Today I phoned and spoke directly with Dr. Jerome Corsi. It’s now official: He won’t appear in the January 21 debate and defend his claims that Obama’s birth certificate is an “obvious forgery.”
In fairness, Corsi’s refusal at this point may not be an absolute one. He said that he wasn’t going to do a debate for now; that he would wait and see how my debate with Zebest, Denninger and Harrison went, and then decide whether he would personally debate me.
When pressed for a reason for his refusal, Corsi wouldn’t give one.
At that point I informed Dr. Corsi that I would of course post at my blog that he had refused to debate. Dr. Corsi replied, “You can post whatever you want.”
Why Would Dr. Jerome Corsi Shy Away From a Debate?
Jerome Corsi has a PhD from Harvard University. He’s written several New York Times bestsellers. He is highly experienced with the media, having appeared (as far as I can tell) on literally hundreds of radio and TV shows. He also claims to have more than 20 experts backing him up.
Readers of WorldNetDaily would do well to ask themselves what Dr. Corsi has to fear from a computer guy in Springfield, Missouri who’s only ever appeared as a radio guest 3 times in his life.
Those who’ve carefully read the book, though, may have some idea. And it’s clear that Corsi himself is familiar with the book, as he mentioned it in the course of our brief conversation.
maybe his reasons are because of the pending sheriff joe investigation.
he’s not afraid to debate anything in his book or evidence he believes, i can tell you that. look at this fox “interview” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZjoPui_pvo . greg jarrett is a journalistic weenie with obama marching orders. he should be ashamed of his job.
it was such a ridiculous tainted interview. jerry never got a chance.
don’t forget the fox jean- claude trembly scandal. fox rushed to put their “expert” up, even he said he didn’t trust fox after that. hannity cancelled jerry an hour before his show, and o’reilly lied about obama senior living in connecticut for several years. something is going on with fox i tell you. i want to know why…
jerry’s research is impeccable to this day. obama is soaked in corruption.
how come michelle obama grew up in chicago politics, worked as assistant for mayor daley, shared an office with bernadine dorhn, and yet she never heard of bill ayers? or did she know, and just not tell her husband. there will be plenty of debates on this john, hell i’ll debate you myself ! i do appreciate your pushing the ball down the field.
i wouldn’t make a lot of hay about jerry not showing at your event. like most of us, he wants to watch the real technical experts address this first. but anything in his book ? he’ll kick your ass. and how about a debate with jack cashill to discuss who wrote that phony piece of crap storybook, dreams from my father, that got obama elected. LOL
obama’s a conceptual hoax and we all know it.
> maybe his reasons are because of the pending sheriff joe investigation.
That’s one theory. Here’s another: Corsi is sweating at any thought of having to personally defend all the nonsense he’s put out over the past 8 months. Better to let his experts go forward and take the heat.
good luck with that amigo, i noticed john kerry missed out on being president.
my goodness john, you’ve become a rather hardened obot since you appeared on the scene a few months ago, i’m beginning to think you’re a red flag too.
been hangin’ with wong and foggy lately ??
let’s roll the dice. the whole world’s watching.
Scott,
I’ll try later to answer your statement that I’ve become “a rather hardened obot,” most likely in a post all its own.
You’re funny Scott. Nobody is watching except the few remaining hardened birthers and the obots who find you amusing. Everyone with a modicum of critical thinking skills and an open enough mind to recognize the truth when they see it knows that President Obama is a natural born citizen and the legitimate POTUS if they’ve bothered to investigate. It’s a good thing (for you) that your boasts about the liar Corsi will never be put to the test–he can’t defend his theories any more than he can sell his books on the birth certificate…
Mr. Corsi may be too busy to debate John but he seems to have saved a lot of time by plagiarizing his recent smear piece on President Obama by lifting most of it from an Article by David Cohen in the London Daily Standard in 2008: http://barackryphal.blogspot.com/2011/12/wnds-corsi-plagiarizes-london-evening.html
I’m curious: Why do you want to debate Corsi (or Farah)?
They aren’t experts; the second you make a technical argument, it’ll go over their heads, and they will defer to their “experts.”
Isn’t it time to quit using the term “experts” to refer to this group (even in quotes)? None of them, even including John Woodman as he readily admits, are qualified as experts in document forensics in any way. That means they are amateurs. In almost every case for the ones who have been quoted in Word Net Daily they have supplied puffed up resumes to attempt to demonstrate they are somehow qualified to offer an opinion on the validity of the LFBC. Paul Irey actually said that several years as a typist clerk in the Air Force added to his qualifications to opine on the LFBC.
There is a reason that no real forensic analyst has agreed with Corsi’s team of amateurs. Most have avoided putting their professional reputation at risk by opinimg on an electronic copy of a document Hawaii says is genuine. The one real analyst hired by WND said there was no proof of forgery to be had from the PDF and his report was never published. I think it is easy to guess why it was not.
Whether it’s applicable or not, Corsi and WND will never stop using the term.
I am also quite willing to acknowledge the degrees of expertise these folks do possess. Karl Denninger has some significant technical abilities and experience. Mara Zebest knows Photoshop quite well. Tom Harrison has been programming for 40 years. I respect all of that. It won’t help their position in the end, but I do respect and am prepared to acknowledge the expertise they do have.
As for myself, I think it’s reasonably safe to say that I’ve most likely invested more time and careful and accurate analysis into the specific issues of Obama’s long form birth certificate than just probably any other person in the world. Yes, it’s true that I don’t do forensic analysis for a living, except possibly the rare odd bit in the computer realm for the very, very occasional client.
But after listening to a “real” and recognized forensic expert describe the process that forensic experts go through, I realized (with a bit of satisfaction, I might add) that he had pretty much given an accurate and detailed description of the exact process and approach I had instinctively taken in examining Obama’s birth certificate. In that regard, I was unable to identify any particular thing that the paid professionals do or do not do that I had or had not done, albeit working with the necessarily limited resources of not having the original paper documents. He also stated that while original documents are always most desirable and provide for the highest accuracy, there are times when forensic experts work with what’s available, even though it’s less than ideal.
If WND’s people — some of whom emphatically did NOT use anything resembling a proper forensic process — are going to be called experts, I would certainly have to qualify as well.
In any event, Corsi and WND definitely *aren’t* going to stop using the term “experts” in regard to their people. And tussling over that particular term isn’t where I’m going to focus my attention. My own attention always has been, and will continue to be, focused on the relevant facts. When it comes to those, neither Corsi nor his people — whatever you want to call them — have a leg to stand on.
I certainly do not mean to denigrate the quality work you did, Mr. Woodman. I think even a real document forensics expert would be impressed with your approach and approve of it. However, my point is that the term “expert” has a legal meaning and it is certain that none of the persons on Corsi’s “team of experts” could pass muster in a court of law as an expert witness. Yet, they have all publicly declared the most validated birth certificate in history to be a forgery and not one of them has ever actually detected a forgery in anything close to a scientific test. I dare say if they had to stake a professional reputation on their work they would not be so bold.
I’m not sure what the legal meaning of “expert” is, but I agree with you that Corsi’s team would definitely embarrass themselves in a court of law. However, none of them are likely ever to appear in a court of law. The whole drama has been and is being played out (to the extent that it still is) in the court of public opinion. And as far as many in the public are concerned, the qualifications the members of Corsi’s team do have make them “experts” to many.
As far as staking their reputation on their work, Mara Zebest has essentially said she would bet her reputation on her claim that Obama’s birth certificate is definitely a forgery. Unfortunately, she’s bet — and lost.
john what’s new ?? are you gearing up for the debate. i just listened to the mark gillar interview with tom, mara and karl. i don’t think they’re giving up. are you taking frank ?
If Frank Arduini (who authored his own critique of Mara Zebest’s claims) wants in on the debate, I’ll certainly consider it.
Bernadine, I mean Scott
I think John will do fine on his own. 😉
Dear Mr. Woodman, — The five videos presented by Sheriff Arpaio’s investigators establish a prima facie case that the image of the birth certificate on the White House website is a computer-generated forgery, and cannot be explained by OCR software or optimization. My two questions are these:
Why have hese investigators not raised significant questions in your mind? You may, if you wish, answer this question by pointing to the pages of your book which address my point of inquiry.
And why, in order to clear the air, has not Obama presented a certified copy of his long-form birth certificate under seal, verifiable against public record, and both self-authenticating and admissible to prove what is purports to show under the Federal Rules of Evidence, for examination by the judiciary committee of the House, or some other suitable committee in Congress? McCain did something similar. I see no reason why Obama should not do likewise.
I would be grateful for an opportunity to correspond by e-mail with you. — John Remington Graham of the Minnesota Bar (#3664X)
John,
I’d be happy to correspond with you by email. Write me if you wish.
You’ve come into this issue really, really, REALLY late.
Why have hese investigators not raised significant questions in your mind?
The significant questions in my mind were raised on April 27, 2011 — close to a year before Arpaio’s announcement.
Those significant questions led to a pretty much EXHAUSTIVE investigation of the birth certificate. For at least the next 3 months, that investigation was like a second full-time job for me.
Completely unlike Arpaio’s posse, I looked at BOTH sides of the issue.
Virtually every claim put forth by Arpaio’s posse had already been comprehensively analyzed by me and rejected as being any good evidence for forgery whatsoever, more than six months before Arpaio’s press conference.
And the results were published at the end of August, 2011.
I also investigated a lot of other issues that Arpaio’s posse didn’t mention, and after thorough analysis of literally dozens of claims, found no credible evidence for forgery. There is literally nothing that would stand up in a court of law, if all sides of the issue were fully and accurately heard.
And it wasn’t because I’m an Obama fan, because I’m not. Frankly, I was looking for good evidence for forgery and was absolutely ready to go public with it if I found any. In fact, one night — for about 10 or 15 minutes — I thought I might have found such evidence. I had the press conference mentally half planned before my further investigations led me to conclude that I’d found no such thing.
I can’t even tell you what a load of horse manure these claims — from the technical and evidence and truth point of view — are.
Joseph Farah (Jerome Corsi’s boss over at WorldNetDaily) was given a copy of my book on August 29, 2011 — the day before it was officially released to the general public. That 221-page book includes solid and apparently irrefutable — as judged simply by the fact that in more than 7 months, no one has ever refuted even one single significant point of it! — evidence that every single claim of “proof of forgery” that I could document, that had been either put forth or publicly backed by Jerome Corsi to that date, was nonsense.
And I counted 23 of those at the time.
When someone gives you bad information 23 times in a row, that ought to raise a few red flags.
I conducted, by FAR, the most thorough and objective investigation of the birth certificate that had ever been undertaken. And the technical analysis remains (in spite of the claims of Zebest/ Arpaio posse/ Mark Gillar at the press conference) absolutely, 100% unrefuted to this day.
And what was the response from Farah and WND?
Not one single word of my analysis of their invalid and frankly bogus claims has ever been covered or even publicly mentioned by WorldNetDaily — in spite of my direct communication with them. Not one of the untrue claims of “proof of forgery” or significant “evidence for forgery” that Corsi has made or promoted has ever been publicly retracted by either Corsi or WorldNetDaily. And none of the evidence against any of the forgery theories, whether presented by myself or anybody else, has ever been really covered by WorldNetDaily, except for being mentioned in passing as being the work of “Obama defenders,” which I absolutely am not.
Instead, we have been treated to a steady stream of articles by Corsi about the supposed forgery, virtually every one of which either has had an ad for Corsi’s book charging that Obama was ineligible, or a public appeal to send money — up to $5,000 a pop — to WorldNetDaily for “Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?” billboards, or to buy other “eligibility products” such as DVDs, bumper stickers, etc.
Corsi publicly stated last year that their goal was to sell 100,000 copies of his book. 100,000 copies times roughly $20 a pop = $2 million.
Arpaio’s posse was indoctrinated personally on the “evidence” by Jerome Corsi for at least 18 hours of presentation time. This is documented.
The Cold Case Posse’s official report was prepared by Mara Zebest, who stated in 2008, “It’s what I live for – my goal to make [Barack Obama] a mockery of the very crowd he seeks for adulation.”
I twice contacted Arpaio’s office to offer my help with their investigation. I was never contacted. I have also learned that Mr. Frank Arduini (who separately debunked the same worthless claims of Mara Zebest that were presented by Arpaio) was never contacted, either. And, reportedly, they didn’t even call the Hawaii Department of Health.
As far as I can tell, every single new claim that was put forth at Arpaio’s original conference has since been debunked — most of them literally within days. I know Arpaio had a second press conference recently. From the little I’ve read that was just a rollout of a few more long-debunked claims.
The day before Arpaio’s first press conference, an ebook on the “investigation” went on sale, with the profits to be split between Jerome Corsi and Michael Zullo, the “lead investigator” for the Cold Case Posse.
I made a statement right after Arpaio’s original press conference. That statement is available on this site.
You might also be interested in some of the things I’ve written about the “natural born citizen” claims.
FYI, no “John Graham,” middle name Remington or otherwise, is listed as a member of the Minnesota Bar Association on their website.
From stuff I’m reading, he’s a real lawyer. Controversial, in the past, but a real lawyer.
Also has a couple of books.
Just saying, not a current member of the Bar. He has Tea Party connections per Google. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it does indicate a possible bias.
Perhaps the “X” after his Bar Assn. # means “Retired”?
That was my guess that the “x” means retired. I bet he is popular with the sov-cits and new confederacy types based upon his book that concludes secession is allowed by the Constitution.
That’s very likely. He’s around 71 years old.
John the Attorney
I am curious. Where do you obtain your [mis]information? McCain never presented anything to the Senate. He allowed a handful of reporters to look at his birth certificate but they were not allowed to take photos or notes. A forged copy of McCain’s birth certificate was filed by the plaintiff in Hollander v McCain . Candidate Obama on the other hand allowed a certified copy of his birth certificate to be examined and photographed by an independent organization. The state of Hawaii has also attested to the authenticity of both the President’s “short form” and “long form” certificates. Why should the President do anything else to appease a bunch of idiots?