A spokesman for West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd said Monday morning that the top Senate Democrat has told him he never participated in lynchings, cross burnings or other hate crimes against African-Americans while he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s. And he insisted that his boss wasn't a racist even during the time he belonged to the anti-black hate group.

Sen. Byrd: I Didn't Lynch and Wasn't Racist While in the Klan