FINAL REPORT: Obama’s Birth Announcements Fail To Show "Natural-Born" Status

A new investigation of Obama’s birth announcements appearing in Hawaii’s two primary newspapers in August, 1961 shows, conclusively, they were the result of a registration record taken by the municipal health authority, not a medically verified “Live" birth documented as occurring at a Hawaiian hospital, per an officially defined "vital event" by the U.S. Department of Health, National Vital Statistics Division protocols. By Penbrook Johannson Editor of the Daily Pen In August, 1961, two announcements allegedly showing a “native” birth for Barack Obama were published in Hawaii’s two primary newspapers, the Sunday Advertiser and the Honolulu Star. For more than three years since Obama engaged his unvetted candidacy for the presidency, many of his supporters have lauded these blurbish announcements as the "holy grail" of proof that he was born in the state of Hawaii. However, a detailed investigation of the history and procedures used by Hawaii’s municipal health department, and its relationship with the newspapers, shows that not only was it a matter of official policy that Obama’s birth would have been announced in the paper regardless of where he was born, the information used to publish the announcements is not even confirmed through any eye-witness medical authority or hospital in the state. Also, in 1961, the two newspapers shared the same address and facility which means they received only one copy of the same vital records information from the Department of Health. Therefore, the format and content of information used in public announcements were published identically by both papers, including any mistakes, omissions, order or context, and no investigation was carried out by the editors to determine if the information provided by the DOH was actually accurate. The two newspapers have long since collaborated into one organization. Now, however, collaborative information from the archive of the U.S. Department of Health’s 1961 Report on Vital Statistics of the U.S – Volume 1: Natality, and Hawaii’s Administrative rules governing the creation of vital records finally reveals the truth about how these announcements were published and why they are mistakenly used by pundits to promote a misguided message about Obama. The Daily Pen’s, Dan Crosby, engaged a two month long research project on location in Hawaii, to, once and for all, close the door on questions about the facts and bring the long-due invalidation of the authority of birth announcements in Hawaii’s newspapers to support Obama eligibility to be president. Recall, for more than two years, major media personalities, such as Bill O’reilly, Chris Matthews and recently fired, Keith Olbermann have enjoyed poking fun with the announcements essentially saying to their viewers that the very presence of these announcements means one of only two exclusive options: 1. They are a legitimate and accurate indication of Obama’s geographic birth in Hawaii, or 2. They are the result of some crazy 50-year-long conspiracy concocted by members of Obama’s family and newspaper editors at the time in order to enable Obama to use the announcements some time later as primary evidence that he was born in Hawaii in the event he might run for president some day. In his investigation, Crosby found confirmed and easily accessible evidence that neither of these choices apply to Obama’s records. In fact, the explanation is far less sensational and simple that it reveals that Mr. Obama (Soetoro) simply benefitted from a commonly used practice in the state of Hawaii for thousands of births which were registered there, but which did not occur there. “The birth announcements were printed from unconfirmed information provided to the Newspapers by the Department of Health without the DOH or newspaper editors confirming the actual location of the birth with any hospital in Hawaii,” says Crosby in a phone call from Oahu, “I found thousands of birth registration records of children born outside of Hawaii who have their announcements published in these two newspapers by cross referencing the announcements with the U.S. Department of Health Vital Records Report for Hawaii.” Recall that Hawaii Revised Statute 338-17.8 allows the state Health Department to register the foreign birth of any child as a native Hawaiian birth if the parents of that child can be proven to the satisfaction and criteria of the Director of the Department of Health only, they were residence of Hawaii within one year of the birth, regardless of the location of the birth. This law then mandates that the vital records registrar must register the birth with the vital records office in coordination with an official, original Hawaiian birth record. “They (newspaper editors) don’t confirm “native” birth status,” continued Crosby, “The newspaper doesn’t care if the birth occurred in the local hospital. They don’t even print that. They merely published information provided to them directly and exclusively from the Department of Health in 1961, which means that any birth meeting the criteria of this law can be registered, and therefore published in a newspaper announcement.” “The birth location is mistakenly implied by people because it appears in this newspaper. I also found several birth records in Japan for birth's registered in Hawaii.” A review of all the birth announcements in Hawaii in 1961 reveals other evidence suggesting a disconnect between the Department of Health and Hawaii’s hospitals. First of all, as shown by Crosby, all the announcements show the parents as married and living at the same address. “This is not merely a majority of the announcements, this is actually all of them. Every single one! Approximately 16,000 in all!” Crosby said. He continued, “This is a significant indication that the newspapers actually do not investigate the information provided by the DOH (Department of Health). If they did, they would have seen that there are more than 1000 births recorded in Hawaii in 1961 in which the parents were not married and/or only the mother is recorded as the parent, yet the papers still publish Mr. and Mrs. ‘Whoever’ in the announcement because that is the information registered, not medically verified.” If the DOH doesn’t include accurate information about the parents for birth announcements, in all cases, what makes people conclude a native birth even though the DOH also omits accurate information about the location of the birth, as well? Crosby also discovered that the announcements are in a tale-tell order which exposes a shocking fact about Obama’s birth announcements. “Did anyone notice the announcements are not in any alphabetic order, or in order of birthdate? This is because, in 1961, birth registration numbers were issued based on the location of the local Vital Records office in which the registration was recorded. The hospital does not assign these numbers, the DOH does. It appears that Obama’s birth was registered in an office not used by any of the birth registrations offices who received birth certification from either Kapi-olani Medical Center, or Queens Medical Center which use two local offices near those facilities,” said Crosby. He continued, “It appears Obama’s birth was registered with the satellite office near his grandparent’s home some distance from the offices nearest to and most used by the hospitals. This particular office was commonly used by indigenous people of Hawaii wanting to record births of children outside of the city. This is why the U.S. Department of Health created the Certificate of Live Birth template in 1959 with a check box indicating whether or not the child was born in the city limits and if the residence of the mother was a farm or not. It appears Obama’s birth at least did not occur in the city of Honolulu and, at most, did not even occur in the state of Hawaii.” In 1956, the National Vital Statistics Division of the U.S. Department of Health issued a revised template version of the “Certificate of Live Birth” form to be used by state municipalities to record and medically verify births. Since Hawaii had not yet become a state, these revisions to the template would not be used in Hawaii until 1959. Therefore, birth records created after 1959 were subject to demographic clarifications and metrics prescribed by the federal authority of the U.S. Department of Health, not the state of Hawaii. “This also explains why Obama’s birth announcements appear in the succession of announcements where and when they do. His alleged “Certification of Live Birth” is not approved by any federal authority as an official source of demographic data or medical verification of his birth. It is merely a record of birth registration. Therefore, the order of printing of announcements in the local papers comes directly from the list which is ordered based on the birth registration office location, not the chronological or alphabetical order of the medically verified birth.” Crosby’s says the difference between “medically verified” and “registration” are significant. He interviewed former Vital Records Adminstration, Martin Hesch in order to gain understanding of the different procedures and authorities used to create vital records and public announcements in a medical verification process as opposed to merely registering a vital event with a municipal office. “I think people simply want to believe a simple equation to this issue,” said Hesch, when asked why he thought so many people ignorantly believe what they are told about Obama’s records. “That is why they think that a birth announcement in a local paper is somehow an automatic indication of a local birth. Unfortunately, they wrongly accept a locally appearing birth announcement as an indication of medically confirmed ‘local birth’ and that just simply is not the way it is in most cases in Hawaii in early part of its history. The media also wants Barack Obama’s natal circumstances and documentation to fit the traditional record model because it is too disturbing to them to think that they were so easily deceived… but we also now know they do not fit this model.” Hesch went on to explain that there two primary authorities to consider when understanding vital records administration. First, you have the medical verification of a vital event, like a birth or death, and you have the administrative process which documents, records and files them. “Birth events and deaths are unique because they require medical verification in the form of official original documentation attested by a medical authority, and, most importantly, the possession of that original documentation is maintained by the local authority,” says Hesch. “However, an administrative process such as that used in birth registrations (not medical verifications), marriages, divorces or amendments to vital records are presided over by legislative rule, not medical standards. This means that they are not exclusive to some originating medical authority. That is not to say that a judge in a divorce case would not require a medical record in making legal decisions, it just means that the standards used to document administrative processes are different than those used to document a medically verifiable vital event in the U.S.” Hesch explained this is why it is possible to publish a birth announcement for a non-native birth. The announcements in the newspapers are the result of the registration records held by the administrative authority, not the records created by the medical authority. “The birth announcement is automatically triggered by the creation of the registration through administrative process, when the municipal record is provided to the newspaper, not the creation of a medical verification record by a medical doctor or hospital,” he said. “The birth can actually occur anywhere and if the announcement does not disclose the location, there is no way to know from just the public announcement whether the vital event is a local occurrence or not.” Hesch’s explanation brings clarity to Obama’s birth announcements. Conclusively, Obama’s birth was registered in the state of Hawaii, but the announcements were not an indication that it was medically verified as occurring there. “So, let me get this straight. People who think that Obama's birth announcements mean that he was born in Hawaii actually believe that the newspaper editors of the 1960’s received thousands of different notices from thousands of different doctors from multiple hospitals and villages throughout Hawaii and then they organized them in some highly coordinated manner for publication in non-computerized publishing system?” asked Hesch, incredulously. "That is utterly ridiculous," he continued, “that is why the DOH pools this information and provided it for public announcements and why the newspapers accepted the information from the DOH without verifying the facts. The verification process would have been staggering and so time intensive for the newspaper deadlines.” “If people would turn off the T.V. and just investigate this stuff for five minutes, they would feel stupid when they realize how simple and unimpressive the reality is,” he said. In fact, the evidence shows that the original medical verification, in the form of what would be a U.S. Certificate of Live Birth signed by an attending physician and attested by a hospital administrator, simply does not exist in a form or content which would promote Obama’s “natural born status”. In fact, Hesch agreed that there is probably information in the original medical birth record which undermines Obama’s identity as a politician and that is the reason why Obama is refusing to disclose it. “Oh, sure, he is hiding something,” he said, “that is the only reason NOT to disclose it. Because, if the original medical record supported his current identity, he would be stupid to keep it hidden. It would only support him in that case.” When asked his opinion about Obama’s case, Hesch said that is a certainty in his mind that Obama’s birth documentation was subjected to administrative processes or amendments and that his medically verified natal records show information that the local vital records authority is able to protect under law under the guise of identity protection. “Of course, it’s ridiculous,” said Hesch, “the Secret Service is not required here. This is natal information which occurred 50 years ago, not a public appearance where the president is under any threat. The only reason to hide the original record is to protect something Obama doesn’t want people to know about him and how that information adversely impacts his ability to be president. It’s plain and simple to me.” In the medical verification process, a registered professional of a federal board must document the circumstances and metrics of a birth. However, the administrative process used to the document the event for municipal purposes is not bound by medical requirements to accurately express those same circumstances because the vital records data is applied under different authoritative functions. Census reports, vital records reports and demographic data serve a different purpose than health report data. Hesch explained that the reasons for this level of administrative complexity comes from Hawaii’s historically plural culture where you have indigenous, native Oceanic, Asian and, of course, American peoples mixing in the population. Since Hawaii is unique in this and that it was a remote, detached territory prior to becoming a part of the U.S., it was necessary to “customize” much of their vital records processes in order to include all those who would be eligible for U.S. citizenry after the island nation became a state. This meant that including non-native births was necessary because the islands of Hawaii were so permeable to migration. Therefore, it has now been confirmed by authorities in Hawaii and abroad that Obama’s birth announcements appeared in two local Hawaiian newspapers without the birth having been medically verified as occurring in Hawaii. The announcements are automatically triggered from information provided by the Department of Health, not the hospital. Therefore, since we already know that Hawaii's Health Department registered foreign births, the announcements would include births for these registrations as well, along with local birth registrations. As a final statement to Bill O’reilly, Chris Matthews and the remaining ignorant slew of media hacks, we would like to say this: Your failure to investigate these facts has undermined your profession and made you look pathetically wanton as journalists. If you would have taken just two more steps in your shallow observations, just one more level down into the actual truth, you have come to the same facts about Obama’s natal history as the internet community has. Instead, you chose to glance at the drive-by message and believe what some deceitful political animal told you about the matter. Now, Obama has made you look like a fool.