Responding to a
Freedom of
Information Act request, the
State
Department has
released passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham,
President
Obama's mother – but records for the years surrounding Obama's
1961 birth are missing.
The State Department claims a 1980s General Services Administration
directive resulted in the destruction of many passport
applications and other "non-vital" passport records,
including Dunham's 1965 passport application and any other passports
she may have applied for or held prior to 1965.
Destroyed, then, would also be any records shedding
light
on whether Dunham did or did not travel out of the country around
the time of Barack Obama's birth.
The claim made in the FOIA response letter that many passport
records were destroyed during the 1980s comes despite a statement on
the State Department website that Passport Services maintains U.S.
passport records for passports issued from 1925 to the present.
The records released, however, contain interesting tidbits of new
information about Obama's mother, including the odd listing of two
different dates and locations for her marriage to Obama's Indonesian
stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.
(Story continues below)
In the released documents Dunham listed both March 15, 1965, in
Molokai, Hawaii, and March 5, 1964, in Maui, Hawaii, as the dates
and places of her marriage.
Dunham later divorced Lolo Soetoro in Hawaii. The divorce decree
took effect Nov. 5, 1980, but the divorce papers do not list the
date of the marriage.
No marriage
certificate
between Dunham and Soetoro has yet publicly surfaced, but a released
application to amend Dunham's 1965 passport to her married name
Stanley Ann Soetoro includes a checked box indicating a passport
officer had seen the marriage certificate.
The released records also document that on Aug. 13, 1968, Dunham
applied to have her 1965-issued passport renewed for two years,
until July 18, 1970.
Under 22 USC Sec. 217a, from 1959 through 1968, passports were
initially issued for three years, but they could be renewed for an
additional two years.
Obama, by any other name
Also revealed by the released records is a heretofore unknown,
alternative name for Barack Obama.
In the 1968 application to renew her 1965 passport, Dunham listed as
her son Barack Hussein Obama, including in parenthesis below the
name, "Saebarkah," in what appears to be a variation of an
Indonesian surname not previously associated in the public record
with the president.
For some unexplained reason, the designation of "Barack Hussein
Obama (Saebarkah)" is crossed off the 1968 application by five
handwritten, diagonal hash marks.
Dunham also appears to have used two different variations of her
name in obtaining and amending passports while married to Lolo
Soetoro: Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro and, without her maiden name,
Stanley Ann Soetoro.
On April 27, 1981, Dunham applied from Jakarta, Indonesia, for a
U.S. passport, indicating that she was in Indonesia working on a
two-year contract from the Ford Foundation, from January 1981
through December 1982.
At that time, Dunham was working on a microfinance program for the
Ford Foundation, which was overseen by Peter Geithner, the father of
Timothy Geithner, the current U.S. secretary of the treasury.
Ann Dunham's occupation in the 1981 passport application was listed
as "Program Officer, Ford Foundation."
No passport records subsequent to 1986 for Ann Dunham were released,
though presumably a passport was issued following her 1986
application, such that the 10-year period prior to expiration would
have extended one year past her death.
Dunham died Nov. 7, 1995, and was known to have been in Indonesia in
1994 when an Indonesian doctor first misdiagnosed as indigestion the
first signs of the ovarian cancer that was the cause of her death
the following year.
The released documents shed no light on proving or disproving
whether Dunham might have held a passport prior to Barack Obama's
birth that she could have used to travel to Kenya for his birth, as
has been speculated in the absence of the release of Obama's
long-form birth certificate from Hawaii..
The State Department released the Dunham passport documents July 29,
responding to a FOIA request submitted by Christopher Strunk, a New
York resident who has actively pursued obtaining documents regarding
Obama's birth and his eligibility to be president under the
"natural born citizen" requirement of Section 1, Article
Two of the United States Constitution.
The Dunham documents have been archived
on the Internet.
The controversy continues
A prominent array of commentators, including Rush
Limbaugh, Sean
Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Lou
Dobbs, Peter
Boyles and WND's Chuck
Norris and Pat
Boone have all said unequivocally and publicly that the Obama
eligibility issue continues to be legitimate and worthy.
Longtime New York radio talker Lynn Samuels did
the same.
"We don't even know where he was born," she said. "I
absolutely believe he was not born in this country."
WND
has reported on multiple 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 Obama 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.
Further, others question his citizenship by virtue of his attendance
in Indonesian schools during his childhood and question on what
passport did he travel to Pakistan three decades ago.
Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release
documents that could provide answers and his appointment
of lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation.
While his supporters cite an online version of a "Certification
of Live Birth" from Hawaii as his birth verification, critics
point out such documents actually were issued for children not born
in the state.