A CITY OF SECRETS TO THE PRESENT DAY AUGUST 15-17, 2011 -- DATELINE JAKARTA
By Wayne Madsen
08/17/2011
Indonesian law required Obama to have sole Indonesian citizenship when enrolled in public school in Jakarta.
Jakarta, Indonesia is where young Barack Obama grew up with his CIA-connected mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, and his Indonesian army officer step-father, Lolo Soetoro. Obama's attendance at two schools that from 1967 to 1971 required the student to be an Indonesian citizen -- a time frame when Indonesian law did not permit dual citizenship -- means that the so-called "birthers," those who claim that Barack Obama was not born in Honolulu, Hawaii but in another country, have been on a dead-end wild goose chase.
The answers to Obama's eligibility to serve as President of the United States is not found in Hawaii or Kenya, but in the narrow alleyways in this sprawling Indonesian capital city.
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Obama with mother Stanley Ann Dunham |
It was the renouncement of Obama's U.S. citizenship that permitted him to be enrolled in two schools in Jakarta -- the Santo Fransiskus Assisi Catholic parochial school from the first to third grades, and the Menteng State Elementary School from the fourth to the fifth grades. While attending the Menteng school, Ann Soetoro was employed as a department head and a director of the Institute of Management Education and Development in Jakarta. Lolo, after his time in the field with the Indonesian army following the 1965 CIA-inspired coup against Sukarno, worked in the Director General's office of the Indonesian Army's Topography division of the Indonesian Army.
Ann Soetoro's covert work for the CIA's and Pentagon's Project PROSYM, the ethnographic political mapping of pro- and anti-government tribes and villages in Java, was complemented by Lolo's access to topographic maps of Java and other islands.
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Soetoro with Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama |
There has been a major effort here in Indonesia to mask and alter the history of Obama, who is ineligible to serve as President because of the break in his "natural born" status from Hawaii after he was adopted by Lolo Soetoro and became an Indonesian citizen. At the very least, since the United States has never had to contend with a president who had broken natural born citizenship status, the Obama situation appears to be a U.S. Supreme Court case made-to-order for constitutional lawyers.
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Obama at public school in Jakarta |
There is very visible secrecy and a fear by those who remember Obama and his family to talk to foreigners who inquire about the past of Obama and his family in post-1965 coup Jakarta. Compare Jakarta to other presidential hometowns like Hope Arkansas; Plains, Georgia; Abilene, Kansas; Hyannisport, Massachusetts; Dixon, Illinois; Yorba Linda, California; and Independence, Missouri and the "creepiness" associated with Obama's upbringing in Jakarta literally reaches out and smacks you upside the head.
The fear to talk critically about Obama is stark in Jakarta. In any other presidential hometown, the older folks who remember their respective native sons are more than happy to reminisce with anecdotes. That is not the case in Jakarta with Obama and his family.
It is clear that the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, working through local agents, has been working overtime to scuttle any unofficial contact between Americans interested in Obama's past and Indonesians who recall Obama and his family in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This dateline comes with a long list of suddenly cancelled meetings with those who are in a position to shed light on the past of Obama, his mother, and step-father.
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For Obama and his handlers, Jakarta is an insurance policy on keeping secrets. English-speakers are as rare as hen's teeth in this part of Southeast Asia. The bitter taste of decades of the dictatorship of General Suharto leaves many Indonesians wary of talking to foreigners, especially journalists.
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Obama's registration card at St. Fransiskus Assisi school in Jakarta, listing his citizenship as "Indonesian." [Bangsa: Warga Negara: nation of citizenship]. Note: WMR has obtained two laws from 1958, still in force, from 1967 to 1971, the period of Obama's school attendance in Jakarta, that state: 1) only Indonesians could attend either St. Fransiskus Assisi and Menteng Elementary schools and 2) Indonesia did not recgonize dual citizenship, which means Lolo Soetoro would have had to renounced Barry Soetoro's natural-born U.S. citizenship prior to Obama being admitted to either of the two schools. WMR is working on a certified English translation of the two applicable 1958 Indonesian laws |
Coupled with the largely invented "cargo cult of personality" that has been built up around Obama in Jakarta and the United States is the odd situation that aside from his Indonesian-born step-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama has no living close relatives.
Stanley Ann Dunham, who changed the spelling of her last name while married to her Indonesian husband from "Soetoro" to Sutoro," died of cancer in Hawaii on November 7, 1995, at the age of 52. On March 2, 1987, Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo died of liver failure at age 52 in Jakarta.
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Obama with grandmother Madelyn Dunham |
Obama's maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died of cancer, at age 86 on November 2, 2008 (Hawaii time, it was November 3 in the continental United States), mere hours before Obama was elected president. Madelyn Dunham's death followed months of her refusing to grant interviews about her and her famous grandson to the media. Obama's maternal grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, who was reportedly associated with Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and CIA activities in France, Lebanon, Cuba, and Hawaii, died in Hawaii on February 8, 1992 at age 73.
Obama's purported father, Barack H. Obama, Sr., died in a car crash in Nairobi, Kenya on November 1982 at age 46.
One Obama relative who has been virtually disowned and ignored by the Obama family is Lia Soetoro, who was adopted by Lolo and Ann Soetoro while Barry Soetoro lived in Jakarta. Lia was invited to Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009, according to the following press release issued by the Indonesian government. Lia was only a few years older than Obama in 2009 at age 51. Lia, who WMR has been told was poor, collecting grass to make ends meet, did not attend the inauguration likely due to the costs involved.
DIREKTORAT INFORMASI DAN MEDIA
PRESS CABLE
NOMOR : 005/09012009
HARI : JUMAT
TANGGAL : 9 JANUARI 2009
Diundang Obama, Lia Soetoro Bawa Boneka Kenangan Terkejut, haru, sedih, dan bangga. Perasaan itu kini berkecamuk dalam benak Lia Soetoro, 51, kakak angkat Barack Hussein Obama, presiden terpilih Amerika Serikat (AS). Setelah puluhan tahun berpisah, keduanya direncanakan bertemu kembali dalam suasana dan kesempatan yang berbeda. Jika tidak ada kendala, Lia akan menghadiri pelantikan Barack Obama sebagai Presiden AS di Washington DC, 20 Januari mendatang atas undangan khusus dari saudara angkatnya itu. Jika Barry, sapaan kecil Barack Obama, kini menjadi orang nomor satu di AS, Lia masih tetap tinggal di kampung. Selain sebagai ibu rumah tangga, istri Ibnu Sobah, 58, ini juga punya kesibukan sehari-hari mencari rumput untuk kambing.
On February 25, 2010, Lia died suddenly from a heart attack at age 53 after suffering from headaches. The following is an Antara News Agency report, exclusively translated from Indonesian to English for WMR, on Lia's death. The dateline is Lia's hometown of Sukabumi on her death:
Obama’s Adopted Sister Dies
Friday, February 26, 2010
Sukabumi, (ANTARA News) –
Adopted sister of the U.S.President Brack Obama, Holiah (53) alias Lia Soetoro who lived in Babakan Banten Village, RT 03/ RW 09 Sukasirna, Sukabumi, West Java, dies last Thursday afternoon (February 25).
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Lia Soetoro |
Lia, whom Obama called “Mbak Non” was buried nearby her residence on Friday morning around 9:00 a.m. [West Indonesian Time Zone]. Lia died Thursday at 17:45 p.m. from a heart attack.
Before her passing, she was scheduled to meet with Obama who will visit Indonesian this coming March.
“My wife should have been in Jakarta that Thursday to meet with Barry (Obama’s nickname) at LCC Menteng Dalem, Central Jakarta.” Said her husband, Edi Sobah (60) in Sukabumi, Friday.
Edi said that before her passing, Lia had just been interviewed by one of the radio stations in Jakarta. Not too long after that, she had a headache. “She even vomited and according to doctor’s exam, she broke the blood vessels in her brain so needed to be taken to the hospital.” Her husband said in watery eyes. But she died on the way to the hospital.
According to him, his wife had been complaining about her health condition for a while, and based on the examination by Puskesmas (local government Clinic) of Bukit Duri, Jakarta, she had high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
“Before she died, she hoped to meet with the U.S. President Barack Obama, but she died before it happens.” Edi have said.
Edi wishes that during Obama’s visit in Indonesia, he would collect himself the mementos of his wife and Barry when they were children which consist of two glass cups, a bed sheet and a monkey doll.
“It is her wish and mine that Barry would see those mementos himself.”
One of Lia’s grandchildren, Yudha said that his grandmother had told him to be a smart and good person like Barack Obama who now becomes the President of the United States. His grandmother has also told him that now Barack Obama has become a President as he wished.” He has said.
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Wayne Madsen |
Investigative
journalist, author and syndicated columnist, Madsen has over twenty years
experience in security issues.
As a U.S. Naval
Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S.
Navy. Madsen has been a frequent political and national security commentator on
Fox News and has also appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, BBC and MSNBC.
He
has been invited to testify as a witness before the US House of
Representatives, the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and an terrorism
investigation panel of the French government. A member of the Society of
Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club, Madsen is based
and reports from Washington, D.C.
Investigative journalist and former Jakarta Post Senior Investigative Editor Robert S. Finnegan contributed to this report.