KommonCents: Arpaio reacts to latest Obama-Kenya connection

Sheriff Joe says literary brochure 'another little element' of investigation

by Bob Unruh

Image from Breitbart.com

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose special investigative unit already has found probable cause that Barack Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate is a forgery, says the discovery of a 1991 literary brochure listing Obama’s birthplace as Kenya “puts more smoke out there.”

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And the old saying is? “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

His comment came today after Breitbart.com published the image of a promotional brochure from two decades ago that declares Obama was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.

A literary agent’s promotional brochure from two decades ago declares Barack Obama was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.” Read the full report here.

The report said the brochure was created by Acton & Dystel, which was promoting Obama as the author of the never-produced “Journeys in Black and White.”

That biography states:

“Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation. He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.”

“We act on facts,” Arpaio told WND today. “We started the investigation back in August and utilized my Cold Case Posse to look into documents, the birth certificate and also the Selective Service forms. We seem to have much stonewalling going on.

“But I’m not going to back down. We are continuing to investigate what we feel are fraudulent government documents. We’re going to keep going, to prove once and for all whether they are genuine,” he said.

The unearthed publication “does put more smoke out there,” he said.

“We’ve gotten tons of information regarding this matter. This is just another little element,” he said.

What’s wrong with just reporting the facts? Joseph Farah blasts the “anti-birther” narrative that infects most of the media – Bretibart.com included. Read Farah’s latest column, “Breakthrough on eligibility story,” now.

Mike Zullo, the lead investigator for Arpaio’s special unit, told WND it is a “very interesting development.”

“This does coincide with information we have been pursuing, in light of the recent disclosures about discrepancies in his book ‘Dreams From My Father,’” he said. “It does bolster the significance of Sheriff Arpaio’s investigation, and it brings into the light the fundamental question of where actually was Mr. Obama born.”

He said it’s not logical that a literary agent would fabricate a foreign birthplace while trying to promote an author to the American market.

The information would have had to come “from someone close,” he said.

Breitbart News published a disclaimer at the beginning of its article stating its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, was never a “Birther” and Breitbart News “has never advocated the narrative of Birtherism.” Breitbart himself once characterized it as “not a winning issue.”

Nevertheless, the biography is one of numerous published reports as well as personal claims that Obama was born abroad, including the recent testimony of a Chicago-area postal worker who reported he was told by the parents of Bill Ayers that Obama was a foreigner.

The Breitbart report says Acton no longer represents Obama, who later published “Dreams from My Father.” Breitbart News describes the entire Acton booklet as being 36 pages long, printed in blue ink using offset lithography.

“It purports to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Acton & Dystel, which was founded in 1976,” the report said.

Breitbart said Dystel still lists Obama as a client, and Miriam Goderich, now Dystel’s partner, was listed as the editor of the brochure. Breitbart says it tried to reach Goderich, without success.

“The parade of authors alongside Obama in the booklet includes politicians, such as former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill; sports legends, such as Joe Montana and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; and numerous Hollywood celebrities. The reverse side of the page that features Barack Obama includes former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader and early-1990s ‘boy band’ pop sensation New Kids On the Block,” the report says.

Acton told Breitbart that almost none of the biographies was written by the person promoted.

“Regardless of the reason for Obama’s odd biography, the Acton & Dystel booklet raises new questions as part of ongoing efforts to understand Barack Obama – who, despite four years in office remains a mystery to many Americans, thanks to the mainstream media,” the report says.

Meanwhile, Allen Hulton, a retired Chicago-area mailman, has come forward with his first-person recollection of a clean-cut young man he identified as Obama who approached him and told him he was going to be president.

Allen Hulton (WND photo)

Hulton delivered mail to Tom and Mary Ayers in a Chicago suburb in the late 1980s and early 1990s and claims to have met Obama in front of the Ayers home.

He has given a sworn affidavit to investigators commissioned by Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio to determine whether Obama is eligible for Arizona’s 2012 election ballot. Hulton has recorded about three hours of video interviews with WND.

Hulton says that in conversations with Mary Ayers while on his route he learned of the couple’s enthusiasm and support for a black foreign student. One bright, warm Chicagoland day, he recounts, he met the student who fit Mary Ayers’ description in front of the Ayers home in Glen Ellyn, Ill. That young man, Hulton is convinced, was Barack Obama.

Hulton delivered mail to the Ayers, who are both deceased, when he was stationed at the post office in Glen Ellyn, an upper-middle class suburb 25 miles west of downtown Chicago, from late 1986 to 1997. He was a Postal Service employee from March 28, 1962, through March 30, 2001.

As WND reported, Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers – whom he dismissed in a 2008 debate as “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” – plagued him in the 2008 presidential campaign and could resurface in this year’s election, as many questions remain.

Why would Obama say he was born in Kenya if he was not? Jack Cashill addresses this question in his column, “BHO’s ever-changing story.”

Young Obama

Over a period of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hulton estimates he spoke with Mary Ayers about 18 to 20 times and once to Tom Ayers, who died in 2007. Mary Ayers died in 2000.

“Sometimes Mary would be out when I delivered the mail, and we would exchange a few words on occasion,” he says, recalling that she liked to talk about her family.

“One day, Mary came to the door when I came up to the house with the mail,” he remembers. “After a greeting, she started enthusiastically talking to me about this young black student they were helping out, and she referred to him as a foreign student.”

Hulton assumed that by “helping” the student, Mary Ayers meant she and her husband were financially supporting the black foreign-exchange student with his education.

See excerpts of Jerome Corsi’s interviews with Allen Hulton:

He says that Mary Ayers told him the student’s name, but that it was a “strange name” that he could not remember, even though at the time it sounded African to him.

“I was taken aback by how enthusiastic she was about him,” Hulton says. “And I believe she said he was from either Kenya or Indonesia, and I favor Indonesia in my recollection.”

WND has reported that when Obama was in Indonesia with his Indonesian stepfather and his mother from ages 6 to 10, he was registered in school as an Indonesian citizen and a Muslim. He went by the name Barry Soetoro, adopting the surname of his Indonesian stepfather. His mother’s passport listed him with the surname Soebarkah.

‘I’m going to be president of the United States’

About a year after discussing with Mary Ayers the foreign student she and her husband were supporting, Hulton recalls meeting a young black male on the sidewalk in front of the Ayers home.

Hulton describes the man as being in his early 20s, noting that he was tall, thin, had a light complexion and that his ears stuck out.

“He greeted me,” Hulton says. “He was very polite, dressed nicely, but informally – slacks and a dress shirt – and he spoke with no accent. Immediately this young black man entered into conversation with me. He told me he had taken the train out from Chicago and had come to thank the Ayers family personally for having helped him with his education.”

Hulton remembers asking the young man what his plans were for the future.

“He looked right at me and told me he was going to be president of the United States,” Hulton says.

“There was a little bit of a grin on his face when he said it – he sounded sure of himself, but not arrogant. I know how people will say things because they have an ambition, but it did not come across that way,” Hulton says. “It came across as if this young black male was telling me he was going to be president, almost as if it were the statement of a scientific fact that had already been determined, as if his being president had been already pre-arranged.”

There also was an internal bulletin from the Kenyan National Security Intelligence Service, or NSIS, that states that the Kenyan government in 2009 commissioned a cultural museum in the Obama home village of Kogelo to honor the “birthplace of President Barack Obama” and rededicate the tomb of his father, Barack Obama Sr.

The 2009 NSIS bulletin report said:

The ministry of national heritage this month hosted a cultural festival in Kogelo and commissioned a cultural museum on a plot donated by a member of the Kogelo community. The cultural festival was attended by the minister for national heritage, William ole Ntimama and U.S. ambassador, Michael Ranneberger.
This was to honour the birthplace of President Obama and re-dedicate the tomb of Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., the president’s late father. But the project had been delayed because of ownership wrangles surrounding the plot.

According to an article in the Kenyan Daily Nation newspaper July 5, 2010, the Kenyan government’s plans to build a 112 million Kenyan Schilling ($1.3 million) cultural center at Kogelo was locked in a dispute over who should donate land to the government for the project.

The Daily Nation, which published an artist’s sketch of the proposed Kogelo cultural center, referred to it as Obama’s “ancestral home.”

The NSIS memo suggests the Kenyan intelligence agency kept a close watch on the Obama family in Africa.

It noted the Kenyan government provided assistance to Obama’s step-grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, in the form of additional security and a government stipend of 50,000 Kenyan Schillings ($575) per month.

A Kenyan blog, “Jaluo,” reported that Grandmother Sarah caused family conflict when she visited Moammar Gadhafi in Libya “to the surprise and chagrins of the White House in Washington, D.C.,” and “without a proper delegation and approval of the entire family.”

The NSIS bulletin echoed the concern that Sarah Obama was visiting Muslim countries on her own initiative, commenting, “Mama Sarah had requested government assistance to travel to Mecca, Saudi Arabia for Hajj pilgrimage,” but “the Saudi Arabia government through its Nairobi embassy has come to her aid” by announcing “she will be a state guest in Saudi Arabia during her time there.”

WND also reported Kenyan MP James Orengo at one point asked the nation’s parliament, “How could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the president of America?”

On the day after Obama’s election, MP Boni Khalwale asked fellow members, “Could we allow … a Motion for Adjournment so that we could also continue the celebrations of having a Kenyan ruling the USA?”

In addition, a number of media sources – including National Public Radio – reported Obama’s birthplace as Kenya prior to his election as president.

Another reference was made in 2008 in the Nigerian Observer.

Under a Washington dateline, Solomon Asowata wrote, “Americans will today go to the polls to elect their next president with Democratic Party candidate, Senator Barack Obama largely favoured to win. The Kenyan-born Senator will, however, face a stiff competition from his Republican counterpart.”

An African Travel Magazine once reported, “As Kenyan born U.S. Senator Barack Obama jets into Kenya today as part of his African tour, concerns have once again been raised on the security preparations for other visitors and residents.”

An article in the Sunday Standard in Kenya begins, “Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack (sic) Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.”

The article is credited to the wire service Associated Press. However, it could not be found either in the AP archives online or the African newspaper’s website.

Also, an African news site and an MSNBC broadcaster referred to President Obama’s birthplace as being outside of the United States.

A report by Modern Ghana posted in advance of the president’s visit stated his birthplace was on the continent of Africa.

“For Ghana, Obama’s visit will be a celebration of another milestone in African history as it hosts the first-ever African-American President on this presidential visit to the continent of his birth,” the report said.