Joel Gilbert: Birthers Asking Wrong Question on Obama Parentage

When Joel Gilbert wrote and produced "Atomic Jihad: Ahmadinejad's Coming War for Islamic Revival and Obama's Politics of Defeat," the film became a feature at the CPAC Conference and went on to win an award at the Hudson Institute Film Festival. Now, the contributing editor to FamilySecurityMatters.org has turned his political sights to another aspect of the Obama administration, that being the origins of the President himself. But if you think Gilbert is climbing aboard the Birther Express (which I would really love to see a version of among all the trains I've collected in my TrainStation 2 app game), think again. According to Gilbert, birthers are barking up the wrong tree. It's not a question of where Obama was born -- but rather, one of paternity. Was Obama's father Barack Obama, the Kenyan? Or was it Communist Party USA agitator and organizer, Frank Marshall Davis? In his newest documentary, "Dreams from My Real Father: A Story of Reds and Deception," Gilbert lays out his case with intriguing results.

The last work I saw from you was "The Last Will and Testament of George Harrison," which was obviously meant to be a Beatles conspiracy spoof. What exactly is the tack with "Dreams from My Real Father" -- serious discourse or political style "Borat?"

No, it's absolutely intended, and it is, a serious documentary. Ninety percent of the information is unimpeachable; it's absolute fact that has been established through many different authors, through research of my own and others. But for the first time it's been put together in a cohesive narrative: we can understand Obama's life history in socialism and in Marxist ideology from his early childhood all the way through his college years. He admittedly showed up at Occidental College at age 18 a committed revolutionary Marxist. Obviously he had a very different upbringing or indoctrination than the average kid at that exclusive Punahou school -- which I just visited, by the way.

So what we have in the film is, we used reasoned logic and some probable events to tie together known factual pillars. Sometimes it requires even some speculation, but based on the logic of what we know occurred. So I would like people, when they see the film, to research any of the facts in there. They'll see most of it is unimpeachable fact. If you compare Obama's Dreams from My Father to my "Dreams from My Real Father," I think everyone will agree that mine is much closer to the reality than Obama's, which is largely a fairy tale.

Why did you choose this particular presentation style -- a first-person narrative voice-over, rather than clips and interview sequences like you did with "Atomic Jihad?"

It's a structural device, first of all, and it is kind of a take off on Obama's Dreams from My Father, which is written in the first person. If you hear the audio book, it's actually Obama who reads it. A first person narrative, I think, is more interesting. It's more fascinating than some narrator saying, "Obama was in ACORN. Obama did this. Obama did that." It allows a little more interesting theatrical -- sometimes humorous, sometimes painful -- connections. I think it's a unique and innovative structural device, and it's in line with how Obama presented his book.

I'll admit that as I watched the first third of the film, I had my tongue planted firmly in my cheek -- until you started bringing out the photographic evidence -- in particular the ones of Ann Dunham taken by Frank Marshall Davis. How did you come into possession of those, and did you have anybody authenticate them?

First of all, I think the film gets interesting right away when you see the comparison photos of Obama and Frank Marshall Davis, which are shockingly similar -- and then of course when we see the Kenyan Obama, there's no resemblance whatsoever.

And I do agree they did look similar, and I was curious if anyone had done any sort of -- I don't know what you'd call it, 'forensic analysis' maybe?

That's a little difficult, because we only have several pictures of Davis at certain ages, where we have hundreds of pictures of Obama. Also, Davis is heavier a lot of the time. So we haven't attempted any sort of forensics, but what we do is we show a number of photos of Obama and Davis, and we look at the timeline.

The timeline of Obama's Dreams from My Father is that his parents fell in love and got married, and that when he was two years old his father could not refuse a Harvard education and left, and that's what broke up the family. Now we know that to be false. His narrative is false. Obama's mother showed up at the University of Washington Seattle three weeks after he was born and started studying while the Kenyan Obama stayed in Hawaii for one more year. Ann Dunham only went back to Hawaii six months after Obama, the Kenyan, had left. So knowing that the Obama story is false, we then can look at what are the possibilities and what are the opportunities.

Obama Mama? Nude photos of a model, allegedly Ann Dunham, lend credence to theories of intimacy between the President's mother and Communist USA agitator Frank Marshall Davis.

The nude photos I acquired from a couple of different sources. I included about seven of them in the film. I tried to be respectful and put the black bars on them. I do have thirty, maybe thirty-five more where she's wearing stripper outfits, not naked.

And these are absolutely, guaran-damn-teed to be Ann Dunham?

I am doing a more in-depth expose of those photos with a little short video explanation on my website, that will give a lot more detail on the background of these photos. How do we know it's at Davis' house? We tie in a number of items of furniture that were identical to the ones Davis sat on. The house structure had these very unique long windows, that are like the Tudor style house Davis lived in all those years. We also have his possessions, like his jazz records, in the background. On my trip to Hawaii, I actually went to the house and was able to get in and measure the windows, the floor, and all the different angles, and take a lot of photography to confirm what I was confident in already. So I've confirmed even further that that is Davis's house that she's nude in.

Now, you have to ask yourself the question: If Ann Dunham was engaging in nefarious activities with Frank Marshall Davis, who was involved in pornography and prostitution, why would she bring her kid, ten-year-old Barry, back from Indonesia, and tell her father "I'm going back to Indonesia, but I want you to take Barry over to this guy's house three times a week. He should really spend his childhood growing up with this guy." The only scenario where that makes sense is if Davis was the real father.

So there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to this. Of course, we have Obama stating in his autobiography twenty-five times all the interaction he had with Frank -- the only person he names by his real name instead of a pseudonym. And we have the neighbors of Frank Marshall Davis have been quoted in interviews where they've said Obama came over from age 10 regularly every week. So all of the circumstantial evidence and timelines, and the similarity of photography of Davis and Obama -- the height, the age spots, the look... knowing the Obama story is false, this is, I think, the most likely scenario which I have presented as an alternative autobiography to Obama's. Mine, I think, is much closer to reality. We know the Kenyan is not the father -- that's very clear. We think, obviously, all the opportunity points to Davis, and to a sham marriage to cover up an illicit affair -- for various reasons for each person, which I discuss in the film.

How do we know for sure it's Ann Dunham? Unfortunately, the standard today is DNA. And even if you have DNA, then they say, "Well, maybe you didn't collect it properly." So there's never such a thing as beyond any doubt. But if you look at the many, many photos of Ann Dunham and the naked girl in the pictures -- especially you can see her teeth; she has some recessed teeth on the left side -- it's very obviously Ann Dunham.

One of the other things that comes up in your documentary is the counter you offer to Obama's claim in Dreams from My Father that he encountered racism in high school, whereas you state that interviews with classmates indicate no such racism happened. I found it a little humorous, given the recent news about Mitt Romney allegedly bullying a student in his own high school days, and the subsequent lack of recall of the contemporaries of his youth. Did you interview any more students who attended high school with Obama during your last visit to Hawaii?

On this trip I did not. I did interview them during the research on the film, and I read many interviews other people had done. Of most interest is the person Obama identifies in his autobiography as Ray, who he claims is 100% African-American, but who is later identified as a gentleman named Keith Kakugawa, who is actually half African-American and half Japanese. So Keith Kakugawa was supposedly his best friend who he had all these racial experiences with. When he was interviewed, Kakugawa said they never happened. And having interviewed other classmates, they all say the same thing: Hawaii was a multi-racial society, blacks were highly respected; they were even called "royal Hawaiians" and there was no such discrimination against blacks.

So here we use some reasoned logic that Obama's goal at the time the book was written was to run for mayor of Chicago one day. And because he was considered an outsider -- a Hawaiian background, his mother was white -- he was trying to write this autobiography as a way to be accepted in Chicago by the black community in order to manipulate them to get their support in a very cynical way. There are people that have really suffered from racism, and I have no doubt that he invented this string of racial incidents with some help from Bill Ayers, whom I believe gave a great deal of assistance in writing the book, it's been well established, in order to position himself as someone who had suffered victimization when he really didn't. It's very disturbing that someone would invent racial incidents to get support. It's manipulative and it's a very ugly thing to do.

You mention Bill Ayers, and he certainly comes up in the documentary, along with a list of others who were brought to light during the first election -- including Bernardine Dorn and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But that first time, their connections to Obama ultimately had no impact on the campaign. Are you hoping that the second time is a charm, that people will make the connections this time?

No, I'm not hoping for anything in those regards. I'm putting together for the first time a timeline and a cohesive understanding of Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers -- and his family and his father who my information and research have indicated literally adapted Obama from when he first met Bill Ayers in New York. He became a part of their inner circle, and they helped him every step of the way.

I think now those issues have more meaning, because it's in the proper context of his entire life's journey in socialism, especially relating to his origins -- the origins of his biology and ideology. Even if you look at the film and are still unsure about the paternity of Frank Marshall Davis, you'll certainly agree that Frank Marshall Davis was Obama's ideological father. So I think now instead of having little snippets -- Reverend Wright said this, Obama lied about that, Bill Ayers may be this... It's hard to understand, hard to put it all together. Everybody knows that something's wrong, but no one could really put it together. I think that's what my film does. It creates a complete story, just like Obama's Dreams from My Father. "Dreams from My Real Father" is an alternate story that I think is very close to reality, as opposed to Obama's book. Every time anybody researches any issue on Obama's book, it turns out it was false. If you research issues in my film, you'll either say it's 100% true, or it's probably true.

This being an election season, have you had any pushback on the documentary, and likewise has their been any support?

I've had tremendous support. The release date is officially July 24th, but we've shipped several thousand copies through my website and also WND.net -- we allowed them to do a lot of pre-sales -- and that helped to get the market and the buzz going for the product prior to the release date. We've had a lot of emails from people saying they want to hold screenings; we've had people buy several hundred copies, they want to give it out to their friends, and sell copies. So it's had overwhelming support from people that have said, "We finally understand this guy in context. We never had something like this before."

Regarding critics, yes, several leftist websites have bought the film and critiqued it or tried to make fun of it. It's almost humorous to watch what they're writing, because I don't think they take the time to watch it, they just try to dismiss it. I think we'll get a lot of that. If you don't get a lot of criticism, you're not successful.

Anything in the way of criticism or rebuttals from the White House itself?

No, we've not heard from them. I think their way of operating is usually through surrogates -- Media Matters and these types of proxies that they use to do their dirty work.

Since the documentary is presented as a book -- complete with all the book visuals throughout the film -- will you be presenting it later as an actual publication?

Now that I've acquired a lot more photography and certain information -- and I'm continuing to do so -- I am going to consider that. I've been encouraged to do so by my distributor and a few others. But it's definitely not in the works yet. It could easily be put together, because there is a completed script, it's just a question of letting it out, and adding in some photos and some of the new information.

One thing I did in Hawaii was to meet with three retired Honolulu Police Department detectives who worked in the fifties and sixties. They gave me a good overview of what life was like there pre-statehood and after-statehood, in terms of how the syndicate ran the island and the rampant prostitution and corruption. They provided me some photos from the police archives that no one had ever seen regarding Frank Marshall Davis and different activities that are going to be shocking to people when they come out.

You've been to Hawaii a number of times now investigating for your documentary, and I've been reading that Hawaii officials are getting particularly tired of people mounting information fishing expeditions, particularly in regards to the certification of live birth efforts. Did you encounter any resistance along these lines?

I found the people who are protecting Obama -- protecting his story that they know to be false -- I can see that they're growing weary of fronting for this guy, keeping up a lie and trying to cover for various issues that he has made public that are not true. And they don't want to be the ones to blow his cover: they support him, or they're fans of his. But I saw a great deal of weariness in those people who are really tired of playing that role.

The people who are interested in truth and honesty are more than willing. They were waiting for me. "Where have you been?" They needed someone to talk to, to tell the truth to, and to give documents to that no one had found them to ask for.

There is an interesting dynamic in Hawaii. There are the people who are weary of Obama because they've had to carry a line of backing things that they know not to be true. On the other side you have the people who are happy to tell the truth.

Did you come across anything unexpected on this last trip that you would consider an information bombshell?

Yes. I got arrest records from the Honolulu Police Department that are going to be very explosive. I got more photos of Ann Dunham. And I got more photos of Frank Marshall Davis and his family that will be truly shocking. Over the next three weeks, there will be breaking news items on my website, and you'll see those released at that time.

And also I got the inside story of many things that go on within the government of Hawaii. Every time you pick up a rock that Obama has laid down, you find things that are shocking.