'Birth hospital': Letter for real

After days of sustained silence, the Honolulu hospital that trumpeted – then later concealed – a letter allegedly written by President Obama in which he ostensibly declares his birth at the facility now claims the letter is, in fact, real.

WorldNetDaily has obtained exclusive images of what the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children says is the original White House correspondence, dated Jan. 24 of this year, just four days after the inauguration of the new commander in chief.

A photograph taken by the Kapi'olani Medical Center for WND shows a letter allegedly written by President Obama on embossed White House stationery in which he declares the Honolulu hospital to be "the place of my birth," The hospital, after publicizing the letter then refusing to confirm it even existed, is now vouching for its authenticity. The White House has yet to verify the claim.

"As a beneficiary of the excellence of the Kapi'olani Medical Center – the place of my birth – I am pleased to add my voice to your chorus of supporters," Obama purportedly wrote.

This excerpt from the alleged Obama letter is perhaps the first formal declaration from the president about his exact birthplace. The White House has still not confirmed if the letter or its contents are authentic.

"We treasure the letter, and we're delighted to share it with you," said Keala Peters, director of marketing and communications for Hawaii Pacific Health, which runs the hospital.

For nearly six months, the text of the letter had been proudly displayed on the hospital's webpage celebrating its 100th anniversary, and was also featured prominently as part of a major fundraising campaign in the spring edition of the facility's Inspire Magazine.

Kapi'olani used a letter,
allegedly written by President Obama in which he declares his birthplace to be
at the facility, to solicit donations in its spring 2009 edition of its Inspire Magazine. The hospital, after refusing to confirm the letter even
existed, is now vouching for its authenticity.

But as WND reported, the image posted online without any presidential or White House seal was shown not to be an actual scanned photo of a paper letter, but rather a computer-generated image created with 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 and used for fundraising before electronically hidden once WND
disclosed it was not an actual paper letter, but merely HTML coding. The hospital now says it has a real document, though the White House has still not verified its authenticity.

When that disclosure was revealed by WND, Kapi'olani literally covered it up, electronically concealing the image from its anniversary page and refusing to confirm the letter even existed. Even the image used as a fundraiser in Inspire Magazine is clearly not the same document now being presented by Kapi'olani, as evinced by differences in the amount of white space between the "Washington" letterhead and the subsequent text.

Join the petition campaign to
make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth
certificate!

Despite numerous requests last week for the hospital to verify the correspondence, Kapi'olani spokeswoman Kristy Watanabe would only say: "Federal law does not permit us to provide any more details concerning information [about Obama's birth] without authorization from Mr. Obama."

Late yesterday, though, Peters finally responded to WND's inquiry when the news site informed the hospital that the FBI and United States Secret Service said the matter could potentially lead to criminal prosecution were the letter determined to be fraudulent.

"It would be a charity fraud scheme," said FBI spokesman Steve Kodak. "It would be investigated by us or the Secret Service. We both have jurisdiction over that."

Peters says Kapi'olani actually has a reproduction of the "original letter" on display at the hospital.

"The original is something that we treasure, and we know that it came from Mr. Obama," she said, explaining only that the paper document was personally presented to them by U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, who read its contents – straying at times from the actual text – at the hospital's Centennial Dinner Jan. 24, the same day the letter in question is dated.

Interestingly, when WND last week asked Abercrombie's press aide Dave Helfert about the circumstances surrounding the letter, he indicated he (Helfert) was first aware of it "once the newspaper ran the story from the next day."

"It sounds like Neil was asked to read it on behalf of the hospital," Helfert said.

Regarding Obama's refusal to release his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate, Helfert said he couldn't speak for the president, but "if that were me, I'd tell people to stick it in their ear. It's none of their business."

Abercrombie has made no secret of having contact with the Obama family years ago when "Barry" was just a boy in the Aloha State.

In this video, the Democratic congressman told KSSK Radio reporter Mike Evans:

I would see little Barry – as his grandfather called him – little Barry and his grandfather mostly all over. They walked everywhere. Stan Dunham, his grandfather, took him everywhere. They met everybody and knew everybody. I mean it's Hawaii, right? It was easy. You wanna be friendly? You wanna see people and know people? You can do it, and he did, and little Barry went with him everywhere.

Regarding the precise whereabouts of the "original" Kapi'olani birth letter from Obama, Peters opted not to comment, saying "it's not anything we want to be damaged."

A close-up view of the letter photographed by the Kapi'olani Medical Center reveals an embossed presidential seal as part of the letterhead.

WND asked her why the hospital simply didn't post a scanned image of the paper letter on its site to begin with instead of the HTML version.

"We did that because we didn't want people to take it from the Web and use it for purposes other than for what it was intended," she responded. "I'm sorry it created suspicion on your part, but it was not our intention."

A close-up view of the photographed letter reveals the signature on this document is a far cry from the crude, computer-generated graphic made to look like a letter on the Kapi'olani Medical Center's website.That online image was concealed by the hospital after WND revealed it was not a photo of an actual paper letter.

When asked why Kapi'olani suddenly yanked the letter off its website after displaying it online for close to half a year, Peters acknowledged removing it "not because it doesn't exist, but because it was becoming a distraction."

"The inquiries about it became a distraction in running our hospital," she said.

Though the hospital now asserts the letter is indeed from Obama, the White House itself has still not corroborated the claim despite numerous phone, e-mail and in-person verification requests.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs refused to confirm the authenticity of the alleged Jan. 24, 2009, letter from President Obama to his purported place of birth, Kapi'olani Medical Center. His remarks begin at the 55:27 mark of the press briefing. (Click photo to view)

When WND correspondent Les Kinsolving asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the letter at Monday's news briefing, Gibbs refused to confirm its authenticity and belittled Kinsolving for even posing the question.

"Do all of your listeners and the listeners throughout this country the service to which any journalist owes those listeners, and that is the pursuit of the noble truth," Gibbs lectured Kinsolving. "And the noble truth is that the president was born in Hawaii, a state of the United States of America."

Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service, told WND, "We're not going to confirm or deny whether or not a letter exists if the White House has not confirmed it exists."

"This is something that is bearing the president's signature," he added. "It is the White House's responsibility to confirm it. So that is the first step – for the White House to determine its authenticity. We're not gonna trump the White House."

He noted he couldn't comment "about the pace" in which Obama or his surrogates would act.

When WND posed the possibility of continued stonewalling and fundraising using a presidential document that might not have originated with Obama, Wiley said, "In a case like that, it may be something we could very well investigate."

All of this matters because President Obama has still not provided simple, incontrovertible proof of his exact birthplace. That information would be included on his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate which Obama has steadfastly refused to release amid a flurry of conflicting reports.

WND has
reported that just within the last week, at least two reports have cited
Obama's birth in Kenya. Wikipedia
also was found to have been reporting on Obama's birth in Kenya, before a
series of scrubs placed his birth in Honolulu.

That came on the heels of several online
information sites changing the president's supposed birthplace from one hospital
in Hawaii to another, after WND broke the news of the letter said
to be from the White House.

WND has yet to be able to identify any physician or medical attendant present at
Kapi'olani in 1961 who can recall Ann Dunham, Obama's mother,
giving birth to Barack Obama at the hospital or who can identify the name of the
attending physician.

Now the Department of Defense has allegedly compelled a private employer to fire a U.S. Army Reserve major from his civilian job after he had his military deployment orders revoked for arguing he should not be required to serve under a president who has not proven his eligibility for office.

Want to
turn up the pressure to learn the facts? Get your signs and postcards asking for
the president's birth certificate documentation from the Birth Certificate
Store!

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 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" – challenges that all have been confronted by attorneys acting on the president's behalf to keep his records sealed.

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, Chelsea Schilling, Joseph Farah, Jerome
Corsi, Les Kinsolving or Bob Unruh on this issue, please contact WND.