On January 24, 2009, Mr. Obama presented a letter to the Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women and Children where, in part, he made the following assertion:

As a beneficiary of the excellence of Kapi`olani Medical Center – the place of my birth – I am pleased to add my voice to your chorus of supporters.

However, as WorldNetDaily is reporting, the medical center refuses to confirm the above claim:

Kristy Watanabe, the public relations specialist for the hospital refused to confirm or deny the veracity of Obama’s letter claiming he was born at the hospital.

“Our comment to everyone who has been calling is that federal law does not permit us to provide any more details concerning information [about Obama's birth] without authorization from Mr. Obama,” Watanabe told WND.

She said the hospital had not contacted Obama for authorization.

When WND asked Watanabe why the hospital did not contact Obama to ask for authorization, especially given the number of phone calls the hospital was receiving with the request, Watanabe said: “This is our response, and we can’t say anything more than that.”

WND asked if a hypothetical elected official pretended to be born at the hospital, would federal law prevent her from disclosing that? If so, which federal law would that be?

“It’s just our policy that without permission we don’t ever answer questions about babies born in the hospital,” she said.

Many in the opposition to questioning this President’s eligibility will often challenge those of us sympathetic with questioning this politician by attempting to avert the debate and asking, “Why don’t you call so-and-so up and simply confirm the facts?” As examples such as this show, the process is not quite as simple and straightforward as simply picking up the phone or sending an email to an official — whether public or private.

One thing is for sure — this will be added as yet another piece of unsubstantiated, sealed documentation that is part of the President’s past (link below).

Update: Via TheObamaFile.com, an article published in the Rainbow Edition Newsletter, seems to indicate that Mr. Obama was actually born in Queen’s Medical Center:

Update: As WorldNetDaily continues to report, the exact location of Mr. Obama’s birthplace has become even more of a mystery. According to the following from their report, Snopes.com, UPI, MyBarackObama.com, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Honolulu Advertiser, Washington Post and the Encyclopedia Britannica bring further confusion to what the President originally said via a letter to the Kapi’olani Medical Center:

[A]ccording to Snopes, the popular online hoax-buster that many rely on as the final word on both important and frivolous stories, Obama was born at a different hospital in the Hawaiian capital.

In Snopes’ entry concerning allegations that Obama is a “radical Muslim,” the site addresses the birth history of the commander in chief, stating, “Barack Hussein Obama was born on 4 August 1961 at the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.”

This image is WND’s screen shot of the snopes.com entry before it was changed:

Currently, even snopes.com appears somewhat confused:

Their son, also named Barack Hussein Obama, was born on 4 August 1961 at the Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. (News accounts have also previously placed his birth as having occurred at Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.)

WND continues:

Interestingly, in Snopes’ entry focusing on the natural-born citizenship controversy, no mention is made of the birth hospital.

But Snopes is not alone in asserting Obama was born at a hospital other than the one he personally claims.

A number of news articles published both in the U.S. and abroad name Queen’s Medical Center – not Kapi’olani – as the correct birthplace.

A United Press International report from Nov. 4 states:

“Obama described his birth at Queen’s Medical Center in Hawaii Aug. 4, 1961, to a young white woman from Kansas and a father of Luo ethnicity from Nyanza Province in Kenya, as an ‘all-America’ story transcending orthodox racial stereotypes and experience.”

Update: Now the UPI has scrubbed their story (thanks, “MGB“)without any explicit notice of update via the following screen capture (confirmed via Google’s cache).

Update: The previous link for the Google cache of the below has similarly been changed. Below you will find a copy of the screen shot from WND:

Adding a twist to the dispute is a separate claim on the MyBarackObama.com campaign website that lists a genealogy for Obama citing his birthplace as Queen’s Medical Center.

The site documents Obama’s lineage back to his great-great-great grandparents, who lived in the mid-1800s.

It states: “Barack Hussein OBAMA was born on 4 August 1961 at the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein OBAMA, Sr. of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann DUNHAM of Wichita, Kansas.”

William Addams Reitwiesner, genealogist at the Library of Congress … [is] listing it at Kapi’olani.

But news agencies are hardly unanimous on the exact hospital.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Honolulu Advertiser and Washington Post have all published stories indicating Obama was born at the Kapi’olani Medical Center, in agreement with the president’s letter to the facility.

The Encyclopedia Britannica mentions only that Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, but makes no reference to any hospital.

The Associated Press reports that Internet users are far from ignorant about the questions over Obama’s birthplace and documentation.

“Among the top search terms paired with Barack Obama: biography, Israel, news, jokes, stimulus package, birth certificate (related to those persistent but unfounded rumors that Obama is not a natural-born citizen and thus ineligible to be president.),” the news organization stated.

Makana Shook, corporate communications coordinator for Queen’s, told WND, “The hospital is not allowed to give out any information to the public about patients without the patient’s permission, because of federal HIPAA law restrictions.”

Kapi’olani officials said they would release any documentation they may have about the president’s birth if the president gives his permission to make the documentation public.

The White House did not respond to a WND request for comment.

The question to the White House noted the multiple references to Queen’s. “Then, beginning sometime after the start of 2009, the president and various members of his family, including his sister Maya Soetoro, changed the story and gave interviews (or wrote letters as above) claiming President Obama was born at Kapi’olani Medical Center.

“Why did the president claim to be born at two different hospitals in Hawaii?” WND asked. “Which is the true hospital where the president was born?”

Snopes responded to a WND request for comment about the conflict between its report and Obama’s statement with an automated message that shed no light on the matter.

WND has reported that among the documentation – besides his birth certificate – not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.

That may very well be intentional on the part of Obama, who used his first full day in residence in the Oval Office to issue an executive order restricting the release of presidential records.

“Upon receipt of a notice of intent to disclose presidential records, the attorney general (directly or through the assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel) and the counsel to the president shall review as they deem appropriate the records covered by the notice and consult with each other, the archivist, and such other executive agencies as they deem appropriate concerning whether invocation of executive privilege is justified,” the order states.

“If either the attorney general or the counsel to the president believes that the circumstances justify invocation of executive privilege, the issue shall be presented to the president by the counsel to the president and the attorney general.”

The result is that the president ultimately would decide if those records can be released.

“After receiving such notice, the archivist shall not disclose the privileged records unless directed to do so by an incumbent president or by a final court order,” the order said.

See the following links regarding the eligibility saga:

• Obama’s Presidential Eligibility: What You Need to Know
• Obama’s Sealed Background Documentation
• What’s the Difference Between a Birth Certification Versus a Birth Certificate?
• Obama Citizenship Facts
• The State Department and Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) Natural Born Citizen Resolution (April 10, 2008)
• Citizen Grand Jury Updates and Eligibility Lawsuit Listing

-Phil