The Myth of the US-Israel Special Bond Forget Iran: It’s Israel’s Nuclear Gun Pointed at Obama's Head http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32414.htm By Jonathan Cook September 10, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - - It is possibly the greatest of American political myths, repeated ad nauseam by presidential candidates in their election campaigns. President Barack Obama has claimed that the United States enjoys a special bond with Israel unlike its relations with any other country. He has called the friendship “unshakeable”, “enduring” and “unique”, “anchored by our common interests and deeply held values”.
His Republican rival, Mitt Romney, has gone further, arguing that there is not “an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally Israel”. A recent Romney election ad, highlighting his summer visit to Israel, extolled the “deep and cherished relationship”.
But, while such pronouncements form the basis of an apparent Washington consensus, the reality is that the cherished friendship is no more than a fairy tale. It has been propagated by politicians to mask the suspicion — and plentiful examples of duplicity and betrayal — that have marked the relationship since Israel’s founding.
Politicians may prefer to express undying love for Israel, and hand over billions of dollars annually in aid, but the US security establishment has — at least, in private — always regarded Israel as an unfaithful partner.
The distrust has been particularly hard to hide in relation to Iran. Israel has been putting relentless pressure on Washington, apparently in the hope of manoeuvring it into supporting or joining an attack on Tehran to stop what Israel claims is an Iranian effort to build a nuclear bomb concealed beneath its civilian energy programme.
While coverage has focused on the personal animosity between Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the truth is that US officials generally are deeply at odds with Israel on this issue.
The conflict burst into the open this month with reports that the Pentagon had scaled back next month’s joint military exercise, Austere Challenge, with the Israeli military that had been billed as the largest and most significant in the two countries’ history.
The goal of the exercise was to test the readiness of Israel’s missile-defence shield in case of Iranian reprisals — possibly the biggest fear holding Israel back from launching a go-it-alone attack. The Pentagon’s main leverage on Israel is its X-band radar, stationed in Israel but operated exclusively by a US crew, that would provide Israel with early warning of Iranian missiles.
A senior Israeli military official told Time magazine what message the Pentagon’s rethink had conveyed: “Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you’.”
But discord between the two “unshakeable allies” is not limited to Iran. Antipathy has been the norm for decades. Over the summer, current and former CIA officials admitted that the US security establishment has always regarded Israel as its number one counter-intelligence threat in the Middle East.
The most infamous spy working on Israel’s behalf was Jonathan Pollard, a naval intelligence officer who passed thousands of classified documents to Israel in the 1980s. Israel’s repeated requests for his release have been a running sore with the Pentagon, not least because defence officials regard promises that Israel would never again operate spies on US soil as insincere.
At least two more spies have been identified in the past few years. In 2008 a former US army engineer, Ben-Ami Kadish, admitted that he had allowed Israeli agents to photograph secret documents about US fighter jets and nuclear weapons in the 1980s. And in 2006 Lawrence Franklin, a US defence official, was convicted of passing classified documents to Israel concerning Iran.
In fact, such betrayals were assumed by Washington from the start of the relationship. In Israel’s early years, a US base in Cyprus monitored Israeli activities; today, Israeli communications are intercepted by a team of Hebrew linguists stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Documents released this month by the Israeli air force archives also reveal that Israel eventually identified mysterious high-altitude planes that overflew its territory throughout the 1950s as American U-2 espionage planes.
In a sign of continuing US caution, Israel has not been included in the coterie of countries with which Washington shares sensitive intelligence. The members of the “Five Eyes” group, consisting of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, have promised not to spy on each other — a condition Israel would have regularly flouted were it a member.
Indeed, Israel has even stolen the identities of nationals from these countries to assist in Mossad operations. Most notoriously, Israel forged passports to smuggle Israeli agents into Dubai in 2010 to assassinate Hamas leader Mahmoud Al Mabhouh.
Israel is far from a trusted ally in the US “war on terror”. A former intelligence official told the Associated Press in July that Israel ranked lower than Libya in a list of countries helping to fight terrorism compiled by the Bush administration after September 11.
So why all the talk of a special bond if the relationship is characterised by such deep mistrust?
Part of the answer lies in the formidably intimidating tactics of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. Thomas Friedman, theNew York Times columnist, spoke for a growing number of observers last year when he wrote that the US Congress was effectively “bought and paid for” by Israel’s lobbyists.
That power was all too evident last week when the Democratic national convention adopted an amended policy designating Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, in opposition to both international law and the vocal wishes of delegates.
But there is another, less spoken-of reason. Francis Perrin, the head of the French Atomic Agency in the 1950s and 1960s, when France was helping Israel develop a nuclear weapon against the wishes of the US, once observed that the Israeli bomb was really “aimed against the Americans”.
Not because Israel wanted to attack the US, but because it realised that — once it possessed the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East — the US would rarely risk standing in its way, however much its policies ran counter to US interests.
For that reason, if no other, Israel is determined to stop any rival, including Iran, from getting a nuclear weapon that would end its monopoly.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He won this year’s Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.
What is the world’s most powerful and violent “ism”? The question will summon the usual demons, such as Islamism, now that communism has left the stage. The answer, wrote Harold Pinter, is only “superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged,” because only one ideology claims to be non-ideological, neither left nor right, the supreme way. This is liberalism.
In his 1859 essay, On Liberty, to which modern liberals pay homage, John Stuart Mills described the power of empire. “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians,” he wrote, “provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.” The “barbarians” were large sections of humanity of whom “implicit obedience” was required. The French liberal Alexis de Tocqueville also believed in the bloody conquest of others as “a triumph of Christianity and civilization” that was “clearly pre-ordained in the sight of Providence.”
“It’s a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers,” wrote the historian Hywel Williams in 2001, “but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature — its conviction that it represents a superior form of life [while denying its] self-righteous fanaticism.” He had in mind a speech by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which Blair promised to “reorder this world around us” according to his “moral values.” At least a million dead later – in Iraq alone – this tribune of liberalism is today employed by the tyranny in Kazakhstan for a fee of $13 million.
Blair’s crimes are not unusual. Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted and their people bombed. The historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions.
This has been principally the project of the liberal flame carrier, the United States, whose celebrated “progressive” president John F. Kennedy, according to new research, authorized the bombing of Moscow during the Cuban crisis in 1962. “If we have to use force,” said Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State in the liberal administration of Bill Clinton, “it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” How succinctly she defines modern, violent liberalism.
Syria is an enduring project. This is a leaked joint US-UK intelligence file:
“In order to facilitate the action of liberative [sic] forces … a special effort should bemade to eliminate certain key individuals [and] to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria. CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup demain [sic] incidents within Syria,working through contacts with individuals … a necessary degree of fear … frontier and [staged] border clashes [will] provide a pretext for intervention … the CIA and SIS should use … capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”
That was written in 1957, though it might have come from a recent report by the Royal United Services Institute, A Collision Course for Intervention , whose author says, with witty understatement: “It is highly likely that some western special forces and intelligence sources have been in Syria for a considerable time.”
And so a world war beckons in Syria and Iran. Israel, the west’s violent creation, already occupies part of Syria. This is not news. Israelis take picnics to the Golan Heights to watch a civil war directed by western intelligence from Turkey and bankrolled and armed by the medievalists in Saudi Arabia.
Having stolen most of Palestine, viciously attacked Lebanon, starved the people of Gaza and built an illegal nuclear arsenal, Israel is exempt from the current disinformation campaign aimed at installing western clients in Damascus and Tehran.
On 21 July, the Guardian commentator Jonathan Freedland warned that “the west will not stay aloof for long … Both the US and Israel are also anxiously eyeing Syria’s supply of chemical and nuclear weapons, now said to be unlocked and on the move, fearing Assad may choose to go down in a lethal blaze of glory.” Said by whom? The usual “experts” and spooks.
Like them, Freedland desires “a revolution without the full-blown intervention required in Libya.” According to its own records, NATO launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were civilian targets. These included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. Read the UICEF report on the children killed, “most [of them] under the age of ten.” Like the destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, these crimes were not news, because news as disinformation is a fully integrated weapon of attack.
On 14 July, the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights, which opposed the Gaddafi regime, reported, “The human rights situation in Libya now is far worse than under Gaddafi.” Ethnic cleansing is rife. According to Amnesty, the entire population of the town of Tawargha “are still barred from returning [while] their homes have been looted and burned down.”
In Anglo-American scholarship, influential theorists known as “liberal realists” have long taught that liberal imperialists – a term they never use – are the world’s peacebrokers and crisis managers, rather than the cause of a crisis. They have taken the humanity out of the study of nations and congealed it with a jargon that serves warmongering power. Laying out whole nations for autopsy, they have identified “failed states” (nations difficult to exploit) and “rogue states” (nations resistant to western dominance).
Whether or not the regime is a democracy or dictatorship is irrelevant. The same is true of those contracted to do the dirty work. In the Middle East, from Nasser’s time to Syria today, western liberalism’s collaborators have been Islamists, lately al-Qaeda, while long discredited notions of democracy and human rights serve as rhetorical cover for conquest, “as required.” Plus ca change…
John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism’s top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. “John Pilger,” wrote Harold Pinter, “unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him.”www.johnpilger.com
That Obama’s birth certificate lists a registrar that appears remarkably like a forger’s signature joke on the word “ukulele” is not the only peculiarity observed in comparing the president’s record with other long-form Hawaiian birth certificates that have been fully authenticated.
The question is whether the Obama birth record the White House released Wednesday is an authentic photocopy of an original 1961 vital record or a modern-day forgery.
Image released by the White House April 27, 2011
The Rosetta Stone for determining the authenticity of the Obama birth document is the long-form birth certificates for the Nordyke twins, which WND discovered and authenticated in July 2009.
Birth certificate of Gretchen Nordyke, one of two twin sisters born at what was known in 1961 as the Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii.
A side-by-side comparison of the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates with the Obama birth certificate the White House released yesterday reveals many differences, some with regard to content, others to format.
In the Nordyke twins’ birth certificate, in Box 20, “Date Accepted by Local Reg.” and Box 22, “Date Accepted by Reg. General,” the date is stamped “AUG 11 1961,” while the date is stamped on Obama’s birth certificate as “AUG -8 1961,” with a dash before the middle number designating the day.
In the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates, the type in Box 8, “Name of the Father” lines up to the right margin with the typing in the next three boxes below, while in the Obama birth certificate, the typing in Box 10, “Age of Father,” and Box 15, “Age of Mother,” are indented below the “R” in “Barack” in Box 8.
In the Nordyke twins’s birth certificate, the type in Box 9, “Race of Father,” Box 12b, “Kind of Business or Industry,” and Box 14, “Race of Mother,” line up to the left margin of the box (in all three boxes for Susan Elizabeth Nordyke and in two of the three boxes for Gretchen Carter Nordyke), while in the Obama birth certificate, the type in each of these three boxes is indented from the right box margin, with varying indent spacing in each line.
In Box 16, “Birthplace of Mother,” in the Nordyke twins’ birth certificate, the letters of “Los Angeles, California,” are aligned at the bottom margin, while in the Obama birth certificate, the “K” in Kansas rides up and appears only partially struck at the top.
The left-margin alignment in the boxes throughout the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates suggest a typewriter was set up to fill in information by tabbing through the document, as compared to the more irregular content of the information filled in the boxes on the Obama birth certificate.
The typed letters in the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates appear irregularly spaced, often run together, as in the capital letters of the boxes stating the name of the father and mother, while the typed letters in the Obama birth certificate appear evenly spaced, not run together, not even with the capital letters in the boxes stating the name of the father and the mother Boxes 8 and 13). Again, the differences more strongly suggest the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates were prepared on a manual typewriter.
In Box 3, “This Birth,” the “X” marking “Twins” in the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates strikes the box upper left, as is the case with Box 4, “If Twin or Triple, Was Child Born,” while Box 3 in Obama’s is struck top right.
Similar differences in how the “X” strikes the boxes can be seen in Box 6d and 7e where the “X” on Obama’s birth certificate fits squarely into the box, drifting toward the top, and the “X” in the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates fall high and to the right in the boxes provided.
The Nordyke twins’ birth certificates in Box 5a lists the birthdate as Aug. 5, 1961, with the month abbreviated, while Obama’s in Box 5a lists the birthdate as August 4, 1961, with the month spelled out.
In the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates the “H” in “Honolulu” in Boxes 7a and 7c drifts high above the horizontal of the other typed letters, while in Obama’s birth certificate the “H” in “Honolulu” is consistently on line with the other letters in the word.
The dates stamped in the Nordyke twins birth certificates in Boxes 20 and 22 appear irregularly stamped, at an angle, while the date stamps in the Obama birth certificate appear more evenly on line, at the center of the boxes, even if a bit high in the box.
The local registrar in the Nordyke twins’ birth certificate, Box 21, is different than the local registrar who signed the Obama birth certificate. Was there more than one local registrar operating to process birth certificates from Kapiolani hospital at this time?
The Nordyke twins’ birth certificate at the bottom have the printed signature of the director of health and the registrar general, along with the date the copies were issued, “5-5-1966,” while the Obama birth certificate has no similar official designations indicating the date on which the copy was issued or that the copy was certified by the director of health and the registrar general to be a “true and correct copy” of the original record on file in the Research, Planning and Statistics Office of the Hawaii State Department of Health.
The Norydke twins’ birth certificates appear white against black, in the format typical of 1960s Photostats, while the Obama birth certificate appears to be a machine copy printed on hash-marked Department of Health paper; yet in Obama’s modern photocopy, a black space at the top appears created by the fold of the paper at the top left corner into the binder and no similar indentation is seen in the Nordyke twins’s photostatic copy.
Some of these differences may be explained by different people preparing the documents on different typewriters, yet how two different formats appear in the date stamp used in Boxes 20 and 22 is more difficult to explain if the Obama birth certificate is legitimate.
Both the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates and the Obama birth certificate identify the birth hospital as Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital, even though there has been considerable Internet discussion that that was not the official name of the hospital in 1961.
Still, it remains remarkable that the Hawaii Department of Health and the White House released the Obama birth certificate without the type of authenticating information that appears at the bottom of the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates.
In Box 3, “This Birth,” there are two “Xs” above “Twin” and “Triplet” – why are these “Xs” here and what do they signify?
What is the meaning of the smudges in the Obama birth certificate in the box containing the name of the attending physician?
What is the significance of the numbers, seen vertically, on the right side of the Obama birth certificate?
WND has previously reported on information discrepancies between the birth dates, certificate numbers and registration numbers in comparing the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates to the Obama birth certificate:
As WND reported, the numbers on the long-form birth certificates issued by Kapi’olani to the Nordyke twins are lower than the number given President Obama, even though the president’s birth certificate was accepted by the registrar general and stamped with a certificate number three days earlier.
Susan Nordyke, the first twin, was born at 2:12 p.m. Hawaii time on Aug. 5, 1961, and was given Certificate No. 151 – 61 – 10637, which was filed with the Hawaii registrar Aug. 11, 1961.
Gretchen Nordyke, the second twin, was born at 2:17 p.m. Hawaii time Aug. 5, 1961, and was given Certificate No. 151 – 61 – 10638, which was also filed with the Hawaii registrar Aug. 11, 1961.
Barack Obama was given Certificate No. 151 – 1961 – 10641, even though he was born Aug. 4, 1961, the day before the Nordyke twins, and his birth was registered with the Hawaii Department of Health registrar three days earlier, on Aug. 8, 1961.
WND has previously reported on information discrepancies between the birth dates, certificate numbers and registration numbers in comparing the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates to the Obama birth certificate:
In 1961, the birth certificate numbers were not assigned by the hospitals.
Instead, the numbers were stamped to the birth record by the Hawaii Department of Health at the main office in Honolulu.
This is the only place birth certificate numbers were assigned.
At the last step of the process, the documents were accepted by the registrar general, with the date of registration filled into box No. 22 on the lower right hand corner of the long-form birth certificate.
The date the birth document was accepted by the registrar general was the same date the birth certificate number was stamped on the birth record.
The birth certificate number was stamped on the form by a rubber stamp that automatically increased the birth certificate number by one each time the birth certificate was stamped.
The question is, in 1961, how was it possible that the Nordyke twins had their birth certificates accepted by the registrar general in Hawaii three days later than the registrar general accepted Obama’s birth certificate, when their birth certificate numbers are lower than Obama’s number?
At the time the Nordyke twins’ birth certificates were discovered, WND displayed copies of the two documents to make clear the limited information contained in the short-form Certification of Live Birth that Obama supporters at that time were claiming was the only Obama birth record needed to prove a Hawaiian birth.
In a recorded interview with WND, Eleanor Nordyke said she had no recollection of Ann Dunham having been in the hospital at the same time she delivered her twin daughters.
“I was in such pain delivering the twins,” Mrs. Nordyke said, “that I have very little recollection of the experience at all, except for the pain.”
Neither the White House nor the Hawaii Department of Health has yet provided an original copy of the Obama birth certificate for forensic examination.
NEW YORK – Recalling Dan Brown’s bestselling novel “The Da Vinci Code,” computer experts have discovered strange anomalies in the Obama birth record released by the White House.
They include a different birth registration number that shows up in “hidden text,” remnants of the short-form certificate apparently bleeding through the long-form and a “smiley face” in the registrar’s stamp that does not show up on other recently issued Hawaii birth records.
Curiously, in a simple process run by Optical Character Recognition software that reveals hidden text, the registration number 10611 turns up, instead of 10641, the number displayed on the two birth records authorized for publication by the White House.
Application of the Adobe Acrobat’s “Examine Document” function on the Obama long-form document produces the following hidden text:
The number 10611 would seem to be more plausible than 10641, which appears to be out of sequence with the numbers of the published birth certificates of twins born a day after Obama.
As WND reported, the numbers on the Hawaii birth certificates of twins Susan and Gretchen Nordyke are lower than the number given Obama, even though the president’s birth certificate was accepted by the registrar general and stamped with a certificate number three days earlier. Further, as WND reported, an article by the man who was Hawaii’s registrar general at the time Obama was born confirmed birth certificates were numbered immediately upon acceptance by the registrar general.
Here is a close-up:
And here are the two pages, for comparison:
Is 10611 Obama’s true birth registration number, the number on a document used by a forger or just a meaningless symbol beneath the text?
Ghost of the short-form birth certificate?
While the White House posted an electronic copy of Obama’s birth certificate printed on the green hash-mark paper of the Hawaii Department of Health, the press was handed a paper copy that for some unspecified reason lacked the green background.
Here is how the white birth certificate looked when distributed in the White House pressroom April 27:
Within days, contributors demonstrated on AboveTopSecret.com that when the copy is run through a color filter process in Paintshop Pro, the text of Obama’s short-form certification of live birth, oddly, appears to bleed through the page.
The contributors speculated that the short-form birth certificate was placed behind the white, long-form birth certificate when it was copied for distribution to the White House press April 27.
Here are two versions of the white birth certificate analyzed under color filters:
And:
User “boondock-saint” posted on AboveTopSecret.com an interactive version that flashes between the short-form and a brown version of the long-form birth certificate, demonstrating how text from the short-form appears to be bleeding through.
The word “VOID” also appears behind the long-form:
Smile, Alvin T. Onaka!
WND previously reported that a close inspection of the Hawaii Department of Health state registrar’s stamp affixed by Alvin T. Onaka on the White House-released document reveals a curious misspelling.
The language of the seal reads, “I certify this is a true copy or abstract of TXE record on file in the Hawaii State Department of Health.”
Here is a close-up of the registrar’s stamp on the White House-released document:
Additionally, with a magnification of 800 percent, the distinct form of a smiley face can be seen on the side of the “A” in Onaka’s first name. The figure appears to be a side profile of a face with a nose, eye and mouth.
It is arguable, viewing the document at 1,600 magnification, that the smiley face could have been formed by inserting a stylized letter “E” into the rounded outside loop of the “A” in Alvin.
The TXE and the smiley face are not seen on other examples of the state registrar’s seal, such as the copy of a long-form birth certificate released by the Hawaii Department of Health as recently as March 15:
Here is a close-up of the registrar’s certification stamp on the long-form birth certificate copy dated March 15:
Why would the Hawaii DOH allow the document issued to the president to contain an obvious smiling face hiding within the first letter of the state registrar’s signature?
Or, could it be the work of a forger leaving his mark, laughing at those who take the document seriously?:
Below is a hand-drawn version that illustrates how the face appears in the letter:
Certainly, whoever proof-read the stamp or examined the document for accuracy at the Hawaii Department of Health before releasing it to the White House either was negligent or had a unique sense of humor.
Why are there white dots on the Obama birth certificate, and how did they get there?
These are questions asked by Tom Harrison, a software designer with more than 30 years experience in graphic design. Harrison – a 58 year-old Dartmouth graduate with a background in mathematics, physics and computer science – believes the dots prove the document is a forgery.
The Oregon-based computer software business he manages, TS4, has done general computer consulting, embedded design, software and web design, and integration and networking since 1980.
Harrison’s expertise is demonstrated in his report to WND, which includes detailed instructions that allow the reader to duplicate his results using Adobe software.
“I’ve read a lot about the purported Obama birth certificate, but I have not seen anywhere (until now) the simplest proof that it is a forgery: the overwhelming evidence provided by the presence of two ‘white dot’ groups in the image,” he explained to WND.
“While many apologists have claimed the layering of the document is a natural outcome of optimized scanning, there is one thing that the scanning process cannot do, even if it is separating layers: it cannot create two separate colors for any given pixel,” he said.
In other words, if you lift an item out of an image, what is left is nothing: transparent space. In fact, all the apologists claiming validity of the document point out that the “white” (actually, transparent) space behind the lifted images is expected. In this case, however, there are two colors associated with the pixels in those two subgroups – green underneath and opaque (not transparent) white on top, and – if anyone is confused by the difference between transparent (rendered white by convention) and opaque white – the “white is not underneath the subgroup, visible when the subgroup is made not visible, but is actually the pixel color when the subgroup is visible – exactly the opposite of claimed “normal” effects.
Put simply, the white dots, he contends, are evidence of two different colors occupying the same pixel, a result that is not possible if the Obama birth certificate were simply a scan.
Two separate colors occupying the same pixel result when one color is in one layer and the second color is in another layer, demonstrating that the document was created electronically, with the layers being used to transplant manipulated information into the final product.
“If the document were indeed scanned, there could not be varied green hues behind the white dots,” Harrison insisted. “No scanner has X-ray vision. Nothing really complicated: No pixel can have two colors from a scanner.”
What is Harrison’s explanation for why the white dots were left in the final Obama birth certificate?
“I suspect it was an early attempt at visually editing out some inconvenient spots, somewhere else in the document,” he answered. “That method wouldn’t work too well, so I think the composer simply dragged them off to the side to try something different, then forgot about them.
“Once de-selected, they would be practically invisible when placed as they were, over the mottled safety paper background.”
As evidence of this, Harrison cites the two blue boxes that pop up to surround the dots when image groups 1 and 2 are selected in the Adobe Illustrator’s pop-up box, as demonstrated in the next section of this article.
To the untrained eye, the blue boxes appear to contain nothing of importance, and it is difficult to understand why the boxes are on the document, unless the person who assembled the electronic birth certificate file placed the boxes there for some reason.
Harrison believes the creator of the document made the error because of a “tight schedule, difficult job, guilty conscience” and “didn’t double-check the removal of ‘junk.’”
White dots in the Obama birth certificate
When the Obama birth certificate is viewed in Adobe Illustrator, two groups of white dots are identifiable in two separate layers in the document.
As seen in Exhibit 1, Harrison says the top group of white dots – identified when a blue rectangle pops onto the document when the first image group in the layers pop-up box is clicked on – was placed into the document as an outside link that was scaled 24 percent and rotated -90 degrees.
Exhibit 1: Layer 3, top blue box identifying white dots in Obama birth certificate.
The second group of white dots is seen when a blue rectangle pops into the document when the second image group in the layers pop-up box is clicked on. Again, the links box identifies that the second group of white dots was placed into the document identically to the first, by being scaled 24 percent and rotated -90 degrees, as seen in Exhibit 2.
Exhibit 2: Layer 3, bottom blue box identifying white dots in Obama birth certificate.
Exhibit 3 shows one of the white dots in an extreme magnification. The ruler lines can be tracked to verify that Exhibits 2, 3 and 4 come from the top portion of the document.
Exhibit 3: Enlargement of white dot in top box, Layer 1, Obama birth certificate.
Exhibit 4 shows the group of white dots in the top box identified with layer 1.
Exhibit 4: White dot group appears, top box, Layer 1, switched on, Obama birth certificate.
Looking closely in the upper right of the screen shot, the large white dot seen in Exhibit 3 can be found in Exhibit 4.
Next, switching off Layer 1 makes the top box and the white dots disappear, as can be seen in Exhibit 5.
Exhibit 5: White dot group disappears, top box, Layer 1 switched off in Obama birth certificate.
What is apparent in Exhibit 5 is that with Layer 1 switched off, the blue box and the white dots at the top of the document disappear. What is now seen in the place of the white dots is the green/white of the security paper occupying the pixels where Layer 1 had placed white dots.
Exhibit 6 shows the bottom box, with white dots visible, as Layer 2 is switched on.
Exhibit 6: White dot group appears, bottom Box, Layer 2 switched on in Obama Birth Certificate.
To distinguish the white dots in Layer 2 from the noise of the green-white in the security paper, Exhibit 7 shows one of the white dots from the bottom box in extreme magnification.
Exhibit 7: White dot in extreme magnification, bottom box, Layer 2 switched on in Obama birth certificate.
When the second image group in the layers pop-up group is switched off, the blue box and the white dots again disappear, as demonstrated in Exhibit 8.
Exhibit 8: White dot group disappears, bottom box, Layer 2 switched on in Obama Birth certificate.
White dots seen against blue background
To make the white dots even clearer, a blue background layer was added to the document, placed “behind” the other objects.
As can be seen in Exhibit 9, the white dots in the top and bottom boxes are visible when Layers 1 and 2 are click-selected and the green security paper is switched off in Layer 9.
Exhibit 9: Top and bottom white dot groups seen against blue background, Layers 1 and 2 switched on, security paper background switched off in Layer 9, Obama birth certificate.
As can be seen in Exhibit 10, the white dots in the top and bottom boxes disappear when Layers 1 and 2 are switched off and the green security paper is switched off in Layer 9.
Exhibit 10: Top and bottom white dot groups disappear against blue background, Layers 1 and 2 switched off, security paper background switched off in Layer 9 of Obama birth certificate.
Exhibit 11 shows the top box of white dots in close-up.
Exhibit 11: Close-up – Top box of white dot groups seen against blue background, Layers 1 and 2 switched on, security paper background switched off in Layer 9 of Obama birth certificate.
Exhibit 12 shows the bottom box of blue dots in close-up.
Exhibit 12: Close-up – Bottom box of white dot groups seen against blue background, Layers 1 and 2 switched on, security paper background switched off in Layer 9 in Obama Birth Certificate.
Seen in extreme close-up, in Exhibit 13, the bottom group of white dots appears arranged in a manner that impressionistically could be seen as representing a butterfly.
Exhibit 13: Extreme close-up – Bottom box of white dot groups seen against blue background, Layers 1 and 2 switched on. Security paper background switched off in Layer 9 of Obama Birth Certificate.
Grabbed and moved around as objects, the two groups of dots can be placed at the top of the document, giving the appearance of a large butterfly chasing a smaller butterfly, as seen in Exhibit 14.
Exhibit 14: “Repositioned” top and bottom group of white dots in Obama Birth certificate.
Harrison proposes the following thought experiment to understand why the white dots prove the document is a forgery:
Imagine a window envelope, of the type used by banks for statements, in which the address of the client shows through a clear plastic window.
There are two layers of paper visible to the observer: the envelope and the portion of the contents visible through the transparent “hole” in the envelope.
Now imagine taking a picture of that envelope and printing the picture: What was previously the composite of two pieces of paper is now just one piece of paper.
With the envelope in hand, the contents could be removed and the bank statement read.
With only the picture of the envelope in hand, no part of the statement is visible or retrievable, except the address.
Now take just one more step in the experiment: Place a small, opaque adhesive sticker on the transparent envelope window, so that it covers just one letter in the address on the bank statement inside, take another picture of the envelope and print it.
On the envelope, you can remove the sticker, and again you can see the complete address. You can still open the envelope and read the entire statement.
On this new picture, however, you can erase the image of the sticker, or perhaps cut it out, but you will not be able to see the letter covered by it – the camera cannot capture what it cannot see – and you still cannot get access to the statement.
How exactly does this apply to the Obama birth certificate?
Harrison explains:
Recall the adhesive dot on the window envelope in the thought experiment: The picture of the window envelope did not have the information under the dot, even if the dot was cut out of the picture, or somehow “erased.”
Just as the paper of the envelope, and the adhesive dot added to the window on the envelope, both obscured the statement kept inside, both of the images (dots and background safety paper) obscure the blue background, because both the white dots and the green safety paper are made of opaque color.
“Now ask this question,” he continued. “How does a paper document, scanned by the White House to show to the world, have two opaque colors on the same spot, when the camera – the scanner – cannot see any more than one color for each pixel?
“The answer is, simply, it can’t, and it didn’t. A scanner does not have X-ray vision anymore than a camera does. Any spot on a document that is simply a scan of paper can have only one color associated with it. If there are two, then the document must have been created from multiple images layered together instead of a piece of paper.”
If this is still not clear, the expert suggested the following: Have someone take a picture of you with a football hidden behind your back, not visible to the camera.
“Will you ever be able to extract the football from that picture?” he asked. “Of course not.
“However, if you take a picture of a football, and a separate picture of yourself, you can ‘hide’ the picture of the football behind yourself, using Adobe Illustrator or similar products, simply by placing the picture of yourself ‘in front of’ the picture of the football in the document.
“When done, the football would not be visible to a casual viewer, but could still be retrieved – made visible – using the software that composed the multiple-image document, by turning ‘off’ the image placed in front of the football.”
He stressed that the White House file does not consist of just one image, but nine distinct images merged together, with the first eight positioned “in front of” – that is, so you see them first – the large background image (image 9), consisting of the green “safety paper” and outlines, as well as some text.
Exhibit 15 shows the file, with the first eight images, marked with numbered red boxes, displayed over the ninth (the safety paper background).
Exhibit 15: Layers in Obama birth certificate
He further stressed that two colors on even one pixel in this document means at least two separate image layers, from different sources, were deliberately placed together.
In this case, it means, Harrison believes, that multiple images were assembled to create a document that did not exist as a genuine whole.
Additional Evidence
As additional evidence, the computer expert cited gray pixels that lingered within letters on the document, such that when the seventh layer, containing the registrar text/signature stamp, was removed from the document, gray pixels remain visible, suggesting the forger did not take the time to erase “tracks of the forgery.”
Exhibit 16 shows the registrar’s text/signature stamp that is visible when the seventh layer is turned on. Looking closely, gray pixels can be seen in the “OF” and the “TXE” of the stamp.
Exhibit 16: Registrar text/signature stamp with Layer 7 turned on. Note gray pixels in center of “OF” and “TXE”
Figure 17 demonstrates the gray pixel residue that remains visible even after Layer 7 is switched off and the registrar’s text/signature stamp disappears from the document.
Exhibit 17: Registrar text/signature stamp with Layer 7 turned off. Note gray pixels in where “OF” and “TXE” were in registrar’s stamp
Harrison found similar residue traces under the first “Aug” stamp in Box 20 on the Obama birth certificate, as well as in the second “Aug” stamp in Box 22.
Exhibit 18 shows the first “Aug” stamp in Box 20.
Exhibit 18: “Aug” Stamp in Box 20 with Layer 4 turned on
Exhibit 19 shows the various shades of green and gray that remain “underneath” the letters on the background image when Layer 4 is switched off.
Exhibit 19: “Aug” stamp in Box 20 with Layer 4 turned off
The same effect can be seen in the second date stamp, “Aug,” seen in Box 22 when Layer 5 is turned on, as shown in Exhibit 20.
Exhibit 20: “Date A …” and “Aug” stamp in box 22 of Obama birth certificate
Exhibit 21 shows that underneath the opaque pixels in “Date A …” and “Aug” in Box 22 there are more gray and green pixels.
Exhibit 21: “Date A …” and “Aug” stamp in Box 22 disappear with Layer 5 switched off
“All of the nine image elements are imported into the blank document, not just the white dots,” he explained.
“That is the whole point: Since all the elements, except the fully-opaque background image (9th group), show “second color” artifacts underneath (on the 9th group safety paper) when “turned off,” they all represent elements that were added “in front of” the 9th group (containing the safety paper background).”
From there, he concluded:
“It’s that second color that distinguishes an element “lifted away” from the original image (leaving behind either transparency, default uniform color, or simply a copy of the lifted image) from an element “added to” the document.
“The prep for the document, with the fuzzy but incomplete erasure (as under “OF” in the registrar stamp and the second “AUG”) and non-erased areas (as under the dots and the first “AUG”) demonstrate not some sort of automatic computational operation doing post-scan optimization, but a manual process by a not entirely competent graphics person trying to create a document from bits and pieces found elsewhere.”
He encouraged careful observation of all the links placed in the document.
“All links are rotated -90 degrees, which I suspect means the editor simply had the document laying on its side while assembling it, to fit his screen, or that the scanner used to fetch the image pieces was scanning to landscape mode, requiring the editor to crop and rotate the pieces he wanted to use.”
He also pointed out that all links are scaled 24 percent, except the large background/safety paper image, which is 48 percent.
“That suggests at least two scan processes, at different resolutions (one of the noted artifacts), requiring different scaling of the pieces.”
Here is how Harrison described the manner in which he believes the Obama birth certificate was constructed:
“The individual pieces were edited – cropped, contrast enhanced, adjusted, etc. – then assembled to form the clumsy whole, complete with resolution differences, dithering differences, duplicated elements like the birth order boxes, and places where two opaque colors cover each other, something that cannot be the result of a scanned piece of paper, where there can only be one color at any one pixel position.
“White over green, or dark gray over green, or black over gray – whatever combination you find – is simply not the result of a scan, but of an assembly of at least two distinct images.
“At the very least, image 9 (the safety paper background) and image 8 (the bulk of the basic certificate text) were taken from different originals.
“Image 8 is high-contrast, apparently scanned in monochrome, without safety paper background, while image 9 is lower in both resolution and contrast, was scanned in color and shows dithering at boundaries (like the edges of characters and the transition of lines).”
His conclusion is that the document is a forgery.
In the end, Harrison summarized, “the assembly shows the one irrefutable hallmark of not being the result of a scan of a single original: multiple colors on the same spot, one hidden behind the other.”
