Free Republic

President Obama’s literary agent is not the only one who was confused over the politician’s birthplace. The U.S. government is on record questioning Obama’s citizenship status as early as when he was 5 years old, stating it lacked documentation to determine his citizenship, WND previously exposed. The citizenship inquiry dated back to 1966, when Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was attempting to secure a waiver so her second husband, Indonesian citizen Lolo Soetoro, could return to the country after his visa had expired. Dunham and Obama Sr. are reported to have divorced in 1964. In 1965 in Hawaii, Dunham married...

Congratulations to Breitbart.com for reporting a story the site clearly didn’t care to publish. It seems that in 1991, Barack Obama was indeed representing himself to his literary agency as “born in Kenya, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”

While the internet buzzed with Breitbart News’ release of a booklet from President Obama’s literary agency circa 1991 describing him as being “born in Kenya,” the mainstream media still refuses to report the story, or plays defense for Obama. Never mind that the agency used the “born in Kenya” biography until 2007. Never mind that authors who have worked with the agency state that the agency asks that authors pen their own biographies. Never mind that Obama has routinely padded his biographical details to appeal to particular audiences. Nothing to see here. Michael Shear, at the New York Times, was...

A possible source of the so-called "birther" issue--or at least a potential cause of the rumors that have dogged President Barack Obama--has been identified. Obama's former literary agency misidentified his birthplace as Kenya while trying to promote the then-Harvard Law grad as an author in 1991. According to a promotional booklet produced by the agency, Acton & Dystel, to showcase its roster of writers, Obama was "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii." Miriam Goderich edited the text of the bio; she is now a partner at the Dystel & Goderich agency, which lists Obama as one of...

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,...

Screenshot of Dystel & Goderich's author bios page from 2003, from Wayback MachineWhile some quickly dismissed as an anomaly yesterday’s explosive revelation that Barack Obama’s former literary agency billed him as “born in Kenya” back in 1991 in connection with a book he never wrote, WND has discovered much later published references – some dated as recently as 2007 – used to promote his highly touted book “Dreams from My Father.” As WND reported, Breitbart News originally found a brochure from two decades ago in which literary agency Acton & Dystel promoted Obama as the author of the never-produced “Journeys...

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...

Note from Senior Management: Andrew Breitbart was never a "Birther," and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of "Birtherism." In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. Yet Andrew also believed that the complicit mainstream media had refused to examine President Obama's ideological past, or the carefully crafted persona he and his advisers had constructed for him. It is for that reason that we launched "The Vetting," an ongoing series in which we explore the ideological background of President Obama (and other presidential...

According to archive.org, a website that caches websites on a regular basis, the Dystel.com website – the official website for Dystel & Goderich, Obama’s literary agents – was using the Barack Obama “born in Kenya” language until April 2007, just two months after then-Senator Obama declared his campaign for the presidency. Archive.org shows that the Dystel website used the following biography for Obama as of April 3, 2007: "BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law...

May 17, 2012 Was Obama Himself the First Birther? Ed Driscoll In case you haven’t seen it, here’s a screencap of the top of the Drudge Report as of the time of this post. The link on the headline takes you to a post at Breitbart.com written by Joel B. Pollack and titled “The Vetting — Exclusive — Obama’s Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: ‘Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’” The article itself begins with a “Note from Senior Management” that cautions the reader, “Andrew Breitbart was never a ‘Birther,’ and Breitbart News is a site that...

In the cover for a 1991 booklet, President Obama is billed as ‘the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, (who) was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’ ‘It is evidence – not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.’ President Obama released his birth certificate to the public last April. He said during a press briefing at the time that he was ‘puzzled at the degree to which this thing just keeps going on.’ He said: ‘We’ve had every official in Hawaii, Democrat...

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."