Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii |
The Honolulu hospital which for nearly six months proudly declared President Obama was born at its facility and used that claim as a major fund-raising tool is now engaged in an active cover-up, hiding a White House letter announcing his alleged birth there and refusing to confirm such a letter even exists.
The Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children is electronically cloaking what it had touted as a Jan. 24 letter from the president, in which the commander in chief, just four days after his inauguration, supposedly wrote, "As a beneficiary of the excellence of Kapi'olani Medical Center – the place of my birth – I am pleased to add my voice to your chorus of supporters."
WND was first to question the authenticity of the letter by revealing the image displayed on the hospital's website was not the image of an actual paper letter, but merely a computer-created likeness of a letter using HTML code, the building blocks of websites.
Barack Obama states in this purported letter from him on what appears to be White House stationery that he was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu. The letter was posted by the medical center for nearly six months on its website before electronically hidden once WND publicized it. |
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Within an hour of WND's report, the image, which also featured no presidential or White House seal, vanished from view on the hospital's page celebrating its 100th anniversary.
WND can now reveal the hospital did not completely remove the image of the letter. It actually covered it up electronically using a special hiding code called "commenting out" that prevents readers from seeing it when anything is put between "<!--" and "-->."
WND took a screen shot of the source code, which is now showing up in green as it's being hidden from viewing on the regular, visible page.
This source code screen shot taken July 10, 2009, demonstrates that a "comment out" has been inserted in the HTML code to prevent the display of what Kapi'olani Medical Center in Honolulu had been proudly proclaiming to be a White House letter from President Obama announcing he was born at the facility. The cloaking change took place approximately an hour after WND revealed the alleged White House letter was merely a computer-generated likeness of a letter. |
"That was purposeful coding in of well-known HTML code that basically removes code from showing up in the display of a Web page, but maintains it in the actual source code of the page," an Internet consultant told WND. "It's just a quick way to stop things from showing up in the browser. It's typically done so that coders can hide or bring something back quickly."
Here is WND's original screenshot of the letter's source code before it was "commented out" to conceal the letter:
This July 9, 2009, screenshot of the source code, revealed what was touted as a White House letter from President Obama is not an image of any actual letter, but merely a computer-generated likeness of a letter.Within approximately an hour of WND's exposing that fact, the hospital "commented out" its HTML code to conceal the letter from view. |
Kapi'olani spokeswoman Kristy Watanabe today refused to even confirm the existence of an actual letter from the White House, only parroting her previous statement to WND: "Federal law does not permit us to provide any more details concerning information [about Obama's birth] without authorization from Mr. Obama."
WND asked again since they have been celebrating Obama's own supposed written admission that he was born at the facility, isn't that authorization?
"No comment," Watanabe said.
WND can also reveal the hospital not only proclaimed itself as Obama's birth location online, it used the Oval Office disclosure as a major fund-raising tool, giving it massive play on page six in its spring edition of its own Inspire Magazine.
A screen shot of the alleged presidential letter and accompanying article is displayed here:
When one compares the version of the letter in the magazine to the one Kapi'olani had online, there are some obvious differences which can be spotted immediately, including a different font for the text, and the fact that Obama's purported signature swoops down over his typewritten name, though it's completely separate from it in the online version.
Chuck Sted, CEO of Hawaii Pacific Health |
"As the hospital celebrates 100 years of pediatric care in Hawaii, we've begun a capital campaign to position the hospital for the next century of care," wrote Chuck Sted, president and CEO of Hawaii Pacific Health which runs Kapi'olani, in his published plea for donations in the edition featuring the Obama letter.
"Our donors recognize the need is urgent; Hawaii's children and families cannot wait. Your support matters. As today's economic realities force all of us to re-think our priorities, we hope you agree that top-quality health care is not a 'nice to have.' It is a priority; it is vital."
The hospital acknowledged it did publish the "Obama birth letter" image in the magazine, but spokeswoman Watanabe refused to answer any questions about it.
"Right now we have no comment. Thank you very much," she said, abruptly ending the conversation by hanging up the phone.
WND has continuously contacted the White House this week to authenticate the existence, authorship and contents of the letter and confirm the true birth hospital of the president.
Staff members there have acknowledged seeing the image of the letter originally published online, but have still not provided any comment.
Suspicions about the letter's authenticity were raised when WND discovered the image posted online was created in HTML computer code, and was not a true image of a document. Various screen shots of the hospitals website before the letter's removal demonstrate that.
Dragging a cursor over the White House letterhead reveals the .jpg image |
Dragging a cursor over Barack Obama's purported signature reveals the .jpg image |
The process of creating a letter in HTML code is not difficult. To
demonstrate just how simple it is, WND used code to put together a
likeness of what Kapi'olani has been alleging to be a letter from the
president.
Below is the WND re-creation using a different font, and it is stressed that this is not an actual letter sent by the White House:
January 24, 2009 Kapi`olani Medical Center Dear Friends, I am writing to share congratulations on the Kapi`olani was one of Hawai`i's earliest hospitals, Hawai`i has always been a home to me, and I'm pleased Sincerely, Barack Obama |
Another issue is U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie's reading of the letter to the audience of more than 700 at the hospital's Centennial Dinner, who cheered when the portion was read mentioning Obama's "birth" at Kapi'olani.
At times, Abercrombie did not read the letter verbatim, as he added some words and deleted others. Ironically, though Kapi'olani scrubbed the alleged Obama birth letter from its site, as of the posting of this article, it retained the video of Abercrombie reading the text, found at the 2:11 mark of the three-minute video.
Like the hospital, Abercrombie has also been personally publicizing the claim Obama was born at Kapi'olani, for months trumpeting on his congressional website the question of Obama's origin is now settled "once and for all," excerpting from Obama's letter that Kapi'olani "is the place of my birth. Hawaii has always been home to me."
Unlike the hospital, Abercrombie's declaration is still viewable as of the posting of this article.
As soon as WND posted questions about the letter – including a story investigating conflicting news reports stating he was born at more than one Honolulu hospital – within hours a number of information sites, such as United Press International and the hoax-busting Snopes.com, swapped their long-published location of Obama's birth from Honolulu's Queen's Medical Center to Kapi'olani.
One WND reader in Beaver Dam, Wis., contacted UPI for an explanation, and received this response from the news agency's Marcy Kreiter, who stated: "The writer made an error. When an error is pointed out to us, we fix it. There's no scrubbing of archives."
WND is also reporting today that an African news site and an MSNBC broadcaster have delivered new
references to President Obama's birthplace as being outside of the
United States
To date, Obama has not revealed his original long-form,
hospital-generated "Certificate of Live Birth" that includes details
such as the name of the medical facility and the doctor who delivered
him.
Here is an actual Hawaii birth certificate from 1963 (the
same era as Obama's birth), which while redacted includes detailed
information documenting a birth, including the name of the birth
hospital and the attending physician. Beneath it is the short-form
"Certification of Live Birth" offered by President Obama as proof of
his Hawaiian birth. It is possible to have been born outside of Hawaii
and still obtain the latter form, but not the former:
Long-form birth certificate from state of Hawaii (Image courtesy Philip Berg) |
Here is the "Certification of Live Birth" presented by
Obama:
Short-form "Certification of Live Birth" |
WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's
status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1,
states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United
States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to
the Office of President."
Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually
born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's
American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to
confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship
through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom
at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the
framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural
born.
Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend
sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a
state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions.
Among the cases have been several from Democrat Philip
Berg, who has alleged that not only is Obama ineligible to be president, he
was unqualified to be the senator from Illinois and should be prosecuted under
the False Claims Act.
The key question in the dispute also is being raised on billboards nationwide.
"Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard in Pennsylvania |
The billboard campaign follows an ongoing petition
campaign launched several months ago by WND Editor and Chief Executive
Officer Joseph Farah.
They are intended to raise public awareness of the fact
that Obama has never released the standard "long-form" birth certificate that
would show which hospital he was born in, the attending physician and establish
that he truly was born in Hawaii, as his autobiography maintains.
Note: Members of the news media wishing to interview Joe Kovacs, Joseph Farah, Jerome
Corsi or Bob Unruh on this issue, please contact WND.
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