "GMA," Ayers again downplayed any close ties to Obama despite the reference to"family friend."
"I'm talking there about the fact that I became an issue, unwillingly and unwittingly," he said. "It was a profoundly dishonest narrative. ... I'm describing there how the blogosphere characterized the relationship."
"I would say, really, that we knew each other in a professional way on the same level of, say, thousands of other people," he said.
He added, echoing a phrase that Obama used to describe Ayers, "I am a guy around the neighborhood."
Ayers acknowledged that he held a reception in his home when Obama began his political run for state office.
"He was probably in 20 homes that day," Ayers said.
During the campaign, Obama tried to defuse the Ayers issue by condemning Ayers' past actions as "detestable."
"The notion that ... me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense," Obama said.
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