Free Republic

May 18, 2012 The Mystery of the Kenyan Birth Roger L. Simon Reading the extraordinary revelation about Barack Obama’s youthful literary career on Breitbart.com [1] — that his agents published a promotional book in 1991 with a bio of Obama saying he was born in Kenya — set my old mystery writer mind ablaze.How could that be? Why would they think such a thing?There are only two forks in this road — either he was born in Kenya or he wasn’t.I have never been a conspiracy theorist and will assume the latter, although I have to confess that for the...

It used to be a lot simpler. As E.C. Bentley deftly summarized it in 1905: "Geography is about maps, But Biography is about chaps." But that was then, and now Biography is also about maps. For example, have you ever thought it would be way cooler to have been born in colonial Kenya? Whoa, that sounds like crazy Birther talk; don't go there! But Breitbart News did, and it turns out that the earliest recorded example of Birtherism is from the president's own literary agent, way back in 1991, in the official bio of her exciting new author: "Barack Obama,...

The text editor of the 1991 literary agency booklet that described Barack Obama as “born in Kenya” said Thursday the line in question was “nothing more than a fact checking error.” Miriam Goderich issued a statement to the Political Wire saying the future president never suggested “in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii”: “You’re undoubtedly aware of the brouhaha stirred up by Breitbart about the erroneous statement in a client list Acton & Dystel published in 1991 (for circulation within the publishing industry only) that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. This was nothing more...

Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama's then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."