PolitiFact.com actually has Okubo on the record denying that the electronic COLB image provided by the Obama campaign can be authenticated by her or by anyone at DHOH! But that was only in a follow-up to their initial story where Okubo said the COLB was a valid Hawaiian birth certificate.
PolitiFact.com describes the controversy that erupted from their initial story:
"When the birth certificate arrived from the Obama campaign it confirmed his name as the other documents already showed it. Still, we took an extra step: We e-mailed it to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real."
"It's a valid Hawaii state birth certificate," spokesman Janice Okubo told us.
"Then the firestorm started."
After the "firestorm," Politifact apparently conducted a follow-up interview with Okubo which shows that what Okubo meant was that the Obama COLB only appeared to be be a valid Hawaiian BC, but she could not and did not "verify" that it was a valid Hawaiian COLB BC.
Politifact: "Okubo says she got a copy of her own birth certificate last year and it is identical to the Obama one we received.
"And about the copy we e-mailed her for verification? 'When we looked at that image you guys sent us, our registrar, he thought he could see pieces of the embossed image through it.'"
"Still, she acknowledges: 'I don't know that it's possible for us to even say beyond a doubt what the image on the site represents.'"
Okubo had to back off her original claim. And a good thing ... she originally said Obama’s alleged COLB was real because it looked like her own. In other words, she used no formal technique to verify its accuracy. She relied on no official record to verify its accuracy. She just thought it looked like hers. At best, she follows up with a second-hand anecdote, "... our registrar ... thought he could see pieces of the embossed image ..." |