Abercrombie tacitly admits that he can’t find Obama’s birth certificate
Update, 12:30 p.m.: I posted Jerome Corsi’s WND article this morning without reading the Abercrombie interview in the Hawaii Star Advertiser that Corsi links. Now that I’ve read it, I must clarify that my original title of this entry, based on Corsi’s story, was not precisely correct. My title was, “Abercrombie admits that the ‘written down’ thing he’s found is not the birth certificate.” In fact, Abercrombie did not directly say that. But he did unmistakably imply that. The Star Advertiser says, in parentheses: “(Abercrombie said there is a recording of the birth in the State Archives and he wants to use that.)” Then Abercrombie says in his own words, “It was actually written I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down…” So Abercrombie has found some written “recording” of the birth, but he doesn’t call it the birth certificate. He makes no mention of the birth certificate. Meaning, obviously, that he hasn’t found the birth certificate. It’s not there. If it were there, he would be proudly touting his discovery of it. But he doesn’t, so it’s not. That is what Corsi means, when he says, “Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie suggested in an interview published today that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.”
And there is much, much more in this January 18 WND article by Jerome Corsi, which I reproduce in full. Among other things, it shows the problem with the contemporaneous Hawaii newspaper announcements of Obama’s birth, which we were told settled the matter.
My prediction on December 29 that Abercrombie would immediately drop the whole birth issue (which would happen, I said, as a result of someone in the White House ‘splaining things to him), though it was borne out for several weeks, has now been shown to be partially wrong, since Abercrombie has now mentioned it again. However, he only mentioned it because a reporter asked him about it—asked him how his famous campaign to bring out the truth about Obama’s birth and silence those awful birthers is progressing. He couldn’t simply answer, “No comment.” He had to say something. But what he said was ridiculously vague, about this unspecified “recording” that he found. Substantively, then, my prediction is still correct. Abercrombie went silent on the birth certificate in the last week of December and only spoke of it again, vaguely, three weeks later when he was asked about it by a newspaper.
Hawaii governor can’t find Obama birth certificate
Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie suggested in an interview published today that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.
Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star Advertiser he was searching within the Hawaii Department of Health to find definitive vital records that would prove Obama was born in Hawaii, because the continuing eligibility controversy could hurt the president’s chances of re-election in 2012. er
Donalyn Dela Cruz, Abercrombie’s spokeswoman in Honolulu, ignored again today another in a series of repeated requests made by WND for an interview with the governor.
Toward the end of the interview, the newspaper asked Abercrombie: “You stirred up quite a controversy with your comments regarding birthers and your plan to release more information regarding President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. How is that coming?”
In his response, Abercrombie acknowledged the birth certificate issue will have “political implications” for the next presidential election “that we simply cannot have.”
Suggesting he was still intent on producing more birth records on Obama from the Hawaii Department of Health vital records vault, Abercrombie told the newspaper there was a recording of the Obama birth in the state archives that he wants to make public.
Abercrombie did not report to the newspaper that he or the Hawaii Department of Health had found Obama’s long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate. The governor only suggested his investigations to date had identified an unspecified listing or notation of Obama’s birth that someone had made in the state archives.
“It was actually written, I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down,” Abercrombie said.
For seemingly the first time, Abercrombie frankly acknowledged that presidential politics motivated his search for Obama birth records, implying that failure to resolve the questions that remain unanswered about the president’s birth and early life may damage his chance for re-election.
“If there is a political agenda (regarding Obama’s birth certificate), then there is nothing I can do about that, nor can the president,” he said.
So far, the only birth document available on Obama is a Hawaii Certification of Live Birth that first appeared on the Internet during the 2008 presidential campaign. It was posted by two purportedly independent websites that have displayed a strong partisan bias for Obama—Snopes.com released the COLB in June 2008, and FactCheck.org published photographs of the document in August 2008.
WND previously reported the Hawaii Department of Health has refused to authenticate the COLB posted on the Internet by Snopes.com and FactCheck.org.
WND has reported that in 1961, Obama’s grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, could have made an in-person report of a Hawaii birth even if the infant Barack Obama Jr. had been foreign-born.
Similarly, the newspaper announcements of Obama’s birth do not prove he was born in Hawaii, since they could have been triggered by the grandparents registering the birth as Hawaiian, even if the baby was born elsewhere.
Moreover, WND has documented that the address reported in the newspaper birth announcements was the home of the grandparents.
WND also has reported that Barack Obama Sr. maintained his own separate apartment in Honolulu, even after he was supposedly married to Ann Dunham, Barack Obama’s mother, and that Dunham left Hawaii within three weeks of the baby’s birth to attend the University of Washington in Seattle.
Dunham did not return to Hawaii until after Barack Obama Sr. left Hawaii in June 1962 to attend graduate school at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
Conceivably, the yet undisclosed birth record in the state archives that Abercrombie has discovered may have come from the grandparents registering Obama’s birth, an event that would have triggered both the newspaper birth announcements and availability of a Certification of Live Birth, even if no long-form birth certificate existed.
WND has also reported that Tim Adams, a former senior elections clerk for the city and county of Honolulu in 2008, has maintained that there is no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate on file with the Hawaii Department of Health and that neither Honolulu hospital—Queens Medical Center or Kapiolani Medical Center—has any record that Obama was born there.
[end of Corsi article]
- end of initial entry -
Robert S. writes:
My parents emigrated to the U.S. from England after World War II when I was five. About 20 years ago I needed my birth certificate for an application. I noticed that the one my parents had passed on to me for my records was old and fraying, coming apart. So I wrote to the hospital at the address on the original form asking for a new certified copy of my birth certificate, hoping the hospital at that address still existed. Within three weeks I was sent a brand new certified copy of my birth certificate without fuss. The hospital is in a small town in England and none of their files are digitized. My birth certificate was there since the 1940s. They simply looked in their folders and found it at the appropriate place. It wasn’t hard at all! So what is the difficulty with Mr. Obama’s birth certificate?
Malcolm Pollack writes:
It certainly is damning that even the governor of Hawaii can’t find an original record of Barack Obama’s birth.
I thought that if you haven’t heard about this alternative hypothesis (you probably have, but I don’t recall your mentioning it), you might find it interesting.
LA writes:
See my comments on the meaning of the Abercrombie story here.
James N. writes:
I have been an extremely reluctant friend to birtherism. First of all, many of the most verbose birthers appear to be disturbed. Secondly, the avalanche of forged Kenyan documents and the insistence with which their acceptance is demanded is off-putting. Third, many of the theories are mutually exclusive.
However, it is clear now that something is wrong with the Hawaii records. It is also probable, based on the state of the records, that Obama has repeatedly lied about facts known to him but not to us. These lies are of three strains:
First. He has asserted that he was born in Kapiolani Medical Center. He even sent them a letter which mentioned this “fact.” If there is no hospital-generated birth certificate, this is almost certainly a lie.
Second. He wrote in one of his books that he came across a copy of his birth certificate when going through his mother’s effects. If there is no State of Hawaii birth certificate, he could not have found it.
Third. Abercrombie now says there is “something written down” rather than a birth certificate. In the absence of further information, this is circumstantial evidence that Obama’s birth was orally reported to the State of Hawaii by relatives, rather than witnessed and certified in the ordinary way.
All of these things elevate the credibility of the underlying birther premise. I still don’t have a coherent theory of WHAT Obama is hiding, or, more exactly, what is causing him to lie unless the truth could hurt him.
As I said, I’ve been very reluctant to adopt a birther-friendly position. The latest from Abercrombie has convinced me that something important is being concealed.
If that be birtherism—make the most of it.
LA replies:
James wrote:
“First of all, many of the most verbose birthers appear to be disturbed. Secondly, the avalanche of forged Kenyan documents and the insistence with which their acceptance is demanded is off-putting. Third, many of the theories are mutually exclusive.”
I have said much the same all along (though I’ve never heard of an avalanche of forced Kenyan documents). That’s why the path to the truth is not all those pullulating alternative theories, but the One Certain Fact—that the birth certificate has been concealed. Call it Rational Birtherism.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 19, 2011 07:14 AM | Send