Even missionaries botch their facts
By Amy Hollyfield
Published on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 02:15 p.m.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/may/02/even-missionarie=
s-botch-their-facts/
SUMMARY: American missionaries who lived in Kenya have spun a
conspiratorial tale about Barack Obama that's bouncing around the
Internet, but the allegations don't hold up to scrutiny. Sound
familiar?
The letter is personal, a friend or relative confiding to another
about something im****tant. It is written by an American missionary,
offering insight from Africa.
=93Thanks for sending out an alert about Obama,=94 Celeste Davis writes in
an e-mail. =93We are living and working in Kenya for almost twelve years
now and know his family (tribe) well. They are the ones who were
behind the recent Presidential election chaos here.=94
Loren Davis, Celeste=92s husband, says the letter was never meant to be
forwarded to thousands, plastered on blogs and put up as the God=92s
truth about Sen. Barack Obama.
=93It was written at a time of a lot of emotional things,=94 he said.
But that=92s exactly what did happen. And before you read any more
excerpts of the letter, understand that its contents are a gross
distortion of a few kernels of truth, another example of the fierce,
mostly anonymous chain e-mail attacks prevalent in this presidential
campaign. This one differs in that it=92s signed by a real person, a
Christian missionary. That fact alone brings it more credence in the
blogosphere.
The letter reads: =93Obama under =91friends of Obama=92 gave almost a
million dollars to the (Kenya) opposition campaign who just happened
to be his cousin, Raila Odinga, who is a socialist trained in East
Germany. ...
=93What we would like you to know is what the American press has been
keeping a dirty little secret. Obama IS a muslim and he IS a racist
and this is a fulfillment of the 911 threat that was just the
beginning. Jihad is the only true muslim way. We have been working
with them for 20 years this July! He is not an American as we know
it.
=93Please encourage your friends and associates not to be taken in by
those that are promoting him. ... By the way. His true name is Barak
Hussein Muhammed Obama. Won=92t that sound sweet to our enemies as they
swear him in on the Koran! God Bless you.=94 ( Read the entire e-mail
here. )
PolitiFact has previously ruled that Obama is not a Muslim, and was
not raised Muslim. He is a committed Christian. We=92ve also ruled that
Obama did not attend a madrassa that taught Wahabism, an austere form
of Islam. And that Obama was not sworn into office on a Koran. He took
the oath of the U.S. Senate in 2005 with a family Bible.
So we=92re focused on three new claims:
=95=93Obama under =91friends of Obama=92 gave almost a million dollars to
th=
e
(Kenya) opposition campaign.=94
Loren Davis provided PolitiFact with a do***ent that he says shows
Obama gave $1-million to the Kenyan opposition campaign led by Odinga.
A header at the top of the page says it=92s a =93consolidated statement of
campaign financial activities.=94 Under the header is a list of
=93incoming resources=94 with entries listed in columns of =93from=94 and
=93amount.=94
Handwritten notes amplify the point being made. A name on the list is
underlined and the words =93Barak Obama=94 are written in the margin,
suggesting that donation is from the Illinois senator, even though his
name is misspelled. The amount across from this name also is
underlined and next to it someone has written =93$1 million,=94 implying
Obama contributed $1-million.
The Obama campaign strongly disputes this allegation and three Kenya
experts who reviewed the do***ent at our request called it fraudulent.
The Obama campaign sent PolitiFact the same do***ent and one other
pur****ting to show Obama=92s campaign contributions to Kenya. The first
they heard of it was when these do***ents arrived by fax.
To see the do***ents, go here and here.
On the legible version, you can see the underlined entry says,
=93Friends of Senator BO.=94
Only, there is no political action committee named Friends of Senator
BO or Friends of Barack Obama. So says Obama=92s campaign. And a search
of the Federal Election Commission Web site and Opensecrets.org, the
Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics, pulls up neither. In
fact, there=92s no PAC name even close.
Not to mention, the Obama campaign says the senator never gave money
to Kenyan Prime Minister Odinga.
And Salim Lone, spokesman for Odinga, confirms that.
=93That is absolutely ridiculous,=94 Lone said in an interview with
PolitiFact from Kenya. =93Mr. Obama did not donate a single cent to Mr.
Odinga=92s campaign.=94
Just to be certain, we did an analysis of Federal Election Commission
re****ts of disbursements from Obama=92s principal presidential campaign
committee, Obama for America, during the 2008 election cycle. We
searched for =93Kenya,=94 =93Odinga=94 and =93ODM,=94 the latter being
Oding=
a=92s
political party, and came up with no matches.
=95 =93Who just happened to be his cousin, Raila Odinga, who is a
socialist trained in East Germany.=94
This part of the claim stems from an interview Odinga did with BBC
News in January 2008. ( Listen to it here. ) In a discussion about the
political situation in Kenya amid fallout from a disputed election =97
where Odinga=92s party rejected official results and vowed to install
Odinga as the =93people=92s president=94 =97 the following exchange
occurs:
Odinga: =93Barack Obama=92s father is my maternal uncle.=94
BBC: =93You=92re related to him?=94
Odinga: =93Yes, I am.=94
No, you=92re not, says the Obama campaign.
We spoke to three Kenya experts who dismiss this part of the claim as
well, suggesting Odinga made the connection to give himself more
legitimacy during the political crisis. Odinga was one of two men who
claimed to have won Kenya=92s presidential election in December 2007 and
the disputed results led to bloodshed.
Odinga ultimately agreed to share power with Mwai Kibaki. Odinga
became prime minister and Kibaki president.
=93It=92s stretched to the point of ridiculousness,=94 said Joel D.
Barkan,
political science professor emeritus at the University of Iowa and
senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Wa****ngton, D.C. =93To my knowledge, they are not first cousins in
the normal sense. To my knowledge, there=92s absolutely no relation****p
at all.=94
Alex Awiti, a Kenyan postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, says
you have to consider the context of when Odinga was speaking, in the
middle of a political crisis.
=93Raila Odinga was groping all over the place, trying to find some
political legitimacy to get on a high pedestal to claim leader****p and
using Obama was basically going to add some political points,=94 said
Awiti, who lived in Kenya until three years ago. =93This is very
op****tunistic and it should be totally disregarded.=94
Lone, Odinga=92s spokesman, said cousins in the African sense is very
different from cousins in the American sense, so they might be distant
relatives.
As far as being trained in East Germany, Odinga=92s own Web site says he
attended Herder Institute in Leipzig, Germany, and earned a master=92s
degree from the Otto von Guericke Technical Institute in Magdeburg,
Germany. Both cities were part of the former East Germany.
But again, our Kenya experts say that doesn=92t make him a socialist.
=93It should have said he was a socialist trained in East Germany,=94
Barkan said. =93He=92s populist politics, but he=92s no socialist.=94
=95 =93By the way. His true name is Barak Hussein Muhammed Obama.=94
Let=92s be clear: The senator from Illinois who is running for president
of the United States is named Barack Hussein Obama Jr. His campaign
has insisted that is his full name (no Muhammad). We=92ve checked this
before and found it to be blatantly wrong. But since the rumor
persists, we decided to dig deeper.
We have now searched every public record we can access and find
nothing to sup****t the notion that Obama has a second middle name of
=93Muhammed=94 or =93Mohammed.=94 Only in the ether of chain e-mails does
th=
is
allegation fly.
We have a copy of Obama=92s marriage certificate from the Cook County
Bureau of Vital Statistics in Illinois. Barack H. Obama married
Michelle L. Robinson on Oct. 3, 1992, in Chicago. (And, yes, the Rev.
Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. officiated.)
We looked at Obama=92s driver=92s license record in the state of Illinois,
and the name reads: Barack H Obama. (Senator, just a reminder that
your license is up for renewal this year).
We searched property records for Obama and found listings under the
names Barack Hussein Obama and Barack H Obama.
We also found Obama=92s registration and disciplinary record with the
Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court
of Illinois. ( You can see it here. ) Barack Hussein Obama was
admitted as a lawyer by the Illinois Supreme Court on Dec. 17, 1991.
(By the way, Obama has no public record of discipline.)
We tried to obtain a copy of Obama=92s birth certificate, but his
campaign would not release it and the state of Hawaii does not make
such records public.
Loren Davis, whose wife wrote the e-mail, says he can=92t substantiate
the claim.
=93That was what we heard there (in Kenya),=94 Davis said.
=95 =95 =95
You=92ll find versions of this chain e-mail and its absurd allegations
all over the Internet. But what makes it different, more believable,
more attractive for forwarding far and wide, is that it=92s signed by a
real person, an American missionary who has spent time in Africa.
Loren Davis spoke at length to PolitiFact about his wife=92s e-mail. He
says they=92re back in the United States but doesn=92t want to say where.
He says he wants to stay out of politics, but he has a deep concern
about Obama.
=93Barack Obama seems like he has a good personality. I=92m not against
him personally,=94 Davis said. =93But I think there would be a very
legitimate threat if a Muslim becomes president of the United
States. ...The squeeze is going to come down.=94
When we reminded Davis that Obama has been an active Christian his
whole adult life, Davis said even if Obama isn=92t Muslim, he has plenty
of Muslim sup****t and the risk is the same.
=93It is a massive roll of the dice based on his connections,=94 Davis
said.
We called Davis after investigating the claims and explained we found
nothing to substantiate them and in fact, more than enough evidence to
disprove them.
He was unmoved.
=93I=92m not going to argue with you ... I=92m just saying that there=92s
a
pattern.=94
Yes, there is. A pattern of Pants on Fire wrong.
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