Did Obama 'miss' 1 year of Columbia classes?

Barack Obama

What's this? Did Barack Obama only attend Columbia University for nine months?

That was the indication of a report obtained from the Student Clearinghouse by eligibility attorney Orly Taitz, who has represented clients in legal challenges pertaining to Obama's bona fides.

But according to information obtained by WND, it appears Obama did indeed attend Columbia for two years.

The concerns were raised in a document filed in court as part of an amended complaint in a case Taitz has assembled challenging the legitimacy of Obama's Social Security number. The case alleges Obama has used multiple Social Security numbers, and the number he reportedly uses today is a Connecticut number, even though Obama lacks links to the state at the time he would have obtained the number.

Help get TV commercials on the air to bust Obama's eligibility wide open!

In addition to the questions over the Social Security number, Taitz raises other questions.

"Further records from the Student Clearing House show even more shocking evidence. In his memoirs and multiple speeches Obama wrote that he studied for two years at Columbia University September 1981-May 1983. He admitted that in summer of 1981 he traveled to Pakistan to visit his friends, but repeatedly claimed that from September 1981 until May of 1983 he resided in New York and studied at Columbia," she wrote in the complaint.

But she explained she obtained evidence indicating Obama was not at Columbia during that entire time.

"Columbia official records show him attending Columbia university only for nine months September 1982-till May 1983 (Exhibit 3)," she wrote.

The exhibit is an image of a printout from the result of an online search of the National Student Clearinghouse database.

Clearinghouse document

The document indicates that Obama attended the university from "09/01/1982 to 05/31/1983."

Blowup of Clearinghouse document

But according to information provided by the clearinghouse to a WND source, Obama attended from "09/1981" to "05/1983" and finished with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.

School spokesman Robert Hornsby told WND that federal law limits the release of information about a student, but he could confirm that "Barack Obama applied for and was granted admission to Columbia College as a transfer student in 1981. He enrolled for the fall term of that year as a political science major. With the conclusion of the spring semester of 1983, Obama completed the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and graduated with his class."

He said the school had no other comment.

Taitz told WND that the school's statements were "nonsense."

She said he got her verification electronically, and it was part of a long list of attendance questions she submitted at the same time. She said she also requested information on Obama's attendance at Occidental College in California, and the service either could not or would not provide that information.

WND inquired of Columbia for information about several other students and found the Office of Alumni and Development could only confirm the attendance of a student, not the dates.

"I was instructed not to give out too much personal information," the office clerk told WND.

The registrar's office referred WND to a clearinghouse and said inquiries could be made through the college's archivist, who did not respond to a message left by WND.

In response to the question about Obama, the Office of Alumni and Development referred WND to the registrar's office, which declined to respond to questions, referring WND to the public affairs office for the law school. From there, WND was referred to the school's public affairs office, where Hornsby responded.

In his autobiography "Dreams from My Father," Obama vaguely wrote about attending Columbia for two years, but didn't provide specific dates.

Among the items also not released by Obama about his Columbia attendance were his grades, his associates, his thesis, his residential status, his support or funding for the school, his admission process, references and others.

Those records are on a long list of other unreleased documents, including his actual birth documentation, his Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, Illinois State Bar Association records, baptism records and his adoption records.

There are other discrepancies in the story Obama has presented. For example, a Hawaii newspaper reported Obama attended kindergarten on Oahu during the school year 1966-1967, at the time he reportedly was attending school in Indonesia where he and his mother moved when she married an Indonesian.

Further, Obama reported he was 2 years old when his father left the family, but university records shows his mother left Hawaii for school in Washington state within weeks of Obama's birth and did not return until after Barack Obama Sr. departed the islands. The evidence makes it appear unlikely the family ever actually lived together as a family.

He also wrote about finding his birth certificate in a book, but then his campaign posted online a computer generated image of a "short form" certificate that apparently was released by the state but indicates little more than someone reported the birth to the state and declared that the child was born in Hawaii.

When lawyers bringing a challenge to Obama's eligibility to hold the office of president subpoenaed Occidental College for records of Obama's attendance, attorneys for the president slapped the effort down in court immediately.

Such behavior bothers Hawaii State Sen. Sam Slom, who spoke to Jeff Katz of WXKS Radio in Boston.

"At first I followed [the issue] with amusement, and then I got really concerned about it, because the question was if it was not just the birth certificate, but other records as well – school records, academic records, work records – why would anyone spend millions of dollars in legal fees, particularly someone in public office, particularly someone in the highest public office, to not make that information public?"

He cited the suggestion that Barack Sr. might not have been Barack Obama's father and that information could be on the original long-form birth certificate that would prove embarrassing to the president.

Recently, potential presidential candidate Donald Trump has also questioned why Obama has kept his records under lock and key, stating, "There's something fishy about the whole thing," and, "There's something on that certificate that's very bad for him."

As WND reported, Slom brought up questions after Hawaii's Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie pledged to find and reveal Obama's birth documentation, then not only failed to follow through, but also asked for the resignation of the man he had chosen to serve as head of the Hawaii Department of Health, which reportedly holds the documentation.