I don't have all the paperwork in front of me, but it looks like he verified the information on the document in question matched and then that the specific items he was asked to verify matched.I've already explained what Bennett asked for. It's why I asked about Onaka only verifying 12 items MINUS THREE OR FOUR items from the DOH's standard birth-record request form. By law, he's supposed to verify those facts.
If the AZ SOS didn't ask the right questions, Onaka wasn't going to volunteer anything he didn't ask
The "right questions"??? We're talking about a standard form that the DOH's own website said is what must be used to apply for a letter of verification. It's right here:
Letters of verification may be issued in lieu of certified copies (HRS §338-14.3). This document verifies the existence of a birth/death/civil union/marriage/divorce certificate on file with the Department of Health and any other information that the applicant provides to be verified relating to the vital event. (For example, that a certain named individual was born on a certain date at a certain place.) The verification process will not, however, disclose information about the vital event contained within the certificate that is unknown to and not provided by the applicant in the request.
Letters of verification are requested in similar fashion and using the same request forms as for certified copies.
link
That is what he apparently did at the bottom of the piece of paper that the PDF is supposed to be a copy of so he's not going to do it again.
Sorry, but he didn't do it at all, so there's no way to "do it again."
So far as I can tell, this time he stuck to what the statute said:
Well, no, he didn't. Again, the statute says: "any other information that the applicant provides to be verified" ... Bennett provided the standard request form. Onaka did NOT verify ANY of the information from the standard request form, with the only possible exception of place of birth, but this one particular item is based upon an unofficial document. And, Bennett asked for information as to whether this was a TRUE copy. A certified copy of a birth certificate will say that it's a true copy in the registrar's signature block. Onaka REFUSED to verify this information. By law, he supposed to verify the information that is provided.
Could be, and if that's true, the matter should be examined more closely. Fukino may have known what she was talking about and might actually have seen a document different from the one that was presented (in PDF copy) to the public.
Apparently she saw a completely different document than Obama's PDF. After leaving the DOH, she told a reporter that Obama's original Certificate of Live Birth was "half-handwritten." The PDF is not. Thanks for admitting that the DOH has not verified that Obama's PDF is legally valid.
I don't have all the answers, and don't need to go on making objections. It's just that the whole "obvious fraud" thing got on my nerves. If it's a fraud, it's not an awful one, not something that amateurs could readily detect as one, and not one singled by a hidden happy face.
A red flag is a red flag is a red flag. You've basically admitted this really was an obvious fraud, it's pretty silly to bemoan one of the obvious red flags. I
Thanks for the response. The relevant phrase in your link is this:
The verification process will not, however, disclose information about the vital event contained within the certificate that is unknown to and not provided by the applicant in the request.
So you can't just say, "Tell me what's in all the fields." You have to specify the information that you have in a given field and ask if it's correct.
Even though we know what is supposed to be in all the fields according to the PDF released to the public, you still have to provide the specific answer yo want verified for each item on the form. You don't find this in the specific statute about verification, but I suspect it comes from other laws about releasing information to third parties.
This is supposed to be a copy of the first page of the request, the form Bennett filled out:
I couldn't read it at first, but I think I can see what you're saying. It looks like Onaka read the items on the form as identifiers specifying which document he was supposed to check, not as items to be checked. That could be the usual way such forms are treated. Of course we know who's birth certificate it's supposed to be, but bureaucrats are supposed to go by the book.
Bennett thought he was going to get a specific verification of all the items on the form and the items on the sheet. He didn't get that. Whether this was some special dodge on Onaka's part or whether it was standard operation procedure for Hawaii DOH is something you could find out if you had other copies of requests for verification and their answers. Barring that, I don't think you can assume that it's a clever dodge.
Sorry, but he didn't do it at all, so there's no way to "do it again."
Once for the short form. Once for the long form. Once in this letter. Maybe Onaka was lying all those times, but it looks to me like he attested to the validity of the information 3 times.
You've basically admitted this really was an obvious fraud, it's pretty silly to bemoan one of the obvious red flags.
I never said it was a fraud, or an obvious fraud -- or authentic. I don't know enough about documents and imaging to decide. Nothing looks obviously fraudulent to me, but what do I know? I do know a tiny bit about fountain pens and manual typewriters, and that makes me think that some of the explanations of why the PDF was fraud were obviously wrong-headed, maybe even stupid. If you subscribed to those theories, I don't mean anything personal, my point is, if it's a forgery there's nothing obvious about it, and the most obvious explanations of a forgery were flawed enough to make us really question the whole "obvious fraud" idea.
If you're referring to Dr. Fukino, my idea was that people can't simply dismiss her comment out of hand. One can't simply assume that she didn't see the document or that she didn't get a good look, or that she didn't know what she was looking at. One has to at least admit the possibility that she may have been right about her comments and that there was something fraudulent about the copy that was released. That doesn't prove that the document was forged, though. Any or all of those objections may still be true. But her comment increases the possibility that the PDF may have been a fake.