Why is the White House in full defense mode against a book by a small publisher contending Barack Obama is not legally eligible to be president?
Today, the Obama re-election campaign launched an all-out attack on a brand new book critical of Obama, "Where's the Birth Certificate," by bestselling author Jerome Corsi, Ph.D., calling it delusional, laughable and a "joke"... even as it climbed to No. 17 overall, No. 3 in non-fiction and No. 10 in the Kindle version at Amazon.com.
If this sounds like major déjà vu, it's because the Obama election campaign did exactly the same thing in 2008 when it mobilized a major assault on Corsi's previous book about Obama, the No. 1 New York Times bestseller "The Obama Nation." And that was a response to the impact of his previous No. 1 New York Times bestseller, "Unfit for Command."
Jerome Corsi's new book, "Where's the Birth Certificate?", is now available for immediate shipping, autographed by the author, only from the WND Superstore
Today's attack by the Obama machine on Corsi's latest and most controversial book was introduced as an offering to sell Obama supporters a T-shirt or coffee mug with an image of the Obama "Certificate of Live Birth" released several weeks ago as well as a portrait of Obama, stamped "Made in America."
In an e-mail dispatched from BarackObama.com this morning, Julianna Smoot proclaims, "You'll like this one."
"Let me introduce you to Jerome Corsi," she says. "This week he released a new book that the publisher says will be a bestseller 'of historic proportions.' The title is 'Where's the Birth Certificate?' – yes, really.
"Corsi's work is a greatest-hits reel of delusions, ranging from 9/11 conspiracies to claiming that there is an infinite supply of oil in the Earth's core. In 2008, he published a book about Barack Obama claiming, among other things, that he (a) is a secret Muslim; (b) is secretly anti-military; (c) secretly dealt drugs; and (d) secretly supported terrorist actions when he was eight years old. So many secrets."
The email tells recipients, "The only thing we can do is laugh at it – and make sure as many other people as possible are in on the joke."
(Story continues below)
Then it asks supporters to donate $30 or more to Obama in exchange for a "limited edition" shirt.
The Obama email, and purchase offer:
The Obama email |
This is not the first White House reaction to Corsi's latest book. The president himself confirmed that he ordered the release of the "certificate" right after the bestselling "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President" was profiled on the Drudge Report and reached No. 1 on Amazon.
So, why the Obama organization's attack against this particular book, when there are so many other hot-selling books that are also very critical of Obama?
"If what Barack Obama released is really a valid birth certificate that answers all the questions about this controversy, why is the Obama campaign in attack mode on Jerome Corsi's bestselling book?" asks Joseph Farah, CEO of WND.com and WND Books, publisher of "Where's the Birth Certificate?"
"Because he fears it is his undoing. Do you really think the $1 billion Obama campaign cares about selling a few coffee mugs? Give me a break. This is an effort to derail media attention from a successful book and media tour that is focusing renewed attention on his ineligibility for office."
Just an hour earlier, Esquire, the Hearst Corporation-owned 79-year-old national magazine, published a fabricated report attacking the Corsi book.
Esquire, which endorsed Obama for president in 2008, claimed falsely in the story that "Where's the Birth Certificate?" was being "pulled from [bookstore] shelves," was being disavowed by the publisher who was offering refunds to customers, and that all copies were being destroyed.
The magazine later claimed it had "committed satire" but not until after a number of major news organizations apparently accepted the report as genuine and contacted WND Books for reaction.
At the Political Punch blog on the ABC News website, Jake Tapper reported that Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt characterized the new effort as a "mobile version" of Obama's 2008 online "fight the smears" effort, which attempted to mute criticisms about his candidacy.
'Fight the Smears' 2.0
About that déjà vu: In June 2008, Obama launched a website called "Fight the Smears" to stop "ideologues" from "spreading a 'pack of lies' about Barack." As WND reported, the site disappeared in July 2009.
"Whenever challenged with these lies we will aggressively push back with the truth and help our supporters debunk the false rumors floating around the Internet," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor told the New York Times.
Some of the "smears" they intended to smack down included assertions that "Obama's campaign was funded by foreigners," "Obama sought endorsement from the (socialist) New Party," "Obama has connections to Bill Ayers" and "Obama is a Muslim."
The website reserved a special section for its counter-attack on Corsi's 2008 New York Times No. 1 bestseller, "The Obama Nation," featuring a 40-page rebuttal.
However, many of the so-called "smears" of 2008 have turned out to be widely recognized as factual. Moreover, many charges made against Corsi by the Obama campaign were themselves fabricated. For instance, not only did Corsi not state in "The Obama Nation" that the president is a secret Muslim, he said the opposite. In advice to John McCain's campaign, Corsi offered that it would be unwise to make that claim, because one can't "read another person's soul."
Obama's father was a convert to Islam and his stepfather was a Muslim. During the 2008 presidential campaign, the Associated Press published an image of a document that showed Obama's religion as "Islam" and his citizenship "Indonesian" when he lived in the Muslim-majority nation with his mother and stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.
Indonesian school registration for "Barry Soetoro" (AP photo) |
Corsi also endured a fierce backlash to his previous No. 1 New York Times bestseller, co-authored with John O'Neill, "Unfit for Command," which charged that Democratic Sen. John Kerry fabricated his image as a Vietnam war hero. The book also recounted his radical anti-war effort that followed his deployment. Many political analysts believe "Unfit for Command" and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign that accompanied it was a decisive factor in Kerry's loss to President George W. Bush in 2004.
Media, including the Associated Press, typically call the book's claims "unsubstantiated" or "debunked," usually without evidence. Those who offered evidence contended the military's records supported Kerry's version of events, without mentioning the group's assertion that it was Kerry himself who wrote the "official record" in many instances, in after-action reports.
When the Kerry campaign did respond to specific claims in "Unfit for Command," it was to backtrack, such as in the case of Kerry's long-held assertion – which he later was forced to recant – that he was in Cambodia illegally Christmas Eve 1968.
Instead of addressing the Swift Boat Veterans' specific claims, the Kerry campaign threatened lawsuits against the television stations that aired the group's ads, demanded publisher Regnery pull "Unfit for Command," accused the group of being run by the Republican Party and attacked the character of co-authors O'Neill and Corsi.
But the lesson the Kerry campaign's ineffectual response to the devastating Swift Boat campaign was this: When Corsi writes a book, counter-attack swiftly and with all barrels. That was the strategy followed by the Obama campaign in 2008 with "The Obama Nation," and again now with "Where's the Birth Certificate?"
Of course, sometimes publicity – even bad publicity – is a good thing.
"Obama's campaign skyrocketed Corsi to immediate and certain fame," wrote commentator Judi McLeod at Canada Free Press.
"Marxists liking to mock their enemies is no guarantee folks will buy Obama's silly coffee mugs," she wrote. "There are too many out there worried they won't be able to come up with the scratch for the coffee to pour into them."
"Meanwhile, the big question 'Where's the Birth Certificate?" just got replaced with 'Why would the president of the USA publicly mock the man who asked?' on a coffee mug?"
At the Chicago Sun-Times, Lynn Sweet wrote, "If the 'birthers' will never believe Obama was born in the U.S., the Obama re-election campaign figures it may as well make some money off of them."
Half of Americans still doubt Obama's birth story
On April 27, with great fanfare, Obama finally released his "birth certificate" after years of stonewalling, spending a fortune on attorneys to block its release and defend against dozens of lawsuits brought by citizens wanting to see it, claiming he had already released it and ridiculing everybody who said he had not released it.
Yet a stunning Gallup Poll taken more than a week later (May 5-8) shows more than half of all Americans remain unconvinced Obama was born in the U.S.
Perhaps that's because, while the establishment press continues to ridicule "birthers" as conspiracy nuts, the White House's April 27 document release has generated vexing new questions and outright contradictions regarding the president's "birth certificate."
For instance, two weeks before Obama finally released his "long-form birth certificate," Hawaii's former Health Department chief Chiyome Fukino – the one official who claimed to have examined Obama's original birth document under lock and key in Hawaii – was interviewed by NBC News' national investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff, who reported that Fukino told him she had seen the original birth certificate and that it was "half typed and half handwritten."
However, the document released by the White House was entirely typed. Only the signatures and two dates at the very bottom were "handwritten." What Fukino described is apparently a different document from what Obama released to the public.
Since the document's late-April release, a flood of expert analyses, some by Obama voters, has cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of the president's belatedly produced "birth certificate."
Moreover, despite the book's controversial title, discussion of the "birth certificate" is actually only a small component of the book's argument regarding Obama's eligibility for the presidency.
Among topics dealt with in "Where's the Birth Certificate?":
• The mainstream media feverishly investigated the presidential eligibility story – that is, when it focused on Obama's Republican opponent, John McCain.
• Obama was born a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, a circumstance the Constitution’s framers considered an iron-clad roadblock to the presidency. The book documents the clear, original intent of the Constitution's founders, which was that no one with dual loyalties would ever be president and commander in chief.
• As a boy, Obama was officially registered in school as a Muslim and Indonesian citizen, another barrier to U.S. natural-born citizenship.
• The press and blogosphere widely reported Obama was born at Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu – before deciding he was born across town at Kapi’olani Women’s and Children’s Hospital. To this day, Kapi'olani is bizarrely secretive about Obama's alleged birth there.
• The Congressional Research Service, a public policy arm of Congress, officially admits no one in the government ever vetted Obama’s constitutional eligibility.
• In preparation for the 2012 election, more than a dozen states are considering legislation to force all presidential candidates to prove they are constitutionally qualified before they can be placed on that state’s ballot
• Going far beyond the issue of birth certificates, Corsi not only documents inconsistencies, blackouts and outright fabrications in Obama's life narrative that have generated widespread doubts, but lays out a compelling body of evidence that Obama is not a natural-born citizen as is required of all presidents by Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution.
One of the biggest disputes that remains unaddressed is why Barack Obama, who lived in Hawaii as a teen, has a Social Security number that indicates he had a Connecticut address.
The controversy over Obama's Social Security number traces back to a WND story May 11, 2010, when it was reported that two private investigators working independently were asking why Obama was using a number set aside for applicants in Connecticut while there is no record he ever had a mailing address in the state.
The records indicate the number was issued between 1977 and 1979, when Obama was between 16 and 18 years old and living in Hawaii.
The Social Security website confirms that the first three digits in Obama's Social Security number are reserved for applicants with Connecticut addresses, 040-049.
Since 1973, Social Security numbers have been issued by one central office, and the first three digits of a person's Social Security number have been determined by the Zip code of the mailing address on the application.
