White House Stonewalling on 'Birth Letter'
Joe Kovacs
July 26, 2009
Is it real, or is it fake?
Despite numerous, repeated requests for more than two weeks, the White House is refusing to verify the authenticity of a letter allegedly sent by President Obama in which he ostensibly declares a Honolulu hospital as his birthplace.
 A photograph taken by the Kapi'olani Medical Center for WND shows a letter allegedly written by President Obama on embossed White House stationery in which he declares the Honolulu hospital to be "the place of my birth," The hospital, after publicizing the letter then refusing to confirm it even existed, is now vouching for its authenticity, but not its content. The White House has yet to verify any aspect of the letter. |
The letter in question, dated Jan. 24, 2009, was trumpeted and used to raise funds – then later concealed – by the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, which eventually released images of the paper letter to WND.
"As a beneficiary of the excellence of Kapi'olani Medical Center – the place of my birth – I am pleased to add my voice to your chorus of supporters," Obama purportedly wrote.
 This excerpt from the alleged Obama letter is perhaps the first formal declaration from the president about his exact birthplace. The White House has still not confirmed if the letter or its contents are authentic. |
But since WND raised questions about the veracity of the letter itself and its contents, the White House has refused to say if the letter itself is authentic and that its content originated with the president.
Staffers at the White House only acknowledge their receipt of WND's request and images of the letter posted online by the news site.
The Kapi'olani Medical Center claims to "know" the letter is real, but hospital spokeswoman Keala Peters refused to corroborate the content, specifically that Obama was born at her facility as the letter asserts.
"We know that [the letter] came from Mr. Obama," she said.
When asked how she "knew" that and how the hospital came to receive the message, Peters only stated, "[Congressman] Neil Abercrombie personally brought it."
At the hospital's Centennial Dinner Jan. 24, the same day the message in question is dated, U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, read the letter's contents – straying at times from the actual text.
Abercrombie has not returned several WND requests for direct comment about the letter, but his spokesman Dave Helfert indicated he would seek a response.
"I will ask him what he remembers, how he came by the letter, whether by dictation or whether it was hand-delivered," Helfert said.
At the same time, though, Helfert told WND outright the matter was not a high priority.
"This issue is just not very important to anyone but you – I don't mean to demean you," he said. "I'm not going to go out of my way to have the congressman kill himself to make time to call you. I've made a judgment that I'm going to bother him about more important issues."
He called it "an incredible waste of our time to have to deal with all the time," and explained, "It's not a legislative issue. It's barely a governmental issue only in the most conspiratorial sense."
Ironically, the congressman thought the issue of Obama's alleged birthplace letter was important enough to prominently display it on his website, stating:
The President's message recognizes the center's service to generations with distinction: 62,000 kids per year, including the President himself. Settling the question once and for all, he states that Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children "is the place of my birth. Hawaii has always been home to me."
 U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, posted this message on his website explaining President Obama settled the question of his actual birthplace "once and for all" merely by declaring it in a letter he read to the Kapi'olani Medical Center's Centennial Dinner in Honolulu Jan. 24, 2009. |
When WND correspondent Les Kinsolving asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the letter at the July 13 news briefing, Gibbs dodged the question, refusing to confirm its authenticity while belittling Kinsolving for even posing the question.
 Press Secretary Robert Gibbs refused to 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) |
"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," Gibbs lectured Kinsolving. "And the noble truth is that the president was born in Hawaii, a state of the United States of America."
Since the medical center has been using the letter for a high-profile fundraiding campaign in the spring edition of its Inspire Magazine, the FBI and United States Secret Service said the matter could potentially lead to criminal prosecution were the letter determined to be fraudulent.
"It would be a charity fraud scheme," said FBI spokesman Steve Kodak. "It would be investigated by us or the Secret Service. We both have jurisdiction over that."
Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service, told WND, "We're not going to confirm or deny whether or not a letter exists if the White House has not confirmed it exists."
"This is something that is bearing the president's signature," he added. "It is the White House's responsibility to confirm it. So that is the first step – for the White House to determine its authenticity. We're not gonna trump the White House."
He noted he couldn't comment "about the pace" in which Obama or his surrogates would act.
When WND posed the possibility of continued stonewalling and fundraising using a presidential document that might not have originated with Obama, Wiley said, "In a case like that, it may be something we could very well investigate."
 Kapi'olani used a letter, allegedly written by President Obama in which he declares his birthplace to be at the facility, to solicit donations in its spring 2009 edition of its Inspire Magazine. The hospital, after refusing to confirm the letter even existed, is now vouching for its authenticity but not its content. The White House has refused to confirm both the letter and its content. The FBI and Secret Service have indicated criminal charges are possible if a fraudulent letter from the White House is being used to raise funds. |
All of this matters because President Obama has still not provided simple, incontrovertible proof of his exact birthplace. That information would be included on his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate which Obama has steadfastly refused to release amid a flurry of conflicting reports.
He has only proffered a "Certification of Live Birth" to assert he was born in Hawaii, but many people remain unaware a child does not even have to be born in Hawaii to receive a COLB. Hawaiian law specifically allows "an adult or the legal parents of a minor child" to apply to the health department and, upon unspecified proof, be given the birth document.
WND has reported that 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.
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.
WND has yet to be able to identify any physician or medical attendant present at Kapi'olani 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.
The Department of Defense allegedly compelled a private employer to fire a U.S. Army Reserve major from his civilian job after he had his military deployment orders revoked for arguing he should not be required to serve under a president who has not proven his eligibility for office.
Obama's birth certificate is not the only document at issue. WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.
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, Chelsea Schilling or Bob Unruh on this issue, please contact WND.