May 26, 2009
Exclusive: A Letter to Rupert Murdoch on the Obama Birth Certificate Question
John D. Hemenway, Esq.
Editor’s note: The following is a letter written by John D. Hemenway, Esq. that was sent to NewsCorp CEO Rupert Murdoch via certified mail.
May 14, 2009
Dear Rupert,
You will likely not have retained a clear memory of me from Worcester College in the early fifties. Much time has elapsed from when we both read “P.P.E.” under Asa Briggs and the others. I had looked forward to cementing our friendship when the death of your father caused you simply to “disappear” from those at Worcester.
Much later, during several visits to my Washington, D.C. home, my moral tutor, David Mitchell, filled me in on the magnificent assistance you provided the College. Perhaps you also had something to do with the “Mitchell Building” erected just off Walton Street.
Everyone who shares your views is pleased at the nearly unprecedented success story you have made of your life. I was very pleased when you became an American, even if some persons attributed your motivation as calculated to expand your economic interests. Pure jealousy! You and your accomplishments have been good for us all.
From time to time, I try to keep up with interesting details concerning your news empire. From that reading, I am certain you and I have many opinions in common. I subscribe to the N.Y. Post, which one can acknowledge is “tabloidish,” but describes real N.Y. City life and the Post’s editorial staff certainly offers solid opinions pertaining to U.S. governmental problems. “Fox News” also makes an outstanding contribution to public awareness of the issues confronting the country.
You may recall the vital contribution Worcester’s Provost John Masterman made to the winning of WWII; he was a key figure, as I remember, in organizing the counter-espionage effort against the Nazis. I write you now concerning a problem nearly of that magnitude.
Rupert Murdoch, Chairman, N.Y. Post
1211 Avenue of the America
New York, N.Y. 10036
That problem is this: the man now occupying the White House is likely Constitutionally unqualified to hold the office. As an adopted American, you will have studied the U.S. Constitution better than many Americans, and from P.P.E. studies know that the Constitution has flexible clauses and hard, literal clauses. One of the latter is the requirement of Article II, Section 1, which states: “No person except a natural-born citizen…shall be eligible to the Office of the President.”
There are indications that Obama cannot meet that requirement. As an attorney, I facilitated a lawsuit (Hollister vs. Soetoro et al.) in the United States District Court (D.C. Circuit) demanding that Obama produce his birth certificate or satisfactory substitute evidence. There are about 20 similar lawsuits across the nation. In my case, U.S. District Court Judge Robertson (a Clinton appointee), who summarily dismissed the case, and is rumored to be seeking an Obama appointment, wrote that Obama’s eligibility had been “blogged, texted, twittered, and otherwise massaged by America’s vigilant citizenry.” In other words, he accepted internet “blogs” in lieu of actual evidence.
He ordered me to “show cause” why I should not be sanctioned for promotion of a “frivolous” lawsuit. (It is significant that, although dismissed, none of the twenty odd similar legal actions have been designated by the responsible judge as “frivolous.”)
Other lawsuits have usually been dismissed for “lack of standing” including a lawsuit brought by Presidential candidate, Ambassador Alan Keyes. If anyone has standing, it is an actual Presidential contender. I provided Judge Robertson 37 pages of explanation as to “why I should not be held in contempt” and he decided to “reprimand” me instead of his threatened sanctions. That case is now under appeal.
Any rational person with even partial knowledge of the facts must know that Obama-cum-Soetoro is desperate to conceal something he does not want known. I believe he is hiding the fact that he and his campaign conspired to assert eligibility for the Presidential office to which he well may not be entitled. In other parts of the world, this would be known as a coup d’etat.
Yet, “mainstream” news services, members of officialdom, judges, including justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have all failed to demand documentation to prove or disprove Obama’s qualifications to serve in the White House.
It is as if a 53% vote is a substitute for an actual determination of the legal qualifications of Obama to be President. It is also evident that consequential people in America all believe the “vetting” of qualifications to be a presidential candidate should have been someone else’s responsibility. Revelation of this massive collapse of the fundamentals of the electoral process (ensuring candidate eligibility) at this point would make some very important people look hopelessly incompetent and inept.
Sadly, that includes your “Fox News.” There are reports that top management of Fox instructed its commentators to stay away from the subject – a strange position for a service that deservedly won a reputation for “fair and balanced” reporting. I cannot believe that you would issue such an order, with your good sense. Was it Roger Ailes or someone else? When I worked with Accuracy in Media (AIM) several decades ago, news manipulation by Ailes never filled the staff with confidence. On May 1, Sean Hannity referred to Ailes as his “boss!”
It is also disturbing that a report circulates that a Saudi national who bought enough stock to win a seat on the board of Fox’s parent company, a Saudi prince, asked you to stop Fox from referring to Muslim youth unrest as “Muslim” riots – he boasted later at a conference in Dubai, that after a phone call to you, thirty minutes later, Fox removed the banner from the bottom of its screen, “Muslim” riots. Given this revelation, many FOX devotees are wondering why the eligibility issue has been ignored by your network.
This constitutional question is one of vital importance to the U.S. It is not as if we wanted to startle our contemporaries with actions calculated to stir up our contemporaries as you once did at Worcester with your bust of Lenin. Or as I did when ruffling feathers of our stuffy dean (who guarded the door of “his” library from allowing anyone actually to touch one of his rare books). After you left for Australia to tend to family problems, I hung a huge American flag from the windows of the Nuffield Building on the 4th of July. The dean’s order (conveyed to me by my scout) still rings in my ears, “Take that damn thing down!”
The “natural-born” clause in our Constitution is a rigid, not a flexible clause. In that respect, it is analogous to the banning of “cruel or unusual” punishments, a clause dear to the hearts of our founding fathers. They certainly heard tales from their grandfathers drawn directly from English experience of ingenious cruelties accompanying the crime of “Regicide” after “dictator” Oliver Cromwell died peacefully in his bed. The fact that the English could not devise a way to govern themselves without inviting the king back may suggest that you modify somewhat your prediction (which I read somewhere) that this will be the last British generation that will live under a monarchy! I recall the first review of my educational “progress” at term’s end in “Hall” at Worcester when David Mitchell described my understanding of English history as limited to “King John was a bad king!”
Since you are now an American, and a good one, too, I have no doubt that you will seek to support the Constitution every way you think wise. Consider that, having won election on a campaign that promised “openness and transparency,” Obama now has spent close to $1 million for concealment of his birth and academic records, which are the only means to prove his eligibility. A birth certificate would cost less than $20.00 to request from the State of Hawaii.
Obama has produced no documents at all that would support his claim to eligibility to office. Is it no longer responsible to claim that “the public has a right to know the truth?” Moreover, even if born in Hawaii, as he claims, Obama’s travel to Pakistan (when Americans reportedly were banned from travel there) in 1981 raises other, complicated issues.
Why did his supporters produce a misleading “certification of live birth” instead of an actual vault birth certificate? Forensic experts have testified that the Certification of Live Birth is a forgery; written on a laser printer, when such printers were not available in 1961.
This evokes shades of Richard Nixon’s problems with typewriters (not just once, re: Alger Hiss; but a second time, when Nixon was caught back-dating documents for the I.R.S.) It makes me proud that in his secret tapes, Nixon referred to me, saying, “Fire the son-of-a-bitch, he’s done this before!” – a reference to my testimony before the Senate against incompetent or dishonest Nixon appointees, such as Helmut Sonnenfeldt (known locally as “Kissinger’s Kissinger) who failed confirmation as Deputy Secretary of Treasury because of my testimony before the Senate Finance Committee.
I also testified against the first “career” foreign service officer ever to fail confirmation in the 182 year history of the U.S. Senate: Howard Mace, who was Director of Personnel of the Department of State, who lost his appointment as Ambassador to Sierra Leone. Senate testimony may ultimately prove useful in this Obama matter, despite the composition of the Congress at this time.
Nixon’s firing order directly led me to study law at Howard University, the prestigious largely African-American University in Washington, D.C. Nixon’s denunciation of me, in fact, boosted me in the eyes of the Dean at Howard and got me to this point.
In conclusion, I can tell you this as fact. America badly needed your brilliant creation: Fox News. But if Fox News really is to be a voice for rational conservatism in the United States, it cannot ignore this vital constitutional question: We have a man occupying the White House who refuses to disclose the very documents that would legitimate his Presidency. Was it not a cover-up that undid Richard Nixon? Please instruct your personnel from Roger Ailes on down that they are encouraged (not forbidden) to report all of the news, including that pertaining to Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.
With best regards, your supporter, friend, and admirer,
John D. Hemenway
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor John D. Hemenway, Esq. is a World War II veteran, Naval Academy graduate and a Rhodes scholar.
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