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New Hampshire, April 27, 2011 NBC News reporter Ron Allen attempts to show Donald Trump “the document”, a piece of paper he was holding which NBC News portrayed as President Obama’s Hawaii “Certificate of Live Birth.” It remains unclear how one of only two “official” copies that an attorney couriered from Honolulu to the White House hours earlier could have landed in the hands of Allen in New Hampshire. (Image credit: NBC News)
New Hampshire, April 27, 2011 NBC News reporter Ron Allen attempts to show Donald Trump “the document”, a piece of paper he was holding which NBC News portrayed as President Obama’s Hawaii “Certificate of Live Birth.” It remains unclear how one of only two “official” copies that an attorney couriered from Honolulu to the White House hours earlier could have landed in the hands of Allen in New Hampshire. (Image credit: NBC News)

By Alan Jones | February 19, 2015

(1776 Channel) The image painted by NBC News of Savannah Guthrie and Ron Allen as close-to-the-action correspondents who scoop the competition may be more than coincidence.

On April 27, 2011, “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” aired a segment called “Obama birth certificate—signed, sealed, delivered” just hours after the White House released a PDF image of President Obama’s Hawaii “Certificate of Live Birth”. The newscast featured:

– NBC reporter Savannah Guthrie proclaiming on air that she saw one of two official copies of the certificate of live birth (COLB) and “felt the raised seal.”

NBC White House Correspondent Savannah Guthrie told Brian Williams that she “felt the raised seal” on President Obama’s Hawaii "Certificate of Live Birth" during the April 27, 2011 broadcast of NBC Nightly News (Image credits: NBC News, UberSocial/WND)
NBC White House Correspondent Savannah Guthrie told Brian Williams that she “felt the raised seal” on President Obama’s Hawaii “Certificate of Live Birth” during the April 27, 2011 broadcast of NBC Nightly News (Image credits: NBC News, UberSocial/WND)

– And a video package showing NBC/MSNBC reporter Ron Allen waving a piece of paper at Donald Trump, who had been insisting for weeks that President Obama should produce an authentic birth certificate. Reporter Allen yelled to the real estate mogul as NBC cameras rolled: “You’ve said you wanted to see it…Don’t you want to take a look at it?”

NBC/MSNBC reporter Ron Allen (Image credit: NBC/Twitter)
NBC/MSNBC reporter Ron Allen (Image credit: NBC/Twitter)
New Hampshire, April 27, 2011 NBC News reporter Ron Allen attempts to show Donald Trump “the document”. In this image, the paper Allen was holding, which NBC News portrayed as President Obama’s Hawaii "Certificate of Live Birth", appears to be folded. (Image credit: NBC News)
New Hampshire, April 27, 2011 NBC News reporter Ron Allen attempts to show Donald Trump “the document”. In this image, the paper Allen was holding, which NBC News portrayed as President Obama’s Hawaii “Certificate of Live Birth“, appears to be folded. (Image credit: NBC News)

Sharon Rondeau at the Post & Email first raised a question about the incident in a Feb. 11, 2015 piece headlined: “Does NBC’s Ron Allen have a paper copy of Obama’s purported birth certificate?”

1776 Channel subsequently issued several requests for comment from NBC News in New York about Guthrie’s claims: What did Guthrie see and feel, and where did she obtain the piece of paper she documented with two photographs and then presented as proof of the COLB’s existence?

And what was it exactly that reporter Allen waved at Trump? As of this writing, 1776 Channel’s queries to NBC have not been returned.

Also see: Savannah Guthrie: Another NBC credibility disaster?

The White House roll-out of the PDF image that the Obama administration apparently anticipated would finally satisfy conservatives demands for proof that the President was born in Hawaii, as claimed, happened on the morning of Wednesday April 27, 2011.

This was the second day of a threeday super tornado outbreak that forecasters feared was becoming more dangerous and was likely going to strike Alabama Wednesday afternoon.  

President Obama headed to Chicago at some point on Wednesday following his surprise announcement from the White House podium that he had released his “birth certificate.”

The President and Michelle needed to be in Chicago for a taping of the Oprah Winfrey Show. As the weather in Alabama grew more ominous, President Obama told Winfrey that he remembered being born. “Can I just say? I was there, so I knew that — I knew I had been born. I remembered it.”

By late afternoon the storm system was wreaking havoc, destruction, and death across the southeast.

The Tuscaloosa-Birmingham EF-4 tornado that killed 65 people was on the ground from 4:43 p.m. until 6:14 p.m. Central Time, NOAA records show.  “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” was broadcast from 5:30 p.m. until 6 p.m. Central Time, revealing that the deadly tornado was tearing through Alabama throughout the newscast.  

April 2011 is ranked by NOAA as the “most active tornado month on record”.  An estimated 316 people died in 29 tornadoes that spooled across Alabama and nearby states on the same day the PDF image went live on WhiteHouse.gov.

“Nationwide, 199 tornadoes developed across 14 states on April 27. Storm survey teams confirmed a total of 122 tornadoes from the afternoon and evening of April 27 Of the 316 deaths reported, 313 were associated with the afternoon/evening tornadoes. In all,
31 of these tornadoes were rated as EF3 or stronger. Eleven tornadoes were rated EF4 and four were rated EF5. The average EF4 and EF5 tornado path length was 66 miles.” – NOAA National Weather Service: The Historic Tornadoes of April 2011

Tornado tracks from the April 27, 2011 super outbreak which killed an estimated three hundred and sixteen people. On the morning of April 27, 2011 a PDF image the Obama administration claims is a scan of President Obama's Hawaii "Certificate of Live Birth" was released at WhiteHouse.gov.
Tornado tracks from the April 27, 2011 super outbreak which killed an estimated 316 people. On the morning of April 27, 2011 a PDF image the Obama administration claims is a scan of President Obama’s Hawaii “Certificate of Live Birth” was released at WhiteHouse.gov.

On April 26, the day before the White House released a PDF image of the COLB, weather forecasters predicted a seventy to ninety percent chance that significant tornadoes would strike the Alabama region the following day on April 27.

Did the White House knowingly time the Hawaii “Certificate of Live Birth” PDF upload to the Whitehouse.gov site to coincide with a news cycle expected to be dominated by severe weather?  Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who left the White House in 2010, was known to say “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Dr. Jerome Corsi, noted researcher and author of at least one unauthorized Obama biography, was scheduled to release his newest, most controversial and highly anticipated Obama bio sequel, Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President. within a matter of weeks.

Did the White House inner circle upload the COLB file in a frantic last-minute rush, hoping to preempt revelations contained in the imminent publication of Dr. Corsi’s book?

A Washington Post rundown of events leading up to the release of the PDF COLB conceded that “Trump was a major factor, by the White House’s own admission”, but went on to acknowledge that “Wednesday’s announcement was the culmination of several days of secret, intense maneuvering.”

“Why did they release the forms on the very day that Trump is making his first visit to New Hampshire?” asked the Washington Post. “Officials said they wanted to release the paperwork as quickly as possible after receiving it, to pre-empt any further conspiracy theories about whether it had been doctored.”

If that was the official plan, it was doomed to failure from the moment the PDF went live at WhiteHouse.gov.

Forensics

The uploaded PDF COLB immediately attracted the attention of forensic document experts who suspected it might be a phony,  easily created with computer software applications.

Closer inspection led to the conclusion that the file was digitally created.  The file had been released without first “flattening” the digital layers comprising the image — an amateurish mistake which immediately caught the attention of Adobe Illustrator professionals around the world.

Lt. Mike Zullo, lead investigator with the Maricopa County, Arizona “Cold Case Posse” recently told 1776 Channel that his unit has obtained an affidavit from certified document examiner Reed Hayes.  Hayes has in the past been an expert witness for Perkins Coie, the law firm hired to defend President Obama from challenges to his eligibility, according to Zullo.   Reed concluded that the PDF image is “entirely fabricated” says Zullo.

“The Power Couple”

White House Counsel at the time of the PDF release was former Perkins Coie law partner Robert Bauer, identified in late 2008 as one half of Washington’s newest “power couple” by a Newsweek roundup called Power 2009: The New Lineup in Washington.

The other half was Anita Dunn who served a brief stint in the Obama White House as Communications Director from April to November 2009.

Newsweek’s 2009 Washington power couple: Robert Bauer (L) was a Perkins Coie partner before becoming White House Counsel. Bauer’s wife Anita Dunn (R) was White House Communications Director until November 2009. Brian Williams of NBC News is standing behind Dunn. (Image credits: Wikipedia, White House/Pete Souza)
Newsweek’s 2009 Washington power couple: Robert Bauer (L) was a Perkins Coie partner before becoming White House Counsel. Bauer’s wife Anita Dunn (R) was White House Communications Director until November 2009. Now-discredited NBC News anchor Brian Williams (standing behind Dunn) visited the White House with an NBC camera crew in May 2009 while Dunn was Communications Director. (Image credits: Wikipedia, White House/Pete Souza)

Bauer, who served in the Obama Administration from January 2010 to June 2011, left the White House two months after the PDF Hawaii “Certificate of Live Birth” was posted at WhiteHouse.gov.

During Dunn’s tenure as White House Communications Director she kept tight reigns on messaging that emanated from the Oval Office.

“Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control.” -Former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn

While working at the Obama White House, Dunn declared war on Fox News and revealed her admiration for arguably the most heinous dictator in modern history. Dunn famously told a group of high school students that Mao Tse Tung was one of her “favorite political philosophers”. She then cited Mao on how best to “fight your war” according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

After Dunn stepped down and was replaced by Dan Pfeiffer she “became an outside adviser to Obama’s White House“.

While inside the White House Dunn had come in contact with major media players, including Brian Williams.

From outside the White House, Dunn continued to maintain close ties with the news media. Dunn is a senior partner at “strategic communications firm” SKDKnickerbocker. In 2010 Dunn hired ABC News Executive Director of Communications Emily Lenzner, who had also worked inside the White House under George Stephanopoulos, Bill Clinton’s Director of Communications.

“Since leaving her White House position, Dunn has visited the White House 100 times” writes the Daily Beast, citing the New York Times.

Bauer’s former law firm Perkins Coie, , which has nearly 1,000 lawyers at 19 offices across the United States and Asia, dispatched a representative to Hawaii to retrieve two certified copies of the long-form Hawaii Certificate of Birth.

Attorney Judith L. Corley was the attorney sent to meet with Hawaii Department of Health officials reported the Washington Post. The Hawaii Director of Health at that time was Loretta Fuddy. Corley reportedly flew to Washington D.C. where she hand-delivered the documents to the White House.

Loretta Fuddy later died in mysterious circumstances after a small plane she was aboard ditched in the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2013. Fuddy was the only fatality among the nine souls aboard the Cessna Caravan 208B.

Does NBC News “check out beautifully?”

To date, NBC News is the only media organization known to have been granted access to the two allegedly official copies of President Obama’s Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth. These documents were reportedly delivered to the White House by law firm Perkins Coie.

NBC News reporter Ron Allen is the second reporter at the embattled network to be portrayed by “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” as someone who has touched a copy of President Obama’s alleged long-form Hawaii Certificate of Birth.

On April 27, 2011, the day the COLB PDF was posted to the White House website (coinciding with brief remarks made by President Obama), Allen attempted to show Donald Trump a white piece of paper following the conclusion of Trump’s New Hampshire press conference.

During the press conference Trump proclaimed “Today I’m very proud of myself” for having forced the President’s hand in revealing his birth background, referring to the earlier White House “release” of the President’s Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth, an apparent act of transparency Trump had been demanding. Trump then added, “Is it real? Is it proper? What’s on it? But I hope it checks out beautifully.”

As Trump set out on foot after the conclusion of his press conference he was surrounded by a throng of media and individuals who may have been members of his entourage. While Trump was preoccupied with shaking hands and greeting supporters, NBC News cameras recorded the moment Allen yelled toward Trump: “You’ve said you wanted to see it…why don’t you take a look at it?”

The video aired that evening on NBC Nightly News as part of a segment called “Obama birth certificate – signed, sealed, delivered.”

Savannah Guthrie narrated the action: “But when NBC’s Ron Allen tried three times to show the document to Trump… he was ignored.”

During the opening of the segment, anchor Brian Williams assured NBC viewers that “there are people who remember seeing him as a baby in the nursery in the hospital right after Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.”

1776 Channel has been unable to determine how one of only two “official” scanned copies of President Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth made its way into the hands of an NBC reporter in New Hampshire less than twenty-four hours after the documents were allegedly hand-delivered to the White House following a long airplane ride from Honolulu.

Unless the copy Ron Allen tried to present to Donald Trump had been subsequently flown from Washington D.C. to New Hampshire, Allen would likely have possessed a document that had been transmitted via fax or internet. Allen may have simply printed a copy of the PDF image that was posted at Whitehouse.gov.

NBC News editors and script writers might have then spun the clip as “evidence” that Trump appeared disinterested in examining “proof”’ that the White House was indeed in possession of an authentic document.

It appears that NBC News was trying to prove to its viewers that the PDF image released by the White House was authentic and simultaneously discredit Trump’s skepticism.

1776 Channel’s investigation into NBC News’ representation that President Obama’s Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth is authentic reveals a complex web of participants working behind the scenes to deliver a unified message.

Reporters, camera crews, editors, and ‘credible’ sounding anchors were able to cobble together a news segment that likely convinced the casual television viewer that any lingering doubts about President Obama’s birth records had finally been laid to rest. Any potential contributions to that message made by the attorneys and communications professionals who circulate between the White House, the private consulting sector and the broadcast networks remain unknown.

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      • He’s examined the PDF forgery which is a proven manipulated document.

        NO ONE has actually seen the Muslim fag’s original birth certificate.

        It must TRULY suck to to be you… And I mean that wholeheartedly…

        And then there is the horseshit defense that people have to take the state of Hawaii’s word… That’s the final fallback redoubt isn’t it, dicknose?
        That’s the last line of defense when you run out of answers… and it’s asinine.

        List of United States state officials convicted of federal corruption offenses
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_state_officials_convicted_of_federal_corruption_offenses

        The state of Hawaii and the HDOH is corrupt and has been since it began issuing birth certificates to foreign born nationals….

        Go fuck yourself, toad…

        • 1) A picture of something is not the thing. The primary reason Zullo was told “no” by the 212 document experts he asked before he found Reed Hayes was that you cannot tell if a document is forged by looking at a picture of it.

          2. The very act of scanning is a “manipulation” of the document being scanned. That doesn’t mean any forgery was involved.

          3. Since Hayes’s actual report remains a closely guarded secret. you have no idea what he said or why he said it. I hope you’re not that premature in every other aspect of your life.

          No. It doesn’t suck to be me. But by my informal count. that’s the third time you’ve used the words “truth,” “true” or “truly” without betraying a hint that you know what they mean.

        • charlesmountain , Keep it clean and don’t drop to their level . I’m with you in your disdain for the obots but using their language only glorifies their position . The obots like our friend HistorianDude are paid to advance a lie with a lie or half truths . Just remember , most obots use Alinsky tactics to advance the false narrative of obama being a legal sitting US President . So just hang in there and the truth will win out .

          • You appear to have not been paying attention. For Charlesmountain to be at our level he would have to rise rather than drop. He is the only participant in this thread who has abandoned actual argument and defaulted to profanity and insult hurling.

            Meanwhile, the actual discussion goes on right over his head.

    • Please provide a link to the Reed Hayes affidavit or admit that it doesn’t exist. Your choice.
      BTW from the number of views that this site gets there aren’t that many minds to change.

    • One of the fascinating things about birthers is their studied inability to think very deeply. Once they have reached even the most vacuous or superficial level of understanding that satisfies their prejudice, they stop thinking at all.

      1. To call the BC a “proven forgery” is to express ignorance at several different levels:

      – A) Nobody from Arpaio and Zullo’s “investigation” has ever even seen the birth certificate. How could they possibly pretend to have proved that a document they have never seen is forged?

      -B) Law enforcement agencies, even real ones (as opposed to volunteer “posses” like the MCSDCCP), never “prove” anything. If they do their job very well, they can submit the evidence they have collected to a court of law where there will be a trier of fact and a trier of law who will tell them whether or not they are right. “Proof” is not what happens in the head of the investigator. It is what happens in a court of law.

      -C) If Zullo and Arpaio actually had evidence of a crime it would be turned over to an appropriate prosecutorial agency, not the web page and weekly pod cast of an obscure radio preacher. There is no hurdle of “standing” in a criminal trial. Yet to this point the posse has made no effort to initiate one. This speaks to a single issue; their lack of any actual evidence.

      -D) Nobody that the Cold Case Posse has engaged in this “investigation” is qualified to have much of an opinion on the electronic PDF file. They have never engaged a single individual with any recognized experience or training in any of the fields necessary to identify forgery in a digital image. This includes Mara Zebest, Garret Papit, Tim Selaty and Reed Hayes.

      -E) There is no such thing as a “Reed Hayes affidavit.” There is, allegedly, a “Reed Hayes Report” which is a very different thing. Zullo has claimed that the report is 40 pages long, but after two years has released no more than three completely out of context sentences, none of which offer any analysis whatsoever. Of course, it does not matter, since Reed Hayes is not qualified to perform digital document forensics, and (like everybody else associated with the Cold Case Posse) has never seen the document he has allegedly declared problematic.

      -F) Finally, the ultimate legal arbiter of the authenticity of any document is the legal authority under which it has been issued. The State of Hawaii has declared the President’s birth certificate (and all the information it contains) to be authentic and true. Under the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution, the only way to rebut that declaration would be equally compelling and equally authentic evidence that contradicts the certificate. No such evidence has ever been shown to exist.

      2. You seem unclear on another concept, so let me help you. Those of us who oppose birthers and birthism do not comment in these fora to “change your mind.” Your beliefs were never based on evidence or reason in the first place, so why would we imagine that evidence and reason could change them now? You have been exposed to some substantive counter arguments by several contributors to this thread. Was your response equally substantive? No… it was to stamp your feet in a puerile tantrum.

      No, we do not come here to convince you, we come here to expose you. We write for those who are not so invested in their prejudice that they can read arguments, evaluate their evidence and then critically consider them.

      We do not expect birthers to do that. Thank you so much for the demonstration.

  1. In the first photograph for this article the document held by Ron Allen has a white border around the edge. The green security paper used by Hawaii does not a white border. The green basket weave pattern is continuous to the edge of the paper and on both sides of the paper. The only document with a white edge border is the PDF on the White House website. That white border was caused by a combination of the edge-erase feature on the Xerox copier that created the PDF and a clipping mask added by the Preview software when the PDF was saved on a Mac computer. This has been well documented. So Allen can only be holding a printout of the PDF from the White House website.
    This means the article starts with a faulty premise and goes spinning on from there. Therefore it would seem that everything below the first paragraph of Jones’ article can be ignored.

  2. So Historian Dude , the long form birth certificate put on the White House website is not a forgery ? Says who ? And give examples ! NO? I suggest you check out Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the cold case posse. They have proven beyond a doubt the image on the White House Website is not a scan of a legal US Birth certificate but a computer generated layered forgery . All one has to know is Brian Williams was one of people pushing the pile of garbage put on the White House website as a real US Birth certificate to question it’s validity . You know the guy that tried to steal Valor with a lie ? What was his name ? Oh ! that’s right ! Brian Williams !

    • 1) No. The long form birth certificate put up on the White House website is not a forgery. It is the ordinary scan of an ordinary paper original created on a Xerox WorkCentre 7566. Not that it matters, since a picture of something is not the thing. No birther has ever actually even been in the same room as the document they claim is forged.

      2) As to who says it shows no sign of forgery, that would include every actual expert in digital images who has made public comment. The list includes digital forensic expert Dr. Neal Krawetz, credentialed forensic document examiner Ivan Zatkovich and internationally-recognized expert on electronic document processing, Ricardo de Queiroz of the University of Brazil.

      3) Not a single one of the “experts” claimed by birthers to have declared it a forgery is an actual expert. Not a single one. Most are at the very best enthusiastic but incompetent amateurs.

      4). The Cold Case Posse has demonstrated only one thing; it is incapable of actually conducting a legitimate investigation of any sort, criminal or otherwise. The “evidence” offered in their two press conferences has been thoroughly debunked, and abandoned even by Zullo. We are now almost a year since the last time they have even pretended they had information ready to release.

      5) Brian Williams has nothing whatsoever to do with the President’s birth certificate. As red herring go, that one could not be more brilliantly scarlet.

    • Forensic Image Analyst Dr. Neal Krawetz

      “The PDF released by the White House shows no sign of digital manipulation or alterations. I see nothing that appears to be suspicious.”

      Optimizing Software developer Professor Ricardo de Queiroz

      “I took a birth certificate which has a similar background pattern, scanned and compressed using an older DjVu tool. It has shown the same problems as POBC, like text letters that were missed and sent to background, and multiple text styles. It didn’t have halo, though, because its algorithm decided to obliterate the whole background pattern. Perhaps if I had time to toy around with packages and parameters I might find something very close to what was used to generate the document shown by the WH, but I unfortunately do not have the time right now.”

      “In summary I can only say I see much stronger signs of common MRC algorithmic processing of the image rather than some intentional manipulation.”

  3. The document Ron Allen is holding appears to be on white plain paper. Hawaii certified birth certificates are on green basket weave security paper. He’s not holding one of the two certified copies but a xerox copy probably printed off the internet.

    Try it yourself, Mr Investigative Journalist. Go to the White House website, click on the link to the birth certificate PDF and then click on the print button. Your copy will be on plain white paper just like Ron Allen’s. And your copy didn’t require a massive conspiracy with hundreds of people.

  4. You offer the suggestion that there was ” a complex web of participants working behind the scenes to deliver a unified message.” But you do not apply Occam’s Razor and consider the fact that it requires no complex web to deliver a message that is simply true. The only genuine complexity in this entire affair is that created by birthers desperately trying to explain away the actual evidence of Obama’s identity and citizenship; evidence that is absolutely probative in any legally meaningful venue.

    The President’s birth certificate has been declared authentic on multiple occasions by the only authority legally qualified to so declare; the State of Hawaii. All else is wild hypothetical fiction,

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