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Polarik's final report: Obama's 'Born' Conspiracy

Forged images, phony photos, and felony fraud

By Ron Polarik, PhD

Forward

The following report is the culmination of over four months of intensive, empirical research whose sole purpose has been to determine if the images and photographs posted on the Internet are true reproductions of a genuine document purported to be Obama's original birth certificate. The idea for the research actually began from the time when the first image was posted on June 12 to the Daily Kos blog. I don't recall on which website I actually saw the story (most likely World Net Daily), but the news had gone viral basically from the moment that it hit the Internet.

Before seeing the image, I had no idea that Barack Obama's birthplace was in question, or that his status as a natural-born US citizen had never been proven. Like millions of other Americans, I believed the story he told about being born in Hawaii to an American Mother (and a U.S. citizen) and an African Father (a Kenyan national attending college on a student visa). I had no idea that this issue would mushroom and take on a life of its own. What I did know, however, was that from the first time I saw the Daily Kos image, or what I now call, "Obama's bogus birth certificate," that something was just not right about it. As someone who has scanned hundreds of thousands of documents in his lifetime, I had a hard time accepting that this was an original scan image made from an original paper document. As Fate would have it, right then, on June 13, I was looking at the conclusive evidence that the text on this image had been graphically altered, or "manufactured," as my first blog post would claim.

From that point onward, I had no inkling of what was to come. I had no idea that I would wind up being the only person on the Planet (at that time) to have spotted the anomalies that I knew were the by-products of intentional, graphic alteration, and to go on record as stating that the Daily Kos image was a fake. I was also not prepared for what came along with this knowledge, for what I had to endure for making it public. Basically, I had painted a big bullseye on my chest and my research findings, and the critics were now coming out of the virtual woodwork taking shots at me personally, and my research, secondly. I had started a new online game called, "Let's pile on Polarik," and every little error I made was magnified into a major transgression. Yet, the crux of my contention was never successfully refuted.

Now, if I had to do it all over again, I probably would not have done it at all, knowing that I'd be spending the next four months conducting further research and compiling evidence on not just the COLB image, but also the digital photographs that were to follow two months later. The personal costs to me were enormous, and I will not elucidate on them (but for those who know me, they also know what were those costs). What began as sort of a curiosity turned into my personal quest for the "Holy Grail," so to speak. I was guided only by the need to uncover the truth, and by the constant harassment by my critics. Had they left me alone from the beginning, I probably would not be writing this report today.

I debated, long and hard, about the title of my report. Aside from it being catchy, I ran the danger of being lumped into a group of false conspiracy theorists, and brushed aside as an idiot wearing a "tinfoil hat." (Actually, that's already happened, many times over). Perhaps there are a lot of false conspiracies, including some really outlandish ones, but there would not be laws on the books, both at a state level and a federal level, that specifically mention the act of conspiracy when the purpose of that conspiracy is to either engage in illegal activity, engage in a cover-up of that illegal activity, or interfering with the investigation of that illegal activity. Conspiracy can involve all of these. Yet, somehow, the word, "Conspiracy," has become a pejorative for "nutty theories from the fringe," as if there has never been a real "conspiracy."

Do you remember, or ever hear about, the "Watergate Conspiracy?" Do you remember, or ever hear about, what happened to President Richard Nixon as a result?

I would tell all of you who think that "conspiracies" are a joke and that the people who claim to have found them are "idiots wearing tinfoil hats," to just ask an FBI agent what he or she thinks about "conspiracy." Or, go ahead and ask a federal judge what he or she thinks about "conspiracy."

"Conspiracy" is no laughing matter, ladies and gentlemen, and neither is "document fraud," as in creating and passing a counterfeit birth certificate.

I should now alert you to the fact that I have been using the phrase, "Bogus birth certificate," as a euphemism for "Counterfeit birth certificate," which is defined as, "A copy or imitation of a state-issued birth certificate that is intended to be taken as authentic and genuine in order to deceive another."

Sound familiar? According to Authenticate-360:

Birth certificates are generally used as “breeder” documents to gain other identity documents and to perpetuate fraud. But unlike Social Security cards, birth certificates are issued by hundreds, if not thousands, of entities, with little regard to consistency or security. An accurately forged birth certificate is a dangerous document, allowing the bearer significant access to everything from driver’s licenses to passports...The increasing availability and affordability of high-quality digital scanners and copiers is a constant threat to the authenticity of government issued documents.

There are current Federal laws in place that prohibit the use of false identity documents, such as a birth certificate, and they are spelled out in Chapter 18 of the United States Code, Section 1028, Fraud and related activity in connection with identification documents, authentication features, and information. In particular, there are specific paragraphs that relate to the use of a false identification document:

The term "false identification document" means a document of a type intended or commonly accepted for the purposes of identification of individuals that - (A) is not issued by or under the authority of a governmental entity or was issued under the authority of a governmental entity but was subsequently altered for purposes of deceit; and(B) appears to be issued by or under the authority of the United States Government, a State, a political subdivision of a State, a foreign government, a political subdivision of a foreign government, or an international governmental or quasi-governmental organization.

What you are about to read in this report are well-documented facts arising from evidence collected over a period of four months and subjected to intense scrutiny and empirical evaluation. Given the overriding fact that the individual whose identity document is in question, has repeatedly failed to provide a genuine identity document, the charge that this individual, along with other individuals, did conspire to proffer in its place, a false identification document, is hereby levied by the American people, by way of one of its citizens. To summarize the seriousness of these actions and this charge, and to the importance of what is contained within this report:

There is conclusive and irrefutable evidence that the COLB image created and distributed by Obama's campaign to the Daily Kos, Annenberg's Factcheck, and the St. Pete Times, Politifact, is, unquestionably, a false identification document. Furthermore, there is conclusive and irrefutable evidence that the photos taken by Annenberg's Factcheck, in collusion with the Obama campaign, are themselves, false identification documents, having been made from the same false identification document image, as well as from additional false identification documents created for the same purpose; namely, to proffer these false identification documents as true reproductions of a genuine, Hawaii-issued and certified, "Certification of Live Birth" document, and thereby, intentionally deceive the American public into believing that Barack Hussein Obama is a natural-born citizen of the United States, and thereby, fully qualified to become their President.

I never imagined that my studies would amount to this. I thought, like most Americans, that maybe the information was accurate even though the document image was fake. I thought, like most Americans, that Obama would simply present a copy of his real, original birth certificate, and that would be that. Yet, here we are, more than twenty months after Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency, and nearly three weeks after the election, and Obama still refuses to show his real birth certificate!

Sadly, mainstream media have totally ignored this inconvenient truth and are not even been willing to even look at this birth certificate issue. They are all still in-the-tank with Obama, but even more so now that he is in line to be President. They all bought into the lies and fraudulent documents proffered up as evidence on Obama's qualifications. They have been too quick to label as "trash" or "garbage" any legitimate questions asked about Obama's real birth certificate. Even thigh-ranking governmental officials in the state of Hawaii where Obama was allegedly born, won't reveal what's on Obama's original birth certificate. All they have said is that they have it. They have not said (1) where Obama was born. (2) when Obama was born, or (30 even to whom Obama was born.

The answer to "What's on Barack Obama's real, original birth certificate" ranks right up there with some of the great mysteries of our time -- and that is really hard to swallow. That a man, with a dubious background, has been elected to the highest office of the greatest superpower in the world without ever having to prove who he says he is! That is not "nutty," that's just plain insane!

With all that said, and without further ado, I present to you my final and complete report on Barack Obama's bogus birth certificate, The Born Conspiracy.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Since the beginning of Barack Hussein Obama’s Presidential campaign on February 11, 2007, there had been numerous rumors regarding Obama’s citizenship status. Several reporters had asked for a copy of Obama’s birth certificate, however, all requests were subsequently denied.

On or about June 12, 2008, the Daily Kos blog, a pro-Obama website, received an image from the Obama Campaign that they claimed was a scanned copy of Obama’s “original birth certificate,”. Before this document image was cropped to 2427 x 2369 pixels, it measured 2550 x 3300 pixels, or 8 1/2” x 11” when printed.

Also, on or about June 12, 2008, the Obama Campaign posted a smaller copy of the same cropped image, measuring 1000 x 1024 pixels:

“You may have recently heard right-wing smears questioning Barack Obama's birth certificate and citizenship. These assertions are completely false and designed to play into the worst kind of stereotypes. You can see Barack Obama's birth certificate for yourself and help push back with the truth...”

The very next day, which was on or about June 13, 2008, Obama’s Campaign replaced the first document image they posted with a smaller copy which they posted to a new website, “Fight The Smears” (fightthesmears.com). The smaller image was disproportionately reduced to 585 x 575 pixels, which was almost half the size of the original posted image, and one-third of its quality.

Also, on or about June 13, Politifact.org, a supposedly nonpartisan, fact checking website that is unquestionably pro-Obama, published a copy of the same image as that posted on the Daily Kos, but was also disproportionately reduced it to 811 x 786 pixels, or 1/3 of its size and 1/6 of its image quality.

On or about June 16, 2008, Factcheck.org, a pro-Obama fact checking website ,posted a full-sized image copy of same document image that appeared on the Daily Kos. Factcheck’s image copy was identical to the Daily Kos image copy before that image was cropped. Factcheck.org is owned by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania; a center run by Obama supporters and funded by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Factcheck.org made the following statement to explain how they received their image copy:

"Bloggers raised questions based on the absence of evidence, specifically the lack of a publicly available copy of a birth certificate and the supposed secrecy surrounding it". According to FactCheck, Tommy Vietor at the Obama campaign sent a message to them and "other reporters" saying, "I know there have been some rumors spreading about Obama’s citizenship, so I wanted to make sure you all had a copy of his birth certificate."

I first noticed that the image posted to the Daily Kos and purported to be the “original birth certificate” of Barack H. Obama, did not look like a regular birth certificate. This image was made only from the front side of a COLB: no copy of the reverse side of this COLB has ever been made, :birth certificate” document was ever scanned, a side that contains all of the official certification instruments, such as the official Hawaiian Seal, State Registrar’s signature, and date stamp of when the document was printed.

To validate my findings that the text in this COLB document image was the result of graphic alternations, and not a result of any printer or scanner artifacts, I made over 700 test scans and images using an actual paper COLB and different scanners that were subjected to different combinations of scanning and image parameters. I was finally able to replicate the Kos image so closely that other image experts thought it was the same Kos image, and not my “clone.”

From this date forward, when I first discovered the evidence of tampering, and regardless of the unfamiliar format of the COLB and the questionable information it contained, I collected a great deal of additional evidence, that the scanned image alleged to be a true copy of Obama’s original COLB was forged, and that this altered image of an official state-issued document is nothing less than a false identification document as defined by Chapter 18, Section 1028 of the United States Code.

All of my findings pertaining to a single source image and the four copies made from of it that are still posted on the four (4) websites, DAILYKOS.COM, FIGHTTHESMEARS.COM, FACTCHECK.ORG, and POLITIFACT.COM, as referred to and described above, are outlined in my Final Report

On August 21, slightly more than two months after the publication of the image on the Daily Kos and Obama's website, Factcheck published their story about nine photos they claimed were allegedly taken of Obama's "real" COLB at his campaign headquarters – the same COLB used to make the document image they posted on June 16.

There was no longer any question in my mind that the COLB image Factcheck posted is a forgery and that Obama's real COLB, as proffered by Factcheck, is a nonexistent document. However, Factcheck created a conundrum for me: if the image Factcheck posted is a forgery of a nonexistent document image, then how can any genuine photos be made of it? The answer had to be that both the image and the photos were forgeries.

I have thoroughly examined the photographs that FactCheck published, and have subsequently found clear and irrefutable evidence of tampering with both the alleged COLB objects photographed and with the photos themselves. One of those COLB objects was, in fact, a printout of a forged document image with the Seal superimposed onto it for the final pictures.

FactCheck’s photos reveal both the absence of known, relevant features found on genuine COLBs along with the presence of illogical and impossible features that would never be found on a real 2007 COLB. Specifically, on the COLB objects photographed, the security border closely matches the border found on a real 2007 COLB. However, both the embossed Seal and the State Registrar’s Signature stamp do not match the same elements found on a real 2007 COLB, but perfectly match those found on a real 2008 COLB; or, in other words, something that would never happen in real life.

Hawaii made three important changes to their COLBs from 2007 to 2008, including the use of a larger certificate layout, a new security border, and, much to the chagrin of Factcheck and the Obama Campaign, a new Seal and Signature stamp that can now be stamped on a COLB by a machine.

With my experience and specialization in document imaging, my findings are conclusive and irrefutable that the COLB images posted by Obama to his campaign website, fightthesmears.com, to the dailykos.com, a pro-Obama blog, to FactCheck.org, a pro-Obama political research group, and to Politifact.org, are, in fact, image forgeries with the intent to defraud the American People into believing that these images were digitally scanned from Obama’s genuine, “original” birth certificate.

With my experience and specialization in photography and digital imaging, my findings are conclusive and irrefutable that the COLB photographs posted by FactCheck.org, a pro-Obama political research group, and to Politifact.org, are, in fact, photographic forgeries with the intent to defraud the American People into believing that these digital photographs were taken of Obama’s genuine, “original” birth certificate.

Chapter One: In the beginning

In the June 9, 2008 edition of National Review Online, writer Jim Geraghty posted the following story to his blog, the Campaign Spot:

Obama Could Debunk Some Rumors By Releasing His Birth Certificate.

Having done some Obama-rumor debunking that got praise from Daily Kos (a sign of the apocalypse, no doubt), perhaps the Obama campaign could return the favor and help debunk a bunch of others with a simple step: Could they release a copy of his birth certificate? Rreporters have asked for it and been denied, and the state of Hawaii does not make such records public...There are several (unlikely) rumors circulating regarding Obama’s birth certificate.

Geraghty listed these rumors as (1) Obama was born in Kenya, (2) Obama's middle name is really "Muhammad" and (3) Obama's first name is really "Barry," as he was called when he was a child growing up in Indonesia. Geraghty concluded his article by saying that "If the concern of the Obama campaign is that the certificate includes...some other data that could be useful to identity thieves, that information could easily be blocked out and the rest released."

Three days later, as if on cue, the pro-Obama Daily Kos blog posted an image of what that they claimed was a scanned copy of Barack Obama's "original birth certificate" that they had received from the Obama Campaign. Before the day was out, a duplicate copy of that same image (albeit it, much smaller in size and poorer in quality) appeared on Obama's own campaign website. A third copy of the same image would be posted on June 16 by FactCheck.org, a political website linked to Obama supporters and funders, followed by Politifact.org, a political website in the same mold as Factcheck.org.

From the first moment that this image was posted, reactions and criticisms spread through the Internet like a virus. Obama supporters stood by the claimed veracity of this document, while Obama critics protested it, not only for the data it held, but also for the way it looked.

To everyone not born in Hawaii, this "original birth certificate" looked nothing like what a traditional birth certificate should look like, and with good reason: it's not. This document is a short transcript of a person's birth record, and is called, a "Certification of Live Birth," or COLB as I came to call it. A COLB is what Hawaii's Department of Health now issues in place of actual photocopies of the original, long-form birth certificate. The COLB is a "short form birth certificate," and when duly certified, can be used for all intents and purposes that a regular birth certificate could be used.

At a minimum, original birth certificates contained the names of the hospital where the child was born and the doctor who delivered the baby. Birth certificates had signatures and stamped or embossed seals on them. By the second week of this controversy, the American public discovered that this type of document was not a photocopy of the original birth certificate completed at birth, but a short transcript of a person's birth record. The original birth certificate is stored on microfiche.

The major problem with a COLB is that the birth record it represents could have been requested late, after a child was born, and the place of birth as recorded may be anywhere in the world. Thus, if Obama was actually born in Kenya, his mother could have registered that birth with Hawaii's Health Department when she and her son returned to the island. Obama's original birth certificate which Hawaii's Health Department officials recently confirmed as being on file, could also have come from anywhere in the world. In other words, while Obama's original birth certificate on record does contain the actual time and place of his birth, the Certification of Live Birth would not if Obama was actually born overseas.

The COLB (as shown below) contains the names of the Father, Mother and Child, the "race" of the Mother and Father, the time and date of birth, and the island and city of birth:

Regardless of a person's actual birth date, anyone authorized to request this COLB, will receive the specific data currently listed on a person's actual birth record, on the date the copy was created. This last criteria is crucial to understand because so many of the criticisms had to do with the "apparent" conundrum posed by getting a computer-generated certificate for people whose birth predated the computer age.

Computer printout or not, many people were still agitated by the apparent lack of visually recognizable feature that attest to its veracity, such as the Seal, signature(s), and date stamps. Initially, I was also a skeptic, having never seen a Hawaiian COLB before. Although this COLB image did not look the same as a traditional birth certificate, what captured my attention were the image anomalies I saw -- anomalies that never would appear on any genuine scan of a document.

Specifically, I saw that the text in this image bore the telltale signs of being graphically altered after the image was created. From June 13 onwards, the unfamiliar format of this document, and the questionable information that it contained, became tangential to my discovery that the scanned image alleged to be a true copy Obama's original COLB, was a forged document image. Now, with four months worth of research and supportive evidence behind me, I can now say, without any reservations, that my initial recognition of this image forgery was absolutely correct.

Surprisingly, the same people who posted this forged image four months earlier, namely the Obama Campaign, the pro-Obama Daily Kos blog, Politifact, and the pro-Obama FactCheck group, are still passing it off as a genuine copy of Obama's original birth certificate. There are a lot of other people who are treating this iconic image as if it was an already established fact. At no time during this 4-month period, did the Obama Campaign submit a second scan image to corroborate the first one such as a scan of the reverse side where the certification elements appear: the embossed Seal of Hawaii, the date stamp, and the signature stamp of Hawaii's State Registrar.

No one on the Left seemed at all concerned that Obama had been given a pass on providing real evidence of his citizenship. So what if everyone else has to show a genuine document. This was Obama, after all, a man who could not do any wrong in the minds of his supporters. So adamant were his supporters about this document image, that anything challenging its authenticity was quickly and aggressively squelched. Even before Factcheck published a series of digital photographs purported to be Obama's real COLB, there were plenty of story lines already considering the birth certificate issue to be dead on the vine, with such titles as "Obama's birth certificate: case closed," or "Obama's birth certificate: the final chapter."

For more than two months, rather than make that second scan, FactCheck decided to gamble on pulling off the ultimate forgery by posting suspicious-looking photos of the same document that they claimed was used to make the scan image that they posted in June 16. Since I now have no doubt that their scanned image was fraudulent, I have no reason to believe that their "photographs" are any less fraudulent.

Supporters of Obama spent a great deal of time trying to explain away these suspicious actions, but logic and subterfuge are no substitutes for having independent observers examine not only Obama's original birth certificate, but also a current COLB containing his current birth record.

The "COLB" hard facts

Hawaii does not issue copies of the Certificate of Live Birth, aka, the traditional, long-form birth certificate. What Hawaii issues in its place is the Certification of Live Birth, aka COLB, that is a short transcript of a person's complete birth record on file -- it is only to be given to the person whose name appears under CHILD'S NAME, or to a member of that person's family, or someone authorized by the person to obtain it.

When people hear the word, "form," they typically envision a pre-printed document containing blank areas to be filled in later. In reality, nearly every form is of the "fill in the blank" variety. The COLB form is different in that it is not a pre-printed form at all, but a completely computer-generated graphic that is "redrawn" every time a COLB is requested.

Although the exact process for how these COLB forms are completed is not known, I imagine that either a computer operator manually enters the information into the blank areas provided, or a computer program automatically fills in these areas with the appropriate information, such as the child's name, parents' names, parents' race, place of birth, island of birth, and the date/time of birth. Perhaps the most important information written onto the form is the Certificate Number which uniquely identifies the birth record. Regardless of whether a person or computer fills in the "blanks," the information for those blanks come from the same place, a birth record database.

[IMPORTANT NOTICE] On Oct 31, 2008, the Directors of Health (Fukino) and Vital Statistics (Onaka) in Hawaii confirmed that there is a "birth record" for Obama in this database. However, that's about as informative as me saying, "I got a pen from my mother and it's in my pocket." You still do not know where, when, and by whom the pen was made. Logic dictates, however, that if birth record confirmed that Obama was born in Honolulu, the Department of Health would have thrown a huge luau in his honor by now.

OK, getting back to the business of creating a COLB, being a computer-savvy individual, I might find it hard to imagine that, in this day and age, a staff person has to manually type the birth data into the COLB form. Then again, we are talking about a State Government bureaucracy where paper forms still rule the roost. My bet would be that the completion of the COLB is not an automated process. Heck, every year when I have to renew my tag at the DMV, the clerks still have to manually type in my information. So, it's a good guess that it happens in Hawaii, too.

A confirmatory note on how these forms are filled in, is how Hawaii handles a request for a copy of a COLB. Individuals who wish to received a certified Certification of Live Birth (meaning that the requisite embossed Seal and Registrar's signature will be placed on it) are required to complete a form-fillable PDF file as shown below. Form-fillable PDF files have been around for some time, and it is worth noting that, by entering information into this request form, you are also replicating what a staff person might do to create the COLB itself.

As shown in the PDF form above, there are blank areas, called "fields," into which you are required to write the information requested. When this form is completed, you are then asked to print it and mail it in with the $10 fee. You cannot save this form with the information entered, and I would imagine that the same is true for the COLB form.

Now, here's the rub when it comes to requesting a COLB. When you fill out the form, you cannot simply enter the person's name (child's name) and expect to get back a fully-completed COLB. Hardly. In fact, if the name matches one on file, all you will get back is about the same as what Directors Fukino and Onaka said about Obama -- that a birth record exists. You only get back what you put into it. So, let's pretend that you had the legal authority to obtain Obama's real COLB (that is, Hawaii received both written and oral confirmation from Obama authorizing you to get it), and where it says, FATHER'S NAME, you type in "BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA II." If the birth record does not list BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA II as Obama's father, then what you'd get is a big, fat blank space where FATHER'S NAME would be.

I believe that the online COLB form is completed in much the same way. The staff person at Vital Records is presented with a blank COLB form -- which may or may not look like the finished product -- and, when the on-screen COLB form is completed, the COLB graphic is sent to a networked printer designated to handle all print requests for COLBs. Since all COLBs are printed on the very same device, all of the text in the COLB should look uniformly the same (Hold that "should look the same" thought in your mind as you read this report).

The COLB is printed on a special, green, Rattan-patterned paper. What makes it "special" and why some refer to it as "security paper" are the fibers embedded in the paper -- somewhat analogous to how our paper money makes use of specially-embedded fibers to distinguish counterfeit bills from the real thing (this point is also important to keep in mind here).

When I originally saw the COLB posted on the Daily Kos, I did not know that all of it was a graphic. I had recently ordered a copy of my own birth certificate and was expecting to see a similar document having text produced by printer fonts (vector fonts). So, when I saw that all of the text were written with bitmap fonts, or what a graphics editor produces, my attention was immediately drawn to it. Not so much that the fonts looked differently (which is what I originally reported back in June), but that they looked exactly like text that had replaced whatever was underneath. That is, the original text had been graphically altered from what was originally written there. The signs of this "overwriting" were patently obvious to me, yet, as I was soon to learn, not at all obvious to anyone else (anyone, that is, who had personally seen and analyzed this COLB image, who knew enough about how COLB's are made, and who wanted to prove to the public that it was a forged image).

Now, looking back on what I hypothesized four months ago, I find that I was spot-on about the altered text, and that's the one distinguishing feature that cannot be explained away by natural causes -- although many have tried their best to do so.

What is particularly important for the reader to realize is that, after four months of controversy over a single image allegedly scanned from Obama's original birth certificate, that image is still the only one ever made. Any time anyone on the Left is asked the birth certificate question, what we get back is a rhetorical question, like "Do you really think that a US Senator running for President would fake his own birth certificate?" How come they never ask why, with over $600 million dollars collected in campaign contributions, the Obama campaign could only afford to produce one lousy-looking image copy?

Of course, the real question is why not produce a real, paper one to show to the public? Why show just one image, and only of the front side of the COLB, but not the back side where the certified Seal and stamps reside? finally, why would one intentionally render that image to be flawed?

"Image" is everything

Time to clear the air here about what is, and is not, a "high-res" scan. The way some people on the other side of the COLB controversy have bandied that term about, you'd think they were talking about high definition TV. Many of these COLB believers maintain that this, now infamous JPG image, is a "high-resolution" scan. This term only makes sense in a relative way because, in comparison to the horrendously-smeared image posted on Obama's Fight The Smears website, every other copy looks "better" (as in "Easier to read"). In terms of image quality, size does matter, and the image copy that Factcheck posted to their website is the largest one of the four. Yes, it is big (2550 x 3300 pixels). Sure, it has a print resolution of 300 DPI (meaning that it would produce a letter-sized print). But, NO, it was never intended to be a high quality image, which is how "high resolution" should be defined.

If you've ever used a digital camera to take photos and transfer them to your computer, then you already know, or should know, what is a JPG image. JPG are the preferred format for photo and image files because they can contain a lot of visual information in a comparatively small amount of file space, due to what's called, file compression. All that you need to know about JPG files and compression is that there is a direct relationship between the amount of compression applied to the file and the visual quality of the image when it is viewed or printed: the greater the amount of compression, the smaller will be the file size, and the lower will be its visual quality. Appropriately, the JPG format is known as a "lossy" one because of the "loss" of visual information in exchange for a smaller (and more manageable) file size.

When it comes to posting images and photos to the Internet, file size is an important factor for several reasons. File size determines how quickly and easily an image can be downloaded and/or displayed on your computer. It determines the costs of maintaining image files on a website as well as the transmission of them to other computer. I mention these factors because they will be important in deciding whether a website owner replaced larger files with smaller ones for cost considerations, or solely to reduce the amount of information contained in them. Remember, the bigger the file, the better the image, all other things being equal.

Why is this discussion relevant to spotting a potential image forgery? Because, a forger knows that the evidence of graphical manipulation is more likely to be detected in a larger image of higher quality than in a smaller image of lower quality. In the case of digital camera photos, there is also additional descriptive information about how the photos were made stored within the photo images themselves -- information that may be incriminating. [NOTE: this additional information is called Exif data, and will be discussed later on in this report].

OK, you're probably asking yourself, "So what's so wrong with the size or quality of the Obama COLB image? It looks fine to me." That's like the guy who winds up in the emergency room, not believing that anything is wrong with him because he thought that he "looked just fine." There is also a lot wrong with the four image copies that a layperson would not notice.

The original, forged source image began its existence as a full-size scan of a real paper COLB. The COLB is printed on a standard, letter-sized piece of paper. Two of the four image copies (those residing on the Daily Kos and Factcheck) are full-size as well (although the Kos image was cropped close to the COLB's borders). The other two images (on Fight The Smears and Politifact) are 1/4 to 1/5 the size of the original source image. The fact that these four image copies vary in their size and quality is the primary reason why many people thought that they were made from other document scans, instead of from only one "scan." Listed in the table below are the four COLB images along with their image size (in pixels), their file size (in Kilobytes), and the amount of memory (in Megabytes) that they would consume when viewed on a computer. You can get a rough idea of how much JPG compression was applied to an image by comparing the file size to the memory required to view it (shown as a percentage of file size divided by memory size):

Website name

Size of image
(pixels)

Size
of File
(K)

Memory
Used
(MB)

Compression
Percentage
(%)

Color
Count
(actual)

Daily Kos blog

2427 x 2369

547K

16.46

33%

70,604

Fight The Smears

575 x 585

110K

.986

11%

32,379

Factcheck website

2550 x 3300

1,437K

24.08

6%

77,903

Politifact website

811 x 786

94.9K

1.91

5%

30,293

The amount of compression and the color count tend to vary with the actual size of the image because, all things being equal, the larger the image, the more memory it consumes, and a greater amount of image compression is needed to save disk space and to improve download times. Keep these factors in mind as you read the table and view the images. The color count is an indicator of image quality, as is the amount of JPG compression. Obviously, the size of an image directly affects how much of the image can be seen and how clearly. The image that is the smallest in size and has the lowest color count is the Fight The Smears image. It is also the hardest to see clearly, and that is exactly the result the Obama Campaign wanted: if you cannot clearly see the image, then you cannot see any alterations made to the image.

The image with the lowest compression level and the second highest color count was the original Daily Kos image. Next in line was the , Fight The Smears image, the smallest image with three times more compression than the Daily Kos image and less than half of the color count. Politifact's image, although bigger than the Fight The Smears image, had almost twice as much JPG compression and a lower color count.

Most surprising of all, however, was the Factcheck image. Although it had a higher color count, the Factcheck image, when cropped like the Daily Kos image, was the same size as the Daily Kos image and used the same amount of memory. However, its compression level was more than five times greater than the Daily Kos image, and almost as compressed as the Politifact image, that is less than 1/4 its size. Normally, any JPG image saved with a compression level less than 40% is not going to look that great when it is viewed at its original size. However, if you only get to view the image at a fraction of its original size, let's say, at the size of the COLB images displayed on Obama's Fight The Smears website, it will seem to look "just fine" -- that is, until you try to enlarge it. Then, all you will see is visual gibberish, which, as I said, is exactly what FTS wanted you to see. Not only was the original image intentionally shrunk down to the size of an image "thumbnail," it was not resized proportionately; i.e., it is wider than it should be.

When you consider that this image copy came from the same source file as its largest "cousin," at the Daily Kos, you begin to understand the total futility of FTS's deliberate attempt to hide any evidence of foul play. Additionally, the very last thing that Obama's campaign would want anyone to see, is the COLB image enlarged to its original size of 8 1/2" square, and that also goes for Politifact's image. Both of these websites displayed their copy of the original forged source file at a fraction of the original size (about 20 to 25% smaller than what the Daily Kos posted).

The only other scans ever made of a "Certification of Live Birth," or COLB, are those that are genuine paper copies, and are in the possession of other people (myself included), and that, in real life, look decidedly different from the deliberately altered image pretending to be what Obama's COLB might have looked like, if it were, in fact, not a forgery.

No matter how many challenges to my conclusions have come my way, I have never wavered from the inescapable truth, that an image of someone's real COLB had been markedly altered to look like it belonged to Obama. Or so the forgery conspirators thought.

To summarize, there was one, original source image that was forged, and four copies of this source image were distributed to (1) the pro-Obama Daily Kos blog, (2) Obama's Fight The Smears campaign website, (3) Annenberg's Factcheck website, and lastly, the St. Petersburg times Politifact website.

On all of these images, there is a telltale "dot" (a piece of dirt left on the scanner glass) that proves they all came from a single source file.

What is also important to know is that I was the first one, and, really, the only one, to prove conclusively and honestly, that the images posted to these four websites were all made from the same forged image, and to explain exactly how the original forged image would have been made.

In the following image, there is a visual anomaly in the upper left quadrant that can be seen in all four image copies. This anomaly is located directly to the right from the phrase, STATE OF HAWAII on the left side, and below the letters, "E" and "R" in the border banner, CERTIFICATION OF LIVE BIRTH (follow blue arrows). This anomaly was caused by a piece of dirt left on the scanner glass when the original source image was scanned.

Even though the size and resolution of these four images vary, with the Fight The Smears image being the smallest (585 X 575 pixels) and poorest in quality (100 DPI) , all four can still be seen in this comparison:

How the forgery was made

The timing of all these images is something that also confuses a lot of people new to this birth certificate brouhaha. As I mentioned in Part One, the "birth" of this conspiracy began on June 10 when Jim Geraghty questioned whether or not Obama was really born in the US. Two days later, on June 12, the first forged copy appeared on the Daily Kos, followed shortly thereafter by a smaller copy (originally 1000 x 1024 pixels) on Obama's own website, BarackObama.com. When Obama's Fight The Smears website spin off was launched on June 13, the image copy was moved to that location, and its size was cut in half to what it is now (575 x 585 pixels). Politifact was next according to claims that they also posted their copy on June 13 (although I was not able to find it until June 27, and I suspect it was back-dated). Factcheck's copy comes in a distant fourth in this phony COLB derby:

Website name

Date first posted

Daily Kos blog

June 12

Fight The Smears
(Barackobama.Com)

June 13
(June 12)

Politifact's website

June 13

Factcheck's website

June 16

The forgery began its life as an actual scan of a real, 2007 Hawaiian "Certificate of Live Birth," (COLB) that belonged to someone other than Obama (No, not his sister). The image acquired by the scanner was then saved as a JPG file. This is the file that was sent to the person who would do the actual forging. Whoever that person was, he or she was sent the information that was to go on the image. I doubt that the forger was the same person who did the scan (or scans, plural. In my analyses, I discovered that there had to be more than one COLB image used to make the forgery). Whoever did the scan did not have Obama's real birth certificate on hand, nor did he or she pull the birth information out of thin air. Only Obama, himself, knows the full truth of his birth origin, and only Obama would know which parts of it needed to be "modified." Somehow, and by some mean, that information needed to be relayed to the forger.

Recall that I referred to this forged image as being unique. What makes it unique is that this image went through three format conversions before it was ever released to the websites mentioned above. Essentially, the red flags for me were the predominance of white and gray pixels in between the letters of the CHILD'S NAME. The almost total lack of green pixels which should normally be there told me that the editing of the text was not done when this image was either a JPG file or a Windows BMP file -- the two predominant file format options when scanning a document.

Bitmapped graphic images are represented by colored dots called pixels. The more dots an image has, the higher the resolution, but also the larger the file. Likewise, the more colors an image has, the more that image will look like the document that is scanned (or the subject that is photographed). Unlike a JPG file where there is a loss of image information due to file compression, the BMP bitmap image does not discard any of the colored dots created from the original source or subject.

There is a third type of file, not previously mentioned, that is most commonly used on websites. This format is known as GIF, and it is also a bitmap image. However, the number of possible colors is limited to only 256; whereas, in JPG and BMP files, there are millions of possible colors. The actual number of colors, though, is dependent on the size of the image. It is strictly a matter of room here, for when the size of the JPG or BMP image gets smaller, there are fewer actual colors available.

I realize that this is a bit technical, but nevertheless, important to know because, when a document is scanned, a temporary, bitmap image is created in the computer's memory. From that internal, temporary image, you, the user, select the image format that you would like the final, permanent image to be, and the computer program then converts that internal bitmap image into that permanent image format you chose.

Logically and actually, if you request the program to use a bitmap image format for the permanent image, then you will have a file that is as large as the amount of computer memory used, with the maximum number of pixels and colors available for an image of that size and format. If you save the scan as a JPG file, depending on how small a file you wish or alternately, the amount of quality desired, you will lose some image information along with some of the colors.

Now, here is why this is critical to the COLB image forgery.

if the Obama COLB JPG image was created directly from the scanned internal image with a known amount of file compression, there would be a fairly predictable range of colors within that image. If there is a large deficit between the number of colors in a JPG image that was claimed to be made from a scan, and the predicted or expected number of colors, you can that postulate that the JPG image was not made directly from the scan image. Additionally, if there is also a deficit in the expected number of pixels of a given color, then you can also postulate that something was done to the image in between the time the internal scan was made, and this particular JPG image was analyzed.

Therefore, since the actual number of colors in the full-size, 300 DPI Factcheck image is far lower than what it should be, and there are a significant number of green pixels missing in the areas between the letters, it is a safe bet to conclude that this image took a detour somewhere along the line. It is that detour, I postulated, which diverted the original scan image to the forger before it ever arrived in Factcheck's inbox.

This deficit in the total number of colors counted in an image, coupled with the specific deficit in green pixels, is absolutely the result of human intervention, and not any artifacts known to Man.

With that fact firmly in place, then it is a somewhat simple, but lengthy and tedious, process, to figure out what would cause these deficits to be there, and then to reproduce the conditions to validate the process. The answer turned out to be, that the original scan image was saved as a GIF file, with its restricted color count, then edited as a GIF image, and finally, resaved as a JPG file with a moderate amount of compression. It should also be noted that neither the GIF nor the JPG, were subjected to any additional smoothing techniques to enhance the image. Had these techniques been applied, then the pixel patterns I found would likely not be there.

The resulting JPG image has a final color count of approximately 70,000, when, if it had been made directly from the image scan, as those complicit in the forgery claim, then the color count would have been well over 83,000, at a minimum. Only through sheer determination and a lengthy trial-and-error process, that produced over 400 test images, was I able to discern the right combination of factors that not only marked the image as a forgery, but also outlined the steps necessary to produce it. I followed these steps to make a clone of the Kos COLB image. Unfortunately, I did not keep track of all the difference changes I made, and so, the actual recipe to make it will need to be rediscovered.

The steps for making the clone involves processes that are familiar to most people who work with graphics. The GIF image, created from the JPG image, was then imported into a graphics program (NOT Photoshop) where the existing text was covered over with portions of the background pattern, and on top of that, in the spaces where the original text formerly information appeared, fraudulent information was typed in to make the image LOOK like it was Obama's COLB. I say, "fraudulent" information, because if it were true information, then Obama simply cold have gotten a copy of his COLB from Day One.

When the alterations were completed, it was intentionally resaved as a JPG, at a 45% compression ratio -- to hide the areas where the forging was made. That's the reason why the image looks the way it does.

Added to these steps, are the ones taken by the four websites, in changing the size, resolution, dimensions, and amount of cropping (*Politifact claims to have posted their copy on June 13, but according to the creation date on the image I downloaded from their site, it was July 8th, meaning that their web page was rewritten to reflect the earlier date). As I mentioned in Part One, while the forged image was most likely distributed to these four websites by the Obama Campaign, the person who manufactured it could be anyone inside or outside of the Campaign, or even inside Factcheck. The reason why I believe that the original forgery might have been made at Factcheck, is by virtue of their photo session with Obama's alleged real COLB and their efforts to squelch any claims of fraud on their part or on Fight The Smears.

The most salient point about the person who created the forgery (a person I dubbed, "Dr. X") is that he or she was not very diligent in its construction, even though the process used was sound. The original image, that served as the basis for the forgery, was made from a scan of a real, 2007 COLB that belonged to someone other than Obama (No, not his sister). This image acquired by the scanner was then saved as a GIF file (an image format different from the JPG format of the four image copies posted online). This GIF image was then imported into a graphics program (NOT Photoshop) where the existing text was covered over with portions of the background pattern, and on top of that, in the spaces where the original text formerly information appeared, fraudulent information was typed in to make the image LOOK like it was Obama's COLB. I say, "fraudulent" information, because if it were true, then Obama would have had no reason to refuse showing a real, paper copy of his COLB from Day One.

After the alterations were made to the text, it was intentionally resaved as a JPG, at a 45% compression ratio -- to hide the areas where the forging took place. This is the reason, and the only reason, why the image (especially the borders) looks so poorly copied.

When the bogus COLB image was first posted on the Daily Kos, people immediately wondered why was there a black rectangle covering up the Certificate Number. I can tell you now, that this black rectangle was added to the image using Photoshop CS3 after the forgery was created in a different graphics editing program (Not Photoshop). If the entire forgery were to have been created using Photoshop CS3, it would never have looked the way it did. To put it another way, the level of Photoshop skills required to change a decent-looking scanned image into this lousy-looking, COLB image, exceed what would be required to make a good-looking, forged image. So, even though the Kos and FactCheck images both had the same Exif data put there by Photoshop, it is wrong to assume that the entire forgery was created inside Photoshop (Exif data is information embedded within an image that describes how, and by what device or process, that image was made. Most graphics editors, except for basic ones like MSPaint, can display this Exif data, and even control which parts of it will be kept).

When the Daily Kos first published the forged Obama COLB image, the publisher admitted that they had only cropped the image (remove blank areas on the image) that was sent to him. However, after examining the Exif data Factcheck published their copy of the forged image, their image had the same Exif information as in the Kos image, with the major exception being the size of the image. A real paper COLB consists of an 8" square certificate graphic printed on a letter-sized (8 1/2" x 11") page of security paper, with no printing on the top 3" of the page. The front side of the paper has that green-and-white Rattan pattern and a blank area on the reverse side - on which the embossed Seal, date stamp, and signature stamp are placed.

The forged image contained a full-sized copy of the scanned image whose dimensions, as measured in pixels, are 2550 pixels (width) by 3300 pixels (height) at a print resolution of 300 DPI, or Dots Per Inch (actually pixels by inch). The print resolution determines what the size of the document will be when it is printed out. If you divide the number of pixels by the print resolution, you will get the size of the image, in inches, when printed. In this case, dividing the width (2550 pixels) by 300 equals a width of 8 1/2 inches, and dividing the height (3300 pixels) by 300 equals 11 inches. The image that Factcheck posted was a full-size copy (2550 x3300, 300 DPI).

Where things get strange is in the Exif data contained within the Kos image. If you recall what the publisher of the Daily Kos said, that the image sent to him was cropped before posting, then you can find the size of the cropped image reflected in the height and width measurements shown by the Exif data. In other words, the image after cropping was now 2427 pixels (height) by 2369 pixels (width) but with the same print resolution.

Not only was the cropped image also 300 DPI, but also the first half of the Exif data remained unchanged, including the date and time that the image was saved, the name of the graphics program saving it (Adobe Photoshop CS3 on a Mac computer), and three other variables. However the Exif data contained in the full-size Factcheck image, has information not found in the Kos image, including the dimensions of the thumbnail image and the amount of image compression applied when saving. A JPG image files can contain a much smaller version of it, called a "thumbnail") embedded in it.

If Obama's real birth record does not match anything on the forged image, regardless of what it actually says, then that is prima facie evidence of document fraud.

I have been collecting and analyzing information ever since the Daily Kos image was posted on June 12th. Not only did I discover that this image was a forgery, but I also discerned and demonstrated the methods used by the forger by using them to recreate an Obama COLB clone -- thus, validating my initial theory. Any attempt at recreating the COLB image MUST show the same, exact pixel patterns that I found between the letters in the original forged images. If it does not show those pixel patterns, then it does not look like the forgery does, and it does not demonstrate how the forgery was made.

On August 21, when Factcheck published photos that were allegedly taken of the same COLB used to make the image they posted two months before, many people thought that the controversy was over. Yet, two months before the photos, writers like Amy Hollifield had already dubbed the arrival of the bogus image scan as the "Final Chapter" in the birth certificate saga.

When Factcheck published their photos of what I had proven to be a bogus image, they created a major conundrum:
.
The photos cannot possibly be real if the image pictured in the photos is bogus. If the image is bogus, then so are the photos. Not just by logic, however, but by careful examinations of these photos that proved they were not made from a real, paper COLB, or even several paper COLBs (Yes, there was more than one COLB object photographed). Some of the photos were taken of a color laser printout made from the original forged source image rather than a real, paper COLB.

To date, no one has been able to show that this bogus image was the result of scanner artifacts, JPG artifacts, anti-aliased text, or any other naturally occurring phenomenon. There is only one possible way for the Obama COLB image to look the way it does, and that's by direct graphic alteration of the text made after the scan image was saved.

Basically, this is the smoking gun, and the only smoking gun in this birth certificate conspiracy. Yes, it is a real conspiracy considering who and how many people are involved in this forgery and cover-up.

This image is shown below. It was first posted on the pro-Obama Daily Kos blog who claimed that it was sent to them by the Obama Campaign:

On the same day, the Obama Campaign posted a duplicate copy of that same image on their website, Fight The Smears, (FTS) although the size of their copy was reduced to about 42% of the Kos image:

What very few people know about this image is that it was taken down the very next day, replacing it with one half as big and poorer in quality (the original FTS image was 1024 x 1000 pixels, the replacement is 585 x 575 pixels). Did FTS take down the original because some people were finding anomalies in it? The entire FTS web site has only one purpose: to mislead the American public by labeling as "smears" all of the factual statements made about Obama. Posting a bogus birth certificate on their website fits their modus operandi.

The headline that redirects readers to their statement about Obama's birth certificate is shown below. Following it is the text of the email that FTS urged supporters to send to their friends.

Barack Obama has made his birth certificate public and it can be seen here .

You may have recently heard right-wing smears questioning Barack Obama's birth certificate and citizenship. These assertions are completely false and designed to play into the worst kind of stereotypes. You can see Barack Obama's birth certificate for yourself and help push back with the truth...

As of September 13, I can confirm that FTS is still posting the same image, the same headline, and the same email letter. What is also of interest on the FTS website is a reference to "the independent group, Factcheck.org." FactCheck.org is most definitely not independent group, but belongs to the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania: a Center run by Obama supporters and funders.

FactCheck.org was also the third group to post a copy of the now infamous Obama "birth certificate" image to their website four days later. Only this time, an uncropped copy of the image was posted:

FactCheck claimed that "bloggers raised questions based on the absence of evidence, specifically the lack of a publicly available copy of a birth certificate and the supposed secrecy surrounding it". According to FactCheck, Tommy Vietor at the Obama campaign sent a message to them and "other reporters" saying, "I know there have been some rumors spreading about Obama’s citizenship, so I wanted to make sure you all had a copy of his birth certificate."

Three months later, no other "reporters" have ever received a copy of this "birth certificate" image, or any other birth certificate image, for that matter, from Tommy Vietor or any one else. To reiterate, there has been one, and only one, image alleged to have been scanned from Obama's "original birth certificate," and that the only people alleged to have received a copy of this document image from the Obama Campaign have been (1) Markos Moulitsas, the creator of the Daily Kos, a pro-Obama blog, (2) FactCheck, a pro-Obama political research group, and (3) Politifact.

Update to Part One

There have been a number of significant changes that have taken place on the websites mentioned in Part One.

As you recall, on June 12, the Obama Campaign posted a copy of the original scan image to their website, My.BarackObama.com, which became, "Fight The Smears," (FTS) on the very next day. The image that FTS posted was greatly reduced in size and quality from the copy they had posted on My.BarackObama.com (from 1024 x 1000 pixels to 585 x 575 pixels).

The original headline on Obama's FTS website (which has recently been changed without comment) redirected readers to their statement about Obama's alleged "original birth certificate." The text from the original web page is shown below.

Barack Obama has made his birth certificate public and it can be seen here .

You may have recently heard right-wing smears questioning Barack Obama's birth certificate and citizenship. These assertions are completely false and designed to play into the worst kind of stereotypes. You can see Barack Obama's birth certificate for yourself and help push back with the truth...

This headline and story line remained unchanged until sometime in the last week in September when, inexplicably (except to me), FTS totally changed their headline and story line, although the same COLB image as was posted on June 12, remained the same.

FTS also modified its home page as well replacing what was there with a rather, bulky table, measuring two columns wide by nine rows high, with an additional top row or masthead spanning both columns:

This table now takes up at least three-fourths of the FTS home page. Each of the 18 boxes in this table contains a separate story about one of the "smears" they found. The last box in the left column of this "Smear matrix," is the "new" story about Barack's "birth certificate :

Clicking on that box will take you to a revised headline and story line:

What following this introduction is the exact, same image that has been on their website since it was posted on June 12. HOWEVER, there's a new wrinkle here -- not about the birth certificate or his US citizenship, but about his Kenyan citizenship which Obama had previously denied ever having. The source of this new story is none other than FactCheck.org, the supposedly independent, nonpartisan political action group owned by the Annenberg Group, wholly owned and operated by loyal Obama supporters. It says the following:

“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.

Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”

So, now, in addition to chiding others for insisting on seeing Obama's original, certified, paper birth certificate, we now learn that Obama really was once a citizen of Kenya (and maybe was one at birth, too).

Why did FTS change its web page regarding Obama's "birth certificate, and include a nonsensical statement about Obama's birth certificate, namely that "Smears claiming Barack Obama doesn't’t have a birth certificate aren’t actually about that piece of paper — they’re about manipulating people into thinking Barack is not an American citizen?"

Everyone born in this country has a birth certificate, so if Obama was born here, too, then he should have one. This isn't rocket science. Yet, Obama is the only one, out of millions of natural born Americans, who refuses to show his original birth certificate to verify his citizenship status. Obama is also the only person and politician to ever submit a forged document image in place of a genuine, certified birth certificate, hoping that this act of fraud would go unnoticed.

Make your own Obamaboon-swooning FAKE JETT RINK state of Hawaii birth certificate-
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