Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
www.wnd.com/files/2012/11/ZulloAffidavit.pdf As used in this review, birther refers to any individual who has promoted as true the theory that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States, and therefore not eligible for the presidency. It fully encompasses any and all of the theories relating to place of birth, citizenship of parents or loss of citizenship via naturalization by other nations.
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I am over the age of 18 and a resident of Arizona. The information contained in this affidavit is based upon my own personal knowledge and, if called upon as a witness, I could testify competently thereto. I am a former sworn law enforcement officer and criminal investigator. Since 2007, I have been duly appointed by the elected sheriff of Maricopa County, Joseph Arpaio, as the chief investigator of his Cold Case Posse. Comments: The very first paragraph reveals the first and most important problem with this affidavit. Zullo asserts that the contents of this affidavit are based upon his own personal knowledge. Legally, personal knowledge means knowledge of a circumstance or fact gained through firsthand observation or experience, i.e. something that the witness saw or heard, not something they learned about from a
This does not appear to be the first affidavit that WND and Corsi have drafted for the signature of a third party birther and on which they went on to base manufactured news articles. In January of 2011, WND began promoting a similar document signed by a man named Tim Adams (see: World Net Daily, January 24, 2011 Hawaii official now swears: No Obama birth certificate, http://www.wnd.com/2011/01/254401/). In a March 2011 interview on the Reality Check Radio Show Adams admitted that I had been willing to do an affidavit last June. But Im po[sic], so this past year, some of the folks at World Net Daily, or affiliated with World Net Daily, they paid for someone to draw the thing up. They sent it up here and I had it notarized and signed and swore out the statement and sent it back. (see: Reality Check Radio Blog, March 31, 2011, http://rcradioshow.blogspot.com/2011/03/rcradio-march-31.html ).
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Under the Arizona Constitution and Arizona Revised Statutes, the Sheriff has the authority to request special assistance from a volunteer posse (the Cold Case Posse), a special five-member team of experienced investigators located in the county, to assist him in the execution of his duties. The individually-selected team deputized by the Sheriff includes former police detectives and attorneys who work voluntarily and at virtually no expense to the taxpayer whenever the sheriff authorizes an investigation to address any issue as the Sheriff deems appropriate. Comments: While the number five has been asserted repeatedly as the membership of the MCCCP, the only actual members who have ever been formally identified are Zullo himself, and Phoenix attorney Denise
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USLegal.com, Definitions, http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/personal-knowledge/ MCCCP Press Conference, July 17, 2012. An unofficial transcript can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/100805605/Unofficial-Transcript-of-the-Arpaio-Maricopa-County-Cold-Case-PossePress-Conference-July-17-2012. A video of the press conference can be found here: http://youtu.be/alVzyfptF80 6 http://www.demarestnj.net/Police.php 7 MCCCP Press Conference, July 17, 2012, Transcript page 21. 8 CBS5AZ.com, Jun. 23, 2012, Cold Case Posse lacks law enforcement experience, http://www.kpho.com/story/19094741/cold-case-posse-lacks-law-enforcement-experience
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In August 2011, a group of citizens from the Surprise Arizona Tea Party organization called upon the Sheriff in his office and presented a petition signed by approximately 250 residents of Maricopa County, requesting the Sheriffs Department to investigate whether a document posted on the official website of the White House on 27 April 2012 and purporting on its face to be an electronic image of the long form or original Hawaiian birth certificate of President Barack Hussein Obama was genuine. Comments: This paragraph appears to be trivially true as far as it goes, though unless Zullo was in attendance he cannot claim personal knowledge of these details. What it also conveniently fails to acknowledge is the contribution of Jerome Corsi to the petitions origin, execution and delivery. The petition arose as the result of a speech by Corsi to the Surprise Arizona Tea Party on the evening of Wednesday, August 17th 2011. It was carried to Sheriff Arpaio the following day by Corsi and some Tea Party representatives whereupon Arpaio committed to an investigation.11 Corsi later spent between 18 (Corsis account12) and 16 hours (Zullos account13) briefing the MCCCP before any attempt at original work began. He then conducted (under MCCP auspices if not deputation) additional research at the behest of the posse and formally participated in the March 1st press conference.
MCCCP Press Conference, July 17, 2012. Transcript page 10. The Huffington Post, June 21, 2012, Donation To Joe Arpaio's Birther 'Cold Case Posse' Rejected By Maricopa County, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/joe-arpaio-cold-case-possebirther_n_1616991.html?utm_hp_ref=politics 11 World Net Daily, August 18, 2011, Arizona sheriff promises Obama-eligibility probe, http://www.wnd.com/2011/08/335261/ 12 MCCCP Press Conference, March 1, 2012. Transcript page 19. The unofficial transcript can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/83474057/Arpaio-Transcript-1-MAR-12. A video of the press conference can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uICO4l5PRcs. 13 MCCCP Press Conference, July 17, 2012. Transcript page 24.
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If the image of the birth certificate were not genuine, the question might arise whether Mr [sic] Obama had been born within the jurisdiction of the United States and thereby complied with the requirement under Article II of the U.S. Constitution that the President be a natural-born citizen. Comments: This is the core birther accusation, though it gets the actual reasoning completely backwards. Birthers insist that the Presidents birth certificates are forgeries because they believe he was born in Kenya, not the other way around. This investigation has largely been an exercise in trying to retroactively support that original prejudice.
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The petitioners expressed their concern that, until that point, no law enforcement agency had ever gone on record as indicating that it had investigated or was willing to investigate whether President Obama was eligible to hold his office. The petitioners said that lack of resources and jurisdictional challenges had inhibited any such investigation elsewhere. Comments: It may very well be true that the petitioners said this. The petition itself has never been publicly released, and no detailed public record exists of what was discussed at the August 18th meeting. But unless Zullo was present at this meeting, he does not have personal knowledge of what transpired, or what the petitioners said.
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http://www.scribd.com/doc/83868764/A-Question-of-Eligibility-Comparison-Chapter-1 and http://www.scribd.com/doc/84047804/A-Question-of-Eligibility-Comparison-Chapter-2 15 MCCCP Press Conference, July 17, 2012. Transcript page 20.
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For 17 years from 1991 until the year before the Presidential election of 2008, the annually-revised biography written by Mr [sic] Obama and circulated by his literary agents had contained the words Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. Comments: This paragraph contains at least the second and third blatant falsehoods offered by Zullo in this affidavit. First, as Zullo is certainly aware, Miriam Goderich (the individual responsible for editing the original pamphlet that included the error regarding the Presidents place of birth) is on the record that the mistake was hers alone and that the President neither wrote the biographical blurb nor provided the information of a Kenyan birth.17
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During the first MCCCP press conference, Zullo and Corsi announced that We have identified a person of interest in the forging of the birth certificate (Transcript page 17). In the ten months since that announcement there has been no follow up regarding any such individual. 17 You're undoubtedly aware of the brouhaha stirred up by Breitbart about the erroneous statement in a client list Acton & Dystel published in 1991 (for circulation within the publishing industry only) that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me -- an agency assistant at the time. There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more. Political Wire, May 17, 2012, Literary Agent Says 1991 Booklet was a Mistake, http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/05/17/literary_agent_says_1991_booklet_was_a_mistake.html
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The official Parliamentary Debates of the Kenyan National Assembly for 25 March 2010 records that Mr [sic] Orengo, the Minister of Lands, said: If America did not see itself as a multiparty state or nation, how could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the President of America? Comments: Kenyan Minister of Lands James Orengo did in fact make those remarks. Since he is patently not in position to know where the President was actually born, he can certainly be forgiven for overreaching in his argument before the parliament. As evidence goes, the statements are unrefined hearsay. This information (to the extent it is true) is also not the product of any MCCCP investigation, and cannot be considered as Zullos personal knowledge. It was originally uncovered by the website World Net Daily almost a year and a half prior to the commencement of the posse investigation.20
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The Daily Mail (online version), May 18, 2012, Barack Obama was still 'Kenyan born' in 2007 according to his literary agency...two months after announcing his bid for the U.S presidency, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146622/Barack-Obama-Kenyan-born-2007-according-literary-agency-months-announcing-bid-U-S-presidency.html#ixzz2EkuP7kMm 19 Breitbart.com, May 17, 2012, The Vetting - Exclusive - Obama's Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: 'Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii'[sic], http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-VettingBarack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii 20 World Net Daily, April 11, 2010, Kenyan official: Obama born here, http://www.wnd.com/2010/04/139481/
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In February 2012, I reported to Sheriff Arpaio that there was probable cause to consider that the White House image of Mr [sic] Obamas birth certificate was a forgery, and specifically that it was not a true and accurate photographic image of a genuine birth record. I advised the Sheriff that the forgers had probably committed two crimes: first fraudulently creating a forgery that the White House had characterized, knowingly or unknowingly, as an officially-produced governmental birth record; and secondly, fraudulently presented to the residents of Maricopa County and to the American public at large a forgery that the White House represented as proof positive of President Obamas authentic 1961 Hawaiian birth certificate. Comments: There is little reason to doubt that this is exactly what Zullo did that February.
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These conclusions were reinforced by input from numerous experts in the fields of typewriting, typesetting, computer-generated documentation, forensic document analysis and Adobe computer programs, as well as comparisons with numerous other birth records and expert reviews of Hawaii state law and of the regulations, policies and procedures of the Hawaii Department of Health. Comments: We begin here to reach some significant areas of concern with the MCCCPs actual investigating. I start by noting as of this writing the Posse has never actually presented a single individual who could 8
Paul Irey, October 14, 2012, Letter to Redacted (as reprinted by Obamaballotchallenge.com): http://obamaballotchallenge.com/obama-birth-certificate-graphics-expert-paul-irey-to-testify-at-indianapolisballot-challenge-hearing 22 So my claim to understand this process actually comes from my 4 years in the Air Force from 1955 to the end of 1988 [sic]. I was typing at the office headquarters directly under commanding officers of the several Air force groups I was assigned to and in those years produced a lot of typewritten documents. Comment by Paul Irey on the Raised on Hoecakes Blog, June 13, 20122, http://raisedonhoecakes.com/ROH/2011/06/12/dear-birthers-grasping-at-straws-hurts-the-conservativecause/#comment-1075 23 Reality Check Radio Blog, December 1, 2011, A Conversation with Paul Irey, http://rcradioshow.blogspot.com/2011/12/conversation-with-paul-irey.html 24 RC Radio Interview with Paul Irey, June 23, 2011, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/rcr/2011/06/24/reality-checkradio 25 Comment by Doulas Vogt on the Obama Conspiracy Theories Blog, May 31, 2011, http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2011/05/expert-claimsbirth-certificate-fake/
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The investigation further determined that the Hawaii Department of Health has engaged in what the Sheriffs investigators believe is a systematic effort to hide from law enforcement and the public whatever original 1961 birth records the Hawaii Department of Health may have in its possession. The posse has also accumulated evidence that the Hawaii government and its agencies had changed their policies and procedures in a manner calculated to hinder our law-enforcement investigation. Comments: Lets set aside for a moment the more arcane debate over whether or not this genuinely deserves to be called a law-enforcement investigation. Let us instead concentrate on what is actually being described by this paragraph. First and foremost, the Hawaii Department of Health is tasked by statute27 to protect the vital records in its possession from disclosure to unauthorized third parties. It takes not the slightest effort to understand that a member of a volunteer posse from some county sheriffs department in Arizona is an
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MCCCP Press Conference, July 17, 2012, Transcript page 5. This is an example of where Zullo attempts to impute a sinister interpretation to something that most likely has a very different meaning. Here he wants people to think that no one wanted to touch it because of its connection to the White House. More likely is that competent forensic document forensic refused to touch it because it is a scan of a document, and therefore pretty much useless for forensic determination of authenticity. 27 HRS 338-2. Authority and duties of the department of health The department of health, herein referred to as the department, shall: (1) Establish a central bureau of public health statistics with suitable offices properly equipped for the safety and preservation of all its official records. http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol06_Ch03210344/HRS0338/HRS_0338-0002.htm
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In furtherance of the investigation, which has now continued for more than a year, I have twice visited Hawaii within the last six months. On the first occasion a Maricopa County Sheriffs Office Detective and I presented our credentials to the offices of the Hawaii Department of Health and requested to speak to Mr [sic] Alvin Onaka, the chief registrar of births, a simulacrum of whose signature-stamp had appeared on the on the electronic document on the White House website. We had hoped to ask Mr [sic] Onaka if he would verify the authenticity of the White House released document and to verify the legitimacy of the registrars stamp bearing his signature. Additionally we hoped to ask him to allow us, for law enforcement reasons, to inspect the original document and, in due course, to subject it to forensic examination. Comments: This is the point at which the Zullo affidavit becomes an extended and often surreal whine about how badly he feels he has been treated by the state of Hawaii, along with a display of investigative and legal cluelessness that would likely have been avoided by a real police investigator. It seems almost inconceivable that any competent investigators would spend the time and money to travel the 2910 miles from Phoenix to Honolulu without already having contacted the officials he intended to visit, apprised them of his travel and purpose, and discussed with them the proper procedures for accessing records which (as he certainly should have known) are protected by law. To the extent that Zullo feels that he is involved in an adversarial encounter with the Hawaii Department of Health, that relationship was established by his decision to arrive unannounced, flash badges and demand to see the State Registrar under the false color of a law enforcement activity. It is unclear if Zullo acted out of malice or ignorance, and ultimately does not matter. This ham-handed and often abusive and invasive approach to a group of government officials who had already spent four
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However, when we presented our credentials at the front desk of the Hawaii Department of Health, much to our amazement we were informed that Mr [sic] Onaka does not speak to the public. We explained that we were on official business. Nevertheless, we were not permitted access to Mr [sic] Onaka. Comments: Pause must be taken at this point to consider the question of Zullos breathtaking naivet. Dr. Alvin T. Onaka is the Registrar of Vital Statistics for the State of Hawaii, a position of not insignificant importance. Zullo arrived completely unannounced, demanded a meeting, and actually believed they would simply say, Sure. In all likelihood he and his detective friend were not the most amazed people in that room, and protestations of official business could hardly have softened the impression. Remember, this is an organization that had been so abused by birthers over the previous four years that at one point a law was actually passed to protect them from vexatious requestors.29 Zullos attempt to bluster his way into a surprise meeting should have been expected to be met with resistance. What credentials were shown that he might imagine would be compelling? Certainly he must have known that even the real detective with whom he travelled was so far out of his jurisdiction that he was indistinguishable from any typical mainland tourist. Zullo carried with him no warrant, summons, subpoena, or even nice letter from a judge somewhere. It can be no surprise that Dr. Onakas staff told him to go away. Sadly as we will see again and again, Zullo failed to glean the most obvious lesson from this, the first of his consistent failures in Hawaii.
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The Honolulu Advertiser, April 29, 2010, Hawaii passes bill to curb clamor for Obama birth certificate, http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2010/Apr/29/ln/hawaii4290353.html
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Ms. Nagamine accused us of trying to get a verification of a birth record without legal authority to do so, even though the document had been offered for public view via the World Wide Web. She constantly evaded answering every question about the legitimacy of the document by hiding behind State statutes. Comments: One must ponder Zullos conception of the difference between hiding behind State statutes and complying with them. DAG Nagamine was completely correct in her accusation. It is a simple objective fact that Zullo was trying to get a verification of a birth record without legal authority to do so. The fact that the President had already released his records on the Web is irrelevant to the State of Hawaiis obligation to protect their vital records. The President may do anything with a copy of his birth certificate that he wants, but the Department of Health does not legally have the same latitude. For DAG Nagamine to have answered Zullos questions would have been a violation of the law. She correctly declined to do so.
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Having regard to the elaborate non-cooperation we received from the State of Hawaii, and upon close examination of the evidence, it is my investigational opinion, shared by the Sheriff, that forgery and fraud have been committed in key identity records, including President Obamas long form birth certificate; his computerized short-form birth abstract; his Selective Service Registration card. Comments: It is difficult at this point to refrain from full-fledged mockery. It is my investigational opinion must rank right up there among the most self-importantly vacuous prologues to a logical non sequitur ever committed to a sworn affidavit. Zullo ignorantly went to Hawaii completely unprepared, hoping to make an end run around the law with bluff and bluster. He was met by professionals who knew their jobs, who knew the law and who
30
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), Pub. L. No. 104-191, 110 Stat. 1936 (1996)
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The Cold Case Posse has also noted that Mr [sic] Obamas first Executive Order issued on his first full day as President, was to seal all of his own past records from public scrutiny. Documentation that is not available for Mr [sic] Obama includes not only his original birth records but also his baptism records, his adoption records, his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia University thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passports, his medical records, his files from years as an Illinois State Senator, and his Illinois Bar Association records. Comments: With this paragraph Zullo plunges completely down the birther rabbit hole, plagiarizing birther emails, blogs and forum posts going back three years31 that even then were widely recognized as absurd. Zullo starts with his fifth lie of the affidavit. President Obamas first Executive Order does absolutely nothing to seal any of the Presidents past records from public scrutiny. Executive Order 1348932 of January 21, 2009 comes very close in fact to doing the exact opposite. It deals for starters only with Presidential Records, i.e. records generated by a sitting President while they were in office. Consequently, not a single one of the records on Zullos list were affected by it. Furthermore, the EO merely rescinded the tighter restrictions imposed by President George W. Bush when he took office in 2001, actually making it easier (not harder) to access the records it really does deal with. As to the list of missing documents,33 can anyone take seriously a complaint about not being able to see the Presidents kindergarten records? What do you suppose an opposition researcher would find useful in them? A particularly socialist finger painting style? A suspicious predilection towards the color red?
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For example: The Free Republic Forum, July 30, 2009, Obama's first act as President EXECUTIVE ORDER 13489 banning release of any of his records, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2304500/posts 32 Available here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2009-01-26/pdf/E9-1712.pdf 33 It appears to derive originally from a list compiled by original Birther lawyer Phil Berg that was posted to one of the several now-defunct earlier versions of his obamacrimes.com website. Almost the identical list was published in an extended article on WND on June 9, 2009, Obama: Where have all his records gone? http://www.wnd.com/2009/06/100613/
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The then Republican governor of HawaiI, Linda Lingle, stated during an interview on New Yorks WABC radio in 2008 that in an attempt to quell the Birth Certificate issue she had the Birth Certificate inspected by the states director of health, Chiyome Fukino. Comments: Ignoring that Linda Lingle is still a Republican, Zullo gets the occurrence of this interview wrong by two years. This interview took place on Sunday, May 2, 2010,34 not in 2008. Zullo can make no claim to this interview as being his personal knowledge.
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Lingle is quoted, So I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health, and we issued a news release at that time saying that the president was, in fact, born at Kapiolani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And thats just a fact and yet people continue to call up and e-mail and want to make it an issue and I think that its again a horrible distraction for the country by those people who continue this. Comments: It is curious that Zullo uses the form Lingle is quoted rather than Lingle said since copies of the interview are widely available online for listening.35 It appears that Zullo has never actually listened to the interview and is quoting it second or third hand from other sources. He certainly cannot claim to have any personal knowledge of what was said. Other than that, the quotation is accurate.
34
World Net Daily, May 5, 2010, Hawaii governor announces 'exact' place of Obama birth, http://www.wnd.com/2010/05/150125/ 35 A Birther edited version can be found here: http://youtu.be/GO6R8E20bio
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Months later, in July of 2009, she added another comment: I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, Director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American. I have nothing further to add to this statement or to my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago. Significantly, Fukino changes the wording from viewing Sen. Obamas original birth certificate to having seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American. Comments: This is an accurate reflection of Dr. Fukinos July 2009 statement.37 But Zullo makes here no effort to actually explain why he feels it is significant that Dr. Fukino used different wording here to describe the document she inspected than she did in October 2008. She cant actually be accused of changing the wording, since it is a completely different statement and the original remains available with original wording completely intact. And to all but the most determined semantic hair-splitter, an original birth certificate is exactly the original vital record that would verify the presidents Hawaiian birth, to the exclusion of any other. Further, what would be the effective nefarious motive of such a change in wording? These two statements (along with Governor Lingles later radio interview) have an inescapable intent that cannot
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News Release State of Hawaii, October 31, 2008, http://hawaii.gov/health/about/pr/2008/08-93.pdf News Release State of Hawaii, July 27, 2009, http://hawaii.gov/health/about/pr/2009/09-063.pdf
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The Governor of Hawaii, Mr [sic] Neil Abercrombie, has said that he was present when Mr. Obama was born. Later, however, he retracted that statement and acknowledged that he did not see Obamas parents with their newborn son at any hospital, although he remembers seeing Obama as a child with his parents at social events. There is no evidence to support that claim. No doctor or nurse who attended his birth has come forward to say so. Comments: Here we find the sixth of Zullos outright lies. Governor Abercrombie cannot be shown to have ever said that he was present when Mr. Obama was born, and therefore no retraction can have taken or did take place. It is clear that Zullo is unaware of any such actual quotation, since he makes no effort to provide more than a hearsay paraphrase. The anti-birther website TheFogbow.com38 has collected the comprehensive catalog of every public mention Neil Abercrombie has ever made on the issue.39 The closest that Abercrombie can be shown to have said anything like what Zullo asserts is in his December 27, 2010 interview on CNN,40 where he says, It's a matter of principle with me. I knew his mom and dad. I was here when he was born. Anybody who wants to ask a question honestly could have had their answer already." (emphasis added). Since he was speaking in 2010 from Hawaii, here can only be a reference to being in Hawaii, and not a claim to having been present in the hospital at the birth.
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Full disclosure: I am among the original members of The Fogbow, posting as Epectitus. TheFogbow.com, What Governor Abercrombie Said and Didn't Say, http://www.thefogbow.com/specialreports/abercrombie/ 40 CNN, December 27, 2010, Governor Vows to End Birther Controversy, http://whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/27/governor-vows-to-end-birther-controversy/
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Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star Advertiser he was searching within the Hawaii Department of Health to find definitive vital records that would prove Obama was born in Hawaii, because the continuing eligibility controversy could hurt the presidents chances of reelection in 2012. Comments: Noting first that Zullo can have no personal knowledge of what Governor Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star Advertiser, here we find the seventh of his (or at this point, Corsis) falsehoods. The interview43 does not say that the controversy could hurt the presidents chances of reelection in 2012.
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The New York Times, December 24, 2010, Hawaiis Governor Takes On Birthers, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/us/25hawaii.html?_r=0 42 World Net Daily, January 18, 2011, Hawaii governor can't find Obama birth certificate, http://www.wnd.com/2011/01/252833/#ixzz1BRJWqnL8 43 The Honolulu Star Advertiser, January 18, 2011, This is a collaborative endeavor, http://www.staradvertiser.com/editorials/20110118_This_is_a_collaborative_endeavor.html
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Abercrombie said the birth certificate issue would have political implications for the presidential election that we simply cannot have. Comments: Again, Zullo can claim no personal knowledge of this. But this time he is close enough.
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Abercrombie did not report to the newspaper that he or the Department of Health had found Obamas long form, hospital-generated birth certificate. The governor only suggested that his investigations to date had identified an unspecified listing or notation of Obamas birth that someone had made in the state archives. Comments: Noting again that Zullo can have no personal knowledge of what Governor Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star Advertiser, as with Dr. Fukinos statements earlier, Zullo resorts to determined semantic hairsplitting to try and portray the governors (not very glib) statement as not actually saying what it is clearly intended to say. In response to this question: You stirred up quite a controversy with your comments regarding birthers and your plans to release more information regarding President Barack Obama's birth certificate. How is that coming? The governor answered: It was actually written I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down. He does not mention any listing or notation. He says directly in response to a direct question about the birth certificate that It actually exists in the archives.
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The New York Times, December 24, 2010, Hawaiis Governor Takes On Birthers, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/us/25hawaii.html?_r=0
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It was actually written, I am told, this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down, Abercrombie said. Comments: Yes... That is what he was reported to have said. Abercrombie has no reputation for eloquence.
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Conceivably, the yet undisclosed birth record in the state archives that Abercrombie has discovered may have come from the grandparents registering Obamas birth, an event that would have triggered both the newspaper birth announcements and availability of a Certification of Live Birth, even if no longform birth certificate existed. Comments: At this point the affidavit (or the original Corsi article from which it is copied verbatim) is no longer a discussion of evidence or an investigation and is simply launching into pure speculation. Of course, in the following paragraphs we will now have the opportunity to examine some of this speculation in more detail. But speculation is of rather patent uselessness in what is supposed to be an affidavit regarding facts that are the personal knowledge of the attestant.
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World Net Daily, January 24, 2011, Hawaii official now swears: No Obama birth certificate, http://www.wnd.com/2011/01/254401/ 46 http://tiny.cc/254e6
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http://www.scribd.com/doc/117573269/Hawaii-Statutes-of-1955-Chapter-57-Vital-Records Downloadable here (by clicking item #117): http://gen.doh.hawaii.gov/sites/har/admrules/default.aspx 49 Bennett, Charles G. and Tokuyama, George Vital Records in Hawaii. Hawaii Medical Journal, Nov.-Dec. 1955, page 129, www.wnd.com/files/CHARLESBENNETT.pdf 50 MCCCP Press Conference, July 17, 2012, Transcript page 10. 51 Ibid. Page 11.
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The newspaper announcements of Mr [sic] Obamas birth do not prove he was born in Hawaii, since they could have been triggered by the grandparents registering the birth as Hawaiian. They might have then paid for the announcements themselves. Comments: The assertion that Obamas grandparents might have paid for the birth announcements has long been discredited even by Jerome Corsis own research and reporting.52 In both 1961 and today, birth announcements were received by newspapers directly from the Department of Health. Obamas announcements are also embedded deeply within scores of other such announcements and are identical in form and format, establishing that they were not somehow uniquely or specially derived. Corsi & Zullos hypothesis is that Obamas grandparents took advantage of Hawaiian laws regarding Certificates of Hawaiian Birth. We will cover that theory in more detail as it develops in this affidavit. But it is important to note that at this point they are confabulating two completely different theories of how the newspaper announcements arose. They are apparently speculating that infant Obama was registered for a Certificate of Hawaiian birth which would have automatically triggered a birth announcement from the Department of Health, and that his grandparents also paid for a birth announcement which would be both redundant and unlikely to show up in the paper along with scores of announcements generated from a completely different source. It is not clear whether Corsi & Zullo are confused themselves, or deliberately trying to be confusing to the affidavit reader.
52
World Net Daily, July 22, 2009, Hawaiian newspapers don't prove birthplace, http://www.wnd.com/2009/07/104678/
24
Paragraph 34:
To date the purported undisclosed birth record in the state archives that Abercrombie has claimed to have discovered as being actually written has never been made public. Being located in the state archives, this document should be available for inspection by the general public without restraint. Comments: Having previously established that Abercrombie was referring to the presidents original birth certificate, this paragraph is simply another (I have lost count now) deliberate falsehood. The document to which Governor Abercrombie referred was publicly released by the White House on April 27, 2011.53 The additional assertion that somehow any document located in the Hawaiian state archives should be available for inspection by the general public without restraint is simply a reflection of either Corsi & Zullos own confusion, or another attempt to deliberately mislead. It is apparently based on the belief that the archives to which Governor Abercrombie was referring are different from the archives in which the Department of Health stores original birth records. Hawaii does have a State Archives,54 but a search of its catalog will show that it does not include birth records and Abercrombie never mentioned state archives. Those records are stored instead in bound volumes located on the first floor of the state Department of Health i.e. in the Department of Healths
53 54
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate http://archives1.dags.hawaii.gov:8000/cgi-bin/koha/opac-main.pl
25
Paragraph 35:
From Abercrombies admission, it is legitimate to infer that this record, if it indeed exists, was not in the possession of the Hawaii Department of Health, which may have no record of the in-country birth of Mr [sic] Obama either in hard copy form, such as a long form birth certificate, preserved in its vault as described by Dr. Chiyome Fukino . If such a document existed, Abercrombie would have had it within minutes of his request . Comments: This paragraph extends the alternative universes version of Abercrombies statements that has served as the fake foundation of Corsi & Zullos desperate effort to explain away and obfuscate the clear statements of two Hawaii Directors of Health, one Hawaii State Registrar, and two Hawaii governors. All have testified that President Obamas original birth certificate exists and is stored exactly in the same place and manner as all other Hawaiian birth certificates. Remember, neither Abercrombie nor Lingle ever claimed personal access to the records. It is unclear to this writer that simply being the Governor could meet the requirements under HRS 338-18 to be considered a person having direct and tangible interest in a public health statistics record. Both Governors Lingle and Abercrombie apparently depended on the testimony of their respective Directors of Heath as the basis of their own statements. So Abercrombie would likely never have had it at all, let alone within minutes of his request.
Paragraph 36:
Mr [sic] Obamas long form birth certificate would have been preserved in a hard-covered bound volume along with the other long form birth certificates of that period. This record would have been easily accessible to the Department of Health upon the governors request, had it existed. Comments: As per the statements and interviews of Dr. Chiyome Fukino, President Obamas long form birth certificate absolutely is preserved in a hard-covered bound volume along with the other long form birth certificates of that period. It absolutely is easily accessible to the Department of Health (or as easily accessible as any other birth certificate) as demonstrated by the fact that over the course of the birther campaign it has been so accessed at least three times.
55
MSNBC, April 11, 2011, Ex-Hawaii official denounces 'ludicrous' birther claims, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42519951/ns/politics-more_politics/t/ex-hawaii-official-denounces-ludicrousbirther-claims/#.UMIFCXfm6Uk
26
Paragraph 38:
This circumstance also suggests that the birth record of Mr [sic] Obama was not at that time recorded in the Department of Healths computerized database that has been in use since 2001. Comments: I can come up with no rational theory of how this suggests anything of the sort. Governor Abercrombie made his comments in January of 2011. The Fukino interview took place in April of 2011, but recounts actions she took in October 2008. A copy of the Presidents computer generated short-form has been available to the public since June of 2008, and it is dated June 7, 2007. Where is there any suggestion that it was not already in the database?
56
CNN, April 26, 2011, Health Director, Dr. Chiyome Fukimo 'Obama was 100 percent born here', http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9D4n6_Uifk
27
Paragraph 40:
In an attempt to verify whether or not Mr [sic] Obama and his mother had arrived in the United States at or around the alleged date of his birth, we contacted the National Archives to obtain microfilms of the I-94 immigration landing records for the year 1961. All such records were and are available for the entire year of 1961, except for those on the alleged date of Mr [sic] Obamas birth (August 4), three days before that date, and three days after that date. The Archivist and his staff did not tell us how the missing records came to be lost, and offered no hope that they would ever come to light. Comments: This is another example of the incestuous working relationship between Jerome Corsi and the MCCCP, since Corsi was the specific person who allegedly carried out this effort. It is further unclear if Zullo can testify from personal knowledge regarding this part of the investigation or if Jerome Corsi is the only
57
The Fogbow, March 2012, SPECIAL REPORT: The Cold Case Posse Preliminary Report, OR Shurff Joe's Got Nothing New Under the Arizona Sun, http://www.thefogbow.com/special-reports/first-arpaio-press-conference/
28
Paragraph 41:
After three months of further investigation, the Sheriff held a second press conference to announce, with my support, that it was no longer a question of probable cause: it was now certain that that the document on the White House website was a forgery. The sheriff also announced that the investigation would continue: and it has continued ever since. Comments: Consider for a moment what the Sheriffs office has announced here. Were these conclusions confidently held (and this were an actual police investigation) the evidence assembled would at this point be presented to an appropriate prosecutorial agency in order to gain a criminal indictment pursuant to a trial. Only in the circumstances of such a trial could the determination be made that anything was certain. In those trials the jury (if it is a jury trial) or the judge (if it is not) has responsibility as trier of fact; i.e. to decide, from the evidence, whether something existed or some
58
World Net Daily, March 22, 2012, Immigration records missing for week of Obama's birth, http://www.wnd.com/2012/03/immigration-records-missing-for-week-of-obamas-birth/
29
Paragraph 42:
The purpose of holding press conferences was and is to notify the public that an investigation is in progress, with the aim of obtaining additional information that might be helpful to the investigators in reaching the truth. As a result of both press conferences, additional material of this kind became available to us. Comments: Its safe to concur that these could be some of the purposes of holding press conferences. They are not an inclusive list however. Other potential reasons include generating activity on the WND website, to engage in propaganda or partisan political spin, or to create diversions from other events that the conferees would prefer to keep on the down low. The first press conference was held just before scheduling hearings for the class-action lawsuit against Sheriff Arpaio (Melendres v. Arpaio) in Federal District Court. The second Arpaio press conference was held two days before its start.
59
30
Paragraph 44:
Most importantly, the registrars stamp in the computer generated document released by the White House may have been imported from another unknown source document. The fact that the stamp cannot have been placed on the document pursuant to state and federal laws is one of the many indications that the document is a forgery and, therefore, that it cannot be relied upon as verification, legal or otherwise, of the date, place or circumstances of Mr [sic] Obamas birth. Comments: Mike Zullo is not competent to render an expert opinion on the technical details of the White House electronic image, so testimony to this effect belongs in someone elses affidavit. Sadly for the MCCCP, none of their identified experts are significantly better qualified than Zullo. That said, only a tour de force of special pleading can lead Zullo to select a single component from the digital image with which to make this case. This is because all the other components, alone and in concert, render the conclusion of a deliberate human forgery absurd. The Registrars stamp is one of only two features that do not scream automatic computer artifact, but Zullo simply ignores the vast corpus of other evidence that directly contradicts his desired conclusion. Not only can the stamp have been placed on the document pursuant to state and federal laws, there are two Directors of Health and the Registrar himself who have independently given verbal assurances for which they are legally accountable that the president was born on the date, in the place, and according to the circumstances reflected on that document image.
31
32
60 61
John Woodman, Is Barack Obamas Birth Certificate a Fraud? (Clifton, New Jersey: Bright Horizon Press, 2011) Investigating the Obama Birth Mysteries, July 18, 2012, Statement Regarding Sheriff Joe Arpaios July 17, 2012 Press Conference: Part 1, http://www.obamabirthbook.com/http:/www.obamabirthbook.com/2012/07/statement-regarding-sheriff-joearpaios-july-17-2012-press-conference/
33
62
The Birther Summit, January 5, 2012, WAS BABY VIRGINIA SUNAHARAS IDENTITY STOLEN?, original since purged, copy available at http://myveryownpointofview.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/dean-haskins-and-duncansunahara-cross-post/ 63 Butterdezillions Blog, May 19, 2011, HDOH Funny Business Regarding Virginia Sunahara, http://butterdezillion.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/hdoh-funny-business-regarding-virginia-sunahara/
34
Paragraph 49:
During the proceedings, the Attorney General implied that Mr [sic] Sunaharas request arose from an underlying interest in obtaining evidence that might assists in determining whether the document on the White House website is indeed a forgery. Ms [sic] Nagamine said Mr [sic] Sunahara ought to be satisfied with a short form extract of the birth record rather than a long-form printed image of the original copy in the bound volume for 1961 in the vaults of the Health Department. Comments: This is a reasonably accurate paraphrase of the position of the State of Hawaii. There can also be no doubt that what he asserts was implied by the State (i.e. that the motivation for the request was pursuit of evidence to support a particular birther theory) was completely true. The lawsuit was conceived, encouraged and supported by birther activist Dean Haskins for this and no other reason.
Paragraph 50:
Ms [sic] Nagamine also said that the entire volume or birth certificates inferentially containing not only Ms [sic] Sunaharas long-form original birth certificate but also those of the twins born at about the same date had been removed to a special, secure location with very limited access. I do not know what purpose the Department of Health had in preserving these records at all, unless it was to show them upon request to family members and others such as law enforcement with a legitimate and statutory interest in seeing the documents. Comments: Even ignoring that the MCCCP has no legitimate or statutory interest in seeing the documents, this is an exceptionally odd paragraph by any measure. Certainly it takes little thought to recognize that there are a number of very good reasons for preserving records such as birth certificates above and beyond letting family members or law enforcement see them. They contain information that is critical to establishing identity, citizenship and enabling access to a countless number of services and privileges,
64
35
Paragraph 51:
Ms [sic] Nagamine said that accessing the original birth records was difficult and expensive. However, in Dr. Chiyome Fuknos interview with CNN she stated that she simply went into the vault and inspected Obamas original Birth Certificate. I am told by Mr [sic] Sunahara that he was willing to pay any reasonable fee to cover the cost. Our investigation indicates that the Health Departments fee is not great: attorneys for Obama had paid $10 for a certified copy and $4 for a second certified copy. Inferentially, such small fees are an indication that the difficulty of consulting the records is not very great: for they are normally kept in bound volumes on specially-designed shelves known to librarians as stacks. A picture of Mr [sic] Onaka pulling out a book of birth records from 1972, just nine years after the year that is of interest to our investigation, shows how small the difficulty in consulting the records is likely to be. The photograph is marked MZ1, annexed and signed as relative hereto. Comments: This paragraph contains a number of willful misinterpretations and confabulations by Zullo. In the order they occur: First, DAG Nagamines argument was not that it was difficult and expensive to access any single specific record, but that it was difficult and expensive to access originals as a standard process for generating certified copies for general use. This was the very reason the process was digitized in 2001 and photocopies of the original long-forms were replaced with the more efficient and cost effective computerized abstracts. To casually allow exceptions to the current standard process would frustrate the expense and purpose of the installed systems. Second, as already discussed in the comments to Zullos paragraph #37, Dr. Fukino never said that she simply went into the vault and inspected Obamas original Birth Certificate at any point during the CNN interview. Third, the fees alleged here as paid by President Obama are those standard fees charged by the State of Hawaii for copies normally delivered as computerized abstracts.65 They do not reflect any effort to consider the real cost associated with deviating from the standard procedure. The inference he draws
65
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/vital-records/vital_records.html
36
Paragraph 52:
The reason why law-enforcement investigators wish to examine the original long-form birth certificate of Ms [sic] Sunahara relates to the practice of the Health Department to number each birth certificate sequentially with the last two digits of the year followed by a five-digit number incremented sequentially by a date-stamp that advanced the counter by 1 after every stamping. At that time, approximately 48 births occurred every day in Hawaii and were required to be registered. They were sequentially stamped in order of date of birth. Comments: Were this Zullos genuine concern, it does not actually require an examination of the original long form birth certificate. The number stamped on the original is required to be the same number reflected on the short-form abstract already in Duncan Sunaharas possession. While the possibility that those numbers could be different is the theory being pursued here by the MCCCP, neither they nor any other birther investigator have ever demonstrated an exception or made a compelling case as to why they believe it may have happened in this instance. Second, there is no good reason to accept (and much evidence that contradicts) the claim that birth certificates were sequentially stamped in order of date of birth. In fact, the birther insistence that they were numbered in that fashion has always been directly contradicted by the publicly available examples of Hawaiian birth certificates from August of 1961. While this will be discussed in far greater detail over the next several paragraphs it is important to keep in mind that the entire birther theory is dependent on the assumption without evidence that this was how certificate numbers were assigned. If that assumption is wrong (and we will show that it is wrong) all the rest of Zullos discussion becomes moot. Third, yes, approximately 48 births occurred every day in Hawaii and were required to be registered. But almost none (if any at all) were registered the same day of the birth. And even Zullo will eventually concede in this affidavit that they were not numbered at the time they were registered.
37
66
World Net Daily, July 28, 2009, Unveiled! Hawaii's 1961 long-form birth certificates, http://www.wnd.com/2009/07/105347/ 67 World Net Daily, May 17, 2011, The dead infant and the birth-certificate mystery. http://www.wnd.com/2011/05/300201/ 68 The Birther Report, January 5, 2012, WAS BABY VIRGINIA SUNAHARA'S IDENTITY STOLEN? http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/01/update-on-lawsuit-filed-against-hawaii.html
38
Date and time born Aug 4 at 7:24 pm Aug 4 at 9:16 pm Aug 5 at 2:12 pm Aug 5 at 2:17 pm
Date and time born Aug 4 at 7:24 pm Aug 4 at 9:16 pm Aug 5 at 2:12 pm Aug 5 at 2:17 pm Aug 5 at 6:45 pm Aug 23
CNN, April 26, 2011, CNN Birther investigation: 'No doubt' President Obama was born in Hawaii, http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/26/cnn-birther-investigation-no-doubt-president-obamawas-born-in-hawaii/ 70 World Net Daily, September 11, 2011, How does Obama's document stack up against genuine BC? http://www.wnd.com/2011/09/342937/ 71 Investigating the Obama Mysteries, September 13, 2011, I Catch WorldNetDaily Scrubbing Information that Directly Contradicts One of Dr. Jerome Corsis Most Important Fraud Theories! http://www.obamabirthbook.com/http:/www.obamabirthbook.com/2011/09/i-catch-worldnetdailyscrubbing-information-that-directly-contradicts-one-of-dr-jerome-corsis-most-important-fraudtheories/ 39
Paragraph 55:
Mr [sic] Obamas birth certificate was registered August 8, 1961. The Nordyke twins birth certificate was registered August 11, 1961. Even if the sequential numbering had followed the date of registration rather than the date of birth, Mr [sic] Obamas certificate should have been automatically assigned a number lower, not higher, than the numbers allocated to the certificates of the Nordyke twins. And the number currently assigned to Ms [sic] Sunahara is entirely out of sequence. Comments: All this paragraph identifies is a second theory regarding how certificates were numbered that is simply, demonstrably wrong. The numbers were not sequenced based on registration date either. This is further demonstrated by the certificates of Stig Waidelich and Johanna Ah Nee. Neither of them would fit the theory of numbering by date of registration.
Paragraph 56:
One possible explanation for the out-of-sequence serial numbers might have been that several serialized piles of birth certificates were registered at different hospitals. However, Ms [sic] Verna K. Lee, an official responsible for the recording of births in Honolulu in 1961, when interviewed by a reporter for wnd.com, said that this was not the case. Ms [sic] Lee was the local registrar who apparently signed the document on the White House website (it is possible that the forgers lifted her signature from another birth certificate and inserted it electronically into the computerized compilation that is now on the White House website). Comments: In this paragraph, Zullo merely identifies a third theory regarding how certificates were numbered that is wrong. It should be noted however that the unidentified reporter for wnd.com referred to by Zullo here is you guessed it Jerome Corsi. And it is also important here for a brief diversion necessary to fully understand and evaluate the value of this particular interview. Completely missing from this affidavit is any discussion of a theory that served as the centerpiece of the MCCCPs July 17, 2012 press conference; a theory that Zullo heavily bolstered with information allegedly 40
72 73
MCCCP Press Conference, July 17, 2012. Transcript pp. 5-8 The Daily Pen, Feb 29, 2012, VITAL RECORDS INDICATE OBAMA NOT BORN IN HAWAII HOSPITAL (PART 2), http://thedailypen.blogspot.com/2012/02/vital-records-indicate-obama-not-born_29.html 74 MCCCP press Conference, July 17, 2012. Transcript page 5. 75 Obama Conspiracy Theories, July 18, 2012, Code 9: the Cold Case Posses big lie, http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/07/code-9-the-cold-case-posses-big-lie/ 76 Obama Conspiracy Theories, July 21, 2012, Cold Case Posse video fraud: it gets worse, http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2012/07/cold-case-posse-video-fraud-it-gets-worse/ 77 Investigating the Obama Birth Mysteries, July 24, 2012, Exposed: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Birther Scam Heres the Proof that Arpaios Posse Fabricated Evidence and Lied to the Nation, http://www.obamabirthbook.com/http:/www.obamabirthbook.com/2012/07/exposed-sheriff-joe-arpaio-corsibirther-scam-heres-the-proof-that-arpaios-posse-fabricated-evidence-and-lied-to-the-nation/ 78 MCCCP Press Conference, July 17, 2012. Transcript pp. 5-7 79 Ibid. Pp. 24-25
41
Paragraph 57:
Ms. Lee was surprised that the numbers were out of sequence. Ms. Lee made recorded statements to a WND reporter during a phone interview. I have personally listened to these recordings. On the recorded conversation Ms. Lee said that all of the birth certificates received in a month were ordered chronologically by date and time of birth and numbered sequentially at the end of each month. The only exception not relevant in the present case was that birth certificates from the islands and from one local out-station in Oahu were grouped separately, so as not to under-represent births outside Honolulu or unattended births occurring at home in the 50% statistical samples by which only even-numbered births were reported to the Federal Government as mandated by the U.S. Office of Vital Statistics. Comments: For only the second time in this affidavit, Zullos typical failure to place a period at the end of personal titles is suddenly replaced by the correct form, signaling that this paragraph was also authored by somebody other than Zullo. The convention used to identify the reporter also changes dramatically from a reporter for wnd.com in the prior paragraph to a WND reporter in this one. My suspicion is that Jerome Corsi is again the author at this point, which would make sense since it was Corsi that conducted the alleged interview. There is no doubt, however, that the author wanted to put as fine a point as possible on the impression that Zullo was writing this, specifically by calling out that, I have personally listened to these recordings. This unfortunately creates a glaring inconsistency with Zullos previous account. During the July 17th MCCCP Press conference, Zullo described the circumstances surrounding the alleged interview in this way: I asked Mr. Corsi to contact Miss Lee, while I monitored the call, and recorded it.81 If Zullo had actually been on the phone, then he would (for perhaps the first time in this affidavit) be secure in the contention that it reflects his personal knowledge (at least regarding what Ms. Lee said, if not the process used by Hawaii to number birth certificates in 1961). But between the press conference and this affidavit, either Zullo has backpedaled from his original account, or Corsi and Zullo failed to synchronize their stories. The suspicion that Corsi is writing at this point is further reinforced by the fact that much of the very next paragraph is redundant to this one, though it reverts to Zullos peculiar style.
80
The Phoenix New Times, September 20, 2012, Joe Arpaio's "Birther" Chief Gets Cops Called on Him During His Pursuit of 95-Year-Old Woman in a Nursing Home, http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2012/09/joe_arpaios_birther_chief_gets.php 81 MCCCP Press Conference, July 17, 2012. Transcript page 23.
42
Now why would it make sense that they be sorted alphabetically by surname? The answer is an obvious one. Remember, there was no computerization of these records in 1961, and the ability to manually find a certificate when needed would have been facilitated by already having sorted them in the way they would be actually be searched; by name. Requests for copies of birth certificates will almost never come with certificate number. They will often come without a birth date and never with time of birth. Being able to quickly search volumes of records by surname provides an obvious advantage. But whatever process was actually used to sort Hawaiian birth certificates prior to numbering, the six certificates known from the month of Obamas birth prove that it cannot have been by date of birth.
43
Paragraph 59:
It is also possible that investigators are being misled into devoting attention to the number on Ms [sic] Sunaharas original long-form birth certificate, which may after all turn out to be different from that of Mr [sic] Obama and identical to that which appears on her short-form computer abstract. For that reason among others, investigators would like to inspect and, in due course, forensically to examine the volumes of long-form certificates for 1961, and specifically the long-form original birth certificates for Mr [sic] Obama, for Ms [sic] Sunahara, and for the Nordyke twins. Comments: Curiously, this is the first time Zullo hints at the suspicion that the number on Virginia Sunaharas longform might be the same number found on Obamas certificates, even though that was the original (and remains the only) reason Virginia Sunaharas certificate has ever been of interest to birthers. This 44
Paragraph 60:
A possibility that the investigators are constrained to bear in mind, given the numerous other defects in the document on the White House website, is that the number on the document is not a genuine registration number assigned to his birth certificate in 1961, but was issued when the short-form document was generated during the 2008 presidential campaign. It is possible that the Health Department does not want the public to see the original 1961 birth records because forensic examination might establish that the forgers had made a mistake in assigning to the forged long-form document on the White House website a number that was out of sequence and that may (or may not) be identical with the long-form original birth certificate of Ms [sic] Sunahara. This is one reason why the investigators have asked to see the original bound volumes from the stacks. Comments: Again, Zullo continues to layer speculation on top of speculation, all of it premised on a foundation demonstrated to have no merit in the first place. Through it all he is excruciatingly careful to avoid any explanation, no matter how prosaic and powerful, that does not conform to his conviction that the Presidents birth certificate must be a forgery. Given a set of data points (the birth certificate numbers) that never supported his theory of numbering in the first place, he concludes the data must be fake before considering that his theory is simply wrong. A genuine investigation does not proceed by piling on ad hoc complexity in order to salvage a prejudice. As with most committed conspiracy theorists, Occams Razor is anathema to the Maricopa County Cold Case Posse.
82
World Net Daily, May 17, 2011, The dead infant and the birth-certificate mystery. http://www.wnd.com/2011/05/300201/ 45
Paragraph 62:
The investigators have obtained an affidavit from an individual who went to the Department of Health when some of the first questions were raised about Mr [sic] Obamas birth certificate. That individual states that when he first went to the main office of the Hawaii Department of Health in Honolulu, Mr [sic] Obamas name did not appear in the computerized registration list in the ring binder, but when he went back approximately 14 days later to re-examine the same list he was surprised to see that Mr [sic] Obamas name now appeared on it. Comments: Abandoning all pretense of personal knowledge Zullo now tosses anonymous hearsay into the mix. That said, this story has circulated in one form or another since at least February of 2010 when John Charlton, the pseudonymous editor of the birther website The Post & Email claimed to have received computer printouts of the Hawaii Birth Index that did not show Obamas name.84 Unfortunately it turned out that he had requested the wrong printout, specifically the one that listed Certificates of Hawaiian Birth and not regular birth certificates. When the correct index was identified, Obamas name was right where it was supposed to be.
83 84
HRS 338-18 (d), http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/vol06_ch0321-0344/HRS0338/HRS_0338-0018.htm The Post & Email, February 26, 2010, Okubo responds to public outcry for investigation, http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/02/26/okubo-responds-to-public-outcry-for-investigation/ (subscription required)
46
Paragraph 63:
Notwithstanding this affidavit, it is plausible that an original birth record for Mr [sic] Obama exists in Hawaii. Our investigation has discovered that at that time Hawaiian law contained a provision that permitted a Hawaiian parent of a child born anywhere in the world or any adult purporting to represent that parent, the right to register the child as Hawaiian-born. It is for this reason that two entries in the Births column of the local newspapers at the time do not constitute evidence that Mr [sic] Obama was born in Hawaii. They are merely evidence suggesting that that a birth certificate was issued for him in Hawaii, and they tell us nothing about whether or not he was born there. In particular they do not as the White House document purports to do identify the hospital of birth. Comments: Didnt we already cover the birth announcements back in paragraphs #22 and 23? That they weigh heavily on Zullos arguments is indicated by the fact that he takes another swing at them, this time by again misrepresenting Hawaiian laws as they stood in 1961. The legal provision which Zullo ambiguously references here can only be the 1955 Territorial Public Health Statistics Act, governing the issuance of Certificates of Hawaiian Birth between 1955 and 1982. And as we already saw in the discussion following Paragraph #31, the actual law directly refutes this audaciously dishonest claim. Zullo seems intent on leaving the false impression that under this law Hawaii knowingly allowed their vital records to contain deliberate lies. After all, if the child was born in Kenya it would be perjurious to put Honolulu in the field labeled, Place of Birth. Hawaii Department of Health spokesperson Janice Okubo noted in July of 2009 that, If you were born in Bali, for example, you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali. You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate.85
85
The Washington Independent, July 17, 2009, Birther Movement Dogs Republicans, http://washingtonindependent.com/51489/birther-movement-picks-up-steam
47
Paragraph 65:
The existence of this law permitting out-of-country births to be registered as though they were Hawaiian births is a further reason why the Sheriff wishes his forensic investigators to be given access to the original bound volumes of birth certificates for 1961, and to be permitted to carry out forensic scrutiny of the volumes and of certain individual certificates, including that of Mr [sic] Obama. Comments: Wait. I admit to a little confusion here. What are affidavits for again? Exactly? Are they supposed to be attestations of facts? Or are they supposed to be arguments why somebody should get to do something they are not otherwise allowed? Is this supposed to be equivalent to the offering of testimony by a witness, or the presentation of an argument from an advocate? I ask these rhetorical questions to put as fine a point as possible on how completely this affidavit has gone off the rails. Yes we are fully aware that the MCCCP wishes to get their hands on the original bound volume of birth certificates that contains the one for the President of the United States. And Zullo should by this time be equally aware that hes not going to get within ten feet of the door where the records are kept based on reasoning and authority as pathetic as that which characterizes his affidavit.
48
86
Politifact.com, June 27, 2008, Obamas birth certificate: Final chapter, http://www.politifact.com/truth-ometer/article/2008/jun/27/obamas-birth-certificate-part-ii/
49
Paragraph 67:
The Cold Case Posses law-enforcement investigation in Mr [sic] Obamas birth certificate continues, taking account of the additional information obtained both as a result of the Cold Case Posses own enquiries and as a result of assistance from the public following publication of some of our results by the Sheriff at the March and July 2012 press conferences. Comments: Okay.
Paragraph 68:
The law-enforcement investigation by and on behalf of the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, would be greatly assisted, and could be brought swiftly, inexpensively, and decisively to an end, if the Department of Health and the management of the Kapiolani Hospital were willing to allow courtrecognized forensic experts selected by the Sheriff of Maricopa County to inspect and forensically examine the volumes of long-form original birth certificates for 1961 and the birth records kept by the Kapiolani Hospital for that year. It should be noted that forensic experts are trained in the management and preservation of paper records, and will cause no damage to the records in the course of their forensic examination. Comments: This is the way the affidavit ends, not with a bang but a whimper. In fourteen pages of rambling, redundant and sometimes tortured prose, Corsi and Zullo manage to establish that their alleged yearlong investigation of President Obamas birth certificate has proven to be an abject failure. Almost every claim they make, accusation they toss, story they tell or theory they propose is old news, stolen from more dedicated journeyman birthers than themselves. Vast amounts of it have long been objectively dismembered, but they remain oblivious. Too lazy to even try and conceal the participation by Corsi in the drafting of this dog, large swatches are simply cut and pasted from Corsis pre-MCCCP work. In every single case where they actually can be shown to have pursued a source or piece of information they wanted, they came up with nothing. They have uncovered not a single new document, detail or reliable piece of authoritative testimony. And as if simple incompetence were not enough, this affidavit, allegedly sworn under penalty of perjury, contains so many bald face lies that I actually completely lost count. At the beginning, I cited the three obvious reasons for this affidavit. The shoe that we are all waiting to drop is the non-obvious reason. For that, we will have to wait and see.
50
The Annotated Zullo, Version 1.3, 2012 Frank Arduini Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is wildly encouraged. Any part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without any express written permission from the author whatsoever. December 21, 2012
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Exhibit: FA1billion
This is another of the components of the PDF version of President Obamas long-form birth certificate available on the White House Website. Like the Registrars stamp, it is a monochrome bitmask. Like the Registrars stamp it can be moved within the document if that document is opened in Adobe Illustrator. Like the Registrars stamp it is reflected as a link in the Layers tool, and it is reduced and rotated in exactly the same manner. In short, it contains all of the same features and anomalies as the Registrars stamp which Zullo asserts are evidence that it was imported from another document. The problem is that only a blithering cretin of a forger would have created such an object as this one, or worse imported it into the certificate. It contains part (but only part) of a date stamp (inexplicably missing the first, second and fourth digits of the year), part of the preprinted text from the standard birth certificate form, and a single cursive stoke from the handwritten date by Dr. Sinclair. It is clear proof that whatever created the different components of the PDF, it was not a rational, thinking human being. It instead bears all the characteristics of the product of an unthinking, automatic computer optimization algorithm. This explanation for the layers in the White House PDF file was floated within hours of the first birther claims of forgery. But for almost a full year (from April 27, 2011 until March 1, 2012) the very existence of layers any layers was promoted by birthers as conclusive proof of forgery. This is true of birthers associated with the MCCCP as well, to include Mara Zebest and their video narrator, Mark Gillar. At the first MCCCP Press conference however, that long held position completely crumbled. Acknowledging that optimization algorithms absolutely do split ordinary scans into multiple layers, the Posse overcorrected and changed the complaint from there should be no layers to there arent enough layers. By the second MCCCP Press conference the story had changed again from there arent enough layers to there arent the right layers. Each change in the story was an incremental move towards acknowledgment that the automatic optimization explanation is correct.
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Y Y N Y N Y N N Y&N Y N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y N
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X 53
X X X
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N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N Y ? Y Y Y N N N N Y N N N N Y N N N N N N N N N N
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X X X X X 54
X X X X X X X X X X X X X
X X X X X
64 65 66 67 68
N N N Y Y
X X X X X
X X X
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www.wnd.com/files/2012/11/monckton_affidavit.pdf
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