Posted on 02/03/2011 4:21:18 PM PST by butterdezillion
The Problem with the Announcement Stories
Two items have been offered as evidence of Barack Obama being born in Hawaii: an online COLB image which the HDOH has indirectly confirmed in 2 different ways as a forgery, and online images of birth announcements in the Hawaii papers shortly after Obama’s birth. This post will explain why I believe we’ve been fed – and swallowed – a lie about where those images came from. Later posts will give a glimpse of just how far it seems somebody was willing to go in order to have something – anything – that would suggest Obama was born in Hawaii, a critical need since Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie told Mike Evans (transcript and audio link) he had gone into both hospitals (Kapiolani and Queens) with a search warrant but found no birth certificate for Obama.
First the claims:
Shortly after Barack Obama’s campaign website posted what they said was Obama’s Certification of Live Birth (COLB) and questions arose regarding its authenticity, Lori Starfelt decided to see if there was a newspaper birth announcement for Obama in Hawaii. She contacted the HDOH and was told that on Fridays they printed out a list of the week’s births; “The Honolulu Advertiser” used that list to print birth announcements in their Sunday paper. So Starfelt calculated that if Obama was born on Friday, Aug 4, 1961, his birth would have been on the list the following Friday, Aug 11th, and should appear in that Sunday’s paper – Aug 13th. She contacted the Hawaii State Library (hereafter HSL), asking for a copy from the microfilm of the Advertiser’s birth announcements on Aug 13, 1961, and was sent an e-mail with an image that had Obama’s announcement on it. She posted that image, along with her story, at Texas Darlin’ Blog around July 21, 2008. (See Post 7679 )
Several days later “Infidel Granny”, posting at Atlas Shrugs Blog, said she had asked a woman at the Advertiser office about birth announcements and was told to check the HSL. She asked the HSL for a copy of the Aug 13, 1961 “Advertiser” birth announcements and the librarian sent an e-mail with the image, saying she had it handy since somebody had just asked for it a week earlier.
On Aug 13th “Koa” at Texas Darlin’ Blog posted an image for the Aug 14th Star-Bulletin announcements, which he/she had copied directly from the HSL archives.
Around Oct 21 a poster at Prius Chat also posted an image of the SB announcement, saying, “Here's a copy I made today of the August 14th (could have been the 15th or 16th), 1961 Star Bulletin newspaper showing Obama's birth announcement stored on microfilm at the Hawaii State Library in Honolulu. I had to enlarge it to the point of losing the top of the page with the date and day in order to make it readable. The microfilm is stored in the basement of the library and was in the box marked Star Bulletin Aug 1, 1961-Aug 16, 1961. ..."
On Oct 29th Whatreallyhappened.com posted images of both the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin images, which were said to be directly from the Star-Bulletin and Advertiser – which both had their microfilms stored at the Advertiser building. Note that he was not told to contact the HSL, as “Infidel Granny” says she was told.
Texas Darlin’ Blog archives, Atlas Shrugs Blog archives, the original article on Whatreallyhappened, and the Wikileaks page which also posted a copy which was a text-searchable file, have all been removed from the web, and the page at Prius Chat requires registration first; neither I nor several others who tried to register were allowed to do so. So the whole story of these claims and the images themselves have been scrubbed, except for fragments (such as the ones I link to) where others discussed and/or copied material, some of which have now been scrubbed from the web also.
I got Starfelt’s Advertiser image from a link referenced elsewhere as being Starfelt’s image, when the image was still available (“Infidel Granny” was given the same image). Whatreallyhappened still has their images posted. The Prius Chat Forum still has the link to their Star-Bulletin image. I copied Koa’s image from Photobucket when it was still available as linked to from the original post atTD Blog. (In my analysis links below I cite where each image came from.) So the images I have used come directly from the original sources.
To verify that I have not altered the images, here are some other places that still have images (as of today), although not necessarily saying the source: Both, Advertiser, Advertiser, Star-Bulletin .
And next the documents themselves:
When a person looks at the documents and claims about the documents, and compares them to what is actually in the Hawaii State Library microfilms, it is obvious why somebody would want these claims buried – although I am not making any specific allegations about who has done what. That should be investigated by someone with subpoena power. Here is a concise summary of what we have:
The Advertiser image that Starfelt and “Infidel Granny” supposedly got from the HSL is pristine. But in reality the HSL microfilms are so scratched up they are nearly unreadable. When a colleague asked the HSL librarian in late April, 2010, for a copy of the Aug 13, 1961 Advertiser birth announcements – the exact image that Starfelt and “Infidel Granny” supposedly got from there - this is what she was told about the condition of the microfilm (emphasis mine):
"As for your request for the Aug. 13, 1961 Honolulu Advertiser birth announcement page, I looked it up, but unfortunately, the microfilm is so worn down on top of being poorly microfilmed, that it is hardly legible. You might be better off asking another library that has a better, less used copy than ours. Or does it have to be the Advertiser? I checked the Star-Bulletin and that date and that film is fine. Let me know."
The Starfelt and “Infidel Granny” images are pristine, with no sign of being “poorly microfilmed”, which would be a constant state for the microfilms, not affected by usage. Those images are clearly not from the HSL microfilms as claimed. However, they match perfectly the images WRH got from somebody at the Advertiser office (with the exception of one C&P line in the left margin below the Asing announcement, which disappeared by the time WRH got a copy). A comparison of the images is here.
Conversely, the Star-Bulletin image – which is the exact same image for WRH, Koa, and the Prius Chat poster (right down to the same piece of hair caught in the viewer when the copy was made and the same waviness in the page being scanned), even though they each claim to have acquired their copy independently, and WRH even claims a different source - has a large scratch down the column of text. But the HSL’s Star-Bulletin microfilms are pristine, including the copy from Aug 14th, where there are no extra marks or scratches anywhere. A comparison of the images is here. To believe the stories of Koa and the Prius Chat poster, you’d have to believe that scratches disappear over time.
Summary:
It is clear that what we were told about where these images came from is not true.
It appears that somebody at the Advertiser office gave out images to select people with the instruction that they were to peddle them off as genuine – the Advertiser image to the librarian at the Hawaii State Library, the Star-Bulletin image to “Koa” and the Prius Chat poster (who may have been the same person), and both images to Whatreallyhappened.com.
This is according to the statements already made and images already made public, which show glaring discrepancies in the stories. There are other discrepancies in the claims which stand out to those who have researched the microfilms as well, and those will be addressed later.
But for now the question is this: Why would somebody at the Advertiser office deceive the public into thinking their birth announcement images were actually copies made directly from the Hawaii State Library microfilms by individuals acting on their own? Why intervene at all, rather than letting these individuals get what really IS in the HSL microfilms? And who was in on this deception?
Those are questions that deserve an answer. Those like Bill O’Reilly and certain “news sources” who cite these images as their reason to ridicule “birthers” would do well to find out exactly why somebody worked so hard to deceive them on where those images actually came from.
Many thanks to you, butterdezillion for all the time, energy, and resources you have invested in protecting our Constitution. May God bless you with infinite strength, courage, wisdom, and resolve.
University of Hawaii at Manoa, California State Library in Sacramento, and University of CA at Berkeley.
I don’t know what Obama’s story is, or what the HDOH is hiding or why. But from their own contradictions and law-breaking, I know they are either outright lying or deceiving in a big way.
My husband calls me naive. Says that’s what government does. But I say if we give government personnel a signed blank check to do whatever they want because that’s what government does, we can only blame ourselves for all the new and heinous ways the government decides to rape us. Why worry about lawless drug cartels beheading people on our southern border? Why not just say, “Oh, well. That’s just what they do.”?
At some point we have to draw the line. America does not HAVE to become Iran, but it will become exactly that if we don’t draw the line and then make it stick.
Thank you, Faith.
That’s an interesting quote from Michael Rivero, and so true.
Obama’s game plan seems to be to demoralize his opponents by doing so much, so big, so fast that it seems hopeless to even try to catch up to all the damage he’s done.
~~~~~~
It’s increasingly clear that this monster scheme, both well
before 2007 and now in the present time, were well plotted,
as well as these morally corrupt and evil humans could
devise and cover. It’s positively demonic .. all of it.
We do remember that the capacities of humans are NOT perfect.
The issue obviously is not going to go away. But only intensify as facts like these get assimilated by growing numbers of people.
So why exactly are there Democrat legislators trying to change Hawaiian law once again if Dr. Fukino's hearsay and Gov. Lingle's lies were so effective??
We probably know the answer to this already. Fukino and Onaka checked the database and found an entry for Obama indicating a so-called "original" birth certificate is "on record." The "vital records," which we have learned is broadly interpreted to include correspondence, requests and receipts, etc., is probably Abercrombie's Hawaii resolution which came out the same day as Fukino's 2009 statement. Abercrombie isn't going to admit he's the source of her 2009 statement. It obviously wasn't based on any permutation of a birth certificate.
Interesting. UC-Berkeley isn’t on this list, so I wonder if there are others missing:
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82014685/holdings/
There is one other library you’ve apparently missed. Bishiop MUS Library in Honolulu apparently has the microfilm archives back to 1921. If you still have a contact in Hawaii who can go there, it probably is worth checking out.
Anyway, many months ago when you first suggested someone manually messed with microfilms, it didn’t strike me as credible, since I assumed there might be a sizable number of university research libraries, for example, that had these microfilm records, so if they missed even 1 or 2, that could really leave some ‘splainin’ to do if anyone brought discrepancies to light (especially if they entail literally creating an Obama announcement from whole cloth).
But today I found the LOC directory and it only includes 5 libraries in the entire country—4 of which you’ve already checked. So clever forgers presumably could have figured out that there’s was a manageable number of records needing to be modified, making this line of attack on birthers more feasible and less risky than if 50 libraries held copies. I assume you already know the approximate time period between the time the first COLB was shown on-line and the first “announcement” image? If it was just a few days, it’s hard to picture that someone would conceive, plan and execute this in such a short period.
So if you have solid evidence of tampering, that would suggest the possibility this was planned in conjunction with the COLB and actually lends further credibility to the COLB also being forged. That would suggest an extraordinary conspiracy (but not necessarily involving that many people). But in light of the persistent stonewalling and resources spent in fighting court battles over this issue, that seems way more plausible to me today than back in 2008 when this birth certificate stuff first arose. I think the actually interval between the COLB and birth announcements was weeks or months, but that actually strengthens the theory IMHO since whoever put out fake COLBs clearly assumed they would work to throw people off track. Having the birth announcements as a “back-up” plan seems like considerable overkill. But in light of continued skepticism about the COLBs, it’s possible to imagine them deciding something else was needed to reinforce the credibility of the COLBs etc. at which it presumably could have taken a few weeks to pull it off.
The one thing I don’t understand is if you have something who has gotten physical access to microfilms themselves, wouldn’t they be able to directly observe evidence of tampering (as opposed to inferring it from printouts)? My vague recollection of this being discussed many months ago—and I assume it was by you, but maybe it was another poster who also had this theory—is that the “evidence” consisted of the kind of work Polarik did, showing that images contained various flaws consistent with “cutting and pasting” (that’s the wrong term, but whatever would have to be done to alter a microfilm record).
I’m trying to think of what article I was reading where it said something about Abercrombie’s 50th Hawaii anniversary resolution being the reason for Fukino making that 2nd announcement, on the same day as the resolution. I know the timing of it seemed crazy as it happened. I think that may have been the LA Times article back around Christmas time when Abercrombie was all bravado about how we would take on the “birthers”.
If I remember correctly, though, Miss Tickly was e-mailed that announcement the night before it was actually made publicly. I should check that again.
Like you say, though, it sure doesn’t seem to be referring to a hospital-generated BC.
I looked at the HDOH retention schedule, and the only things they allow to be transferred to the State Archive are COHB microfilms after 75 years.... and.... a security copy microfilm of registrations of foreign birth. I’m not sure Abercrombie really wants to claim that what they have for Obama is in the archive...
So why exactly are there Democrat legislators trying to change Hawaiian law once again if Dr. Fukino’s hearsay and Gov. Lingle’s lies were so effective??
We probably know the answer to this already. Fukino and Onaka checked the database and found an entry for Obama indicating a so-called “original” birth certificate is “on record.” The “vital records,” which we have learned is broadly interpreted to include correspondence, requests and receipts, etc., is probably Abercrombie’s Hawaii resolution which came out the same day as Fukino’s 2009 statement. Abercrombie isn’t going to admit he’s the source of her 2009 statement. It obviously wasn’t based on any permutation of a birth certificate.
She pulled a bait-and-switch. In October 2008, she had no problem specifically referencing an "original birth certificate." A legitimate birth certificate, whether a long-form or an abstract, is considered a self-authenticating piece of evidence according to the Federal rules of evidence (which is why the COLB says it's prima facie evidence if entered in a court of law). Nothing else needs to be cited. By changing her verbiage to "original vital records" Fukino was admitting that the original birth certificate was NOT sufficient to prove the facts of birth. She was also casting doubt on the validity of Obama's alleged COLB, because it too, if it is an accurate representation of an original birth certificate, is equally insufficient to prove the facts of birth. The 50th resolution then conceivably becomes a documentary crutch on which to make a new, parsed statement ... and she made sure to distinguish that July 2009 statement from the October 2008 statement. IOW, she was saying she was not basing the claim of birth upon the original birth certificate.
The thing that I've been thinking is very odd is that the HI DOH claims at their Obama web page: "Records pertaining to the Department of Health database for vital statistics information are not required to be disclosed by the Uniform Information Practices Act because those records, by their very nature, must be confidential in order for the government to avoid the frustration of a legitimate government function (see HRS §92F-13(3)). Disclosing such information compromises the department’s ability to protect the integrity of vital statistics records, to ensure their proper use, and to ensure the efficient and proper administration of the vital statistics system as is required by HRS §338-18."
What records are they talking about and how does disclosing Obama's original birth certificate compromise their database and/or their legitimate government function?? Their function is to store, maintain and disclose records when requested. Making that one record public, if it exists, would negate any need for other information requests. While the UIPA doesn't require them to disclose such information, it absolutely does NOT prohibit them from releasing such information/records. The only thing that I think they might be protecting are the handling of adoption records or they're covering illegitimate government functions whereas they registered Hawaiian births without proper documentation. Obama's birth might expose a larger problem they don't want made public.
Yes, it says they saw that an original birth certificate was “on record.” This does NOT mean they pulled out an actual hard copy of a birth certificate. Thanks to databases, you can see what data is on record without actually going through the archives or hard copies of records. It’s like going to a Red Box and browsing the DVD menu. You can see what is in the machine without actually dispensing the DVD and looking at it. You know this and pretend otherwise.
They don't need to pass a law to do that. They can print off the alleged COLB from Obama's campaign site and sell it.
The October 2008 statement was sent out via email from .....
Janice Okubo.
The questions regarding the July 2009 statement were answered by
Janice Okubo.
The person who still has their job at HDOH is....
Janice Okubo.
It is possible that Fukino never authorized the statement but did a ‘go along, get along’ approach after they were out there.
Janice Okubo seems to be constant at den of lies HDOH.
Also, the person that lied about the reason for Palafox’s departure is
Janice Okubo.
http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/5d442e77734740e498c0ea00a89e7d77/HI—Health_Director/
“He did not volunteer it on his own. He had no idea why the governor asked him to resign. But he did because the governor asked him to do so,”
“Janice Okubo, the Department of Health communications director, said Palafox is unaware of any criminal investigation and resigned for personal reasons.”
This is the timing:
June 12 Daily Kos COLB
June 16 Factcheck posts scanned copy; supposedly had the document
July 23 Advertiser announcement on Texas Darlin Blog
Aug 21 Factcheck photos released
So there was about a month between the posting of the COLB and when the first online images of the birth announcements appeared.
But what mustn’t be forgotten is that the Factcheck PHOTOS of the COLB were taken back in March, shortly before the last, third breach of Obama’s passport file. That’s according to the gif data (I hope I have that term right; I’m going off of my bad memory).
Another thing to keep in mind is that just a day or two after the election Will Hoover came out with an article talking about the places where Obama had lived.
Fred, I can’t remember the details, but where in this chronology did Mrs LaForge die - the last person living at the address claimed as the residence of “Mr & Mrs Barack Obama”?
IIRC, the Bishop Library said they don’t have the microfilms. A librarian had recommended to one of my colleagues that she check there and we talked about it but I think she was told they didn’t have them. I don’t have access to those communications with her any more so I can’t check whether my memory is correct.
Some of these libraries have cut off access to the particular microfilms in question since ladysforest and I started talking about what we’ve found. One library that’s not listed on the list of holdings is the library in Hilo, HI. IIRC their Aug 1961 and April 1961 reels were being withheld from the public, as were those reels at the CA State Library in Sacramento. All the other 1961 microfilms were kept at the Sacramento library but those 2 months’ microfilms were moved to storage in a warehouse - supposedly because of budget cuts.
And I think the NY State Library did the same. It’s been so long since I dealt with that part though so I might be mistaken on that.
Based on the condition of the microfilm at the HSL, I believe somebody spliced in the forgery and then duplicated the whole microfilm roll with the splice, scratches, and all - leaving a “poorly microfilmed” roll of barely readable print, with lots of scratches. Whoever messed with the microfilms did not do a professional-quality job; they left flaws that are way outside the clearances allowed by any respectable microfilming company.
When they did the Star-Bulletin forgery for the HSL they didn’t bother with trying to make the microfilm look authentically old and used. They spliced the forgery into a 2nd-generation CLEAN microfilm from the Advertiser office and copied the spliced roll - resulting in a microfilm so clean that it could not have been in the HSL getting worn and torn for 50 years.
At the Library of Congress there is a slice down the length of the microfilm roll at the beginning of the roll with Obama’s announcement. And IIRC there are also fingerprints actually developed onto the microfilm roll. Not fingerprints from somebody touching the microfilm at the LOC; those don’t show up in the viewer or on copies. To get actual fingerprints showing up on the copies, film that had been handled had to be duplicated with the fingerprints on. IOW, that copy of the microfilm was made from a microfilm roll that had been handled and fingerprints left on it. That’s not how a microfilming company does things. They have a silver dioxide (I hope I’m remembering the terms right) master copy and then make diazo copies from that. The master is kept pristine.
So anyway, it seems to me that there is evidence suggesting that a non-professional duplicated the spliced microfilms so there would not be physical evidence of the splice.
They may be talking about transaction logs - database information regarding when a record originated and has been accessed or altered.
I spoke on the phone to a worker at the Vital Records Office, trying to figure out why there was no record of my request even though I had already received a couple responses via the hdohinfo email address. All of a sudden she asked me if the request had anything to do with Obama. I asked if that would make a difference. She said yes, that anything that has to do with Obama has to go directly to Janice Okubo rather than to the fulfillment department to process the request.
Janice Okubo is the gatekeeper of everything about Obama. And they are DEFINITELY treating Obama’s records differently.
One time I told Janice Okubo that there are protection programs for whistle-blowers and there was still time for her to get out before the whole truth came crashing down on her and she was found complicit in the crimes being committed. She was so flustered she answered a different request by replying to that e-mail, which was actually a request for something else.
Yes, it says they saw that an original birth certificate was “on record.” This does NOT mean they pulled out an actual hard copy of a birth certificate. Thanks to databases, you can see what data is on record without actually going through the archives or hard copies of records. It’s like going to a Red Box and browsing the DVD menu. You can see what is in the machine without actually dispensing the DVD and looking at it. You know this and pretend otherwise.
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