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© 2009 WorldNetDaily
The alleged Kenyan birth certificate offered by eBay seller Lucas Smith and displayed last weekend on YouTube.com is not a valid document, a WND investigation has revealed.
 Screen shot of whole document from Lucas Smith's video; close-up views available in clip below |
Administrators at Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa, the hospital named as President Obama's supposed birth hospital in the document, refused to authenticate the record when contacted by WND sources in Kenya.
The document appears to have the following defects:
- Kenyan news sources have called into question the use of "Coast Province" or "Coast Provincial" as a correct reference to the official name of the Mombasa general public hospital in 1961, citing Professor Dan Branch of the University of Warwick who noted that the term "Coast Province" was not used in the early 1960s when Kenyan provinces were typically referred to as "regions."
- Until 1964, Kenya was the Dominion of Kenya, not the Republic of Kenya, and Mombasa was part of Zanzibar until Dec. 12, 1963, not a coastal province of Kenya.
- Dr. James O.W. Ang'awa, the physician who was named in the document as the attending physician at Obama's birth, was a physician who worked in Kenya during the 1960s; however, he worked at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi. Dr. James O.W. Ang'awa never worked at any hospital in Mombasa.
- The dates on the document are formatted in U.S. style, listing in order the month, day and year; this is not the British format which typically follows the order of day, month and year.
- The footprint on the document appears nearly perfect in definition; real infant footprints typically show signs of smudging because of foot movement.
- The footprint on the document is densely black, revealing few natural lines on the sole of the foot; footprints used for document identification are typically inked much lighter to allow for natural lines to be clearly apparent.
- Footprints taken for document identification are typically taken for both feet, just as fingerprints taken for identification are typically taken for both hands.
- The document does not look remotely like the 1961-era birth certificates used in Kenya; infant footprints were not displayed on Kenyan birth certificates in the 1961-era.
WND sources in Kenya described the Smith document as a clever forgery in that Helton Muganga is currently an administrator at Coast Provincial General Hospital.But when WND sources in Kenya contacted Coast Provincial General Hospital, no administrator would verify the authenticity of the document.
Moreover, WND sources reported it is unlikely any 1961 birth certificate for President Obama will ever be found at Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa, even if one originally existed.
Administrators and doctors at the hospital told WND sources that in 2004 a high-level team of Kenya's National Security Intelligence Service came to the hospital and seized all files containing birth certificate documents from the years 1960 through 1963.
According to the hospital administrators and doctors interviewed at the hospital, it was not until four months later that Kenya's National Security Intelligence Service returned the seized files to the hospital.
As WND has reported, Lucas Smith, a former resident of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and known by the eBay handle "colmado_naranja," claimed online and in phone conversations with WND to have an authentic document from Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa proving Obama's birth there.
After promising to reveal the document to WND, Smith then dropped communicationswith a team of people offering to help him verify the document, only fueling the belief the sale – and therefore the alleged document – was a scam.
WND followed Smith's ongoing saga as "colmado_naranja" as he attempted several times to sell the document, or photos and stories surrounding it, on eBay, only to have the auctions repeatedly removed by site administrators.
WND also launched an investigation into "colmado_naranja," which led through several online aliases and reported collaborators, including Dawnella Wilson, "InspectorSmith" and, eventually, Lucas Smith.
Smith, whose background includes a lengthy criminal record and a reported attempt to sell his kidney to a man in need of organ transplant, nonetheless insists that his motives are above board, even if his past looks dubious.
"I do have a background. I've made mistakes in my life," Smith told WND in an e-mail. "It took a guy like me to go and get tangible proof about Obama. I don't mind breaking a few laws or policies here and there. I don't mind paying the military in foreign countries to look the other way ... The military [in Africa] will grant you access to anything for just a few dollars. People are starving. So yes, it takes a guy like me to get things done once in a while."
An enhanced version of the Smith YouTube video has been published by Repubx.com,permitting a more legible examination of the document.
WND has also determined that a supposed Kenyan birth certificate previously released by attorney Orly Taitz is also a forgery.
WND has reported on an authentic 1961-era Kenyan birth certificate, which looks distinctly different from the document Smith released in the video.
 Authentic 1961-era Kenyan birth certificate obtained by WND |
WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." 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 the questions.
WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.
 "Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard at the Mandalay Bay resort on the Las Vegas Strip |
The campaign followed a petition that has collected more than 450,000 signaturesdemanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question andthe production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question.
The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.
Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.
If you are a member of the media and would like to interview Joseph Farah about this campaign, e-mail WND.
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eBay seller releases video of 'Obama birth certificate'
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Jerome R. Corsi is a staff reporter for WND. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972 and has written many books and articles, including his best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "The Late Great USA." Other books include "Showdown with Nuclear Iran," "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil," which he co-authored with WND columnist Craig. R. Smith, and "Atomic Iran."
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