Amazing fact found in the National Archives: birthers will believe anything

Assuming that you are a rational person and that you haven’t been off-planet for the past few years, you know that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, and it might come as a shock to you that his father Barack Obama Sr. had an “unnamed son” born in Kenya in 1961.

Nevertheless, that compendium of all things birther, Obama Release Your Records, reported that just such a “fact” had been found in the British National Archives. ORYR later removed their article and replaced it with one containing a disclaimer:

Two very credible sources informed us that records regarding “an unnamed son of Obama Sr. was born in Kenya in 1961” cannot be confirmed as being at the British National Archives. We can’t say anything more until the sources publish their research.

So ORYR admits that they publish unconfirmed rumors — that’s hardly anything new. One need not wait for these unnamed sources because unlike unconfirmed stories about the British National Archives, the United States has archives too, and we know what’s in there.

Archive v. Archive

First, FOIA documents from the US Department of State show that Barack Obama Sr. did not leave the United States at any time between his arrival in 1959 and 1964. That means that if he fathered a son born in 1961, he did it in the United States.

If he did father a son in the United States and that son was born in Kenya, the child is certainly not sitting in the White House, because the US immigration reports also show that no US citizen (e.g. President Obama’s mother) traveled from Kenya to the United States by air for the entire period between July 1, 1961 to June 30, 1962 (boat travel would have taken too long).

The Kenyan government looked into the matter in 2009 and called birther claims “baseless.”

The fools at ORYR should have known better to publish the story in the first place. It reeks of fakery because it lacks verifiable details, and it no doubt sprung from the story that Jerome Corsi had gone to England to look for something – perhaps the Olympics. This little trip to the archives does, however, give us a little insight into the birther mind. They will believe anything.