I think that at this point, Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate is as valid as his "Certification of Live Birth" – based upon other external and independently-verifiable “prima facie” facts known.
The Kenyan birth certificate's plausibility can be directly tied to the events surrounding prima facie facts, recorded in the 1964 Obama divorce, as outlined in Post 6,799 and Post 2,222 of the Free Republic thread "Is this really it? (re: possible Obama's Kenyan B.C.)".
As for Obama's "Certification of Live Birth," its plausibility is anecdotal at best. Nearly all of the accounts of his mother’s whereabouts in the months immediately before and after Obama JR's birth comes from personal accounts of one person: Susan Blake [Botkin].
You may recognize Blake as the former Mercer Island city councilwoman and high school friend of Obama’s mama, Ann Dunham. Blake said that Ann stopped by to visit with Obama Jr when Obama was just 3 weeks old in late-August 1961.
She was interviewed by the Seattle Times, the Chicago Tribune (video), and others. In August 2008, Michael Patrick Leahy spoke with Blake in doing research for his book, “What Does Barack Obama Believe?” In the book, Blake says that when she got married in 1964, Blake sent Dunham a wedding invitation to Dunham’s last known Hawaii address, but it was returned with no forwarding address.
Leahy brings up a couple of interesting questions that others have queried about Dunham’s visit with Blake:
“Why does an 18-year-old mother take her 3-week-old baby on a plane trip from Honolulu to Seattle if her parents and husband were in Honolulu?"
"What would be sufficient motivation for such an action?”
Therefore, to delve deeper into the rabbit hole of Obama’s birth, below are notes from a NEVER BEFORE RELEASED telephone interview conducted by a fellow investigator (from an adjacent "research team" who must remain anonymous) with Blake a week before the Inauguration.
It should be pointed out that the interviewer was very thorough and accurate in capturing highlights of the hour-plus telephone interview with Blake. However, he said that in interviewing her, at times it was difficult to discern what was truth, half-truth, embellishment, or misremembered from Dunham's brief and unexpected visit that took place nearly 50 years ago.
These raw notes show some new information and inconsistencies that seem to both AID while HINDERING Blake’s believability as a “witness” to Obama Jr and his mother’s whereabouts from 1960-1962.
1. Susan has been contacted now by many individuals especially in the last 2 days. One of her first contacts was back in August or so of 2008 by Michael Patrick Leahy, writer of the book "What Does Barack Obama Believe" available from Amazon. Much of what Susan has heard about her other interviews she feels has been distorted.2. She was friend and confidante of Stanley Ann during her High School years, knew Stanley (she went by STANLEY not Ann) and that she was a very forward, articulate woman who shared much of her thoughts with her friends.
3. Stanley left in spring of 1960 and wrote cards and letters from Hawaii over a year or so that she was there. She sent a Christmas card to Susan stating she was dating a Kenyan student and was 'in love'. In spring of 1961 Stanley sent another letter stating she had been married and was expecting a baby.
4. Susan had gone on vacation to Santa Cruz in summer of '61, had returned mid August because she remembered the fires around Santa Cruz at that time which caused her to return home. Soon after she was back, her mother told her that Stanley was coming to visit. Stanley had the newborn Barack Obama, roughly 3 weeks old. To Susan's best recollection it was sometime around Aug. 25th to Aug 30th.
5. Stanley told Susan she was only in Seattle for a short visit, going on to Boston to find residence and a job, because she intended to go there for BO Srs. graduated studies. She was to fly to Boston shortly after their visit.
6. Her understanding was that Stanley had waited until the baby was old enough to fly according to what Stanley said of the doctor. She was very much "in love" with Barack Obama Sr, happy to have the newborn, although not proficient at changing a diaper, which Susan did. "My claim to fame is that I changed Barack Obama's diaper".
7. She thought that Stanley was going to fly to Boston, establish her domicile etc., then return thru Seattle to Hawaii. She said SHE NEVER SAW HER AGAIN, although she knew through another mutual friend John, and Maxine Box, that she was again in Seattle in spring 1962. She said from what she's read that Stanley was a correspondence student at the UW in fall 1961, but that she didn't necessarily have to be there to be a correspondence student. However she knew Stanley was there in spring 1962.
8. Susan didn't understand why all the distortions or "mystery" that is being purported, she thinks it’s all very straight forward, that Stanley had BO in Honolulu, married BO prior to that, they were in love. She also mentioned that she's received calls from bewildered teachers/other students from interviewers asking about communist activity and other strange behaviors which she personally knows nothing of.
9. She states that while Stanley was there she stayed with a friend of Stanley Ann's mother, even borrowed a car to come see Susan. Didn't know who that was or where they lived.
10. Sadly, Susan hung up on me after the conversation deviated to why all the controversy surrounding his birth, his citizenship. Her understanding is that BO was a Natural Born Citizen by virtue of Stanley being a US citizen at time of birth IN HONOLULU. She did know that BO SR. was a KENYAN national, that according to Stanley "he was being groomed for political office" and that Barack Obama was a dual citizen but it didn’t matter, he was an NBC. When I stated what I firmly believe, that BOTH parents must be US citizens the phone clicked and she wasn’t on the other end.
Personal experience tells us that conversation between friends can be fickle, and memories can change over time. For example, Blake says Dunham was only passing through the Seattle area on her way to look for a job and residence in Boston in August 1961 to join her husband in graduate school. However, it wasn't until Spring 1962 that Obama Sr received two fellowships: one to pursue a doctorate in economics at the New York School for Social Research in New York City; the other for Harvard. As Obama SR did not graduate from Hawaii University until June 1962, and makes no mention of his bride and infant child in a June 22, 1962, interview with the Star-Bulletin the day he left Hawaii , one must wonder if other memories of Blake's meeting with Dunham match relatively-established, critical statements of dates and locations.
Personal memories fade, but prima facie facts, such as that from the 1964 Obama divorce decree, are STATIC – well, for the most part, anyway. Pages can be removed from divorce decrees, to protect privacy, leaving the remaining information intact. In stark contrast, abbreviated details and questionable accuracy are the very watermark of weaker documents, such as Obama’s Hawaiian-issued “Certification of Live Birth”.
Clearly, not all prima facie is created equally.
For example, Hawaiian birth certificate law, codified in HRS §338, can allow for a:
“Certificate of Hawaiian Birth”, terminated in 1972 after Obama’s 1961 birth, to be substituted for a ...
“Certificate of Late Birth”, thence a ...
“Certificate of Live Birth”, thence a shortened, abstracted ...
“Certification of Live Birth”, which wasn't first issued until Nov 2001
BTTT
BUMP for the truth.
There is/was some confusion that Orly only submitted to the court the image of the Kenyan Registration of Birth as exhibit 'A', but she must have the real hard copy of it. If the court did accept images of documents as evidence, then one could as easily submit for court authentication Barack Obama's COLB just the same. ...That would nice. ;-)
I agree, and after having destroyed my eyesight reading not only this thread, but everything elsr from here to Zanzibar, I am putting all but one egg in this basket.
I am saving the last one for breakfast.
Why would Susan Blake abruptly hang up after question #10?
THANKS THANKS.
I asked that question on some thread, somewhere over the past 5 days. Other accounts describe Stanley Ann as an extension student. There is a difference between extension and correspondence. I don't even know if UW had both. Extension students have to show up for classes occasionally, although the classes are probably given at unconventional times and places. Correspondence students do all of their work by mail and never (seldom) set foot on campus. I'm merely pointing out this detail because it differes from other accounts reported, whether it be more accurate or the friend mis-remembered the circumstances.
Thank you again for all the great work you have done on this.
I pray you are right.
We identified the anomalies in the Susan Blake conversation specified by the researcher (set out in BP2's post) where we suggested some of the same conclusions he and BP2 reach and this is to emphasize a couple of the points and suggest one other obvious factual inference they don't reach.
There are a handful of factual disconnects in Susan's statements.
August of 1961 is clearly the wrong date for the excuse that Stanley Ann is going to Boston to set up a joint residence with Obama Sr.
I view the diaper changing story as both a factually accurate story as to the occurrence and clearly inaccurate as to the timing relationship with his birth.
The fact that the August 1961 time frame is so clearly wrong for the excuse in my view leads to another fact--Stanley Ann didn't tell Susan why she was there or where she was in fact coming from (redating the event from late August to early August per the analysis below is conclusive that she was not "coming from" Hawaii if the birth certificate date of August 4 for the birth is correct which I believe that it is).
Like the other researcher, I view the factual disconnects as both adding credibility and confirming my view that Susan had been prompted before the interview but also that the preparation was done in a somewhat hasty or incomplete manner.
If the preparation had been better, she would have had a better fairy tale for the reason for the visit; and she would have been told not to tell the story about the diaper changing.
The diaper changing was a step too far. It has an absolute ring of truth. But it too is just one step in excess. Women who are slow know how to change diapers in 48 hours. Stanley Ann was neither slow nor stupid--someone else may have changed diapers for her in Kenya but she was a lot closer to the birth date than three or four weeks. Had to be.
There is also a statement in the early version of the video interview which got removed at some point which indicates that the baby is the wrong color to be three weeks old at the time of the visit. I am not sophisticated enough to recount exactly how that works but some of the experts view that as conclusive of a much earlier date for the visit.
I have taken it as pretty close to a fact (although not evidence per se) that the Susan Blake visit occurred within three days of the birth at the outside.
I have suspected that Susan's point that the visit had occurred in late August was a factual invention in part because of her demeanor reflected in the live video interview--she knew the visit happened earlier but she also knew she shouldn't place it too close to August 4 because the person who prepped her told her not to.
And would also speculate that she didn't tell the person doing the prep the diaper story because the story in fact tells too much.
The fact that Susan hung up when she realized that the interviewer was on the other side coupled with her understanding of at least some part of the Natural Born Citizen rules, both confirms the fact that she was prepped and that she didn't really know all the facts about the trip which was interrupted by the visit.
I have a couple of other legal editorial thoughts on BP2's post. Is BP2 a lawyer? I have read several BP2 posts the last few days and all are really excellent (I do recognize that people who aren't lawyers can also do really excellent analysis).
Unless there is a scientific defect identified by laboratory analysis or some other patent deficiency in the Orly birth certificate, it is prima facia legal evidence that the birth occurred in Kenya on August 4.
What that means is that if this argument gets down to a legal contest in a court of law where the controlling issue is his place of birth, the opposing forces will need to prove by real evidence, that the birth certificate does not accurately report his birth data. I doubt they can do that.
I recognize the legal deficiencies in his Natural Born Citizen position even if he had been born in Hawaii--the two parent argument; the alternate citizenship argument; his personal representations that he was not a US Citizen. But my view, having been involved in many lawsuits over issues like this and watched them play out is that in the current political setting in the US, if Obama can prove factually that he was born in Hawaii, he is likely to win. I tend to ignore that possibility because I have known for some time that he was born in Kenya and my experience also is that the facts ultimately tend to crawl out.
I wouldn't predict how the end game is likely to play out here. And it may well play out over an even longer period than I expect--but the end of the day answer is that a strong majority of the American People will recognize that he is not President and at about the same time will also recognize how bad the policies he supports are for the Country.
One VERY important tidbit not included in the Post #7170 regarding the NEVER BEFORE RELEASED Susan Blake interview:
Susan Blake said, then retracted, that she received a post card from Stanley (Ann Dunham) from a ship in February or March of 1961. When asked where it was headed, she said she did not know. Immediately in the next breath, Blake said she was just guessing about the ship. Then she also said that instead of a postcard, it was a actually a letter from Ann in Spring of 1961, stating she had been married and was expecting a baby, but didn't remember from where the letter was sent.
This information about the ship came about two-thirds the way in the interview. By this point, the interviewer had also been told that Ann said she was on her way out to Boston in August 1961 -- a year before Obama SR started attending Harvard -- and quite frankly, he began to think Blake was making things up “on the fly”. Because the interviewer was already dismissing parts of her statements by this point, and then she retracted this, he didn't think much of it (neither did I at the time). That's when the interviewer asked the "money question" about Obama's citizenship, and she hung up.
To add to this concept of a ship ride to Kenya, here's this from Michael Patrick Leahy book, “What Does Barack Obama Believe?” when he interviewed Blake in August 2008: "If Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, there is no indication that Barack Obama Senior was present at the birth of his third child. Stanley Ann's high school classmate Susan Blake had the impression that he was not there, and may not even have been on the island of Hawaii at the time..."
The address on the famed Honolulu Advertiser Obama birth announcement, 6085 Kalaniaole Hwy, is 15 miles from the University of Hawaii campus. It was an expensive area of the island, in an area not populated by students (as owning and operating a car on Hawaii was/is expensive).
Also, accounts indicate that Obama SR's family wasn't happy upon learning about Ann. They were said to be upset, in addition to other reasons, that he was not honoring the dowry of 14 cows given to Keiza's family when he married her in January 1957.
IF Barack was still in Kenya if he and Ann took a boat ride there in Feb-Mar 1961, and Ann decided to leave once she was permitted to do so after the baby was born, that could explain this part of the story about a possible ship-ride to Kenya, as well as a flight back to Washington state three weeks after Obama JR's birth (perhaps via Hawaii en route to file a Kenyan BC).
As Obama SR did not graduate from Hawaii University until June 1962, and makes no mention of his bride and infant child in a June 22, 1962, interview with the Star-Bulletin the day he left Hawaii , one must wonder if other memories of Blake’s meeting with Dunham match relatively-established, critical statements of dates and locations.
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Ya know there is a thought arising from this..
If Obama Sr didnt know about the supposed marriage thingy, and that he was suppose to be the father of Obama Jr then he wouldnt acknowledge them...
Nobody saw them together in Hawaii and she didnt live with him or stay with him...
Ann used her maiden name to register at UW because it was HER LEGAL NAME at the time...Fall 1961...
Susan Blake may have made the whole thing up...
What if Obama was a convenient “father” after the fact ???
Obama only saw his Dad that one time years later...
It’s not unusual to take a photo of your children with a good family friend...like that photo at the airport...
Obama never went to Kenya until after Obama Sr was dead...
Just a thought...
And then again maybe Ann did send Susan Blake a postcard from a ship going etc...
“I got a postcard from a ship err I mean ...wouild you like a cup of coffee ??? Isnt the weather hot for this time of the year..........”
I am doing some independent investigation of BHO senior's records at Harvard. He does not show up in Alumni Records, which is supposed to have the names of all students who have matriculated at Harvard. I am looking for independent confirmation, but it does not appear that there is a PhD thesis in the Harvard archives.
Given that BHO senior seemed to spend all his time giving political speeches, I think it is doubtful that he ever pursued serious studies at Harvard. I will get back to you when I have succeeded/failed in getting indpendent verification of the missing thesis.