A Conversation with Paul Irey

Paul Irey

I called Paul Irey last week to invite him to appear on Reality Check Radio to debate  John Woodman on the authenticity of the Obama long from birth certificate. Irey has declared it to be a forgery beyond doubt. Mr. Irey’s claims are based on differences in typefaces and other anomalies among various letters in the document. In his book, Is Obama’s Birth Certificate a Fraud?: A Computer Guy Examines The Evidence For Forgery, John Woodman devoted an entire chapter to Mr. Irey’s claims and found them to be easily refuted. John Woodman has publicly challenged Paul Irey to debate him but Mr. Irey has refused. I thought I would offer a fair forum to them where a full two hours could be devoted to a debate but unfortunately Mr. Irey still refuses. Mr. Irey was kind enough to be a guest on my show earlier this year and I had hoped he would consider a return for what could be an interesting evening.

Mr. Irey and I touched on a number of topics and the conversation while civil did become heated at times. Irey concedes that John Woodman has found some major flaws in his original analysis. Namely, Woodman demonstrated that many of the letters that Irey chose to blow up for comparison are from a vertical section of the document where it appears that the copier or scanner caused a distortion. Irey concedes that Woodman is correct. Irey also said that he has sent an email to Orly Taitz, Jerome Corsi, Doug Vogt, and others advising them of the problems with his analysis and asking them not to use it. I was startled to hear this and told Mr. Irey I had never seen a single retraction printed anywhere. I told him that this hasn’t stopped Taitz from including it with her motions in several court cases and in her challenge presented to the Ballot Law Commission in New Hampshire last month. Irey offered two explanations why he was not that concerned to have his flawed analysis submitted as evidence. First he says he is still sure the birth certificate is forged because a source he will not name from the Secret Service told him in 2008 that Obama was not born in Hawaii. Second, he is working on a new analysis that will be published soon (one would assume in World Net Daily) that will be “irrefutable”.  He also said it didn’t matter because no judge had read them anyway. I suspect Irey is correct that no judge has ever really read his gobbledygook but no real expert would dare let work that he would not endorse be filed in any court.

I asked Mr. Irey if he was concerned that two administrations in Hawaii had vouched for the validity of both the 2008 COLB and the 2011 long form birth certificate and that Dr. Fukino, Loretta Fuddy, and Alvin Onaka had all staked their professional reputations on those documents. Irey replied that “Fuddy and Onaka would both be going to jail” for their complicity in the forgery. I told him that I would bet him $500 that neither of them would go to jail by a date one year from our conversation. Irey would not take the bet. (My offer still stands by the way.)

I then asked Irey how he could explain other additional evidence of that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. These included the contemporary newspaper accounts, recollections by Obama’s teacher Barbara Nelson, and the passport records for Ann Dunham that showed that an official from the state department had investigated the Obama child’s place of birth. Irey was familiar with these but dismissed them all. He said Barbara Nelson was lying and that the newspaper announcements were the result of Obama’s grandmother filing for a birth certificate after the Obamas returned from Kenya. Irey said he remembered reading that there was a Hawaii law that allowed one to get a birth certificate that said the birth place was Hawaii even though the birth occurred elsewhere. He could not quote the statute. He said that was done for a Chinese communist but he could not remember the name. I am sure Irey was referring to the birth certificate issued by the Territory of Hawaii in 1904 for Sun Yat-sen.  Dr. Conspiracy and others have written about this fraudulent birth certificate oft cited by Birthers as proof that anyone can get birth certificate in Hawaii with merely a signature of a relative. No other certificate other than this one from 1904 has ever been produced although Orly Taitz and others have maintained it is easy to obtain a birth certificate that shows a Hawaiian birth with a mere signature of a relative.

Irey also buys into Larry Sinclair’s cockamamie stories. I will not delve into the details but let’s just say Irey is very familiar with all the details and believes Obama is bisexual and met male lovers at Rev. Wright’s church.  He had several of them killed according to Irey. He buys into other conspiracy theories too: Did you know that all the major news outlets have their news stories verified daily by the government? Mr. Irey says that this began in 1947 under the Truman administration and continues to this day. 

Paul Irey’s hobby of delving into conspiracy theories goes back a long way. If you talk to him for very long he will always get around to the Kennedy assassination. He believes the fatal shot was fired from a sewer in front of the limousine and that the famous autopsy photo showing little damage to Kennedy’s face cannot be reconciled with the Zapruder film. He believes the driver of the limousine slowed the vehicle intentionally at the right moment to allow the unknown assassin to take the fatal shot. I did not want to engage him on the Kennedy assassination details. We recently passed the 48 year anniversary of the assassination and I have seen every conspiracy on the assignation debunked to at least my satisfaction. I see no point at spending time on it. 

I am convinced that Paul Irey is sincere in his beliefs.  He might even be a pleasant guy to meet but he lives in a different world than most of us. He trusts no one and wakes up every day sure that unknown sinister forces are controlling every aspect of government and the media. Like most conspiracy theorists he always invokes the shadowy “they” to toss out mountains of evidence for which he has no explanation.  For that I pity him. However, that in no way excuses the fact that he has allowed his so-called “evidence” that he knows is flawed to be used by charlatans like Orly Taitz and Jerome Corsi to convince their gullible followers and readers that the President is a liar.