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February 14, 2010
A Further Inquiry into Obama's Origins
By Jack Cashill
Last week I contributed an
article to American Thinker on Obama's origins that evoked a good deal of informed response. In it, I argued that the failure of the mainstream media to document the first year of Barack Obama's life has rendered the media accounts of the year before his birth suspect.
Here is what we know about Obama's first year. On August 19, 1961, fifteen days after Obama's
presumed birth, his mother, "Stanley Ann Dunham," enrolled for classes at the University of Washington at Seattle.
The apolitical Washington State historical blog
HistoryLink confirms Ann's arrival in August 1961, identifies her Capitol Hill apartment in Seattle, names the courses she took, and documents an extended stay by Ann and little Obama into the summer of 1962.
Incredibly, not one of the mainstream media accounts I consulted -- including four book-length biographies, several long-form magazine and newspaper bios, Obama's official campaign biography, and Obama's 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father -- places Ann and Obama anywhere other than in Hawaii during that first year.
Given this collective failure and the Obama camp's squirrelly response to questions about his birth certificate, another look at the circumstances leading up to that birth is warranted. To restore logic and order to this investigation, I turn to a structure we know as Occam's Razor: "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate.'' This translates roughly as "Multiple variables are not to be posited without necessity." Let me start with the timeline and cast of characters.
Late summer, 1960
Stanley and Madelyn Dunham and 17-year-old daughter Stanley Ann (henceforth "Ann") leave the Seattle area for Hawaii. Ann does not want to go.
Fall, 1960
Ann enrolls at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where 23-year-old Barack Obama, Sr. is a student.
Spring semester, 1961
Ann fails to enroll at the University of Hawaii.
February 2, 1961
Barack Sr. and Ann marry in Maui.
August 4, 1961
Barack Obama is reportedly born in Honolulu's Kapiloani Hospital for Women and Children.
August 19, 1961
Ann Dunham enrolls at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Summer 1962
Ann and baby Obama return to Hawaii.
Fall 1962
Barack Sr. leaves for Harvard.
Spring 1963
Ann re-enrolls at the University of Hawaii.
January 1964
Ann files to divorce Barack Sr.
What follows are four possible scenarios to explain the circumstances of Obama's birth. Each involves a different set of biological parents.
Ann Dunham and unknown Seattle male
In the original article, I floated the possibility that the progressive and adventurous 17-year-old Dunham was impregnated by a black man while the family was still living in the Seattle area. If so, this pregnancy could have prompted the family to uproot to Hawaii where no one knew them and where mixed-race babies were more accepted.
Although this theory would make sense of the family's abrupt move to Hawaii and Ann's seemingly sudden departure to Seattle after Obama's birth, it introduces too many variables that I was unable to substantiate.
Barack Sr. and Ann Dunham
In football jargon, this scenario would be the ruling on the field. It stands until conclusive evidence can be found to overturn it. The most formal evidence for it is a divorce document issued in 1964, to wit, "[t]hat one child has been born to said Libellant and Libellee as issue of said marriage, to wit: BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, II, a son, born August 4, 1961." The libellant in question is Stanley Ann D. Obama. The libellee is Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.
This document aligns with names and dates on the more questionable "certification of live birth" that the Obama campaign posted online, as well as with the newspaper postings soon after the August 4 birth.
This scenario conforms to the story line that the young Obama heard growing up from his mother and grandparents, namely that the brilliant, charismatic Barack Sr. had swept the quiet Ann off her feet, impregnated her, married her, and left reluctantly for Harvard after a year of nurturing baby Obama in Hawaii.
Propping up this narrative is chatty Hawaii Democratic congressman Neil Abercrombie, who knew Barack Sr. at the University of Hawaii. "Little Barry, that's what we called him," Abercrombie told the Chicago Tribune about baby Obama while "recalling his days with Obama Sr. and his future wife, Ann Dunham, at the University of Hawaii."
There could not have been many such "days." The most compelling evidence against this scenario is Ann's documented enrollment at the University of Washington immediately after Obama's reported birth and Barack Sr.'s departure for Harvard immediately upon Ann's return to Hawaii.
In addition, all details about the marriage remain elusive. Obama himself writes in Dreams, "In fact, how and when the marriage occurred remains a bit murky, a bill of particulars that I've never quite had the courage to explore."
A couple marries in a different county like Maui to keep the notification out of the local news. No one attended the wedding -- not Abercrombie, not Ann's parents. In fact, no one in Barack Sr.'s clique seemed to know there was a relationship, let alone a wedding.
Neil Abercrombie's brother Hal never saw Ann and Barack Sr. together. Another clique member, Pake Zane, who had distinct memories of the outsized Barack Sr., could not recall Ann at all. If the young couple were making their home on Kalanianole Hwy. as the newspaper announcements claim, some friend should have at least remembered.
When Abercrombie and Zane visited their pal in Nairobi in 1968, Barack Sr. shocked them by not inquiring at all about his wife and then-six-year-old child (although he would visit the Dunhams four years later). In July 2008, speaking at a university roundtable, Michelle Obama said of Barack's mother that she was "very young and very single when she had him." This may not have been a slip of the tongue.
At least a few respondents to the last article cited the likeness of Obama to his half-brother, Mark Ndesandjo, also mothered by a white woman, as proof of Barack Sr.'s biological paternity. Beyond color, I do not see any particular resemblance (photo here). The adult Obama does not look like Barack Sr., and as Abercrombie concedes, he does not sound at all like him either.
Stanley Dunham and unknown black woman
The evidence for this scenario is all circumstantial. "You know," Stanley's brother Ralph has said of Obama, "he looks exactly like Stanley. He looks exactly like my brother, only he's dark." Admittedly, grandsons can look like their grandfathers, but Ralph is right. The similarity between the two is striking.
The photo below, likely taken upon Barack Sr.'s departure for Harvard in 1962, shows not only Stanley's stunning resemblance to Obama, but also his inexplicable fondness for a black man who allegedly knocked up his daughter and is now abandoning her and his grandson. This photo is not an anomaly. As Obama recounts in Dreams, "Gramps" has only good things to say about his prodigal son-in-law.