Inconsistencies abound in FactCheck report on Obama "birth certificate"

Israeli Insider ^ | 8/24/08 | Reuven Koret

[pissant]

The Annenberg Political Factcheck website has published photographs and an analysis of what it says is the "original birth certificate" of Barack Hussein Obama II. While the physical document depicted in the photos resemble the document image previously scanned and published by the Daily Kos website and Obama's own "Fight the Smears" site in June, FactCheck's case for authenticity and its claims to objectivity are undermined by a litany of process flaws, conflicts of interest and factual inconsistencies that raise doubts about its motives and methods of those of the Obama campaign.

The Factcheck.org report, titled "Born in the USA," accompanied by an image of the Bruce Springsteen album cover, starts:

In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake."

We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

FactCheck claims that its staffers have "seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate" begs the question and obscures the truth. In fact, the article later goes on to make clear that this is in fact not "the original birth certificate" but "a 'certification of birth,' also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns."

"The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response."

This would seem to suggest that Factcheck went through the process of requesting the birth certificate (after all, why else reproduce and link the request form?), but no -- it turns out that they had a special invitation to visit the birth certificate at its residence, as if they were visiting some long lost relatives or a reclusive celebrity:

"Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago."

For an organization that claims to be fastidious with the facts, the sentence is vague and overly cute. Who made the invitation to "spend some time with the certificate"? How exactly did it happen that they "got a chance"? Did FactCheck approach the Obama Campaign or did the Obama Campaign approach FactCheck? And what are the forensic analysis credentials of the FactCheck staff that allows them to conclude definitively that the birth certificate is real and original?

And when is "recently"? The controversy over the birth certificate has been raging for ten weeks. Was it coincidental that it would emerge right after Obama returned from his "vacation" in Hawaii? The claim of "recently" is thrown into further doubt by the revelation that embedded date information in the photographs indicates that the photos were taken nearly a half year ago.

Factcheck.org posted 9 photographs of what it claimed were different aspects of Obama's "Certificate of Live Birth", all in less than optimal and idiosyncratic lighting conditions. All of them were taken over a less than seven minute period on March 12, 2008 from 10:40:18 to 10:47:02 at night.

No wonder FactCheck sufficed left it a vague "spend some time" when the duration of the entire photography session took 6 minutes and 44 seconds. Talk about: "Wham, bam, thank you, Obama!" Does that sound like a serious and thorough examination to

FactCheck will need to explain these hard chronological facts, which can be verified from the published photos by anyone with an EXIF reading tool, publically available on the net and as part of graphics software.

If the embedded graphical information is correct, it means that FactCheck is lying about doing the photo session "recently" and may be lying about much more, since it would be implausible that "FactCheck" was even checking facts about the birth certificate in March 2008.

Factcheck may try to argue that the photographer "forgot" to set the correct time. But that would further illuminate the shoddy level of professionalism in disregarding the need for exact documentation of the date, a carelessness echoed in the introductory remarks of its article ("recently" is not a fact, especially when it is not clearly associated with the location of the photo shoot ? where the documents "reside" is hardly the same thing). If so, FactCheck would also need to show some other published photos published with the same camera that show an identical offset between the camera's time and the real time.

Exactly for such reasons -- the lack of professionalism, exactitude and transparency concerning the provenance of this paper and the circumstances of the photographic session -- the reasonable demand from the skeptics -- who were initially made suspicious by the fact that the purported certificate image was published first (initially in relatively low resolution and only later in high resolution) in the far-left partisan Daily Kos blog -- has always been that the paper certificate must be subjected to the scrutiny of objective media or document forensics specialists, and mainstream journalists who can ask the hard question not just about this document image or that document image but examine it for themselves and query Obama himself about the many lingering mysteries and evasions in this whole affair.

It is striking, too, that Newsweek reprints the FactCheck report under the organizational byline without the minimal scrutiny that one would expect from a serious news magazine. In effect it is an advertorial serving the interests of the Obama campaign, not an objective piece of journalist.

FactCheck itself, as a project primarily funded by the Annenberg Foundation, hardly fits the bill of being a disinterested party, especially given Obama's four year stint as founding chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, currently being investigated due to its massive withholding of papers which document the catestrophic failure of the project, including public funds wasted under Obama's leadership, and his relations in that project with former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

Most curious, too, is the apparent lack of curiosity of FactCheck in pursuing the original "long-form" birth certificate that was supposedly used as the basis for the short form. After all, Barack Obama refers explicitly to possessing this document in "Dreams from My Father". Since FactCheck apparently has sufficiently close relations with the Obama teams to merit the exclusive privilege of being invited to "spend some time" (or at least 6 minutes and 44 seconds) with the reclusive short-form, one might think that if they were really interested in checking facts or examining original records they would doggedly pursue the paper source document -- the real thing from 47 years ago, not something cleaned and extracted from a database and thus subject to all kinds of potential revision and redaction.

Rather than asking the hard questions of Obama himself, or even the Obama campaign, or even requesting additional documents from the State of Hawaii in the public interest (they said they "tried" to ask about the long form but failed to get an answer), FactCheck falls back on the rather lame claim that the short form has "enough information to be acceptable to the State Department" and goes so far as to include a footnote linking to the State Department's Passport application requirements.

But isn't that bar set a bit too low for the man who wants to be President, especially as you can be a citizen without being natural born, especially when there are multiple reports coming from Kenya -- including several from Obama's own relatives -- that he was actually born in Kenya and came to Hawaii only days after birth, apparently at his mother's insistence that he would be recorded as being born in the USA? Apparently not too low for FactCheck. From their report it would appear that they are not interested or, perhaps more correctly, conflicted in their interests.

The photographs themselves of course superficially resemble what a real short-form certificate should look like, although it is impossible to ascertain from a series of jpg images. Remarkably, for an organization which purports to be dedicated to checking facts, no high resolution of the document's two sides was made so that professionals could compare that scan with the scan previously published in the Daily Kos. The Obama headquarters has no scanner? FactCheck has no scanner? Only a Canon Powershot 570 with an unset date? Or perhaps they were granted a mere six minutes and 44 seconds and had no time for a scan.

Comparing the high resolution Daily Kos scan (as opposed to the scan originally published) with the FactCheck photos, there are obvious and dramatic differences. The scan shows only the thinnest of fold marks at the top and none below, no seal and no signature block. Oddly, only the June 6, 2007 date stamp is visible. Only after extreme manipulations of the Daily Kos image did some graphic specialists managed to squeeze out the blurred and color enhance image of something that just might be a seal or a signature block. But even then, not in the correct size or expected location.

Those stark differences clearly validate the skepticism with which the scan was regarded by Israel Insider and others from the start. Why, then, did it take the campaign ten weeks to produce photos that show the missing seal, signature block and deep fold marks, so deep that they disrupt some letters and print of the seal? What changed between June 12 and August 21?

Then there is the issue of the redacted file number which for the last ten plus weeks has been blacked out . Here's the explanation that comes from the Obama campaign, according to FactCheck:

We asked the Obama campaign about the date stamp and the blacked-out certificate number. The certificate is stamped June 2007, because that's when Hawaii officials produced it for the campaign, which requested that document and "all the records we could get our hands on" according to spokesperson Shauna Daly. The campaign didn't release its copy until 2008, after speculation began to appear on the Internet questioning Obama's citizenship. The campaign then rushed to release the document, and the rush is responsible for the blacked-out certificate number. Says Shauna: "[We] couldn't get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we've found out it's pretty irrelevant for the outside world."

That's odd. The "rush" to release the document? Who exactly was rushing them? The bloggers over at Daily Kos? Why was the Obama campaign in such a "rush" if there was no problem and no real pressure to produce. They couldn't wait another few hours or a day to talk to the Hawaii Health Department before rushing to print at the Daily Kos? And then, after the redacted document was up, they couldn't have replaced it with an unredacted image?

Only last week, the Honolulu Advertiser quoted Janice Okubo, Director of Communications in Hawaii's Department as Health, as saying that with the file number one could hack into the system. "Potentially, if you have that number, you could break into the system." Okubo seems on intent on defending the Obama campaign even if she admits that the image they presented as authentic lacked visible stamps and seals. "They responded and apparently it isn't good enough that he posted his birth certificate," Okubo said. "They say they want it because they claim he is not a citizen of the United States. It's pretty ridiculous."

So which is it? Is the file number irrelevant, as the campaign now claims, or is it a data that could be used to hack into the system, as Hawaii claims. If it is irrelevant, why is Janice Okubo providing excuses for the Obama campaign? If it is dangerous for data security, why is the Obama campaign ignoring that danger? And why does Okubo say it's "ridiculous" to be asking questions about the provenance of a vital record of a presidential candidate when the proffered proof clearly lacked the requisite stamps and signatures. Or did Obama's people and Okubo have a heart to heart between body surfing sessions at Waikiki?

Despite the points scored by the Obama campaign in gaining high level media coverage for a favorable puff piece, the FactCheck photospread -- revealing so much that the scan did not --unwittingly serves to validate the legitimacy of the probing questions and analyses that have been asked over the past two and a half months by Israel Insider and various bloggers, document examiners, and average citizens.

While the quality and consistency of the analyses of these amateur sleuths have been irregular, and have taken wrong turns on several occasions, shouldn't the burden of proof for documenting one's citizenship and producing the original vital records fall on the candidate and the legal authorities empowered for this purpose, not ordinary citizens disturbed by the lack of transparency of a presidential candidate and his arrogant unwillingness to produce documents expected of regular Americans?

The FactCheck report may have Obamatons humming "Born in the USA", but anyone serious about getting to the truth of Obama's constitutional qualifications will be disappointed by their casual and smug report. And they will expect more from a candidate who, like the protagonist in the opening lines of the Springsteen song, seems to "spend half [his] life just covering up."

The evidentiary and analytical shoddiness of the FactCheck report, both in terms of the dubious dating of the photos, the inexactitude in the circumstances of the shoot, apparent inconsistencies between the photos and the scan, and the failure to pursue the more significant, truly original, long form birth certificate, all point to the inadequacy of the proof presented to date to validate Obama's claim to being a "natural born" US citizen.

That question, it now seems, will need to be answered in federal court.

[Admin Moderator]

Because this is America where you are innocent until PROVEN guilty. He doesn’t have to show evidence of his innocence until someone shows evidence of his guilt, which has not happened.

Obama is not being charged with a crime, so your point is pointless.

Instead, he is running for the highest office in the land. The Constitution is quite clear that he must be a native-born citizen. There are elaborate guidelines in each state to get on the ballot in those states. Why would needing to prove you are a native-born citizen be an issue, then?

Methinks you doth protesteth too much.

[TheNewPundit]

Forgery is a crime, as has been pointed out by so many in here. He has shown proof of citizenship, as I have pointed out so many times.
And I have also pointed out that I am protesting because good conservatives don’t use the same low brow tactics used by liberal smear campaigns. Good conservatives focus on the actual issues and don’t make accusations they can’t back up.

[TheNewPundit]

“Obama is not being charged with a crime, so your point is pointless.
Instead, he is running for the highest office in the land. The Constitution is quite clear that he must be a native-born citizen. There are elaborate guidelines in each state to get on the ballot in those states. Why would needing to prove you are a native-born citizen be an issue, then?
Methinks you doth protesteth too much.”

Forgery is a crime, as has been pointed out by so many in here. He has shown proof of citizenship, as I have pointed out so many times.
And I have also pointed out that I am protesting because good conservatives don’t use the same low brow tactics used by liberal smear campaigns. Good conservatives focus on the actual issues and don’t make accusations they can’t back up.

[usmcobra]

Check again The Annenberg Foundation did fund the Annenburg Challenge and funds Factcheck.org

About FactCheck.org

Our Mission

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels.

The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by the Annenberg Foundation.(my emphasis)

You'll find your crow on their about page, I suggests ever so politely that you eat it...

[TheNewPundit]

You need to read it again and tell me how that proves that they are covering for Obama. And then read the part about Obama not being involved with the organization that runs factcheck.

Annenburg Challenge = Obama
Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania DOES NOT = Obama

How is that crow?

[usmcobra]

It is pretty hard to prove forgery when he won’t release the original document to anyone that can validate it and only uses the internet and assorted JPGs to show it off....

[usmcobra]

Funded by the same source Get it?

Good! Obama was chosen to work with Bill Ayers on the Annenburg Challenge. Got it?

The same people that funded the Annenburg Challenge plucked Obama from obscurity paired him with Bill Ayers and still fund Factcheck.org are in fact using FactCheck.org to cover his past by trying to defuse an issue that would roundfile his qualifications in this election.

[Shamrock-DW]

What about....HE’S A MARXIST YOU IDIOT!!!!!!

[TheNewPundit]

“It is pretty hard to prove forgery when he won’t release the original document to anyone that can validate it and only uses the internet and assorted JPGs to show it off....”

Are you saying that it is hard to prove something to be true if you don’t already have the evidence?

[TheNewPundit]

“The same people that funded the Annenburg Challenge plucked Obama from obscurity paired him with Bill Ayers and still fund Factcheck.org are in fact using FactCheck.org to cover his past by trying to defuse an issue that would roundfile his qualifications in this election.”

Great theory, has just as much evidence as your other theory about Obama not being an American.

[TheNewPundit]

Just so you know, by that same token, Ronald Reagan is also connected to factcheck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Annenberg

Notice to picture on the right.

[Kevmo]

FactCheck.org does not always check their facts...
***Yup. Here’s another example, just with this document:

http://oldatlanticlighthouse.wordpress.com/2008/08/23/factcheck-obama-birth-certificate-alignment-problem/

Factcheck Obama Birth Certificate Alignment problem
August 23, 2008
http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/factcheckorg-has-new-birth-certificate-story/

Snoopy said, on August 22nd, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Anyone notice the certificate number isn’t level with the security pattern. Looks like it was added later.

The old COLB certificate number was level to the pattern.

http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/birth_certificate_2.jpg

(when you follow above link, click the mouse to expand the image. On some images, you can right click and click view image and then expand the image. This is the case at the Obama webpage.)

The word certificate may be pre-printed. The certificate number is variable information like Honolulu below. Honolulu is level with the background. But the certificate number doesn’t appear to be. Certificate number is

151-1961-010641

In the 151, the 151 are close to the lower horizontal bar in the background. But by the end of the certificate number, the end 41 is far above the horizontal bar. The initial 1’s top seems to be slightly below the horizontal bar above the number. The final 1 seems to go into and overlap the horizontal bar above the number. Of course, we are looking at it at an angle. Someone may wish to reorient it for us.

The 0 6 in the last segment of the number also seem to be inside the horizontal bar above the number. The 5 in the 151 has its top appear to have a small gap between it and the horizontal bar above it. These gaps would seemingly be independent of original camera angle and the orientation that Factcheck has chosen to give us, but perhaps they do? Mabye COLB defenders may want to do experiments and show us its an angle issue? Right now it seems not.

If you look down the form, Honolulu stays level with the horizontal bars.

The Certificate Number was originally blacked out on the Obama webpage and Daily Kos. So if FactCheck or someone added this certificate number, they might have put it out of line.

The Patricia Decosta COLB

http://www.againstobama.com/2008/07/barack-obamas-forged-birth-certificate-the-smoking-gun-has-been-found/

or here

http://www.againstobama.com/wp-content/uploads/doc_decosta_pat_birth.jpg

The Decosta COLB does not appear to have a misalignment problem.

http://www.valeehill.net/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I4525&tree=0001

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/birthcert

http://www.barackobama.com/images/fts/BO_birthcert.jpg

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/12/11012/6168/320/534616

http://images.dailykos.com/images/user/3/BO_Birth_Certificate_thumb.jpg

Perhaps if the COLB, certificate of live birth, was manufactured outside normal means, then someone made a mistake on the alignment. So the reason for the blackout may have been this alignment was wrong in the first place. The purported reasons were to protect security or confidentiality or privacy. But perhaps it was to cover up the misalignment all along.

According to Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs, the Factcheck photo images contain date indicators indicating a March 12, 2008 date for when they were taken. So at that point, Factcheck and the Obama campaign under David Axelrod may have decided to conceal the Certificate Number because it was out of alignment.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/08/annenberg-fact.html

DateTimeOriginal - 2008:03:12 22:40:18
DateTimeDigitized - 2008:03:12 22:40:18

This is draft and preliminary and subject to revision. Comments and corrections welcome. This is hypotheses or speculation. All other disclaimers apply.

[razorback-bert]

Just as all John Kerry had to do put his war record straight was released them, but all he did was let a tame journalist see parts.

Dan Rather had documents, so he said, and they were just photocopys too.

History is full of fake documents.

We know Obama lies, so why should we trust any unvetted document he produces?

All Obama has to do is release the document unconditionally.

[bvw]

http://www.timesherald.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20089295&BRD=1672&PAG=461&dept_id=33380&rfi=6

Born in the U.S.A.?
By: KEITH PHUCAS, Times Herald Staff
08/25/2008

... Sean Smith, Obama’s Pennsylvania communications director, was contacted Friday about the suit but declined comment.

The civil suit filed by Berg will be reviewed by the U.S. Federal Election Commission, according to Patty Hartman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

[usmcobra]

Do you believe Reagan used the internet to fight slurs against him?

Isn’t that what you are suggesting?

I have always found that most groups that claim to be nonpartisan aren’t, simply because they gather the best and brightest skulls filled with mush churned out by our liberal colleges and universities.

Real conservatives don’t waste their time involved in such pursuits of justice since they know the game is already rigged.

Exposing this fraud and stopping this scam before the election is our best chance to prevent the inevitable riots and looting from happening when Obama loses and he will lose.

Your willingness to allow it to continue shows me at least that you would rather have the worst happen then do anything about it.

It certainly shows in you a willingness to avoid exposing the man’s lack of integrity and honesty.

[TheNewPundit]

He released it, you chose not to believe those who inspected it.

[TheNewPundit]

“Do you believe Reagan used the internet to fight slurs against him?
Isn’t that what you are suggesting?”

No, I’m suggesting that the links you seek aren’t always there.

“I have always found that most groups that claim to be nonpartisan aren’t, simply because they gather the best and brightest skulls filled with mush churned out by our liberal colleges and universities.”

And I have been reading factcheck for four years now, and they are very good at keeping things straight. I have seen a mistake or two, but they do a better job than most.

“Your willingness to allow it to continue shows me at least that you would rather have the worst happen then do anything about it. It certainly shows in you a willingness to avoid exposing the man’s lack of integrity and honesty.”

Very ignorant statements. I have exposed his lack of integrity. My most recent thread before I posted the factcheck thread was regarding his flip-flops on abortion. Your willingness to ignore this and other facts shows a lack of integrity and honesty. How can you expose one man’s lack if you lack the same?

[HighlyOpinionated]

There is a way to open the Sealed Documents, but it doesn't really matter if Barry O' was born in Hawaii or not. Other forums state that Indonesia does not recognize dual citizenship and that IF Barry O' was adopted by Lolo Soetoro (and there's good secondary evidence this is true), then Barry O' no longer can claim US Citizenship. The ONLY way would have been for his Grandparents to adopt him, thereby sealing the Adoption in Indonesia. And Lolo would have had to agree to the adoption process, since by adoption, he was LEGAL although not Natural Father.

[bvw]

Very ignorant statements. I have exposed his lack of integrity. My most recent thread before I posted the factcheck thread was regarding his flip-flops on abortion. Your willingness to ignore this and other facts shows a lack of integrity and honesty. How can you expose one man’s lack if you lack the same?

And to think that one day, some many years ago you were someone's bundle of joy.

[bvw]

Since Obama was a minor at the time Lolo’s adoption would have occurred, I do not think his US citizenship (if that was valid from his birth, which itself is a separate question) would be impaired by that adoption, since Obama returned to the US before he was an adult. If, however, Obama took an action such as traveling under Indonesian passport while an adult, he thereby confirmed his Indonesian citizenship and could indeed have forfeited any claim to a US citizenship.