While nearly 400,000 concerned citizens demand PresidentObama present his elusive "long-form" birth certificate,more than a dozen other documents remain unreleased or otherwise blocked from the public eye.
Numerous documents which have yet to be surrenderedinclude the following.
Obama kindergarten records
The Maui News reported that Obama attended kindergarten at Noelani Elementary School on Oahuduring the school year 1966-67. It released a photo of two teachers, Katherine Nakamoto andAimee Yatsushiro, with five students. The teachers claim one of the children is Barack Obama.
According to the Hawaii Department of Education, students must submit a birth certificate toregister . Parents may bring a passport or student visa if the child is from a foreign country.
So far, no records have been released by the school. Noelani Elementary School officials have notresponded to WND's request for comment.
Punahou School records
Though from a modest background, Obama began attending the prestigiousPunahou School in Honolulu, one of Hawaii's top private institutions. Hereportedly received a scholarship and attended the school from the fifth
grade until he finished high school, though no financial records have beenreleased.
The Boston Globe reported, "In 1979, the year Obama graduated, tuition for high school students at Punahou was $1,990, a sizable expense comparedwith Hawaii's median family income of $22,750 that year.
Obama, reportedly a "B" student, studied among the island's richest andmost accomplished students. According to the school's website, he also
played forward on Punahou's 1979 state championship basketball team.
Occidental College records
Obama's alleged kindergarten class (photo: Maui News)
Punahou's alleged 1979yearbook photo of Obamaplaying basketball
Obama arrived at Occidental College, a small liberal arts school in Los Angeles, Calif., in the fall of 1979. He only briefly mentions the school in his 1995 memoir, "Dreams from My Father."
Obama attended the school on a scholarship. Some question whether the financial aid he receivedwas reserved for foreign students. Financial records have not been released.
In a legal action, handled largely by GaryKreep of the U.S. Justice Foundation, officialsat Occidental College were served with ademand to produce records concerning Barack Obama's attendance there during the 1980s
because they could document whether he wasattending as a foreign national.
Kreep petitioned the college with a demand for its records concerning Obama.
"The gravamen of the petition is the questionas to whether United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama, of Illinois, is eligible to serveas president of the United States pursuant tothe requirements for that office in the UnitedStates Constitution," he wrote. "The recordssought may provide documentary evidence,and/or admissions by said defendant, as to said eligibility or lack thereof."
College officials then contacted Obama's lawyers, who argued to the court that the election wasover and that future concerns should be addressed to Congress.
The motion stated that the records, which could reveal on what name Obama attended classes atOccidental and whether he attended on scholarship money intended for foreign students, "are of norelevance to this moot litigation."
The motion also claimed the petitioners failed to serve the subpoena properly.
Get your "Where's the birth certificate?" bumper sticker here.
"The subpoena directed to Occidental College should therefore be quashed. Alternatively, this court
should issue an order directing that the deposition of the custodian of records of Occidental Collegenot take place," the firm working on Obama's behalf stated.
"The central issue in this lawsuit … is whether any Respondent had a legal duty to demand proof of natural born citizenship from Democratic Party's nominee," the motion said. "None of thedocuments sought by petitioners could possibly assist in answering this question."
A judge granted a motion to quash the subpoena.
"Obama's attorneys bent over backward to block us," Kreep told WND. "Obama doesn't wantanyone to see those records. He's trying to hide them."
His efforts resulted in a threat from Obama's attorneys to seek financial sanctions against the plaintiff's lawyers.
Kreep said a notice of appeal will be filed next week.
A notice posted on the Occidental College website states, "Family Educational Rights and PrivacyAct (FERPA) regulations protect the privacy of student education records. We, therefore, cannotdisclose students' classes, grade point averages, majors or other such information."
Columbia University records
Obama transferred from Occidental College to Columbia University in 1981, at the age of 20.
According to the New York Times, Obama "suggests in his book that his years in New York were a pivotal period: He ran three miles a day, buckled down to work and 'stopped getting high,' which he
says he had started doing in high school. Yet he declined repeated requests to talk about his NewYork years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker,roommate or friend from those years."
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the newspaper in October 2007, "He doesn’t remember thenames of a lot of people in his life."
In a 2005 profile in a Columbia alumni magazine, Obama called his time at the school "an intense period of study."
"I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn't socialize that much. I was like a monk," he said.
Columbia University hosts outdoor viewing of 2009 Inauguration on large screen
Obama claimed to be a part of the Black Student Organization and anti-apartheid activities. Butaccording to the New York Times, several well-known student leaders did not recall hisinvolvement.
Fox News made contact with 400 of Obama's classmates. No one remembered him.
The Columbia University chapter in Obama's life remains blank, according to the New York Sun.
"The Obama campaign has refused to release his college transcript, despite an academic career thatled him to Harvard Law School and, later, to a lecturing position at the University of Chicago," theSun reported in September 2008. "The shroud surrounding his experience at Columbia contrastswith that of other major party nominees since 2000, all whom have eventually released informationabout their college performance or seen it leaked to the public."
When the newspaper inquired, the Obama campaign did not offer an explanation for why thetranscript had not been released.
According to the New York Sun, a program from Columbia's 1983 commencement ceremony listsObama as a graduate. University spokesman Brian Connollyconfirmed that Obama graduated with a major in politicalscience but without honors. Nonetheless, he was later admitted to Harvard Law School.
Columbia thesis "Soviet Nuclear Disarmament"
Before applying to Harvard, Obama is said to have written amajor thesis in his senior year. It has not been released.
An Oct 30, 2007, a New York Times article stated, "[Obama] barely mentions Columbia, training ground for theelite, where he transferred in his junior year, majoring in
political science and international relations and writing histhesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament."
Former Columbia professor, Michael Baron, told NBC NewsObama excelled in his year-long honors seminar calledAmerican Foreign Policy.
He also said Obama spent a whole year writing a "thesis" or "senior thesis" on the topic of nuclear negotiations with the former Soviet Union.
"My recollection is that the paper was an analysis of the evolution of the arms reductionnegotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States," Baron told reporters in an e-mail."At that time, a hot topic in foreign policy circles was finding a way in which each country couldsafely reduce the large arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at the other … For U.S. policy makers in
both political parties, the aim was not disarmament, but achieving deep reductions in the Sovietnuclear arsenal and keeping a substantial and permanent American advantage. As I remember it, the
paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success. Barack got an A."
Baron said he saved Obama's paper and recently searched through boxes hoping to find it, but hetold reporters he may have thrown it away during a move several years ago.
Baron wrote a letter of recommendation when Obama applied to Harvard Law School. According toFederal Election Commission records, he also donated at least $1,250 to Obama's presidentialcampaign.
On July 24, 2008, the Obama administration told NBC News Obama was unable to release copiesof his thesis paper.
"We do not have a copy of the course paper you requested and neither does Columbia University,"Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said.
According to MSNBC, Columbia University officials claim they do not have a copy available in thecollege's archives.
Harvard Law School records
With less than steller marks upon hisgraduation from Columbia, Obama
was accepted into Harvard LawSchool.
WND columnist Jack Cashill wrote,"If Obama's LSAT scores meritedadmission (to Harvard), we wouldknow about them. We don't. TheObama camp guards those scores, likehis SAT scores, more tightly that Irandoes its nuclear secrets."
He continued, "We know enoughabout Obama's Columbia grades to
know how far they fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard."
Cashill wrote, Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, lobbiedfriends like Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton to intervene at Harvard on Obama's behalf.Al-Mansour reportedly mentored founders of the Black Panther party in the early 1960s.
Cashill suggests Obama's "shyness" about his Harvard experience may stem from his reluctance to
broadcast his connections.
According to Politico, Obama's name does not appear on any legal scholarships during his time atHarvard. His campaign reportedly said his Harvard education was a product of hard work andstudent loans. Obama graduated magna cum laude in 1991.
Harvard Law Review articles
In 1990, Obama beat out 18 other contenders to become the first black president of the HarvardLaw Review, where he spent at least 50 hours a week editing submissions from judges, scholars andauthors.
According to Politico, there were "eight dense volumes produced during his time in charge there – 2,083 pages in all."
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told Politico Obama didn't write any articles for the Review, buthe did leave behind numerous case analyses and unsigned "notes" from Harvard students.
As Matthew Franck noted in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time."
Susan Estrich, the first female president of the Review who served 14 years earlier, said Obamamust have had something published that year, even if his campaign denied it.
"They probably don't want [to] have you [reporters] going back" to examine the Review, she said.
Staff of the 1990-1991 Law Review with Obama at center (photo: Obama campaign)
However, Politico later reported it had unearthed a 1990 article that "offers a glimpse at Obama's
views on abortion policy and the law during his student days."
His six-page summary answers a legal question about whether fetuses should be allowed to filelawsuits against their mothers.
"Obama's answer, like most courts': No," Politico reported. "He wrote approvingly of an IllinoisSupreme Court ruling that the unborn cannot sue their mothers for negligence, and he suggestedthat allowing fetuses to sue would violate the mother's rights and could, perversely, cause her totake more risks with her pregnancy."
The report continued, "His article acknowledged a public interest in the health of the fetus, but also
seemed to demonstrate his continuing commitment to abortion rights, and suggested that thegovernment may have more important concerns than 'ensuring that any particular fetus is born.'"
Despite its earlier statement, theObama campaign later confirmedObama's authorship of the articleand claimed it was the only piece hehad written for the Review.
University of Chicago scholarlyarticles
Obama lectured at the University of Chicago Law School, a top schoolwhere the faculty is known for voluminous scholarly publishing,from 1992 until 2004.
The university offered Obama a full-time tenure-track position, an honor typically reserved for published instructors. However, reporters have been unable to find scholarly articles authored by
him. The university reports that Obama declined the tenure offer.
Sarah Galer, news editor at the Law School and Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, told WND, "President Obama wrote 'Dreams from My Father' while at the law school butdid not produce any scholarly articles as far as I know."
Passport
According to March 2008 reports, State Department employees conducted an unauthorized searchof Obama's passport files during the recent presidential campaign. CNN reported that three differentcontract workers accessed his information on separate occasions – Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14 – without authorization. Two workers were fired and another faced discipline.
Obama's files reportedly contained copies of passport applications, birth date, basic biographicalinformation, records of passport renewal and possibly citizenship information.
The Obama campaign demanded a thorough investigation to determine which employees looked atthe file and why.
"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shownlittle regard for either over the last eight years," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton told CNN
in a statement. "Our government's duty is to protect the private information of the American people,not use it for political purposes."
Meanwhile, a key witness who had been cooperating with federal investigators was later foundfatally shot in front of a Washington, D.C., church. A police officer found the body of Lt. QuarlesHarris Jr., 24, slumped dead inside his car.
At the time, investigators said they didn't have any information connecting the murder to the passport case. After one year of investigation of the homicide, there have been no arrests.
During his first presidential campaign in 1999, Sen. John McCain released 1,500 pages of medicaland psychiatric records collected by the Navy. In 2008, McCain allowed reporters to spend threehours sifting through 1,200 pages of health records.
In 1999, former Vice President Al Gore releasedmedical records revealing "mildly elevated" cholesterol
levels and removal of a common form of skin cancer from his forehead in 1997. The documents disclosedhis weight, resting heart rate, resting blood pressure,cardiovascular fitness and a variety of other healthdetails. Gore's records were compiled after a complete
physical examination by several military physicians.
Likewise, President George W. Bush allowed themedia to view about 400 pages of personal medicalinformation in 2000 and 2004.
After initial reluctance, Sen. John Kerry allowed the Navy to release his full medical records in 2004.
While not all have done so, it has been common practice for presidential candidates to releasemedical records.
However, Barack Obama, a relativelyyoung candidate who was said to have
been in "excellent health," refused torelease medical records. Instead, hesimply provided a six-paragraph notefrom his physician briefly summarizing21 years of doctor visits and healthinformation.
The letter contained no supportingdocumentation.
Other documents
According to additional records listed at
the Obama File Report, other documentsthat remain unreleased include:
• Complete files and schedules of his years as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004
• Obama's client list from during his time in private practice with the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Gallard
• Illinois State Bar Association records
• Baptism records
• Obama/Dunham marriage license
Couple said to be Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham (photo: Obama campaign)
WND has been reporting since before the election on questions – and lawsuits – raised over Obama's birth and eligibility. He reported in his book he was born in Hawaii and his half-sister agrees. But the woman the president says is his paternal grandmother, Sarah Obama, claimed tohave been present at her grandson's birth in Mombasa, Kenya.
The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizenof the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Officeof President."
Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 380,000 others and
sign up now!
Complicating the issue are Obama's move to Indonesia as a child,where he reportedly attended that nation's public schools, and hislater travels to Pakistan, raising questions about on what nation's
passport was that travel accomplished. Then there are the multiplelaw firms hired to make certain Obama's long-form birthcertificate information, and other documentation such as collegerecords, remain sealed from public view.
Obama's presidential campaign released to select newsorganizations only what is known as a "certification of live birth,"a document obtainable in Hawaii in 1961 by Americans actually
born outside the country. However, Joseph Farah, WND editor and chief executive officer, has been calling for the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate showing the hospital of his
birth, attending physician and other details to confirm his citizenship status.
Farah launched a national billboard campaign last month in an effort to keep the issue before the
American people. The billboards, being leased around the country, ask the simple question,"Where's the birth certificate?" Farah is asking the public to support his campaign with donations.So far, more than $75,000 has been collected.
The billboard campaign followed one launched months earlier to collect the names on an electronic petition demanding accountability and transparency on the issue. So far, that petition has gatherednearly 400,000 names.
The campaign got a boost recently when WND White House correspondent Les Kinsolving askedObama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, why the president wouldn't release his birth certificate.Gibbs' response was covered live on C-SPAN and by Fox News Channel and others – excluding
It was the first time any member of the press corps has publicly asked a member of theadministration a question directly related to Obama's constitutional eligibility for office as a"natural born citizen."
Congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionallyeligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," but no controlling legal authority ever sought to
verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.
Both the petition and the billboard campaign are part of what Farah calls an independent "truth andtransparency campaign."
The first sign to be posted under the campaign, a digital, electronic one, is up and online onHighway 165 in Ball, La.. In addition, based on the heavy volume of financial donations in the firstdays of the campaign, WND was able to commit to leasing three more standard billboards – one inLos Angeles, another in Orange County, Calif. and a third in Pennsylvania.
Birth certificate question being raised in Ball, La
Farah said the campaign was born of frustration with timid elected officials in Washington, corrupt judges around the country and a news media that show a stunning lack of curiosity about the most basic facts of Obama's background – especially how it relates to constitutional eligibility for thehighest office in the land.
"As Obama transforms this country from self-governing constitutional republic to one governed bya central ruling elite, the simple fact remains that no controlling legal authority has established thathe is indeed a 'natural born citizen' as the Constitution requires," Farah said. "Obama's promises of
transparency have become a bad joke as he continues to hide simple, innocuous documents like his birth certificate and his student records."
