Hawaiian officials admit withholding Obama's original BC

Now it's pretty apparent why Barack Obama made his sudden, last minute visit to Honolulu. It wasn't Granny's health problems that interested him but Hawaii's Health Department.

The strategy may have backfired. A statement by Hawaiian officials Friday that they have seen but won't release an "original" birth certificate that has never been released raises more questions than it answers. It undercuts the indignant claims of Obama spokesmen and supporters that the "birth certificate" has been published for months, and the ridicule and claims of "smear" that the Obama camp has made against anyone claiming otherwise.

Image: the "certification of live birth" claimed by Obama campaign as his "birth certificate"

According to an AP report, Hawaii Health Department Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said Friday that she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate.

But they won't say one word about what's on it.

Conspicuously, Hawaiian officials refuse to confirm that the information on the "original" certificate conforms to what has appeared on the "Certification of Live Birth" produced in 2007 that has so far been passed off as original by the Obama "Fight the Smears" site (here) and the Annenberg-backed site FactCheck.org (here). The latter dedicated a photoshoot to examining in pornographic detail a computer-generated facsimile that may bear no relation to the original document that the State of Hawaii now admits holding.

Can anyone smell "red herring"?

All of the obfuscation, which has been going on for more than four months, begs the question that the Obama campaign and its media supporters have steadfastly refused to answer: why won't the original birth certificate be released?

Why can't the Obama campaign do as the McCain campaign did, and release the original, typewritten document that the State of Hawaii, finally and in the last days before the election, admits exists in its "vaults"? What could be so damaging or contradictory that Obama has felt the need to keep hidden all these years and has created elaborate cover-ups to put forward computer-abstracted certification of live certificate instead of the original birth certificate?

Fukino says that no state official, including Governor Linda Lingle, ever instructed that Obama's birth certificate be handled differently. But state officials, including Lingle's office, have consistently refused media requests for the release of the document, saying that only Obama himself, or a close family number, was authorized to have access to the "original" certificate. She says state law bars release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest.

Apparently that does not include the American People.

And yet Obama claimed in his memoir Dreams from my Father that he had in his possession his birth certificate. Unless the document has been "lost," he could publish the original without visiting grandma in Honolulu.

Trumpeting victory in Hawaii's admission that a suppressed "original" birth certificate exists is Chicago-based journalist Andy Martin, a long time nemesis of Obama, whose trip to Hawaii preceded the candidate's. (Obama arrived just as Martin left). Martin takes credit for forcing the State's hand in a press release:

Obama has falsely claimed to have placed the "original" on the Internet. Factcheck.org has falsely claimed to have seen this document and posted it on the Internet; that is not true. CNN has falsely ridiculed Martin. Hawai'i officials have now refuted Obama's false assertion.

Martin's victory in Honolulu will roil the final weekend of the presidential campaign. Internet chatter is expected to explode as the issue moves to the front page over Saturday and Sunday. Swing voters may be swayed by the exposure that Obama has brazenly been lying to the American people. "We just lobbed a grenade into the final weekend of the presidential campaign," says Andy.

"I am ecstatic. I called Obama a liar. I called Factcheck.org 'ObamaLies.org.' I said CNN was sloppy and lazy and wrong. And I was right. The State of Hawai'i has now backed me up. Whew. I knew I was right, but I feel a lot more comfortable knowing that I have started to get the machinery moving in state government. The original document is now obviously protected and safe from any tampering by Obama.

"My lawsuit started a firestorm in Hawai'i. The circuit judge has set a hearing for November 18th (a report in the Honolulu Advertiser for November 1st for an earlier hearing date of November 7th is inaccurate; that date was cancelled).

"CNN also has egg on its face, because, once again, Hawai'i backs my contention that the original document has never surfaced in public. CNN tried to demean me by contradicting my accurate claim.

"Now Obama, Factcheck.org and CNN have been exposed as liars. I said there was a 'secret,' original, typewritten birth certificate that had never been disclosed, and that document was the original COLB, not the phony 'original' that CNN placed before its viewers.

Martin, who has advanced the theory that the candidate has suppressed the original certificate because it would show that his father is not in fact Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., claims that Frank Marshall Davis -- a high profile Communist and journalist that Obama II referred to in his memoirs only as "Frank" -- is in fact Obama's father.

Martin has a court date in Hawaii on his demand to release the original birth certificate in the public interest scheduled for November 18, 2008. He has scheduled a press conference for today (Saturday, November 1).