State department rules are VERY VERY clear on this point.
But hey, don't trust me! That thing you're sitting in front of right now? It has internet access. Go to the state department's own web site and see for your self.
A "Statement of No Record" and a DS10A signed by an older blood relative suffices.
That's now. Post 9/11. In the age of ID theft. With everyone worried about international child kidnapping and the sex slave trade. With our borders fully secured against saboteurs (OK, I made that last part up!)
It was quite a bit more lax when Barry Toot Barack Hussein Obama got his first passport decades ago...
[You do not need a birth certificate to get a passport. ]
I could not get a passport in my Texas town, of 70 thousand, without one.
I happily went to their office with my nice original Hospital birth certificate, little footprints, gold seal and all, and they laughed.
Told me I’d have to sent to Pennsylvania for an ‘official’ BC to get my passport.