Sunday, October 14, 2012
PBS DOCUMENTARY PRODUCERS FIND NO EVIDENCE OBAMA ATTENDED
COLUMBIA
“I DIDN’T CONSIDER HIM AMERICAN” –
Interviewing several people from Obama’s past, producers of “The
Choice” documentary about the coming 2012 election find it inexplicable that
there are no Columbia classmates who can attest to Obama’s attendance there.
By Dan Crosby of The Daily Pen
NEW YORK, NY - A recent documentary about the life
of Barack Obama broadcast on PBS’ “Frontline” called “The Choice 2012” presents
a variety of testimony from alleged classmates of Obama during their mutual
attendance of Occidental College and Harvard University.
However, when the producers attempted to film a segment about Obama’s
attendance at Columbia University, they were unable to
locate even one of Obama’s classmates from the New York-based University
and, instead, recorded an interview with an alleged “roommate” who
shared a rundown New York apartment with Obama.
Because of this lack of first hand testimony about Obama’s
presence at Columbia, the documentary disproportionately abbreviates its
coverage of these years of Obama's life, from 1981 to 1983, when compared with
its coverage of Obama’s other school attendance.
The documentary focuses instead on Obama’s residence in New York and presents a
soliloquy about how traveling from the west coast to the east coast changed
Obama’s perspective on race but mentions nothing about his relationship with
Columbia students or faculty.
By Obama’s own admission, he traveled to Pakistan, India and
Indonesia in 1981, but no record or passport from his trip has ever been made
public.
Conspicuously, the PBS documentary makes no mention of Obama's
travel outside the United States at this time.
"That's a pretty significant event for a 20 year old
kid," says Karen Welch, spokesperson for the Community Television
Initiative, "One would think it worthy of inclusion in a world-wide
broadcast about the biography of the President."
At the 33 minute mark of the 1 hour 55 minute documentary, PBS
begins a segment about Obama’s arrival in mainland America after his graduation
from Hawaii’s highest ranked prep school, Punahou Academy, in 1979. The segment
begins with interview cuts with Obama’s former Occidental College roommates,
Eric Moore, Louis Hook, Caroline Grauman, Sohale Siddiqi and author David
Maraniss describing Obama’s time at the Los Angeles college.
“I didn’t consider him American,” admits
Sohale Siddiqi, “He seemed like an international individual.”
"I was visiting his roommate in Los Angeles, Hasan Chandoo,
who was also going to Occidental College with him. And after New Year's Eve we
drove back from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and I spent a couple of weeks
there," says Siddiqi.
Many questions still remain about the relationship between Chandoo
and Obama. However, more suspicious is the fact that the documentary gives
no biographical information about Chandoo or his relationship with Obama after
the two had allegedly attended Occidental together.
"Apparently, the producers made no effort to contact Chandoo
for this piece or make his account of the story a part of this
documentary," says Welch, "which is strange considering the rumors
and testimony about how close they were. They, apparently, traveled the world
together and knew each other intimately for years, but PBS omitted him.
Strange."
“My father was Kenyan,” describes Moore, of a conversation in
which Obama tells him about his origins, “he said, ’I go by the name ‘Barry’ so
I don’t have to explain my name all the time.”
“One day, he (Obama) told me he was going to transfer to
Columbia,” Moore continued, “he said he needed a more expansive environment, a
more urban environment where he could grow intellectually."
Full of other biographical allegations about Obama, the
documentary also conspicuously omits how he was able to afford his move from
the southwestern U.S to the northeastern U.S and the exorbitant tuition needed
to attend Columbia.
Boston Globe columnist, Scott Helman wrote Obama “flew across the
United States”, but does not explain how Obama paid airfare or if he took any
belongings. The documentary goes on to report that Obama took residence on the
“edge of Harlem”.
By all accounts, Obama was not a good student at Occidental.
His easy going lifestyle, according to PBS, left him restless and wanting, so
it’s difficult to imagine that Obama attended Columbia on a merit scholarship.
If Obama actually registered for classes at Columbia, there remains no
documented evidence that he actually attended them, or how he paid the tuition.
At the 37:20 mark, the documentary segues into an interview with
an alleged New York roommate of Obama’s named Phil Boerner. According to the
documentary, they lived at 339 E. 6th, Apt. 6A.
The fact that Boerner is white having lived in Harlem with a black
roommate raises questions about the nature of the living arrangement and if
Boerner was a classmate of Obama’s at Columbia.
However, the documentary does not publish testimony from Boerner that he
attended Columbia. Boerner gives copious descriptions of the apartment, but
provides no information about Obama’s attendance at Columbia.
For more than five minutes of material during the “Obama in New
York” segment of the documentary, appearing immediately after the quote from
Moore, there is absolutely no mention of Obama’s attendance at Columbia.
Instead the story devolves into Obama’s experiences with poverty, race, social
isolation and ideology. No mention of his attendance at Columbia is made.
Former Libertarian VP candidate Wayne Allyn Root has publicly
stated that he never saw Obama at Columbia from 1980 to 1983. Obama
alleges that he was a classmate of Root’s enrolled in the same courses and the
same major but Root says if that was true, he would remember him.
“I was a poli-sci major, apparently just like Obama, in a class
of about 400 or so people,” says Root, “and I, nor anyone I know ever remember
seeing, talking to or being with Barack Obama while we attended Columbia. Not
one single person. We don’t remember him in any of our classes. We don’t remember
him on campus. We can’t find one professor that remembers grading him on any
assignment. It’s bizarre, like he was a ghost among us.”
The documentary then claims that several of Obama’s Occidental
classmates joined him in New York, including Siddiqi.
“I think the first thing we experienced was complete intimidation
by New York City,” says Siddiqi, “which seemed rougher and tougher and
uncivilized more than any other place either of us had lived. Both of us were
questioning ‘why the heck did we come to this place?’ It was scary and we had
no resources.”
If Siddiqi's account is true regarding his and Obama's economic
situation, then the question becomes more amplified: How did he afford
Columbia's tuition and expenses?
Siddiqi also provides no supporting testimony that Obama actually
attended Columbia. He never mentions Obama’s experiences as a college student while
in New York.
Author, David Maraniss, expounds on the impact living in New York
had on Obama saying, “I think New York was the key to his life.”
“He made no lasting African-American friends during those four
years, in New York,” says Maraniss.
“The NY years are marked by this kind of ‘turning inward’ for
Obama,” says Obama biographer, Jodi Kantor.
“He spends time reading, fasting, wandering the city. There’s this
almost monk-like existence.”
Maraniss and Kantor also make no allusion to Obama’s alleged
attendance at Columbia which is a strange impasse to the theme of this segment
considering the research Maraniss and Kantor are alleged to have done for their
respective biographies about Obama.
“It’s the period of his life where he does the least,” says
Maraniss, “But figures out the most.”
At the 41:21 mark, the documentary segues to Obama’s life in
Chicago without so much as providing a single interview or piece of
evidence from eyewitnesses or Columbia University demonstrating that Obama ever
attended Columbia.
PBS’ presentation of this part of Obama’s biography further raises
suspicions about Obama’s activities during the early 1980’s.
Many have reason to believe that Obama was able to attend Harvard as a foreign
student on a foreign student scholarship, after he returned from Pakistan
sometime in 1982.
If Obama attended college as a foreign student, his
natural born eligibility to be president would fall into suspicion.
Renouncing or losing one's American citizenship constitutionally disqualifies
them from being a presidential candidate.
Like so much of Obama's covert past, PBS' documentary, "The
Choice 2012" only confirms that the American people have never been
allowed to review actual documented evidence of Obama’s so-called Columbia
years.