All in the Family

Although many official records of Obama’s extended family are sealed, there is sufficient information in the public domain to suggest that his stepfather Colonel Lolo Soetoro and both maternal grandparents also had links to the CIA.

Colonel Lolo Soetoro

Following her return to the University of Hawaii East West Center in 1962, Obama’s mother Stanley Ann Dunham divorced Obama senior and met retired Indonesian Colonel Lolo Soetoro. She married him in either March 1964 or March 1965 (her passport records list two different dates). However Ann remained in Honolulu to finish her when Soetoro returned to Indonesia in 1966. She and five year old Barack joined him in 1967, after she received her bachelor’s degree in anthropology.

According to Madsen, Soetoro was linked to the CIA via his participation in the 1965-67 CIA-backed coup that overthrew Sukarno, Indonesia’s first democratically elected president. Madsen disputes Obama’s claim that Soetoro did “topicological surveys” for the Indonesian army when he returned to his native country in 1966. I, too, find it extremely implausible that the fascist general Suharto would employ an experienced combat officer to perform geological surveys in a country racked by extreme political instability and violence. Although his evidence is sketchy, Madsen believes Soetoro returned to active duty to fight communist insurgents in Java (see http://www.opinion-maker.org/2010/08/special-report-the-story-of-obama-all-in-the-company-part-iii/).

By the time Ann joined Soetoro in Jakarta in June 1967, Suharto had consolidated the coup and installed himself as acting president (March 1967).

Stanley Armour Dunham: Unanswered questions

As I blogged previously, Madsen also suspects Ann Dunham’s father worked for the CIA. In addition to the photo of Stanley Armour Dunham welcoming Barack Obama senior (presumably as part of the CIA-inspired Africa Airlift program) in 1959, Madsen has also uncovered a second photo suggesting Dunham and his family were living in Lebanon in the early fifties – something Obama also neglects to mention in his biography. While an extremely restless furniture salesman might move his family from Kansas, to Texas, to Berkeley and ultimately to Hawaii in pursuit of exactly the right furniture store, it wouldn’t explain the family’s presence in Beirut in the early fifties. The photo depicts Stanley Ann Dunham, Stanley Ann Dunham in a school uniform with the insignia of College Notre Dame de Jamhour, a private Jesuit school in Beirut.

Stanley Ann (with parents) in Notre Dame de Jamhour uniform

Madsen notes that Armour Dunham had an FBI file (J Edgar Hoover commonly kept files on covert CIA agents) that was allegedly destroyed in 1997.

Madelyn Dunham

Madsen believes Obama’s grandmother Madalyn Dunham had CIA connections via her 16 year career at the Bank of Hawaii, where she managed the secretive escrow finance department. The Bank of Hawaii has been widely implicated in money laundering (linked to illegal covert operations and/or narcotics trafficking) on behalf of a range of Asia-Pacific CIA front companies, including the Indonesian Lippo Group; the CIA’s Nugan Hand Bank in Australia; the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and an affiliate bank Commercial Bank of Commerce Cook Islands, Ltd. (CBCCI); gold bullion trader Deak International; European Pacific investments; and a Honolulu CIA front company called Bishop Baldwin Rewald Dillingham Wong (BBRDW), Ltd.

To be continued, with a look at the CIA-linked foundations Obama worked for in Chicago.

Obama’s Fictional Autobiography

The scenario Obama lays out in Dreams from My Father about his parents’ background differs markedly from limited information available from school and other public school records. Some commentators attribute this to his embarrassment over his father’s multiple marriages. Barack Obama senior’s wife (Keiza) and family in Kenya raise questions about the legality of his marriage to Stanley Ann Dunham. However the book fabricates or misrepresents events totally unrelated to the marriage between Dunham and Obama senior in February 1961.

Obama’s Grandfather Welcomes His Father to Hawaii

The first thing Obama gets wrong is the year his parents met (the year Stanley Ann and her parents moved to Honolulu from Mercer Island Washington). Obama gives this as 1959, whereas Ann’s yearbook and fellow students in her graduating class indicate she remained in Mercer Island through her June 1960 graduation. Moreover her University of Hawaii records confirm she didn’t enroll there until September 1960.

Ann Dunham from 1960 high school yearbook

He indicates his parents first met in a Russian class at the University of Hawaii. However Wayne Madsen (see prior blog) points out that Stanley Armour Dunham, Ann’s father, already knew Obama senior. He has a 1959 photo of Dunham officially welcoming Obama senior with a traditional lei ceremony. This suggests that Stanley Armour probably relocate to Hawaii in 1959, with his family following a year later. However the photo raises the interesting question of why an alleged furniture salesman, with no prior connections to the Honolulu business community or the University of Hawaii is welcoming the first Kenya student to enroll there.

Dunham and Obama Sr: 3rd and 4th from right

Madsen believes that rather than being a simple goat herder, as Obama claims, his father was one of 280 students from British eastern and southern African colonies sponsored to study in the US under the CIA-inspired Airlift Africa project. http://www.voltairenet.org/article166741.html The goal of the project was to counter the influence of Soviet and Chinese backed rebels and leaders as these colonies gained independence. According to Madsen, Airlift African students selected were chosen by Kenyan nationalist leader Tom Mboya, who also selected participants from Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland. Mboya was a long time CIA asset who later spied for them at pan-African nationalist meetings.

It’s also Madsen’s belief that furniture sales was merely a cover, that Stanley Armour Dunham had a CIA role in overseeing Airlift Africa and other foreign students at the University of Hawaii.

Who Was the Real Ann Dunham?

Obama’s description of his mother, in Dreams from My Father, as “shy and awkward” at 18, when she met Obama senior, is also puzzling. Her friends at Mercer Island High School, where she was on the debate team (requires lots of public speaking), describe her as a firebrand who was always questioning and challenging conventional wisdom.

His parents’ brief period of domestic bliss (between February 1961 and mid-1962, when Obama senior left Honolulu to attend Harvard) is also a fabrication. His friends in Honolulu had no idea Ann even existed and report that Obama senior continued to live in bachelor quarters. Whereas transcripts from the University of Washington indicate that Ann returned to Seattle in September 1961 with her one month old son and enrolled in evening extension classes until June 1962. The woman she lived with and other Seattle friends confirm this. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Dunham and http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=106018 and http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004334057_obama08m.html)

Obama also likes to portray his mother as a struggling single parent and a free spirit and “sixties child.” However Madsen has compiled considerable evidence suggesting she was actually a career employee (and possibly a NOC – an agent under non-official cover like Valerie Plame) for a series of known CIA fronts (the USAID-funded Lembaga Pendidikan Pembinaan Manajemen, Development Alternatives Inc., the Ministry of Industry Provincial Development Program, the Ford Foundation Southeast Asia regional office, and the Asian Development Bank). Among her other duties in Indonesia in the 1970s, was “anthropological” field work. Madsen believes this was actually intelligence gathering to consolidate the CIA-sponsored coup (1965-67) that overthrew Indonesian president Sukarno. (see http://www.t-room.us/2011/03/by-wayne-madsen-obamas-cia-mommy-dearest-%E2%80%94-identifying-indonesians-for-assassination/).

Among other evidence, Madsen cites a resolution passed by the American Anthropological Association in the mid-sixties condemning “intelligence meddling” of the CIA and Defense Department in anthropological field work. He also quotes the 1966 Beals Report (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/154/3756/1525.citation), which states that “several anthropologists, especially younger ones who had difficulty in securing research funds, were approached by ‘obscure’ foundations or were offered support from such organizations only to discover later that they were expected to provide intelligence information to the CIA.”

To be continued, with a look at Obama’s stepfather Lolo Soetoro and his grandmother Madalyn Dunham