© Miri WTPOTUS March 29, 2012
This month marks the fourth anniversary of what author Jack Cashill
called
one of the great underreported stories of the 2008 campaign: the multiple breaches of the presidential candidates’ passport records in March of that year.
This will be a comprehensive overview of the story, so it is long and for that I apologize. Read it or save it for future reference. The revelations from Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse are topical. The vettings of Barack Obama by Breitbart’s successors are topical. As the campaign revs up, the blogosphere and many conservative news websites are revisiting stories from 2008. The security breach of the State Department passport files, in 2008,
was among the very first signs of the scrubbing of any documentary evidence that might disprove what Obama wants Americans to believe about him. As hard as it may be for us to believe, there remain Americans who know little about these issues. And so, we reprise …
The passport breach
As Ken Timmerman of Newsmax
reported at the time:
The security breach, first reported by the Washington Times and later confirmed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, involved a contract employee of [John O.] Brennan’s firm, The Analysis Corp., which has earned millions of dollars providing intelligence-related consulting services to federal agencies and private companies.
During a State Department briefing on March 21, 2008, McCormack confirmed that the contractor had accessed the passport files of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain, and that the inspector general had launched an investigation.
Sources who tracked the investigation tell Newsmax that the main target of the breach was the Obama passport file, and that the contractor accessed the file in order to “cauterize” the records of potentially embarrassing information.
“They looked at the McCain and Clinton files as well to create confusion,” one knowledgeable source told Newsmax. “But this was basically an attempt to cauterize the Obama file.”
(Timmerman is currently
running for Congress in Maryland.)
Three individuals were intially caught up in the security breach, which was
flagged by a computer program of which the perpetrators may have been unaware; but
inexplicably knowledge of the breach didn’t percolate to the upper levels of the State Department until months later,
against what should have been established procedures. The breaches of Obama’s files occured on
January 9, February 21 and March 14, 2008. Cashill reported that
[O]ne of the three contract employees caught in the act worked for the Analysis Corporation, the CEO of which was John Brennan, a 25-year CIA veteran. The [Washington] Post does report that Brennan donated $2,300 to the Obama campaign but suggests no deeper tie. This information is offset by the revelation that the other two culpable contract employees worked for Stanley Inc., whose CEO Philip Nolan contributed $1,000 to the Clinton campaign.
Stanley, however, had been handling passport work for 15 years and had just been awarded a five-year, $570-million contract. The company had no reason to play favorites in the 2008 campaign. It promptly fired the two employees, neither of whom was likely working at the directive of Nolan or of the Clinton campaign.
Unlike Stanley Inc., a huge government contractor listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Analysis Corp. had fewer than 100 employees, and its one culpable employee escaped discipline. The Post article tells us only that “his or her employment status is under review.”
At the time of the passport breach, Brennan was advising Obama’s campaign on matters of intelligence and foreign policy. When Brennan was
later selected by Obama to join his administration as an advisor on counterterrorism (now Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President), the passport breach wasn’t mentioned by the Washington Post, according to Cashill. Daniel Pipes of Front Page Magazine referred to Brennan as
“sycophantic” with regard to his relationship with Obama.
The news media brushed the incident off as
simple curious snooping into the lives of the rich, famous, and powerful, although
Timmerman’s anonymous source supplied the actual reason, which was
to “cauterize” Obama’s passport file of “embarrassing” information.
Whether deliberate or coincidental, the State Department added to the “curious snooping” meme by widening the investigation to look for browsers
other than the three who worked for contractors and who were caught by the computer program. Interestingly enough, it seems to have been
Obama’s passport file that was being watched most closely by the system; it was the breach of his file that brought the “snooping” to light. The Inspector General was supposed to have been informed, but the Washington Times
reported that
it is not clear whether the IG reviewed the improper computer activities, the officials said.
Acting Inspector General William E. Todd and the chief IG branch investigator, James B. Burch, a former U.S. Secret Service agent, are leading the passport probe …
Todd was appointed in January 2008 after Howard J.
Krongard left the post of Inspector General (having been run out for political reasons). Todd was replaced by Harold W.
Geisel in June 2008, so Geisel presented the final report about the security breach. A rather convenient shuffling of the players at a crucial time. That same Washington Times story shows the
unusual focus on the breach of
Obama’s records:
As soon as we realized that there were these unauthorized accesses for Senator Obama’s passport files, we collected the information, we briefed the secretary [Condoleeza Rice], we briefed Senator Obama’s staff, all before we ever replied to the reporter,” Mr. McCormack said.
What’s odd is that a reporter informed the Secretary of State of the breach! How did a reporter know before she did? Inspector General Todd should have known in January 2008, when the first breach was flagged.
In July 2008, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), produced an official
report of the results of the investigation into the breach;
a report so heavily redacted that it is useless to citizens wanting to know the truth. The report, labeled “sensitive but unclassified”, stated:
A U.S. passport is the official U.S. government document that certifies the holder’s identity and citizenship and permits travel abroad. Applications for passports require the submission of personally identifiable information (PII), such as the applicant’s date and place of birth and social security number. In addition, other documentation, such as the applicant’s birth or naturalization certificate, is required.
From a footnote in the report:
The term “personally identifiable information,” as defined by the Office of Management and Budget, refers to information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, such as name, social security number, or biometric records, either alone or when combined with other personal or identifying information that is linked or linkable to a specific individual, such as date and place of birth and mother’s maiden name.
The report further stated that the Passport Information Electronic Records System (PIERS) contains
scanned images of passport applications and select supporting documentation for records created from 1994 to the present. In addition, PIERS contains passport applicant information, but no scanned images, for records created from about 1978 to 1993. … PIERS also contains additional information, such as previous names used by the applicant, citizenship status of the applicant’s parents or spouse, and scanned images of passport photos, and select supporting documentation, if applicable, submitted by the applicant.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center says that
The contents of a passport file can include all the information that is required in a passport application. This includes:
- full name, date of birth, place of birth, gender, Social Security number, mailing address, phone numbers, email addresses;
- the names, birth dates, and citizenship information of the applicant’s parents;
- height, hair color, eye color;
- occupation, employer, permanent address, emergency contact information;
- travel plans of applicant;
- information regarding marital status, and information about spouses;
- a recent color photograph of the applicant and documents proving U.S. citizenship and proof of identity.
A little Obama perspective
In 1994, Obama was a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School; an associate at the law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland; and sat on the boards of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago and the Joyce Foundation.
In 1995, he was the founding president and chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (
with which FactCheck blog is associated). Also in 1995, Obama first published his memoir
Dreams From My Father. That same year, his mother died. Prior to publication of the memoir, Obama and his wife traveled to Bali to overcome his writer’s block (they said).
In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate and traveled to the UK to visit half-sister Auma’s family. Prior to that, Obama traveled
multiple times to Kenya during the 1980s and 1990s, perhaps even earlier. He traveled to Europe in 1988. He allegedly obtained his Social Security Number in
1977, although he claims to have worked for Baskin-Robbins in Hawaii, before 1977.
(Obama traveled back and forth between Indonesia and Hawaii numerous times, during childhood, although those trips would
predate PIERS. However, he used the name
Barry Soetoro during childhood, and his mother’s passport
records seem to indicate another alias–
Soebarkah. It was common for Indonesians to use only one name.)
Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981, the summer after he allegedly
registered for the draft. He traveled to Indonesia in 1983, according to biographer Janny Scott. He traveled to Kenya soon after his father died in November 1982. According to biographer David Mendell, that trip to Kenya took place in 1983.
As a U.S. senator, Obama traveled to Moscow, Kiev, and Baku, Azerbaijan, in 2005; and to Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya (where he campaigned for his cousin Raila Odinga, in alleged violation of the Hatch Act), and Djibouti, Chad, in 2006. While in Russia in 2005, he was
detained for some hours at the airport by Russian authorities
who had questions about his passport.
With all these trips between 1978 and the present, the Department of State likely had quite a dossier on Obama in its computerized archives.
The OIG report stated that the PIERS database had more than 20,000 authorized users in 2008, and over half of them were contract employees. The report also said that
almost all users have ”read only” access.
Almost all, but not ALL. The footnote associated with that comment, which presumably explains who has more than
read only access, is redacted.
There exist other passport-related databases, among them Travel Document Issuance System (TDIS), the Passport Records Imaging System Management (PRISM) database, the Passport Lookout Tracking System (PLOTS), the Management Information System (MIS), and the Consular Lost and Stolen Passport (CLASP) system.
The OIG report informed us that the State Dept. apparently has neither the ability
nor the authority to discipline
contract employees–that falls to supervisors at their place of employment. In this instance, John O. Brennan was the ultimate supervisor of one potential Obama passport cauterizer.
So how does information get into PIERS?
Contract employees do the drudge work. They process applications,
scan documents, and print passports and other documents. However, federal employees are their immediate supervisors; the supervisors review documents and approve or deny passport applications.
It seems obvious that someone has “input” access, meaning the
ability to add to or change records in the database as well as to delete records from the database. (How difficult is it to substitute one scan for another?) At a press
briefing, reporters were told
Contractors support government employees by answering customer service enquiries, printing and mailing issued passports, and entering data. … The Passport Information Electronic Retrieval System, or PIERS, with access to only a small subset of those documents, typically contains only the applicant’s passport application form (including photograph). In complex circumstances, for instance if there are grounds to suspect possible fraud, if a person born overseas claims citizenship by virtue of having an American citizen parent, or in certain passport applications from minors, we may need additional evidence to review the applications, and we keep this information in the passport file with the applications, accessible by PIERS. … In more complicated cases, such as those involving a derivative citizenship determination, law enforcement issues, or possible fraud, we may keep originals or copies of other documents in the file.
(Note: The link to the explanation about citizenship of persons born abroad is inaccessible, due to the presence of a robots.txt on the page, from which one can infer that the page is deliberately removed from public view.) From what we know of Obama’s biography, it features
more than ”complex circumstances.”
The government’s Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) claimed that
PIERS tracks and logs the activities of system users. It logs the authorized user and timestamp in which it was accessed.
However, the OIG learned to the contrary that
The PIA information appears to contradict what OIG observed during the course of this review. While PIERS may track and log user access, it does not maintain information regarding what specific activities were conducted or why the system was accessed.
At this
link are the comments of Mark W. Duda, Assistant Inspector General for Audits. At this
link are the comments of Harold W. Geisel, Acting Inspector General. Geisel stated that
PIERS offers users the ability to query information pertaining to passports and vital records, as well as to view and print original copies of the associated documents. … [N]either Consular Affairs nor the Department had implemented breach notification policies, procedures, or other criteria for reporting incidents of unauthorized access of passport records when they were detected.
Geisel noted that Consular Affairs should
henceforth produce
accurate Privacy Impact Assessments for PIERS and other databases.
The appalling lack of security explains why then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice
could not assure anyone that information was not changed or deleted (“
cauterized”) during the course of these breaches. As the Washington Times
reported:
Officials do not know whether information was improperly copied, altered or removed from the database during the intrusions.
One wonders whether the system was
never designed to
journal or log transactions or
whether the functions were turned off at certain times, so that these changes were not traceable.
In any case, it appears that there’s no audit trail. No before image or after image of specific database records. That certainly is poor software systems design, especially for such a critical database. Ask any software engineering professional.
However, the underlying documents, which were scanned or transcribed into the database,
ought to exist somewhere.
Or database backups
ought to exist somewhere, because
it defies common sense to believe that such critical databases would not have multiple backups in case of a catastrophic event. Or a hacking.
One theory
In his recent article, Cashill speculated that the reason for the cauterization might be connected to Obama’s 1981 trip to Pakistan, a trip
mentioned by candidate Obama only after the passport files had been “cauterized.” This
heretofore unmentioned trip amazed
Jake Tapper of ABC News. Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs also
speculated that the passport breach was connected to Obama’s 3-week trip to Pakistan when he was a young college student. A logical theory. It’s covered in depth by Jack Cashill in his recent
story.
Another theory
Perhaps the passport file
contained a copy of Obama’s original birth certificate, which had to be cauterized to match what Obama chose to reveal to the world in June 2008 on a campaign website (Fight the Smears) and on the blog The Daily Kos. That being his short-form certification of live birth (SFCOLB), which was released in response to a growing clamor among the electorate for proof of his eligibility.
Immediately upon release of that “document”, which was
purported to be a scan of an authentic certified vital record from Hawaii, the image came under intense scrutiny from the “pajamas media”, but
not the mainstream media,
which chose to abrogate its sacred trust under the First Amendment and ignore anything questionable about this presidential candidate’s background.
The image looked nothing like how a scanned document should look. The embossed seal and registrar’s stamp were not evident, among other issues raised.
In response to the controversy,
Obama-connected FactCheck blog posted what they implied were recent photographs of the paper document, taken by their representatives at Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago. Their story, with photos, was published August 21, 2008. The writer implied that the photos proved that the document was authentic and that Obama was born in Hawaii, although the
FactCheck blog representatives are not certified forensic document examiners. Only FactCheck representatives have ever claimed to have seen that document
in paper form. No member of the media. No member of the public. That remains true to this day.
Some readers of the FactCheck story were puzzled by the author’s insistence that the SFCOLB
has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: “your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.”
Why was FactCheck blog writing about the State Dept.? Why were they writing about the data items required on documentation in order to obtain a passport? Especially in the context of
whether or not a person has proved his eligibility for the presidency, which requires
natural born citizenship–a standard much higher than
simple citizenship?
Naturalized citizens are not eligible for the presidency, and yet they can and do receive passports from the State Dept.
Who was talking about passports? Not those questioning the SFCOLB. Soon those FactCheck photographs came under intense scrutiny, too.
It’s the EXIF data
FactCheck blog originally published nine high-resolution photographs of the “document”, taken from different angles and under rather odd lighting. Some dark, with
shadows falling across particularly pertinent parts of the certificate, such as where the embossed Hawaii Dept. of Health seal
should appear. Others had flares of light
obscuring data, such as the father’s name.
Not one photo showed
the entire back side of the certificate, which is where the registrar’s certification–signature and date stamp–
should appear. However,
the images were published with the embedded EXIF data intact:
Digital cameras will record the current date and time and save this in the metadata. Camera settings–This includes static information such as the camera model and make, and information that varies with each image such as orientation (rotation), aperture, shutter speed, focal length, metering mode, and ISO speed information.
Below are some metadata tags from the second photograph published in that article by FactCheck blog:
Camera: Canon PowerShot A570 IS
Lens: 5.8 – 23.2 mm
Shot at 5.8 mm
Exposure: Auto exposure, 1/60 sec, f/4, ISO 80
Flash: Auto, Did not fire
Focus: Single, Face Detect, with a depth of field of from 0.39 m to infinity.
AF Area Mode: Multi-point AF or AI AF
Date:
March 12, 2008 10:41:26PM (timezone not specified)
File: 2,304 × 3,072 JPEG (7.1 megapixels) Image compression: 92%
Note the date:
March 12, 2008. Fully five months before FactCheck blog claims they went to Chicago to photograph the SFCOLB, and three months before the SFCOLB was published on the Obama campaign’s Fight the Smears website and the Daily Kos blog.
What else happened in March 2008? Obama’s passport files were cauterized. The date of the final breach of his passport file was March 14, 2008–
two days after these photographs were taken of an alleged SFCOLB in Chicago.
After the embedded EXIF metadata were reported on the Web by enterprising citizen researchers,
FactCheck blog downsized the resolution of the photos and removed the EXIF data altogether. After the long-form birth certificate was published on the White House blog in April 2011, FactCheck again
changed their story, removed most of the photos, and summarized the previous article.
Obama supporters tried to explain away the discrepancy in the dates of these photos by saying that the photographers, being amateurs, probably incorrectly set the date on the camera. The time on the EXIF data indicated it was around 10 p.m., except the photos seem to show sunlight streaming through windows. One theory is that the photographer
never set the camera’s date and time since he or she bought the camera.
A check of several digital cameras, which had never had the date or time reset since the day of purchase, showed that
both had the correct date, but the time was off by about 12 hours–something that may be attributed to the fact that
most digital cameras are built on the other side of the globe. Check your own camera, if you’ve never changed the date and time. Let us know what you find.
Whatever the case,
why did FactCheck, a partisan blog, so quickly remove that EXIF data, if it wasn’t indicative of something, shall we say, too revealing?
Three days after the photos were published, Israeli Insider newsmagazine staff
wrote:
But the repeated references to State Department requirements for a passport take on a new significance in the light of the recognition, pointed out by an Israel Insider reader, that this “new” certificate of live birth is recorded as being photographed on March 12, 2008, and a contract employee of an Obama advisor — allegedly a former CIA agent — was caught breaking into Obama’s passport files on March 14, 2008. … The issue has never been whether or not Obama can prove U.S. citizenship well enough to get a passport. … The issues are where he was born, whether he is a natural born citizen under the Constitution, whether he ever was a citizen of another country, and, if so, whether he ever renounced that foreign citizenship.
This
story from the Washington Times supplied a
factoid which may indicate another link between the passport breach and the SFCOLB:
[The] intrusions appeared to be the result of “imprudent curiosity” on the part of contract employees who were hired last summer to help process passport applications.
In this instance, “last summer” was the summer of 2007, exactly
when the SFCOLB was allegedly requested from and produced by the Hawaii Dept. of Health for the Obama campaign, according to FactCheck blog. It was the following summer that an image purporting to be a scan of that document appeared on the Internet. Coincidence? Perhaps, but there are an awful lot of coincidences and oddities swirling around Obama and his documentation.
The fallout
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Passport Services
Ann Barrett took the fall. She resigned or was “moved.” Take your pick. That same story reports:
Meanwhile, a State Department employee who was not identified in documents filed in U.S. District Court, was implicated in a credit-card fraud scheme after 24-year-old Leiutenant Quarles Harris Jr. told federal authorities he obtained “passport information from a co-conspirator who works for the U.S. Department of State.”
The investigation began after Metropolitan Police on March 25 pulled over Mr. Harris … on suspicion that the windows of his vehicle were tinted too darkly.
After searching Mr. Harris and his vehicle, police found marijuana and 21 credit cards that were not issued in his name or the name of a female passenger with him. Police also found eight printouts of State Department passport applications, and four of the names on the applications matched four of the credit cards.
Upon questioning by agents from the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Postal Service and State Department, Mr. Harris “admitted he obtained the passport information” from a State Department employee, court documents say.
Mr. Harris also said the fraud ring submitted credit-card applications using the names and “identifying information” of the persons listed on the passport applications, and that a postal service employee then would intercept the cards before they were delivered to the appropriate residences.
Mr. Harris may have
lost his life over this incident; he was cooperating with authorities but was later found shot, execution style. It remains unclear whether his case was connected to the Obama passport cauterization, whether his murder was ever solved, or whether his co-conspirators at the Dept. of State and the Postal Service were ever identified and punished.
Jack Cashill stated recently on a
radio program that the individuals who broke into the passport files have never been identified.
Some have been, although whether the cauterizer is among them is anyone’s guess:
Gerald R. Lueders, 65, of Woodbridge, Virginia, pleaded guilty in January to one count of unauthorized computer access, according to a statement from Lanny A. Breuer, the District of Columbia assistant attorney general. [Yes, THAT Lanny Breuer.]
U.S. Magistrate Judge Alan Kay sentenced Lueders to one year of probation and fined him $5,000 …
Two other State Department workers fired over the snooping were previously sentenced.
Dwayne [F.] Cross, 41, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, received a year of probation and an order to perform 100 hours of community service, while former foreign service officer and intelligence analyst Lawrence [C.] Yontz [48] was sentenced to one year of probation.
More about
Lueders, who
worked as a full-time Foreign Service Officer beginning in 1974. Following his 2001 retirement, Lueders has continued working at State, first as a ‘contractor/retired annuitant’ and, most recently, as a Watch Officer in the agency’s Office of Consular Affairs. He admitted accessing the passport records over a two-and-a-half-year period beginning in July 2005 [to February, 2008].
Dwayne Cross (aka DeWayne)
worked from August 2001 to February 2008 as an administrative assistant in State’s Abduction Unit for Diplomatic Security, Counterintelligence division (from March 2008 to October 2008 Cross worked in the agency’s acquisitions office while employed by an outside contractor).
Cross accessed the passport files over a five-and-a-half year period ending in August 2007, according to another court filing …
Yontz seems to have been Brennan’s employee. He’s described in news stories variously as a
State Dept. employee or a
former State Dept. employee. The story linked above states that he also got 50 hours of community service. In addition,
Yontz served as a foreign service officer at the State Department between September 1987 and April 1996, then returned to the agency in January 2004 for work as an intelligence officer. Yontz had access to official databases, including PIERS, the DOJ said.
Interesting timing.
2004. Another
story says Yontz cooperated in the investigation and
was a contract employee. Yontz
accessed the files between February 2005 and March 2008. His firm was not mentioned in the court records, unlike for the other two, who worked for an unnamed
Firm A (assumed to be Stanley, Inc.); another
story said Yontz worked for TAC (The Analysis Corp.–Brennan’s firm).
This
story names five others:
An employee of the U.S. Department of State was sentenced Wednesday to 12 months of probation. …
Kevin M. Young, 42, of Temple Hills, Maryland, was also ordered by Judge Alan Kay, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to perform 100 hours of community service. Young pleaded guilty on Aug. 17 to one count of unauthorized computer access. … Young has worked full-time for the State Department since February 1987. He has been a contact representative for the Passport Special Issuance Agency for the last eight years. … Young admitted that between March 11, 2003, and Dec. 21, 2005, he logged onto the PIERS database and viewed the passport applications of more than 125 celebrities, actors, comedians, professional athletes, musicians, models, a politician and other individuals identified in the press. …
On July 10, 2009, William A. Celey, a file assistant, pleaded guilty to unlawfully accessing more than 75 confidential passport files. Celey was sentenced on Oct. 23, 2009, to 12 months of probation and ordered to perform 50 hours of community service.
On Aug. 26, 2009, Karal Busch, a former citizens services specialist, pleaded guilty to unlawfully accessing more than 65 confidential passport files. Busch is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 15, 2009.
On Oct. 28, 2009, Yvette M. Burrison, a passport specialist, pleaded guilty to unlawfully accessing nearly 100 confidential passport files. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled for Burrison.
On Nov. 9, 2009, Susan Holloman, a file assistant, pleaded guilty to unlawfully accessing 70 confidential passport files. Holloman is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 21, 2010.
This
story names yet another, the ninth so far:
A State Department employee was sentenced yesterday to 12 months of probation for illegally accessing more than 60 confidential passport application files, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Debra Sue Brown, 47, of Oxon Hill, Md., was also ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola in the District of Columbia to perform 50 hours of community service. … Brown has worked full-time for the State Department since September 1995 as a file clerk and a file assistant in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. … Brown admitted that between March 25, 2005, and Feb. 7, 2008, she logged onto the PIERS database and repeatedly searched for and viewed the passport applications of more than 60 celebrities and their families — actors, comedians, professional athletes, musicians, and other individuals identified in the press — as well as personal friends and acquaintances.
Again, it’s the timing
We are aware of another incident of
potential cauterization prior to the election of 2008: Obama’s Selective Service Records. In November of 2008, Debbie Schlussel
reported on the response from the government to a FOIA request for Obama’s Selective Service Registration, which had taken over a year to receive. Obama hadn’t shown up in a query of the online database, when citizen researchers tried to investigate his background. Thus the FOIA
request for the record, upon the advice of the Selective Service Administration.
I sent an email to the Selective Service (www.sss.gov) and got this
response:
“Dear Sir: You may write in to ask for his Registration Number under a Freedom of Information Act, and it will then be released. If there is an error in his file, if he registered without yet having a social security number, etc., any number of reasons could prevent his registration from being confirmed on-line.”
Because it’s
a crime to not register for the draft, Obama would have disqualified himself from holding elective office, including the presidency, if he didn’t register.
Although Schlussel’s report was written in November 2008, the actual response from the government was generated in September 2008,
within two days of Obama mentioning to George Stephanopoulis that he had registered for the draft. Did he have advance notice that it was now
safe to make such a claim, just as it was now
safe for him to mention the trip to Pakistan, because all files had been successfully cauterized?
Other potentially “cauterized” public records
Since 2008, we have become aware of other public records that are allegedly missing or destroyed:
Stanley Ann Dunham’s pre-1965 passport application is
missing or destroyed. The State Dept. did not release it in response to a FOIA request, but
it is known to have existed, based upon what they did release.
All copies of the yearbook from Mercer Island High School for the year Stanley Ann Dunham allegedly graduated went missing from the school library.
One page from Stanley Ann Dunham’s divorce records is missing; speculation is that it was a copy of Obama’s birth certificate, although it could have been a paternity report, naturalization paperwork, proof of adoption, or some other ”embarrassing information.”
The first week of August 1961 is missing from INS microfilms of passengers entering the US from overseas (port of entry records). They were stored at the National Archives, which has
no explanation other than that in 1961, someone tasked with copying the originals must not have noticed that the microfilm machine jammed and did not copy that week’s worth of records.
Coincidentally, that is allegedly the very week during which Obama was born. Somewhere. We are to believe that the clerk
destroyed the originals and did not first ensure that there were copies on the film, even though the clerk must have known about the jam. Oddly, the microfilm roll ended at that missing week and a new roll began with the following week.
Obama’s public school kindergarten records from Hawaii are “missing.”
Some of Obama’s school records from Indonesia were reportedly “eaten by bugs.”
The Selective Service Administration
refused to give Sheriff Arpaio access to Obama’s original draft registration, a document that they claimed to have copied and sent to a citizen in response to a FOIA enquiry. Does the original exist? Did it ever exist?
No document recording a marriage license issued to Obama’s parents has ever been found. No certificate of their marriage has ever been found.
Of course, we can’t forget those “original vital records on file” at the Hawaii Dept. of Health, which have never been produced to any court or citizen or member of the media. Records that former HDOH employee Tim Adams swore he was told do not exist. Records that current governor of Hawaii Neil Abercrombie could not find.
Gone. Cauterized.
No transparency. No truth.
