Press Secretary Robert Gibbs did not confirm the authenticity of the alleged Jan. 24, 2009, letter from President Obama to his purported place of birth, Kapi'olani Medical Center. His remarks begin at the 55:27 mark of the press briefing. (Click photo to view)

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs today refused to confirm that a letter posted by the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu – purportedly from President Obama claiming the facility as his birthplace – is, in fact, real.

The issue arose today when Les Kinsolving, WND's correspondent at the White House, asked Gibbs about the letter, which the hospital also used in a magazine fundraising article.

However, when WND reported on the posted images and questioned their authenticity, the hospital concealed the online image, and then refused to confirm the letter even exists.

Gibbs' answer came in response to Kinsolving's question, which begins at the 55:27 mark into the video recorded by C-SPAN:

While you and the president were overseas on July the 7th, there was on the Internet a copy of a letter on White House letterhead dated January the 24th, 2009, with the signature "Barack Obama," which stated, "The place of my birth was Honolulu's Kapi'olani Medical Center." And my question is, can you verify this letter? Or if not, would you tell us which Hawaiian hospital he was born in, since Kapi'olani, which used to publicize this, now refuses to confirm?

Barack Obama states in this purported letter from him on what appears to be White House stationery that he was born at the Kapi'olani medical center for Women and Children in Honolulu. The letter was posted by the medical center for nearly six months on its website and used for fundraising before electronically hidden once WND disclosed it was not an actual paper letter, but merely HTML coding. The hospital and White House now refuse to confirm that a real document even exists.

Gibbs said, without responding directly to the question about the veracity of the letter, "Goodness gracious. I'm going to be, like, in year four describing where it is the president was born. I don't have the letter at my fingertips, obviously, and I don't know the name of the exact hospital."

Join the petition campaign to make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate!

When Kinsolving asked when Gibbs could check, he responded.

"I will seek to interview whoever brought the president into this world. But can we just – I want to do this once and for all, Lester. Let's just do this once and for all. You can go on this – I hope you'll take the time not just to Google 'President, January 24, Hawaii hospital, birth' and come up with this letter, but go on the Internet and get the birth certificate, Lester, and put…"

When Kinsolving pointed out the image posted on various website's was not a birth certificate or a certificate of live birth, but a different "Certification of Live Birth" document, Gibbs said, "I know. Just a document from the state of Hawaii denoting the fact that the president was indeed born in the state of Hawaii."

But under Hawaiian law at the time of the president's birth, such documents were available for babies not even born in Hawaii.

Obama states in the purported letter that he was born at Kapi'olani. The letter was posted by the medical center for nearly six months on its website before being electronically hidden once WND publicized it.

Now the hospital refuses to confirm that a real document even exists. But a similar – although not identical – image purporting also to be a letter from Obama claiming Kapi'olani as his birth place appeared in the hospital's Inspire Magazine:

Then Gibbs, amidst a repeating chorus of guffaws and giggles from the White House press corps, started lecturing the WND correspondent, who is among a handful of the most senior correspondents on the White House assignment, about journalism.

"You know, Lester, I – I want to stay on this for a second, Lester, I want to stay on this for a second, because you're a smart man, right?" said Gibbs.

"Hypothetical," said an unidentified reporter.

"All right, all right, settle down in here. Only I get to make jokes like that," said Gibbs.

"Lester, let's finish this one. Do all of your listeners and the listeners throughout this country the service to which any journalist owes those listeners, and that is the pursuit of the noble truth. And the noble truth is that the president was born in Hawaii, a state of the United States of America. And all of this incredible back-and-forth – I get e-mails today from people who inexplicably can figure out very easily the White House e-mail address, and want proof of where the president was born," Gibbs said.

"Lester, the next time you ask me a question I'm going to ask you what reporting you've done to demonstrate to your listeners the truth, the certificate, the state, so that they can look to you for that momentous search for the truth, and you can wipe away all the dark clouds and provide them with the knowing clarity that comes with that certainty," Gibbs said.

However, WND has reported that a wide range of Obama documentation – along with Obama's birth certificate – are not available, including Obama's kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records.

WND has reported that just within the last week, at least two reports have cited Obama's birth in Kenya. Wikipedia also was found to have been reporting on Obama's birth in Kenya, before a series of scrubs placed his birth in Honolulu.

And that came on the heels of several online information sites changing the president's supposed birthplace from one hospital in Hawaii to another, after WND broke the news of the letter said to be from the White House.

When WND exposed doubts about the authenticity of the letter because it was created with HTML computer code, the hospital which for nearly six months proudly declared Obama was born at its facility and used that claim as a major fund-raising tool commenced an active cover-up, hiding that White House letter from its original webpage and refusing to confirm such a letter actually exists.

WND has yet to be able to identify any physician or medical attendant present at Kapi'olani Hospital in 1961 who can recall Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, giving birth to Barack Obama at the hospital or who can identify the name of the attending physician.

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To date, Obama has not revealed his original long-form, hospital-generated "Certificate of Live Birth" that includes details such as the name of the medical facility and the doctor who delivered him.

Here is an actual Hawaii birth certificate from 1963 (the same era as Obama's birth), which while redacted includes detailed information documenting a birth, including the name of the birth hospital and the attending physician. Beneath it is the short-form "Certification of Live Birth" offered by Obama as proof of his Hawaiian birth. It is possible to have been born outside of Hawaii and still obtain the latter form, but not the former:

Long-form birth certificate from state of Hawaii (Image courtesy Philip Berg)

Here is the "Certification of Live Birth" presented by Obama:

Short-form "Certification of Live Birth"

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen" – challenges that all have been confronted by attorneys acting on the president's behalf to keep his records sealed.

The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions.

Among the cases have been several from Democrat Philip Berg, who has alleged that not only is Obama ineligible to be president, he was unqualified to be the senator from Illinois and should be prosecuted under the False Claims Act.

The key question in the dispute also is being raised on billboards nationwide.

"Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard in Pennsylvania

The billboard campaign follows an ongoing petition campaign launched several months ago by WND Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah.

They are intended to raise public awareness of the fact that Obama has never released the standard "long-form" birth certificate that would show which hospital he was born in, the attending physician and establish that he truly was born in Hawaii, as his autobiography maintains.

Note: Members of the news media wishing to interview Joe Kovacs, Joseph Farah, Jerome Corsi, Les Kinsolving or Bob Unruh on this issue, please contact WND.