CERTIFIGATE
'I created Obama's certification of birth'
White House links to deliberate forgery from Snopes.com, thinking it was real
By Jerome R. Corsi
WND.com
When the White House posted online an image of President Obama's purported long-form birth certificate, it also linked to the previously circulated "Certification of Live Birth," the short-form version that had been presented as the only birth documentation available.
However, the short-form certificate to which the White House linked April 27 was a forgery, claims computer expert Ron Polland, Ph.D., who says he made the image himself.
"I made the birth certificate image that was given to the media at the White House press conference held on April 27, 2011," Polland told WND.
"The White House said the black-and-white image is a copy of Obama's 2007 [Certification of Live Birth], but it's not. It is the forgery I created, and I can prove that is the case," he declared.
Polland said he created the image to bolster his contention that the short-form Certification of Live Birth circulated by the Obama presidential campaign was a forgery.
"You have to be able to show how an electronic document was created in order to prove it is a forgery," he explained. "I wanted to prove the [short-form certificate] was a forgery, and I wanted to show how it can be done."
Then how did the White House end up presenting the forgery as authentic?
Polland contends that all of the short-form "versions in circulation on the Internet are forgeries."
"Probably the White House just picked my forgery off Snopes.com, thinking it was the real thing," he said.
Polland said he realized various Obama supporting groups, including Snopes.com, had posted his forgery as the authentic Obama document, but he decided to say nothing until he felt the time was right.
"I didn't say anything until the White House published my forged Obama birth certificate as the real thing," he said. "Then I decided it was time to speak up. Once the White House posted the forgery, I knew I could expose both the president and a supposedly independent, fact-checking website like Snopes.com as being caught promoting a fake document as the real thing."
Polland walked WND through step-by-step documentation to show that the White House linked to his creation, not a document issued by the state of Hawaii.
The White House website documenting the April 27
press conference
states:
In 2008, in response to media inquiries, the president's campaign requested his birth certificate from the state of Hawaii. The state sent the campaign the president's birth certificate, the same legal documentation provided to all Hawaiians as proof of birth in state, and the campaign immediately posted it on the Internet. That birth certificate can be seen here (PDF).
Clicking that link, as seen in Exhibit 1, leads to a black and white image on the White House website:
 Exhibit 1: Obama short-form COLB on White house website |
A close-up of the bottom of the page shows that the document was taken not from a White House or Hawaii Department of Health Web page, but from Snopes.com:
 Exhibit 2: Closeup of Obama short-form COLB on White House website |
Snopes.com, in an June 2008 article, posted the Obama short-form certificate after it had been first published by DailyKos.com June 12, 2008, and by the Obama campaign website FightTheSmears.com.
When Snopes.com posted Polland's fake document, he took a screen shot of the Snopes.com website, showing that the link to the Obama document was the URL at which Polland had posted his forgery. Exhibit 3 shows the Snopes.com website attempting to "debunk" what it considered the false claim that the Obama short-form birth certificate was a forgery.
 Exhibit 3: Snopes page attempting to 'debunk' claim Obama COLB is a forgery |
Exhibit 4 is a screen shot that shows the Snopes.com website linked to Polland's forgery:
 Exhibit 4: Snopes COLB linking to Polland's forgery |
Independent confirmation is readily available on the Internet that Snopes.com had linked to the forged Polland birth certificate.
It can be seen, for instance, in the following comment a reader posted on Salon.com, a strongly partisan pro-Obama website, on Nov. 3, 2008.
As seen in Exhibit 5, the reader shows that the article posted on Snopes.com, attempting to prove the authenticity of the Obama short-term birth certificate, was linked to Polland’s forgery:
 Exhibit 5: Salon.com letter showing Snopes.com linked to Polland's fake |
Exhibit 6 shows a closeup of the relevant section.
 Exhibit 6: Closeup of Salon letter showing Snopes link to Polland's fake |
Exhibit 7 shows that as recently as April 7, only 20 days before the White House press conference releasing Obama's long-form birth certificate, a reader on HuffingtonPost.com was unknowingly urging others to send Polland's fake certificate to Donald Trump as evidence Obama had been born in Hawaii.
 Exhibit 7: Huffington Post reader unknowingly urges others to send Trump a copy of Polland's fake COLB |
The Snopes.com link to the Polland fake document was still in place at the time of the April 27 White House press conference, as demonstrated by a reference to Polland's Photobucket website. At Polland's site, the hits to his fake document peaked April 27, as seen in Exhibit 8.
 Exhibit 8: Polland's Photobucket account for fake COLB peaks coincident with White House April 27 news conference |
"If Obama has his Certification of Live Birth and his 2008 presidential campaign had actually scanned it and posted it on their website FightTheSmears.com, then why did the White House distribute on April 27 a fake copy ... that the White House never had and never made?" Polland asked. "Instead, the White House distributed a fake [short-term certificate] image that I had and I made."
Polland takes this as proof that the document the campaign released in 2008 was a forgery.
"Because what Obama calls his birth certificate is a fabricated Photoshop forgery, and I proved it by duplicating one from scatch, in real-time, in the only way it could have been created," he said. "No scanner in the universe created the [document] Obama claimed was his."
Polland has posted a video on his YouTube channel demonstrating how he fabricated the document and the White House distributed his fake.
As seen in Exhibit 9, Snopes.com has replaced the Polland fake document with a new green-background image that no longer matches the one posted on the White House website with the Snopes.com URL.
 Exhibit 9: Snopes.com substitutes different COLB image to replace Polland fake |
Polland, a frequent Internet poster under the username "Polarik," has published a series of videos on YouTube summarizing his three-year investigation seeking to prove the Obama short-term birth certificate was a forgery.
Polland's expertise is in computer graphics and the use of computer peripherals, such as printers and scanners to input digital images.
He earned a Ph.D. in Instructional Systems from Florida State University in 1978 and a masters degree in Educational Research and Psychology from Florida State in 1972.
Polland has just published an e-book entitled "Alias Barack Obama: The Greatest Identity Fraud in History."