BORN IN THE USA?
Obama: Where have all his records gone?
Footprints of president's own history either vanish or remain covered up
While nearly 400,000 concerned citizens demand President Obama present his elusive "long-form" birth certificate, more than a dozen other documents remain unreleased or otherwise blocked from the public eye.
Numerous documents which have yet to be surrendered include the following.
Obama kindergarten records
The Maui News reported that Obama attended kindergarten at Noelani Elementary School on Oahu during the school year 1966-67. It released a photo of two teachers, Katherine Nakamoto and Aimee Yatsushiro, with five students. The teachers claim one of the children is Barack Obama.
According to the Hawaii Department of Education, students must submit a birth certificate to register. Parents may bring a passport or student visa if the child is from a foreign country.
So far, no records have been released by the school. Noelani Elementary School officials have not responded to WND's request for comment.
Punahou School records
Punahou's alleged 1979 yearbook photo of Obama playing basketball
Though from a modest background, Obama began attending the prestigious Punahou School in Honolulu, one of Hawaii's top private institutions. He reportedly received a scholarship and attended the school from the fifth grade until he finished high school, though no financial records have been released.
The Boston Globe reported, "In 1979, the year Obama graduated, tuition for high school students at Punahou was $1,990, a sizable expense compared with Hawaii's median family income of $22,750 that year.
Obama, reportedly a "B" student, studied among the island's richest and most accomplished students. According to the school's website, he also played forward on Punahou's 1979 state championship basketball team.
Occidental College records
Obama arrived at Occidental College, a small liberal arts school in Los Angeles, Calif., in the fall of 1979. He only briefly mentions the school in his 1995 memoir, "Dreams from My Father."
Obama attended the school on a scholarship. Some question whether the financial aid he received was reserved for foreign students. Financial records have not been released.
In a legal action, handled largely by Gary Kreep of the U.S. Justice Foundation, officials at Occidental College were served with a demand to produce records concerning Barack Obama's attendance there during the 1980s because they could document whether he was attending as a foreign national.
Kreep petitioned the college with a demand for its records concerning Obama.
Occidental College library
"The gravamen of the petition is the question as to whether United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama, of Illinois, is eligible to serve as president of the United States pursuant to the requirements for that office in the United States Constitution," he wrote. "The records sought may provide documentary evidence, and/or admissions by said defendant, as to said eligibility or lack thereof."
College officials then contacted Obama's lawyers, who argued to the court that the election was over and that future concerns should be addressed to Congress.
The motion stated that the records, which could reveal on what name Obama attended classes at Occidental and whether he attended on scholarship money intended for foreign students, "are of no relevance to this moot litigation."
The motion also claimed the petitioners failed to serve the subpoena properly.
Get your "Where's the birth certificate?" bumper sticker here.
"The subpoena directed to Occidental College should therefore be quashed. Alternatively, this court should issue an order directing that the deposition of the custodian of records of Occidental College not take place," the firm working on Obama's behalf stated.
"The central issue in this lawsuit … is whether any Respondent had a legal duty to demand proof of natural born citizenship from Democratic Party's nominee," the motion said. "None of the documents sought by petitioners could possibly assist in answering this question."
A judge granted a motion to quash the subpoena.
"Obama's attorneys bent over backward to block us," Kreep told WND. "Obama doesn't want anyone to see those records. He's trying to hide them."
His efforts resulted in a threat from Obama's attorneys to seek financial sanctions against the plaintiff's lawyers.
Kreep said a notice of appeal will be filed next week.
A notice posted on the Occidental College website states, "Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations protect the privacy of student education records. We, therefore, cannot disclose students' classes, grade point averages, majors or other such information."
Columbia University records
Obama transferred from Occidental College to Columbia University in 1981, at the age of 20.
According to the New York Times, Obama "suggests in his book that his years in New York were a pivotal period: He ran three miles a day, buckled down to work and 'stopped getting high,' which he says he had started doing in high school. Yet he declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the newspaper in October 2007, "He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life."
In a 2005 profile in a Columbia alumni magazine, Obama called his time at the school "an intense period of study."
"I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn't socialize that much. I was like a monk," he said.
Columbia University hosts outdoor viewing of 2009 Inauguration on large screen
Obama claimed to be a part of the Black Student Organization and anti-apartheid activities. But according to the New York Times, several well-known student leaders did not recall his involvement.
Fox News made contact with 400 of Obama's classmates. No one remembered him.
The Columbia University chapter in Obama's life remains blank, according to the New York Sun.
"The Obama campaign has refused to release his college transcript, despite an academic career that led him to Harvard Law School and, later, to a lecturing position at the University of Chicago," the Sun reported in September 2008. "The shroud surrounding his experience at Columbia contrasts with that of other major party nominees since 2000, all whom have eventually released information about their college performance or seen it leaked to the public."
When the newspaper inquired, the Obama campaign did not offer an explanation for why the transcript had not been released.
According to the New York Sun, a program from Columbia's 1983 commencement ceremony lists Obama as a graduate. University spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated with a major in political science but without honors. Nonetheless, he was later admitted to Harvard Law School.
Columbia thesis "Soviet Nuclear Disarmament"
Before applying to Harvard, Obama is said to have written a major thesis in his senior year. It has not been released.
Soviet nuclear missile
An Oct 30, 2007, a New York Times article stated, "[Obama] barely mentions Columbia, training ground for the elite, where he transferred in his junior year, majoring in political science and international relations and writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament."
Former Columbia professor, Michael Baron, told NBC News Obama excelled in his year-long honors seminar called American Foreign Policy.
He also said Obama spent a whole year writing a "thesis" or "senior thesis" on the topic of nuclear negotiations with the former Soviet Union.
"My recollection is that the paper was an analysis of the evolution of the arms reduction negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States," Baron told reporters in an e-mail. "At that time, a hot topic in foreign policy circles was finding a way in which each country could safely reduce the large arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at the other … For U.S. policy makers in both political parties, the aim was not disarmament, but achieving deep reductions in the Soviet nuclear arsenal and keeping a substantial and permanent American advantage. As I remember it, the paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success. Barack got an A."
Baron said he saved Obama's paper and recently searched through boxes hoping to find it, but he told reporters he may have thrown it away during a move several years ago.
Baron wrote a letter of recommendation when Obama applied to Harvard Law School. According to Federal Election Commission records, he also donated at least $1,250 to Obama's presidential campaign.
On July 24, 2008, the Obama administration told NBC News Obama was unable to release copies of his thesis paper.
"We do not have a copy of the course paper you requested and neither does Columbia University," Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said.
According to MSNBC, Columbia University officials claim they do not have a copy available in the college's archives.
Harvard Law School records
Obama at Harvard
With less than steller marks upon his graduation from Columbia, Obama was accepted into Harvard Law School.
WND columnist Jack Cashill wrote, "If Obama's LSAT scores merited admission (to Harvard), we would know about them. We don't. The Obama camp guards those scores, like his SAT scores, more tightly that Iran does its nuclear secrets."
He continued, "We know enough about Obama's Columbia grades to know how far they fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard."
Cashill wrote, Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, lobbied friends like Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton to intervene at Harvard on Obama's behalf. Al-Mansour reportedly mentored founders of the Black Panther party in the early 1960s.
Cashill suggests Obama's "shyness" about his Harvard experience may stem from his reluctance to broadcast his connections.
According to Politico, Obama's name does not appear on any legal scholarships during his time at Harvard. His campaign reportedly said his Harvard education was a product of hard work and student loans. Obama graduated magna cum laude in 1991.
Harvard Law Review articles
In 1990, Obama beat out 18 other contenders to become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, where he spent at least 50 hours a week editing submissions from judges, scholars and authors.
According to Politico, there were "eight dense volumes produced during his time in charge there – 2,083 pages in all."
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told Politico Obama didn't write any articles for the Review, but he did leave behind numerous case analyses and unsigned "notes" from Harvard students.
As Matthew Franck noted in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time."
Susan Estrich, the first female president of the Review who served 14 years earlier, said Obama must have had something published that year, even if his campaign denied it.
"They probably don't want [to] have you [reporters] going back" to examine the Review, she said.
However, Politico later reported it had unearthed a 1990 article that "offers a glimpse at Obama's views on abortion policy and the law during his student days."
His six-page summary answers a legal question about whether fetuses should be allowed to file lawsuits against their mothers.
"Obama's answer, like most courts': No," Politico reported. "He wrote approvingly of an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that the unborn cannot sue their mothers for negligence, and he suggested that allowing fetuses to sue would violate the mother's rights and could, perversely, cause her to take more risks with her pregnancy."
The report continued, "His article acknowledged a public interest in the health of the fetus, but also seemed to demonstrate his continuing commitment to abortion rights, and suggested that the government may have more important concerns than 'ensuring that any particular fetus is born.'"
Despite its earlier statement, the Obama campaign later confirmed Obama's authorship of the article and claimed it was the only piece he had written for the Review.
University of Chicago scholarly articles
Obama lectured at the University of Chicago Law School, a top school where the faculty is known for voluminous scholarly publishing, from 1992 until 2004.
The university offered Obama a full-time tenure-track position, an honor typically reserved for published instructors. However, reporters have been unable to find scholarly articles authored by him. The university reports that Obama declined the tenure offer.
Sarah Galer, news editor at the Law School and Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, told WND, "President Obama wrote 'Dreams from My Father' while at the law school but did not produce any scholarly articles as far as I know."
Passport
According to March 2008 reports, State Department employees conducted an unauthorized search of Obama's passport files during the recent presidential campaign. CNN reported that three different contract workers accessed his information on separate occasions – Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14 – without authorization. Two workers were fired and another faced discipline.
Obama's files reportedly contained copies of passport applications, birth date, basic biographical information, records of passport renewal and possibly citizenship information.
The Obama campaign demanded a thorough investigation to determine which employees looked at the file and why.
"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton told CNN in a statement. "Our government's duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes."
Meanwhile, a key witness who had been cooperating with federal investigators was later found fatally shot in front of a Washington, D.C., church. A police officer found the body of Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., 24, slumped dead inside his car.
At the time, investigators said they didn't have any information connecting the murder to the passport case. After one year of investigation of the homicide, there have been no arrests.
The passport has not been released.
Medical records
During his first presidential campaign in 1999, Sen. John McCain released 1,500 pages of medical and psychiatric records collected by the Navy. In 2008, McCain allowed reporters to spend three hours sifting through 1,200 pages of health records.
In 1999, former Vice President Al Gore released medical records revealing "mildly elevated" cholesterol levels and removal of a common form of skin cancer from his forehead in 1997. The documents disclosed his weight, resting heart rate, resting blood pressure, cardiovascular fitness and a variety of other health details. Gore's records were compiled after a complete physical examination by several military physicians.
Likewise, President George W. Bush allowed the media to view about 400 pages of personal medical information in 2000 and 2004.
After initial reluctance, Sen. John Kerry allowed the Navy to release his full medical records in 2004.
While not all have done so, it has been common practice for presidential candidates to release medical records.
However, Barack Obama, a relatively young candidate who was said to have been in "excellent health," refused to release medical records. Instead, he simply provided a six-paragraph note from his physician briefly summarizing 21 years of doctor visits and health information.
The letter contained no supporting documentation.
Other documents
According to additional records listed at the Obama File Report, other documents that remain unreleased include:
Complete files and schedules of his years as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004
Obama's client list from during his time in private practice with the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Gallard
Illinois State Bar Association records
Baptism records
Obama/Dunham marriage license
Obama/Dunham divorce documents
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license
Adoption records
Birth certificate
WND has been reporting since before the election on questions – and lawsuits – raised over Obama's birth and eligibility. He reported in his book he was born in Hawaii and his half-sister agrees. But the woman the president says is his paternal grandmother, Sarah Obama, claimed to have been present at her grandson's birth in Mombasa, Kenya.
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."
Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 380,000 others and sign up now!
Complicating the issue are Obama's move to Indonesia as a child, where he reportedly attended that nation's public schools, and his later travels to Pakistan, raising questions about on what nation's passport was that travel accomplished. Then there are the multiple law firms hired to make certain Obama's long-form birth certificate information, and other documentation such as college records, remain sealed from public view.
Obama's presidential campaign released to select news organizations only what is known as a "certification of live birth," a document obtainable in Hawaii in 1961 by Americans actually born outside the country. However, Joseph Farah, WND editor and chief executive officer, has been calling for the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate showing the hospital of his birth, attending physician and other details to confirm his citizenship status.
Farah launched a national billboard campaign last month in an effort to keep the issue before the American people. The billboards, being leased around the country, ask the simple question, "Where's the birth certificate?" Farah is asking the public to support his campaign with donations. So far, more than $75,000 has been collected.
The billboard campaign followed one launched months earlier to collect the names on an electronic petition demanding accountability and transparency on the issue. So far, that petition has gathered nearly 400,000 names.
The campaign got a boost recently when WND White House correspondent Les Kinsolving asked Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, why the president wouldn't release his birth certificate. Gibbs' response was covered live on C-SPAN and by Fox News Channel and others – excluding CBS.
It was the first time any member of the press corps has publicly asked a member of the administration a question directly related to Obama's constitutional eligibility for office as a "natural born citizen."
Congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," but no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.
Both the petition and the billboard campaign are part of what Farah calls an independent "truth and transparency campaign."
The first sign to be posted under the campaign, a digital, electronic one, is up and online on Highway 165 in Ball, La.. In addition, based on the heavy volume of financial donations in the first days of the campaign, WND was able to commit to leasing three more standard billboards – one in Los Angeles, another in Orange County, Calif. and a third in Pennsylvania.
Birth certificate question being raised in Ball, La
Farah said the campaign was born of frustration with timid elected officials in Washington, corrupt judges around the country and a news media that show a stunning lack of curiosity about the most basic facts of Obama's background – especially how it relates to constitutional eligibility for the highest office in the land.
"As Obama transforms this country from self-governing constitutional republic to one governed by a central ruling elite, the simple fact remains that no controlling legal authority has established that he is indeed a 'natural born citizen' as the Constitution requires," Farah said. "Obama's promises of transparency have become a bad joke as he continues to hide simple, innocuous documents like his birth certificate and his student records."
Chelsea Schilling, WorldNet Daily, 6/9/09
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