Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Dr. Chiyome Fukino Issues Another "Transparency Dodger" Statement on President Obama's Birth Certificate

Dr. Chiyome Fukino, Director of the Health Department of the State of Hawaii, issued another public statement yesterday, July 27, 2009, on the issue of the validity of the Certification of Live Birth the Hawaii Department of Health issued to President Obama in 2007, which has been displayed prominently throughout the internet. Here's the statement:

"I ... 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 citizen," Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said in a brief statement. "I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago."

You can read the full story here, and the October 2008 statement here.

Dr. Fukino's statement adds no new information to the discussion, and is only slightly less finely parsed than her October 31, 2008 statement. It earns her the title of "transparency dodger" and will inevitably require a more detailed statement in the future because of what it fails to reveal.

Apparently, Dr. Fukino continues to refuse questions from the press on the topic, which does nothing but make skeptics want more answers.

Dr. Fukino could do us all a service by adding more information that will move this inquiry towards a final conclusion. Here are the questions Dr. Fukino needs to answer:

1. When you say you have "seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii Department of Health verifying Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural born citizen" does that mean you viewed a physical hard copy of the original hospital issued 1961 Certificate of Live Birth or does it mean you have reviewed the electronic records upon which the 2007 issued Certification of Live Birth was based ?

2. Will you formally request of the President of the United States that he authorize you to reveal every detail of information included in the original vital records of his birth maintained by the State of Hawaii Department of Health ?

3. Can you name the hospital in which President Obama was born ?

4. Can you tell us the name of the attending physician at President Obama's birth according to the vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii Department of Health?

5. If you reviewed a physical hard copy of the original hospital issued 1961 Certificate of Live Birth, will you release that document to the public upon receipt of authorization by the President ?

6. If you viewed only the electronic records of the original 1961 hospital records of President Obama's birth, can you tell us what became of the original physical hard copy of that document ? Was it discarded and destroyed ? Is it stored in a warehouse ? If it is stored in a warehouse, can you authorize its release?

The issue of what Dr. Fukino actually viewed to make the determination that the President was in fact Hawaii born is quite relevant, since the State of Hawaii switched all of its birth records from hard copy to digital in 2001.

Almost all news commentators, including Chris Mathews of MSNBC recently, have assumed that Dr. Fukino's October 31, 2008 statement meant she had physically viewed the original hard copy of the President's 1961 birth certificate. Yesterday's statement seems to indicate it is more likely that Dr. Fukino viewed an electronic record and not a physical hard copy, but it is still not definitive.

The liberal blog TPM agrees with me that Dr. Fukino made a very serious public relations error when she failed (until last month) to disclose that the Department of Health went digital only in 2001. Here's what they said in a blogpost yesterday:



"A lot of time and effort could have been saved if Hawaiian officials had said from the beginning that the long
forms for every person born in Hawaii from 1908 to 2001 were discarded in 2001."


We can summarize the facts to date as follows:

There is absolutely no evidence to support the "birther" claim that Obama was born in Kenya.

There is significant secondary evidence (the 2007 Certification of Live Birth, Contemporaneous 1961 Newspaper birth announcements) to support the argument Obama was born in Hawaii.

However, though primary evidence of his birth in Hawaii is thought to exist in hard copy form in Kapiolani Hospital (which he claims as his birthplace) this data has not been released.

The State of Hawaii Department of Health Statements, rather than shedding light on the source of primary evidence in their possession, have fueled suspicions that information is being withheld. And, in fact, some relevant information has been withheld.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here’s Obama’s dilemma in a nutshell (READ VERY CAREFULLY AND DIGEST):

If BHO shows his original long form birth certificate, indeed showing he was born in Hawaii, it will also show his father was American citizen, Frank Marshall Davis, not the Kenyan/British citizen, Barack Obama Sr. While that would allow Barack Jr. to be POTUS eligible as BOTH a “citizen”/“native born citizen” AND an Article 2 “natural born citizen” — that is, born to two American citizens on American soil — it would simultaneously show he is a fraud hiding his real father — an unacceptable political debacle.

If, on the other hand, BHO keeps hiding his original long form birth certificate — while simply repeating, without showing, he was born in Hawaii — he can still CLAIM BOTH he was born in Hawaii AND his father was the Kenyan/British Barack Obama Sr. This would enable Barack Jr. to claim he’s a “citizen”/“native born citizen” but it would mean (if a federal court would ever get around to declaring and thus far no one has standing to bring the suit) that he’s NOT an Article 2 “natural born citizen” and thus not eligible to be POTUS — a legal/constitutional debacle since all acts under an illegal POTUS are void.

So it seems, BHO has elected option one until forced to go option two because for now it looks like no federal court will ever find a plaintiff with standing. (Of course, there’s the additional issue of BHO losing American citizen status if/when he became an Indonesian citizen — that is, IF he returned and was naturalized he would be a legal citizen, but would lose both native and natural born status, and, IF he returned and was not naturalized, he would be an illegal immigrant unlawfully in this country — but we’ll leave that for another day.)

Michael Patrick Leahy said...

Anonymous,

Thanks for your comment.

The only problem with your theory is that there is no evidence to support the claim Frank Marshall Davis was the father of President Obama.

Unknown said...

Dr Fukino’s modus operandi is to send a press release to news outlets that are sympathetic to Mr Obama, knowing that they will spin her words to the maximum advantage of Mr Obama. In this way they get their ‘hit’ in first. I have just checked the Hawaii.gov website and searched for Fukino’s recent press release. Not surprisingly, it is not there. I searched for Fukino + Obama. Fukino’s notorious press release of 31st October 2008 is there but it is disguised under the date ’31st December 2002′. This may not have been added to the Hawaii.gov website until AFTER I had made a Freedom of Information request for it.

I have copied and pasted, below, a quote attributed, by The Honolulu Advertiser, to Dr Fukino. This may or may not be accurate. It is probably not complete.

“I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawai’i State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai’i State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawai’i and is a natural-born American citizen,” Fukino said in a statement. “I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008, over eight months ago.”

When one carefully examines these words, there is still plenty of room for wriggling.

Dr Fukino refers to ‘original vital records’. We are meant to assume that all of the records were generated in August 1961. Dr Fukino doesn’t state that. Why not? If she wanted to remove the doubts on this point, she should have stated the dates of ‘the original vital records’. Probably, some records do date from August 1961, but she has left open the possibility that some records were submitted after August 1961 – such as ‘corrections’, or ‘alterations’ or adoption(s) – all of which are specifically allowed for by Hawai’ian law. She may even be referring to some recently submitted ‘original vital records’, which Mr Obama himself may have sent in – perhaps with a covering letter explaining why he is a ‘Natural Born Citizen’.

Dr Fukino states that she has seen these ‘original vital records’….’verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawai’i and is a natural-born American citizen’. She does not claim that the records have been examined and scrutinised in order to establish their provenance or reliability or veracity. Again – why not?

Dr Fukino uses the term ‘natural-born American citizen’. She does not state ‘Natural Born Citizen’ of The United States. So baby Obama was natural-born, that could even mean that he was born naturally, as opposed to being born by un-natural Caesarian section. [This is not intended to be an inflammatory remark about birthing procedures - it is intended to show that Dr Fukino's use of the term 'natural-born', with a hyphen, separated from the word citizen, by the adjective American, gives Dr Fukino plausible deniability in making her misleading claim]

Of course, as we have always acknowledged Barack Hussein Obama II may have been born in Hawai’i of an American citizen Mother. This obviously would make him a United States citizen at birth. If we assume that Dr Fukino is ALSO trying to assert that he is a ‘Natural Born Citizen’ within the meaning of The Constitution, then she must be implying that she fully understands the term and that she must have seen ‘original vital records’ verifying that BOTH of Barack Hussein Obama II’s parents were American citizens at the time of his birth. We know that Barack Hussein Obama I was never a citizen of The United States, so that opens the possibility that Dr Fukino has seen ‘original vital records’ verifying that Barack Hussein Obama II’s biological Father was not from British East Africa (now Kenya), but was instead some entirely different man, from America, such as Frank Marshall Davis – but lets not go there! [I accept that there is no evidence to this effect in the public domain, but my point is that Dr Fukino's words in her two press releases do not even rule out this possibility]

Unknown said...

Dr Fukino may alternatively be just a ‘party hack’ and one of Mr Obama’s devoted followers.

I agree that the citizenship of Mr Obama’s Father is the crucial issue in assessing The Constitutional POTUS eligibility issue. It is patently obvious, for the reasons given above, that Dr Fukino has chosen to AVOID that issue in her press release of yesterday.

We still need to see the original 1961 long-form Birth Certificate, and ALL of the other documents in the Hawai’ian files, in order to tie up all of the loose ends that I have mentioned above. It may be that Mr Obama knows of some information in there that would undermine his carefully contrived life story. The existence of such information would put him at risk of being black-mailed and therefore make him a security risk.

It might well transpire that this is all part of the end-game of Mr Obama’s people – that having built up the Birth Certificate issue into the biggest monolith possible, they will then totally obliterate it and everyone on it or near it, by releasing the original long-form Birth Certificate. They would then hope that the main issue of Mr Obama’s dual-national, non ‘Natural Born Citizen’ status and therefore the issue of his Constitutional ineligibility to be POTUS, would also be buried forever.

Anonymous said...

There is no registrar's signature on the 'Certificate of Birth' Obama claims is a birth certificate.

How can it be legal without that signature. Anyone (including terrorists) can make a copy in Photoshop and insert their own name.

So how can this be legal without a signature?

Michael Patrick Leahy said...

Anonymous,

You are incorrect in your assertion.

The 2007 Certification of Live Birth has the Registrar's signature on the back of the document. This document complies with all Hawaii statutes.

The document which needs to be produced, however, is the 1961 Certificate of Live Birth, which in theory was the basis for the information included on the 2007 Certification of Live Birth.

Anonymous said...

I agree its lame that Hawaii doesn't release long form, but I noticed an interesting story in my hometown Paper (Buffalo News)

http://www.buffalonews.com/494/story/554495.html

Seems to account for:
1) Where he was born
2) Why no doctor has come out
3) Gives circumstantial evidence that he was born where he says he was to BHO I.

Anonymous said...

NOBODY DESTROYED ANY ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS. Get real. NO Department of Vital Statistics anywhere actually DESTROYS the original documents, just because they digitalize them. WHERE did you get the idea that any of the original documents were destroyed??

Anonymous said...

Am I the only one that has caught this which was on the MSNBC site?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42519951/ns/politics-more_politics/

...."Before she would do so, Fukino said, she wanted to inspect the files — and did so, taking with her the state official in charge of vital records. She found the original birth record, properly numbered, half typed and half handwritten, and signed by the doctor who delivered Obama, located in the files. She then put out a public statement asserting to the document's validity. She later put out another public statement in July 2009 — after reviewing the original birth record a second time...."

WHAT WAS RELEASED A FEW DAYS AGO..........WASN'T HALF HAND-WRITTEN! Did MSNBC and Fukino just flubb this up further?