Examining the Obama birth certificate controversies, either real or manufactured.
By Jim Marrs
AboveTopSecret.com
December 12, 2008
“When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”
— Robert A. Heinlein, If This Goes On, 1940
With a healthy 52.9 percent of the national votes, Illinois Senator Barack Hussein Obama II surely must be qualified to be the 44th President of the United States.
Or is he?
This question has proved worrisome for a growing number of citizens long before the November election and has stirred strong passions on both sides. The controversy finally reached all the way to the Supreme Court, which on December 8 declined to review a suit by New Jersey resident Leo Donofrio questioning Obama’s eligibility to hold office. But at least a dozen other suits remained active and the issue had not died despite deafening silence on the part of the “Watchdog” corporate-controlled national news media.
Obama supporters see this question as a non-issue and even “pure garbage,” as was attributed to an Obama Team spokesman. They view those who question Obama’s Constitutional qualification like Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell, who on December 2, 2008, described them as “loonies — like the skinheads from Tennessee who planned to dress up in coattails and top-hats and go on a racist killing spree before targeting Obama.”
But are those who question truly “loonies?”
Gary Kreep, executive director of the United States Justice Foundation (USJF), responded to the Obama Team by stating, “The Constitution of the United States is NOT ‘garbage’ and furthermore, securing the rights of the people under the Constitution is NOT ‘garbage’!”
“The Obama campaign’s response is an elitist, condescending slap in the face to patriotic Americans. No one is above the law and Team Obama cannot make the question of Obama’s eligibility go away by disrespecting the American people,” he added.
The USJF is a nonprofit (501(c)3) public interest, legal action organization active since 1979.
The Obama qualification issue all starts with the Constitution of the United States, which clearly states in Article II, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;… ” This was written as protection against office-seekers who might owe allegiance to people other than Americans and use foreign money to gain power in the new Republic. It was a wise move then and is a wise move today, considering the number of Bush administration officials accused of dual citizenship with Israel.
While no one has accused Obama of being under the control of a foreign power, his heritage, like that of Bill Clinton, does become somewhat murky on close inspection.
For example, according to authoritative sources Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, reportedly in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Stanley Ann Dunham (1942-1995). Ann Dunham reportedly married Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr. (1936-1982), on February 2, 1961. The senior Obama, an African Muslim by birth, was an avowed atheist and father of two children from a previous marriage to a Kenyan woman named Kezia. It has been alleged that the senior Obama was not legally married to Kezia as their marriage may have been only a tribal marriage and thus, relieving him of any charge of bigamy in his marriage to Dunham. Both Obamas studied Russian at the University of Hawaii partially sponsored by the Laubach Literacy program. Although the Obamas reported divorced in 1964, there are no documents of such and there have been question raised concerning their marriage. President-elect Obama’s wife, Michelle, once described Dunham as “very young and very single when she had him.”
Allegations are that the President-elect Obama was actually born in Kenya which not only would eliminate him as a natural born citizen but would make him a citizen of Kenya, which at the time of his birth was a British Protectorate.
According to Reuven Koret, publisher of Israel Insider, Obama was not born in Hawaii, but in a hospital in Mombasa, Kenya. Koret added that the Israeli Mossad believe the Mombasa story but “Proving Mombasa is not so easy, as NSIS [National Security Intelligence Services] in Nairobi are clamming up tight, as are MI6 in London, who have the original Mombasa file and full details of the birth.”
According to a telephone conversation transcript published on the Internet by Anabaptist Bishop Ron McRae, Obama’s 86-year-old Kenyan step-grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, claimed she was present when Obama was born in Mombasa. However, this conversation involved two translators and has been accused of being edited for content.
In an affidavit posted on the Citizen Wells website, McRae stated, “The liberal bloggers can make of this preacher what they want, who is neither a self proclaimed bishop, or a partisan supporter of McCain, out to get Obama. As the Continental Bishop of The Anabaptists Churches of North America, this preacher was unanimously elected to that office by the statewide bishops and elders sitting upon our National Presbytery. Howbeit, who this preacher is or is not, is not the issue, but rather, who Barack Obama is.
“This preacher believes Obama’s grandmother. I do not believe Barack Obama…. The officials in Kenya throughout the registrar’s office in both Mombassa and Nairobi have told us that he was born in Kenya, and they will tell you verbally that the records have always existed, both for Obama’s birth, and the birthing records of his mother. But the government, under orders from Barack’s cousin Raila Odinga have sealed and confiscated the files to keep them top secret. The government employees know the truth, but fear for their lives in a most serious way.”
Others questioned whether or not Obama’s mother ever went to Kenya as Barack Obama Sr. came to America in a 1959 program Kenyan student program and did not return home until 1965, some time after leaving his wife and son. Ann Dunham was 18 years old and three months pregnant with Obama when she married Obama Sr. David Mendell, author of the biography Obama: From Promise to Power, has stated that no records exist of Dunham’s travel to Kenya only a year after the Mau Mau rebellion ended. “Ann’s mother would have gone ballistic if her daughter had even mentioned traveling to Kenya in the final stages of pregnancy,” added Mendell.
Jim Geraghty, one of the first bloggers to raise the question of a possible Obama birth in Kenya, also raised a further question. “If Obama were born outside the United States, one could argue that he would not meet the legal definition of natural-born citizen … because U.S. law at the time of his birth required his natural-born parent (his mother) to have resided in the United States for 10 years, at least five of which had to be after the age of 16,” wrote Geraghty, adding, that Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, was 18 when Obama was born “so she wouldn’t have met the requirement of five years after the age of 16.”
Jerome Corsi, a senior staff writer for WorldNetDaily, an influential Internet pro-Christian website which has covered the Obama eligibility story from its onset, tracked the Obama birth story doggedly even to flying to Kenya to investigate for himself in early October, 2008. This trip only added more mystery to the issue.
Corsi, author of a New York Times Best Selling book on the president-elect entitled The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, was seized by Kenyan officials as he was entering a hotel to conduct a news conference in which he was to answer “lingering questions” about Obama’s birth as well as “expose details of deep secret ties between the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and a section of Kenya government leaders, their connection to certain sectorial groups in Kenya and a subsequent plot to be executed in Kenya should Senator Obama win the American presidency.”
According to Time, Corsi was detained for about four and a half hours before he was expelled. Immigration officials said the author did not have a proper permit to work in Kenya. Corsi’s publicist, Tim Bueler, said, he and Corsi were assured their visas and passports were in order but that officials said they had misplaced their immigration cards, which visitors fill out upon arrival at the Nairobi airport. During their detention, both Corsi and Bueler were held incommunicado, restricted in their movements and with no accessibility to a telephone.
Apparently, Obama enjoyed widespread support in Kenya and his half-sister, Auma Obama, attacked Corsi’s book, calling it “blatant lies,” despite his publisher Simon & Schuster’s description of the work as “thoroughly researched and documented.”
According to FactCheck.org, even if Obama was born in Kenya, the fact that he has never renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship would have automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.
One Above Top Secret member voiced his frustration this way: “Now why hasn’t Mr. Obama released his [birth certificate] and ended this thing? What, does he think we don’t know he was supposedly born in Hawaii or who his parents were or his name and birth date? What is on his that he has to have it sealed from the public I wonder? How about the rest of you, could you produce a BC in about 10 minutes to 3 days if you needed to prove where you were born? And yet after all this time he has still to produce one, and has actually had his sealed from the public…Hiding something is my bet but we shall see…”
Even before the election, the question was raised and lawsuits filed. Such questions have been raised by a wide swath of people who see themselves as public-spirited citizens who want to make certain the legal requirements for holding the nation’s highest office are met to avoid a constitutional crisis.
One of the first to file suit prior to the election was attorney Philip J. Berg, a former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania; former candidate for Governor and U.S. Senate in Democratic Primaries; and former Chairman of the Democratic Party in Montgomery County, PA. Berg, a self-proclaimed liberal who served as a former member of Democratic State Committee, filed a lawsuit in Federal Court on August 21, 2008, [Berg vs. Obama, Civil Action No. 08-cv-4083] seeking a Declaratory Judgment and an Injunction that Obama does not meet the qualifications to be President of the United States. Berg claimed his suit was filed for the best interests of the Democratic Party and the citizens of the United States.
In Berg’s suit, it was argued that significant questions remain over Obama’s birth place; whether or not he was ever a citizen of Kenya, Indonesia and/or Canada; that Obama had used a number of aliases, such as Barry Soetoro, Barry Obama, Barack Dunham and Barry Dunham, and failed to acknowledge the use of such names when he applied to the Illinois Bar.
“If the DNC [Democratic National Committee] officers and/or leaders had performed one ounce of due diligence we would not find ourselves in this emergency predicament, one week away from making a person the nominee who has lost their citizenship as a child and failed to even perform the basic steps of regaining citizenship through an oath of allegiance at age eighteen [18] as prescribed by Constitutional laws!” stated Berg one week before the Democratic National Convention.
Berg publicly pledged to drop his suit if Obama will simply produce authorized proof of citizenship. It was not forthcoming.
What did come was surprising legal action from the National Democratic Committee which joined with Obama’s attorneys in asking that Berg’s suit be dismissed.
Pointing to the intense and minute scrutiny given Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin by the Democrats, Berg commented, “”I think it’s outrageous. The Democratic National Committee should be ensuring the Democratic Party and the public that they have a qualified candidate up there. To file a joint motion is like they’re in cahoots.”
However, despite the claims of a Kenyan birth, the evidence for Honolulu as Obama’s true birth place appears imposing.
One compelling item is a notice in the August 13, 1961, edition of the Honolulu Advertiser in the “Birth” section reading, “Mr, and Mrs, Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug. 4″ However, anyone may place a notice in the newspaper and do so often to notify friends and relatives of a birth that may have taken place elsewhere.
Many Obama supporters believed the issue would die away after an Hawaiian “Certificate of Live Birth” (COLB) was posted to the Daily Kos blog on June 12, 2008. But only further controversy ensued.
Ron Polarik, who claimed an extensive background in forensic science, posted a detailed refutation to the certificate. Polarik explained, “Before seeing the image, I had no idea that Barack Obama’s birthplace was in question, or that his status as a natural-born US citizen had never been proven. Like millions of other Americans, I believed the story he told about being born in Hawaii to an American Mother (and a U.S. citizen) and an African Father (a Kenyan national attending college on a student visa). I had no idea that this issue would mushroom and take on a life of its own. What I did know, however, was that from the first time I saw the Daily Kos image, or what I now call, ‘Obama’s bogus birth certificate,’ that something was just not right about it. As someone who has scanned hundreds of thousands of documents in his lifetime, I had a hard time accepting that this was an original scan image made from an original paper document.”
He added, “The answer to ‘What’s on Barack Obama’s real, original birth certificate’ ranks right up there with some of the great mysteries of our time — and that is really hard to swallow. That a man, with a dubious background, has been elected to the highest office of the greatest superpower in the world without ever having to prove who he says he is! That is not “nutty,” that’s just plain insane!”
Polarik explained that the posted document is a short transcript of a person’s birth record, a “Certificate of Live Birth” or “COLB as I came to call it.” He went on to state that a COLB is “what Hawaii’s Department of Health now issues in place of actual photocopies of the original, long-form birth certificate. The COLB is a “short form birth certificate,” and when duly certified, can be used for all intents and purposes that a regular birth certificate could be used.”
Polarik quickly became dubious of the COLB due to “the apparent lack of visually recognizable feature that attest to its veracity, such as the Seal, signature(s), and date stamps.” “Initially, I was also a skeptic, having never seen a Hawaiian COLB before. Although this COLB image did not look the same as a traditional birth certificate, what captured my attention were the image anomalies I saw — anomalies that never would appear on any genuine scan of a document. Specifically, I saw that the text in this image bore the telltale signs of being graphically altered after the image was created,” he said.
After more than four months of research, Polarik concluded, “With my experience and specialization in document imaging, my findings are conclusive and irrefutable that the COLB images posted by Obama to his campaign website, fightthesmears.com, to the dailykos.com, a pro-Obama blog, to FactCheck.org, a pro-Obama political research group, and to Politifact.org, are, in fact, image forgeries [emphasis in the original] with the intent to defraud the American People into believing that these images were digitally scanned from Obama’s genuine, ‘original’ birth certificate.”
This conclusion, of course, met with strenuous opposition from Obama supporters. “You may have recently heard right-wing smears questioning Barack Obama’s birth certificate and citizenship. These assertions are completely false and designed to play into the worst kind of stereotypes. You can see Barack Obama’s birth certificate for yourself and help push back with the truth,” countered a website called FighttheSmears.
The controversy rolled on with pro-Obama writers citing support for the COLB by FactCheck.org. On the other side, Polarik noted that “FactCheck.org is most definitely not independent group, but belongs to the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania: a Center run by Obama supporters and funders.”
Despite Polarik’s compelling work showing Obama’s Hawaiian Live Birth Certificate a fake, Hawaiian Department of Health Director Chiyome Fukino on Oct. 31 released a public statement that “The Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.” Hawaii’s registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, also vouched for the existence of a complete birth certificate for Obama. Some days later, according to World Net Daily Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle placed the Obama birth certificate under seal and instructed the Department of Health “to make sure no one in the press obtains access to the original document under any circumstances.”
WorldNet Daily reported that a veteran private investigator with FBI training was hired in Hawaii to check into the question of Obama’s birth certificate. However, after visiting both the Queens Medical Center and the Kaliolani Medical Center, the investigator reported that sheriff’s deputies were posted at both hospitals to brush off inquiries into Obama’s birth certificate.
Publisher Koret wrote, “Hawaii Dept of Health would hardly denounce a potential presidential candidate’s birth certificate as fraudulent without cross-checking birth records for August 1961. No birth was registered in the name of Obama in Honolulu in August 1961… This last detail may explain why Hawaiian officials [in October] confirmed that a birth certificate does indeed exist but conspicuously refused to release any details or even confirm that the details conform to those on the computer-generated Certification of Live Birth. The name on the ‘original’ certificate may in fact not be Obama nor the birthplace Honolulu. But Obama’s recent visit ‘to his [now deceased] grandmother may well have had less to do with her health than eliciting this vague and inconclusive statement from the Hawaiian Health Department.”
So why can’t the public see it? What’s the problem?
Sen. John McCain, defeated by Obama in November, avoided any such controversy over his birth in Panama to parents serving in the U.S. military there by gaining from his fellow senators a resolution in April, 2008, declaring him a “natural born Citizen under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.” He also made public his birth documents.
The Obama birth issue was exacerbated when the Federal Judge dismissed Berg’s suit, saying he had no legal standing in filing such a suit.
Following the dismissal of Berg’s suit, the attorney proclaimed that by failing to respond to his suit demanding proof of citizenship, Obama has legally “admitted” to the lawsuit’s accusations, including the charge that the Democratic candidate was born in Mombosa, Kenya. Berg pointed to Rule 36 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which states that unless the accused party provides written answer or objection to charges within 30 days, the accused legally admits the matter. “Since Obama has only filed motions to dismiss and has not actually answered the charges in the lawsuit,” Berg said, “according to Rule 36, Obama has legally admitted he is not a natural-born citizen.”
Supreme Court Justice David Souter agreed that a review of Berg’s federal lawsuit against Barack Hussein Obama II, et al., dismissed for lack of standing was warranted. The suit received Court Docket No. 08-570 on Oct. 31, 2008.
And Berg’s was not the only case concerning Obama’s constitutional qualification to be dismissed for lack of standing. Unconfirmed reports indicate that citizens in Utah, Wyoming, Florida, New York, North Carolina, Texas, California and Virginia have also filed lawsuits or requested court orders to verify Obama’s citizenship status.
Among others dismissed, Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry W. Baxter dismissed a suit brought by the Rev. Tom Terry saying, “I don’t think you have standing to bring this suit.” Terry had argued, “”I bear no personal ill will against Barack Obama. In fact, his election solely on the basis as the first African-American president-elect is a very positive thing for our nation. However, as an American, I have very grave concerns about Mr. Obama’s possible divided loyalties since he has strenuously and vigorously fought every request and every legal effort to force him to release his original birth certificate for public review and scrutiny. I think that is significant.”
Washington State Superior Court Judge John Erlich threw out a suit from the Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed noting that Reed did not have the authority to inquire into Obama’s constitutional qualifications.
Such rulings provoked a howl of protest from many people, not all ardent opponents of Obama. Attorney Berg raised a pertinent question when he asked, “This is a question of who has standing to uphold our Constitution. If I don’t have standing, if you don’t have standing, if your neighbor doesn’t have standing to question the eligibility of the individual to be president of the United States – the commander in chief, the most powerful person in the world – then who does?”
In a suit filed in California, USJF Executive Director Kreep argued that his plaintiffs did have standing, stating, “The parties in this case have standing to bring this litigation, due to the fact that Dr. [Alan] Keyes and Dr. [Wiley S.] Drake, Sr., are candidates on the California ballot for President and Vice President of the United States, and Mr. [Markham] Robinson is an Elector for the Keyes-Drake ticket, and Vice Chairman of America’s Independent Party, of Fenton, Michigan, which nominated Dr. Keyes for President. He is also a Chairman of the American Independent Party (California), which nominated Dr. Keyes and Dr. Drake for President and Vice President, respectively. Based on the foregoing, it is imperative for SOS to be provided proof that Senator Obama is a ‘natural born’ citizen.”
The outcome of this suit has yet to be resolved.
“We will file lawsuits on his actions, every time. As long as we have money, we will keep filing lawsuits until we get a decision as to his citizenship status,” vowed Kreep.
Meanwhile, those opposed to a President without solid credentials moved to bring their case to a wider audience. A full-page ad placed in the Chicago Tribune On Dec. 1 and 3 carried the headline, “An Open Letter to Barack Obama – Are you a Natural Born Citizen of the U.S.? Are you legally eligible to hold the Office of President?” The body of the letter, after enumerating several allegations concerning Obama’s citizenship, stated, “With all due respect, I ask that you immediately direct the appropriate Hawaiian officials to allow access to the vault copy of your birth certificate by our forensic scientists on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, December 5, 6 and 7, 2008.
“In addition, I ask that you deliver… documentary evidence to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. by 10 a.m. on December 8, 2008, marked for my attention.”
None of this happened.
The letter was signed by Robert L. Schulz, chairman of We The People Foundation For Constitutional Education, Inc., “a New York-based not-for-profit group that is supported by tax-deductible donations,” according to its website. For some time, Schulz has been complaining of government investigations regard his tax-protest activities. Schulz has filed suits against the federal government alleging that there is no law that requires citizens to file income taxes. A 2007 Justice Department civil suit against Schulz for tax fraud is on appeal.
This whole “natural born Citizen” issue should have been a non-starter. After all, couldn’t most Americans produce a genuine birth certificate if needed? The simple act of producing an incontrovertible birth document should have ended the questions.
But this has not yet happened and the issue has grown and reached all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Dec. 8, 2008, declined to hear the Donofrio case.
Joel Skousen of World Affairs Brief expressed doubts that the high court would consider the matter back on Dec. 6, writing, “I doubt the Supremes will hone in on the key issue of challenging the validity of the Hawaii Certification of Birth by Obama’s mother. The evidence keeps mounting that Obama was not born anywhere in Hawaii. All hospitals records in Hawaii have now been checked and none show that Barack Obama or his sister were born in any medical facility there–contrary to his mother’s false certification to the State. Chances are slim to none that the Supreme Court will do anything more than take Hawaii’s word that the certification of birth is legitimate–instead of demanding that the State prove the basis of the certification.
“In a decided show of bad intent by the Court, in one of the latest filings with the Supreme Court the clerk of the court evaded a timing filing of the case by sending the arriving envelope to the FBI for anthrax testing–without any justification whatsoever, other than ensure the filing is delayed past the Dec. 15 deadline when US electors meet to ratify the election of Barack Obama. The fix is in.”
Many worried citizens even view this issue as portending a constitutional crisis even worst than the Watergate scandal. And they are all not ‘loonies’.
Edwin Vieira, a constitutional attorney with 30 years experience and four Harvard degrees, told Philadelphia’s The Bulletin that if it were discovered that Obama is not eligible to be President, it would cause many problems. “They would be compounded if his ineligibility were discovered after he had been in office for a period of time,” Vieira added, noting such problems as appointments would be recalled, nominations rescinded, and any decisions invalidated. He also pointed out that since all laws must be ratified by the President, any legislation signed by a bogus president would become null and void.
He said Obama supporters should be the ones most concerned about the birth issue because his entire political platform would be discredited if it were learned that he was ineligible for office from the beginning.
“Let’s say we go a year into this process, and it all turns out to be a flim-flam,” Vieira postulated. “What’s the nation’s reaction to that? What’s going to be the reaction in the next U.S. election? God knows. It has almost revolutionary consequences, if you think about it.”
Vieira said considering the consequences of an ineligible President and the growing number of lawsuits concerning Obama’s right to rule, the issue will not go away any time soon. He added that any legislation of policies approved by an Obama administration could end up in court which would allow plaintiffs to subpoena records to include Obama’s birth certificate.
Adding to the vexation of anti-Obama forces is the question of why didn’t Obama’s opponent Sen. John McCain or his primary opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, raise the qualification issue early on?
No one seemed to have a satisfying answer to this one except perhaps some deep-thinking conspiracy theorists who suggested that the whole Obama qualification issue may be a long term plan by globalists to destabilize the United States, ushering in their New World Order.
After all, this issue is a win-win situation for anyone desiring to fragment American society, for if it proves that there is no authentic Obama birth certificate, two possibilities arise – either the U.S. Constitution must be abrogated or the Constitution must be amended to allow Obama to serve. Either choice could prove disastrous for the nation.
Constitutional law already has been savaged in the past in bypassing the Posse Commitas Act and the declaration of war provisions, not to mention the Military Commissions Act and sections of the PATRIOT Act. And any Constitutional Convention seeking to change the document would undoubtedly result in a circus of lobbyists and special interest groups.
Douglas Hagmann, on the Northeast Intelligence Network website, summed it up this way: “There appears to be an unprecedented level of collusion between numerous political power brokers on both sides of the political divide, elected and appointed officials on both the federal and state levels, as well as members of the corporate media. It is interesting if not alarming to take a few steps back in an effort to gain a wider perspective, and finding unusual alliances and political ‘bed partners’ among various members this group…. [S]ome events… have taken place within the past several years … that have effectively changed or otherwise had a direct impact on the social and geopolitical landscape of America and its power structure. A few examples include such things as NAFTA [North America Free Trade Agreement], the SPP [Security and Prosperity Partnership] treaty, border and immigration issues, the PATRIOT Act, the Global Poverty Act of 2007, the management of the oil “crisis,” the most recent economic crisis and the remedies enacted, and the recent G-20 economic summit, where President Bush essentially provided economic oversight of U.S. economic institutions to the European Union.”
Or, could it be, as alleged by some, that the birth controversy be a ploy by the globalists to keep President Bush in power long after his term ends?
In light of all this, is it too much for President-elect Obama to simply authorize the release of his birth documents and settle the matter once and for all before any further harm comes to our Constitution?
Or, perhaps George W. Bush was right when, according to several credible accounts, he described the Constitution of the United States as “just a goddamned piece of paper.”
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