A computer document expert who analyzed the online image of Barack Obama’s purported Certificate of Live Birth for WND confirmed there are anomalies inconsistent with a simple scanning process, and there is evidence it has been manipulated, but there’s no way to determine exactly what may have been modified.

The end result is that while it is known there were changes, the full extent of operations that were done to the image cannot be determined at this point.

Image released by the White House April 27, 2011
The White House last week trumpeted the release of the above document, calling it “proof positive” Obama was born in Hawaii, as if that would answer all of the questions about his presidential eligibility. In fact, those who contend the founders of the country excluded dual citizens from qualifying as a “natural born Citizen,” as the Constitution requires presidents to be, say the document actually proves Obama’s ineligibility.

It verifies that Barack Obama Sr. was listed as the father, but he never was a U.S. citizen.

Obama Jr. himself even seemed to hold that position, suggesting in a resolution he co-sponsored to address Sen. John McCain’s status as a “natural born Citizen” that the status requires “American citizen” parents.

The original Obama document presumably is in the custody of the state of Hawaii, and officials there explained to WND that they put the original in a copier and copied it onto “safety paper,” sending those copies along to the president.

From there, the president apparently made copies of those documents to hand out to the press corps, and then someone uploaded an image that was posted online – the image that, actually, is the only one most Americans have seen.

It was analyzed by Ivan Zatkovich of Tampa-based eComp Consultants, which consults on intellectual property for telecommunications, web publishing and ecommerce and has provided services for corporations such as McGraw-Hill, Houghton-Mifflin, Citicorp and Amazon.com. Zatkovich has 28 years experience in computer science and document management and for more than 10 years has been an expert witness providing testimony in federal court in both criminal and civil litigation.

He confirmed that the multiple layers of the PDF document are anomalous.

“When a paper document is scanned on a scanner and saved as a PDF file it normally contains only a single layer of graphical information. The PDF that appears on the White House website however, contains multiple layers of graphic information. Multiple layers usually appear in a document like this when it is being edited or modified in some fashion.

“It is possible to take a single layer PDF and inadvertently create multiple layers, without changing the image in any fashion. But that does not appear to be the case here. The multiple layers in the PDF document are a result of changes made to the image,” his report said.

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Among the various items that were separated into different layers include the main text, the mother’s occupation, the dates accepted, the stamp and signature of the state registrar and the time stamp of the state registrar:

The document is broken into layers.

The background layer – with all of the additional layers removed – essentially has the text removed except some random portions of signatures and a white border where the text appears on other layers:

The background, without layers of information added on top

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The main layer of text reveals most of the wording on the document, with strange exceptions such as the first part of Stanley Ann Dunham Obama’s signature. The main text layer has only “unham Obama.” Likewise, “Kenya” is spelled “enya” and “Barack” is spelled Ba ack.”

The layer with the main parts of the text

The report said in field 17a, for example, the question regards the “Type of Occupation Outside Home During Pregnancy,” and the answer is “None.” However, the “Non” and the “e” are on separate layers. Likewise with the date accepted. There “Date A” and “AUG – 8 6” are on a separate layer from the rest:

Unusual division of characters of information on different layers

The report said there are two groups of overlays, the first including the main page of text and a separate one with the mother’s occupation. The second group involves the stamps, with one of the local registrar, another from the registrar general, another for the state registrar and yet another for the time stamp of the state registrar.

“All of the overlays were of a higher resolution than the background layer,” the report said. “This suggests that the overlays [were] created to enhance that content (i.e. make the text darker and/or the edges sharper). The only two plausible explanations for this pattern of layers is: 1. Someone was changing the content of both the text and the stamps. 2. Someone was systematically enhancing the black text layers for legibility, and then enhancing the stamp overlays separately for legibility.”

The white halos around the lettering suggests manipulation here too

The report also addresses the white haloes around most of the printing on the document.

“It has been suggested that these ‘suspicious white borders’ indicate that items were pasted into the image. The pasting of content itself does not necessarily create a white border. A more likely reason for this halo effect is that the text was enhanced,” the report said.

“This does not mean that other content in the document was not changed. However, most of the detectable changes are consistent with someone attempting to enhance the appearance of the document rather than change the content.”

It concludes that while the modifications are consistent with someone enhancing the legibility of the document, “it is possible that in addition to enhancing the legibility of the document that the content of the document was also changed.

“There is no specific evidence of how or why that content would have been changed, but the evidence clearly indicates that the document was changed,” the report said.

A second opinion, from Jon Berryhill of Berryhill Computer Forensics, said for a complete analysis, access to the original document would be best.

A video based on this story has now been posted on YouTube: