Book Review - Corsi's Where's the Birth Certificate?

Book Review

Where’s the Birth Certificate: The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible To Be President

Jerome R. Corsi, PhD

WND Books, 2011. 392 pages. Indexed.
ISBN #978-1-936488-29-2

Jerome Corsi earned a PhD in political science from Harvard, so he is familiar with thorough research. This book offers a wealth of detail and never puts theory ahead of fact. Many basic details of Obama’s life remain a mystery, because so much of his history has been scrubbed.

Corsi also put together the Swift Boat book, Unfit for Command, which helped doom the John Kerry run for president.

Just as this book was coming out, Obama released a long-form birth certificate, after fighting that action in the courts for several years. Many have good reason for suspecting the released form is a forgery, but it proves a useful anchor in the Obama timeline. The birth certificate also proves that Obama is not natural born and therefore ineligible to be president.

Natural born is not the same as born in America. Obama’s putative father was a British citizen and his mother was too young to fit into an American law that would sidestep the paternal problem. Obama Senior was a British citizen when Barry was born, so Barry began with dual citizenship.

Little attention has been focused on Obama being an Indonesian citizen when he was a student in that Muslim country. Coming back to Hawaii means that he had to be naturalized. Many would like to know if Barry Sotoero, as he was known at Occidental, came as a foreign student. They would also like to know what passport he traveled on, since he spent time in Pakistan, a fact revealed late in the campaign.

Who Is My Daddy?
Nothing is quite so mysterious about Barry as his paternity. Some have doubted who his mother is, too. Here are some theories:
1. The official record has an African, Barack Obama Senior, meeting and marrying Stanley Ann Dunham, later divorcing after he left for Harvard. However, no one remembers seeing them together. They were never listed at the same address. There is no marriage record. In the Hawaiian newspaper stories, Obama Senior is written up as if he has no family.
2. One far-fetched theory has Ann’s father getting a Black woman pregnant, which accounts for Ann’s lack of maternal affection for Barry.
3. Another theory has Communist Frank Marshal Davis fathering Barry with Ann, due to the poem “Pops” and other evidence, such as the photographs of Ann on the Net.
4. A fourth theory has Jimmie Hendrix fathering Barry with Ann in Seattle, where Hendrix was known as a musician. This theory is based on her exclusive dating of Black men in Seattle, her immediate return to Seattle after Barry’s birth, and Barry’s enigmatic reference to Hendrix. Ann’s friends have been told not to talk to anyone about her.

In my spare time I have look over the theories. Timelines are really important in solving puzzles like this. There is only one possible truth. A particular man fathered the president at a particular time and place. When Barry’s birth is anchored to that birth certificate, all related facts should fit, more or less.

For example, I was born at Moline Lutheran Hospital, which no longer exists. I have a token or short form of my birth certificate and have to order the long form to get my Arkansas driver’s license. I know who delivered me and where, on what date and time. I even have a birth announcement showing my brother and sister. There are no stories about me being born at Moline Public Hospital, which was next door to Moline Lutheran. There are no stories about me being born in Canada or Africa or Germany. Family pictures show me with both parents, even before birth.

One photo shows my mother with my older brother and sister. My father’s shadow appears, since he took the photo. From the age of my siblings I can tell I was on the way. Wharton Field House is in the background, and it is clearly our front yard, the only home we had in Moline (although there was a Dairy Queen in Massachusetts, where I also appeared, gnoshing on a cone). Needless to say, there are tons of family photos. I also have grade school report cards (talks too much) and class photos at Garfield. Two of my neighbors, I am sure, can recall our neighborhood soirées, which were filmed by my parents and even appeared in the Moline Daily Dispatch.

Contradictions with Barry
Contrast my mundane but happy childhood with the president’s. Obama Senior was never listed as the same address as Ann. The only address given for Ann was at her parents’ home in Hawaii, although she and Barry soon went to Seattle. One woman remembers baby-sitting Barry when his mother was in night classes.

The Dunham family left Seattle suddenly and moved to Hawaii. Ann moved back to Seattle soon after the birth, a fact left out of all accounts of Barry’s childhood, when he was campaigning.

The story of an unlikely love uniting Barry’s parents, only to be torn apart by a Harvard scholarship, is simply not true. Apart from a photo 10 years later, of Obama Senior uneasily holding an eager Barry, there is no connection.

No one saw Obama Senior and Ann together – ever. No one remembers them as a couple. Barry offers no detail about their alleged marriage. The alleged divorce is just as hazy, doubtless invented to make Barry appear legitimate.

Obama Senior was a celebrity in Hawaii (p. 128) – the first African to study at the University of Hawaii. Yet no newspaper account mentions him marrying Ann and having a baby boy. He left Hawaii for Harvard in June of 1962. Ann did not return to Hawaii from Seattle until after that time (p. 136). Therefore, it is a myth that Harvard broke up the family with a scholarship too thin to support them all.

Was Barry Born in Africa?
I find it unlikely than a teen-aged mother flew to Africa to see the alleged father of her baby, giving birth to Barry there. We have specific dates for her studies in Hawaii, which she abandoned, and her night classes in Seattle, which she definitely had Barry with her. Perhaps the actual date of Barry’s birth is not the one published, but they are sticking to that story – August 4, 1961.

Nevertheless, there is a persistent base of stories linking the president’s birth to Kenya.

A soldier based in Hawaii remembers talking to Barry about Kenya, his desire to be president, and his birth in Mombassa. His has gone on record about those recollections, which by themselves do not carry much weight. I do not think Corsi dealt with this account.

Barry’s grandmother in Africa said he was born in Kenya in an interview. She then changed her story and said Hawaii.

There are many published stories about Barry being born in Kenya. Although it is easy to Photoshop a story, there are too many accounts to reject them all. Corsi has screen captures of the evidence. (pp. 83ff) Kenyan politicians celebrated that one of their own was US president.

Kenyan stories tend to be scrubbed away from the Net. Equally troublesome are the two different Hawaiian hospitals where Barry was born, two different doctors who delivered him. One family began celebrating that their late patriarch delivered the president, something they did not know until the long form was released. I find that unlikely.

Fraudulent Social Security Number
Social Security numbers are issued in the state where someone lives, yet the president has a Connecticut number. He never lived in Connecticut. It is against the law to assume the SS number of another person, yet this appears to have happened with Barry.

The Original Birthers
The Democrats made an enormous issue out of Senator McCain being born in the Panama Canal Zone, American territory, the son of two American citizens. McCain’s father was a military officer. Nevertheless, the Democrats pursued this story in the newspapers, in blogs, and in court.

I wonder if this was a clever smoke-screen, since the resolution was a Congressional statement acknowledging McCain as qualified. Oddly, the Republicans never dealt with Obama in the same way.

The Birth Certificate Excludes Obama as Natural Born
Assuming Obama Senior is the father of Barry, the president is not natural born. His father was a British citizen, so he is excluded according to the 14th Amendment (p. 50).

Moreover, as a citizen of Indonesia, he had to be naturalized when he came back to America, if he bothered at all. The passport information that would have revealed a lot has been destroyed.

The president was known as Barry Soetoro at Occidental. That was his Indonesian father’s last name. State Department documents show a third last name as well, another new mystery.

Corsi shows that Ann’s remaining passport document shows her removing Barry from her American passport with the assumption that he will have his own Indonesian passport. She may have wanted to emphasize his Indonesian citizenship at that point.

Names Matter
When I apply for a life insurance license, I have to reveal whether I have ever worked under another name. That is true for every state. Barry has been asked the same thing when applying for a law license or running for president. Yet he says he has always had the same name.

Obama has also denied being Muslim, but both putative fathers were Muslim. No Muslim father is going to have a non-affiliated son. Besides, Barry was clearly Muslim in Indonesia. His impromptu responses (my Muslim faith, traveling the 57 states, the Muslim prayer being the sweetest sound) point to one religion only. His scripted remarks try to make him Christian. Few are convinced.

Everything about Obama is false - from his Communist mentor in Hawaii (Frank Marshal Davis) to his crooked friends in Chicago, and his bomber pals in politics (Ayres).

Corsi’s book is a careful evaluation of the facts we know at this point. More books will be published on this topic, and I hope Corsi does a follow up.