On February 9, 2011, Greg Hollister (litigant in the Hollister v. Soetoro lawsuit) sent a private email to Orly Taitz, and copied John Hemenway (Hollister’s attorney in the lawsuit), Larry Elgin (Hollister appellate attorney), Susan Daniels (a private investigator assisting Orly Taitz) and Linda Bent (a writer) stating that he had a web printout from the Social Security Administration indicating that Barack Obama’s social-security number did not pass the Social Security Number Verification System (SSNVS). For background on what that meant, see my March, 2011 article, “More social-security troubles for the President?”
Taitz recently published an image of Hollister’s email, but rather than redacting the addresses, I’ll just present the text, making it accessible to search engines at the same time:
Dear Ms. Taitz.
I have been monitoring your efforts at a distance reference the eligibility of Barack Obama to serve as POTUS. I see that you are now filing suit reference his many SSNs.
I have a copy of Obama’s selective service card with the SSN affixed. I, as a small business owner have access to the Social Security Number Verification System. As a result, I checked the SSNVS for the SSN Obama used for registering with Selective Service. The SSNVS search resulted in a report sheet that states that number Obama used to register for Selective Service was never issued.
Let me be direct – i have not agreed with many of your tactics in this endeavor. However, I have continued to follow your efforts to see where there may be synergy and this is one.
Therefore if you think the documents will be helpful, please let me know and I will send you the PDF files for both the Selective Service Card and the SSNVS report that states that SSN was never issued.1
Sincerely
Greg HollisterGregory S. Hollister, Colonel, USAF, Retired
President, Hollister Enterprises, LLC2
Hollister doesn’t say when he ran the SSNVS check, but the letter suggests a sequence of events.
He says something really odd in his email, “I have a copy of Obama’s selective service card with the SSN affixed.” Images of Obama’s selective service registration are all over the Internet, but in every instance block 3 where the social-security number appears is blacked out. I filed a FOIA for this form myself, and my copy has the SSN blacked out. I frankly do not find it credible that Hollister had one of these with the SSN intact. But Hollister didn’t say “registration” but “card.” How in the hell could he get President Obama’s Draft card?
The story is that someone entered a change of address for President Obama at Selective Service, then requested a card, which was then mailed to the requester at the new address. It was shown (see Fogbow link at the end of the story) that it was Hollister that did this, and he admits in the email that he has the card. The way the letter reads, he took the SSN from the card, then ran SSNVS. The address change happened December 7, 2010.
Linda Bent, copied in the email, wrote an article for Examiner.com that was published February 23, 2011, and mentions the SSNVS document provided by Hollister. When I wrote my article in response to Bent’s story, I used the SSNVS image that you see all over the Internet. There’s no indication of when it was retrieved. What I had not seen then was a different version of the image that has now appeared in a Taitz evidence dump (colloquially referred to as “zibits”) that I present following (click to enlarge):
In this version it is clear that the date has been deliberately cut out of the document, presumably by Hollister to hide his involvement in the crime (yes it’s a crime to use SSNVS for someone not your employee).
So why does the date matter?
One has to ask why Obama’s SSN didn’t pass SSNVS, and a possible explanation is that Obama got a new SSN once his old one was broadcast all over the Internet. If the SSNVS were run before Obama’s SSN was broadcast (around October of 2009), that explanation fails.
Orly Taitz researcher and professional “skip tracer” Al Hendershot claims that the SSNVS is from 2008. On his blog, The Obama Hustle, Hendershot writes:
Evidentiary finding #3:
This was a SSN verification that was completed in 2008 using Obama’s name associated with the stolen 042-68-4425 with his name listed as the owner. The result came back as a failure because naturally his name was never legally associated with that number.
And this is followed by the Hollister image.
Now recall that Hollister claims that he got the Obama SSN from Obama’s Selective Service card. That card had to come after December 7, 2010 when the fraudulent address change was done. Making the change to get the card required Hollister to know the SSN, and that he could have obtained from a poorly-redacted court filing by Orly Taitz in the fall of 2009 (somewhere around October 2, which is after 2008).
On February 9, 2009, Hollister’s attorney Hemenway submitted the first amended complaint in the case of Hollister v. Soetoro that contains a number of exhibits, but not the SSNVS. To me that is a strong suggestion that Hollister did not have the SSNVS information on that date, or else he would have included it (unless he knew what he did was illegal and was trying to hide it).
So in conclusion, I have a very hard time believing that Hollister’s SSNVS was from 2008. If his email is to be believed, it came after Hollister fraudulently obtained Obama’s Selective Service Card, and that had to have been after December 7, 2010.
Hollister’s illegal SSNVS check of Obama’s SSN had to have occurred after December 7, 2010 and before February 9, 2011. Hendershot is wrong.
I had a phone conversation with Orly Taitz where she raised the social-security number issue with me, and I presented the “new number” scenario. Taitz said that there were failed SSNVS checks on Obama that preceded her spilling his number on the Internet. I thought she was lying then, and I still do today.
Read more:
1This result, that the SSN was “never issued” is disastrous for Orly Taitz’ claim that the SSN belongs to Harrison J Bounel.
Here’s a clue for you from Raicha at the Fogbow, who posted this on March 24, 2011: http://www.thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=5421&p=224065#p224065
“I called the Selective Service and confirmed that [President Obama’s Selective Service] record was modified on December 7, 2010 by someone.”
Since December 7, 2010 was before Hollister’s alleged criminality was made public by Orly Taitz, my guess is that the 12/7/2010 change was probably Greg Hollister changing President Obama’s record back to Obama’s address shortly after changing it to his own, which is how he allegedly obtained the change of address notification from President’s Selective Service record.
If Hollister checked SSNVS after he got the Selective Service record as he says in his email to Taitz, then he probably did it in late 2010 or early 2011.
Using Google search for hits between January 2008 and November 2011 inputting “Barack Obama” and “SSNVS” and then reading the links to make sure it refers directly to the supposed failure of the social the earliest article I come across is the February 23rd article mentioned above and then followed by an ORYR/Birther report article on the 27th which was a reprint of Linda’s article. The very first mention seems to be by Linda Bent.
One more thing, though. Raicha also says this: http://www.thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=5421&p=224065#p224047
“Hollister would not even had to make a phone call in order misdirect the Selective Service record. It can be done online if you have a matching SSN and birthdate in the system:”
So, Hollister must have had Obama’s SSN already when he did his Selective Service caper. This is, of course, not surprising since we all know that Taitz had posted it all over the internet the previous year. I still think it’s pretty likely that he accessed SSNVS after he got the Selective Service record like he said. Why would he lie to Taitz about that?
Note that he says “card”, not “registration form”.
There’s at least one birther-debunking site (I _thought_ it was this one) that has a detailed analysis showing, with reasonable certainty, that it was Hollister who used Obama’s SSN do the fake change of address. This was based on an unredacted postal bar code that narrowed the delivery address down to his street (maybe even his block??).
That response from the SSS included a card, and a signature by Romo that triggered a fresh conspiracy theory (“It’s fake because Romo wasn’t in charge when Obama registered”).
There may, or may not, be some information on that webpage that helps set a timeline: my recollection is not that detailed.
It was The Fogbow as linked at the bottom of my article.
This article has has significant revision as the result of new information from commenters. Thanks folks.
Also I think the form number was visible SSS3 something I think? I looked it up and usually the form is for a change of information like a change of address.
And just for the sake of completeness: IIRC, Orly got Obama’s SSN from the poorly-redacted (unredacted?) tax returns he posted online (because, you know: sealed records and all that). So, depending on which way the wind is blowing, birther theory would seem to be that he was filing his taxes with either a non-existent SSN, or with someone else’s SSN.
I mention this because as it happens, the timing here is awesome: this is the perfect time of year for the Birther Keyboard Kommandos to finally put it all on the line, literally. You can test, all by yourself, how likely it is that Obama used an SSN that never existed when he filed his taxes.
All you have to do is make up an SSN, or find an SSN that isn’t actually yours, and use it on your own personal tax return when you submit it. See how that flies with the IRS!
I have a guess as to what will happen, given the IRS’ reputation for letting things like this just kind of slip by, but don’t let me spoil the thrill of discovery for you.
Birther Report says it has obtained a new secure server and will migrate all content from Blogger.
I have alerted DARPA to this new development. 😀
No need: the NSA told them as soon as he emailed his termination notice to Google.
The techs are already installing the Special Comm Interface at his new location.
And, since he foolishly procrastinated in making his decision to move, he’s going to get one of the just-released Mark III models.
Poor guy should’ve moved while they were still using Mark IIs. Now he’s got no chance at all…
Getting back onto the topic of SSNs…
Youtube popped up Susan Daniels’ lovefest with Mark Gillar as a suggestion, so I took a peek into the echo chamnber.
It was interesting to watch them regurgitate the “no hospital will claim him” myth, while acknowedging that Kapi’olani had framed the letter he sent them and put it on display for a while, then turn around and accusing The Media™ of lying about the subject. Hypocrisy much?
Then they got back on topic, and Daniels _started_ to make the claim that Obama couldn’t have gotten his SSN from CT, because he would have had to pick up the card in person. But she changed tone in mid-lie, apparently realizing that the were millions of us (including much of her target audience) who got our SSNs around that time, and would know better.
Hilariously, she said she might have given Obama a pass if he’d gotten his SSN from California, because “it’s close”, and she kows you have to make allowances for mistakes (maybe the reason the stopped on the “in-person” lie was that she realized people would associate the image of a teenaged Obama swimming home from California with his card in his teeth with her?).
But the best part was where she tried to debunk the “ZIP Code Typo” hypothesis, and illustrated the difference between “ignorance” and “stupidity”. She claimed that it couldn’t have been a typo because the most likely erroneous ZIP hadn’t been issued back then (ignorance). But she failed to realize that, if the number had been issued by a system sophisticated enough to validate the ZIP to that level, it never would have allowed anyone to mis-type one beginning with “0” for a letter bound for Hawaii (stupidity). But, no, she insisted she had proven that a typo was “impossible”. For her sake, I hope Obama’ Sup3r S3kr1t Plan to turn the U.S. into a Commiesocialist Dependency State includes lots of money to expand the custodial care facilities…
I think the “Linda Bent” who was copied on the email from Hollister was actually Linda Bentley who is a long time Birther and writes for the Sonoran Desert News.
Hollister is quoted in an article in the Colorado Springs Gazette as saying he got the 042 SS number from Susan Daniels. He also claims to have covered his ass for pretending to be the President’s employer by sending President Obama a 1099 form. The article was published on March 29, 2011.
http://gazette.com/article/115381
Hollister filed a petition for a rehearing after the SCOTUS denied his original appeal. That was filed on February 7th, 2011. That petition was denied on March 8th, 2011. I don’t know if he included the SSNVS info in the petition.
IIRC, in that interview Daniels and Gillar both say the Bounel name is not real and a waste of time. Daniels also says she told both Hendershott and Orly the same thing.
Remember, The Conspiracy is huge, hyperintelligent, vindictive, unfettered by concerns about “laws” and “courts”, involves every agency at every level of federal and state government, and will even resort to murder if need be.
AND, it will be totally thwarted by ruses such as this.
There is a non-governmental website where you can verify a SSN, although it will not identify the person to whom it is assigned. I have used this website for years and never found it to display erroneous information:
http://www.ssnvalidator.com
Enter Obama’s number and you get this result:
Social Security Number:042-68-4425
Date of this report: February 17, 2014
State of Issuance: Connecticut
Approx. Date of Issuance:1976 And 1977
Issuance Status: According to Social Security Administration data, this SSN has been issued.
SSA Death Masterfile: No record as of 01-31-2014
STATUS: THIS SSN HAS BEEN VALIDATED!
The difference between ssnvalidator.com and the SSA’s database is that once a number gets into ssnvalidator’s database it is never removed. As we all suspect, Obama’s SSN was most likely changed after it was splashed all over the Internet and the SSA presumably purged his original number.
My understanding is that those sites use issued ranges provided by SSA, rather than any actually personal records. But the results the same. We know that the SSN on either side of Obama’s was issued, and that numbers within groups are issued sequentially, so certainly Obama’s SSN was issued. If Hollister had gotten back one of the codes that says some of the data doesn’t match the other, that would be cause for concern, but the “never issued” result is easily explained.
I read one of the Hollister appeals, and it didn’t have the SSNVS.
I never saw a copy of Hollister’s Motion for Reconsideration to SCOTUS posted anywhere. I think we only saw the docket, which of course shows it was denied.
You can read the table of contents here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20111124223020/http://constitutionalruleoflawfund.org/SupremeCourt2.html
That tells me all I need to know about the guy. Seriously? A 1099? Golly, would that be a 1099-MISC? A 1099-B? Maybe he just went all “sovereign citizen” and created his very own form: the dreaded 1099-BIRF.
I hope he followed the proper procedure of first sending the President a W-9 (say, now THERE’S a clever way to obtain the president’s SSN), and made sure to keep copies of all the invoices the President sent him for the non-employee services he provided (Taking out Bin Laden: $1. Knowing where Bin Laden was hiding: $10M) and documentation that these invoices were actually paid as reported.
Not to pick the fly poop out of the pepper, but employers send W-2’s, not 1099’s. Either way, though, the IRS clearly states that the results of any TIN verification submissions cannot be used by an employer/payor to “close an account” with an employee/payee.
So it looks like Hollister will need to keep paying President Obama’s invoices. I think the next one is due in just under two months.
And if you enter 042-68-4424 and 042-68-4426 into the database, you will see that both of those numbers were issued in 1976 or 1977. Why would the Social Security Administration issue those numbers but not issue 042-68-4425? Skipping a number makes no sense.
Actually, it would make sense to leave an occasional gap so they’d have numbers of various vintages available to create credible legends for undercover cops, protected witnesses, and, of course, Marxist-socialist-anticolonialist infiltrators seeking to destroy the country from within.
I have no idea whether they really do that, but it’s a credible possibility.
This discussion on when the 042-xx-xxxx was issued brings to mind an exchange I had with Mark Gillar on YouTube a while back. Gillar tried to claim that Obama worked at Baskin-Robbins before that number was issued. (He claims it was issued in 1977) He he cited an article on Politifact titled Here’s the scoop: Obama has worked in the ice cream business, among many others that states:
I believe the Politifact article is wrong. The fact that they were uncertain about the year is indicated by the fact that they don’t even give a precise year. President Obama’s Facebook page timeline has this entry for 1978:
I emailed Bill Adair who was listed as the editor of the PolitiFact page. He refused to correct the article based only the the Facebook page entry. Although it is a minor point I think they are clearly wrong on the dates.
I doubt that they do. Victims of identity theft get new numbers all the time, so having a new number is not a red flag. Plus someone looking up an SSN to see when it was issued is not something I have ever heard being done by a prospective employer. The same thing with Birth Certificate numbers — no one is going to check (unless your name is Obama), plus a delayed or late registration explains an out of series number.
What’s hard for people in the witness protection program is that once they get a new Social Security card and drivers license, they have no credit history.
BTW: According to the U.S. Marshall’s Service, 8,500 witnesses have taken on new identities since the witness protection program begin in 1971.
According to Maraniss:
Obama’s Senior Yearbook was 1978, so that would make his junior year 1976-1977, and the summer in question 1976, which is consistent with what the Social Security administration says about that number sequence, between 1976 and 1977.
I seem to remember now that we have covered this before haven’t we? So 1976 is the most likely year.
I don’t recall the discussion, and it’s definitely not in one of my articles since I search them first on any research project (I have such good reference sources 😉 )
BTW, The Snopes article on President Obama’s SS # says he applied for it in 1977. They do not cite a source however. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/ssn.asp
One thing the birthers have been able to show is that the President in all probability got his SSN in March, 1977. The person with the SSN one number higher than the President and several people with SSNs below the President’s number all got their’s in March,1977
I’ve always thought that the fact that President Obama has been filing tax returns with the IRS with the same number for all these years is definitely proof that he could not possibly be using someone else’s number. As others have pointed out, if the number did not match his name, the IRS would not have accepted his tax return.
Seems to me that should end the argument.
I know there are ways around everything but I’m pretty sure there’s not a way around this.
Can anyone here see any way around it?
Didn’t the President graduate from Punahou in 1979? His senior year is 1978/1979.
Then his junior year is 1977/1978.
Oh Noes! You mean President Obama can’t use his time at BR for his 40 quarters?
It has always seemed to me that there is a much simpler explanation why the SSNVS fails verification. The eVerify form shown above does not have The President’s name suffux, therefore all necessary information for a match was not entered. A match failure would follow. The same would be the case if a birther used Barry Soetoro. Or Harry Buenel (sp?).
Isn’t it also true that certain states don’t participate in eVerify, including Illinois?
Are you saying that the states are responsible for populating the eVerify DB?
I think so. I was born a couple of months after the pres and I have a friend born a couple of months before the president and we are both class of ’79. Also, the president was Columbia class of 1983, right?
That looks like the TOC for the petition for cert. He later (February, 2011) filed a petition for rehiring after cert was denied. He might have included the SSNVS as new evidence.
Well, I’m guessing you’ve never worked for the Mafia, or some other group of the sort that kills you if your background doesn’t check out. 😉
For some of us, that would be an improvement 🙁
For most of the people going into the program, building a new credit history beats the alternative of building a new family mausoleum.
No, just that the program was not being rolled out to all the states at the same time. I read that some time ago.
This was meant as a comment to Steve that he should rethink his comment.
Misunderstanding on my part.
Long time lurker, 2nd time posting. I worked in HR for many years. I have completed many employment verification forms. I live in the middle of the country so when a new employee would hand me a card with a ssn that didn’t start with 4 or 5 I would take notice. More often than not, if the new employee was over the age of 50 in the 90’s and had a ssn that started with a zero he was more likely to have worked for the railroad in early life. For most it was a first job out of school and the railroad would request the number for the young employee. I know our president didn’t work for the railroad. I just cringe when I read that ssn that begin with a zero can only be East coast based.
My Uncle Harold was a railroad employee when he got his SSN and his SSN began with 715. He was born in 1916.
http://www.mrfa.org/ssn.htm
E-verify and SSNVS are not the same thing, although for the purposes of this discussion the difference might not matter. Here’s what the US Customs and Immigration Services web site says: http://www.uscis.gov/e-verify/questions-and-answers/how-e-verify-different-social-security-number-verification-service
“How is E-Verify different from the Social Security Number Verification Service?
E-Verify [run by USCIS] confirms the employment eligibility of newly hired employees. The Social Security Administration’s program [SSNVS] verifies that a name matches a Social Security number (SSN). A person in the United States may have a valid SSN but not be authorized to work in the United States.”
Which is why birthers have to believe the conspiracy was already alive and kicking back then. However this creates the new logical problem that if the almighty conspiracy was already involved, there would have been no need to use an existing SSN, “they” could just have issued a fresh clean new one to Obama.
No birther has been able to come up with a reply to that.
Nor have they been able to explain why Obama would have had any reason to steal someone else’s SSN when he clearly was eligible for his own. We know that he had his own U.S. passport when he was 16, so obtaining a SSN would have been a routine process for him.
There is still one reason why President Obama failed E-Verify that does not involve when Orly splashed his number on the internet…apparently, when elected President, his is sequestered from government databases somehow. The subject came up when the President attempted to sign up for insurance through a ACA.
A White House official said Obama’s staff helped him sign up for a plan.
“Like some Americans, the complicated nature of the president’s case required an in-person sign-up,” the official said. “As you’d expect, the president’s personal information is not readily available in the variety of government databases HealthCare.gov uses to verify identities.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/193892-president-enrolls-in-obamacare
Noting however, that Obama wasn’t president in 2008, the year Hendershot claims the lookup was done.
However, Obama was elected in 2008.
And it is no less speculative to assume a party nominee who recieves secret service protection also recieves data security than it is to assume his SSN was changed thanks to Orly, so we’re still building multiple layers of speculation to explain a failure that occured on a speculated, date.
My ultimate point is assuming setting the date of any failed E-Verify date by when Orly began publishing the number is probably (1) giving Orly far more credit than she deserves; and (2) probbably setting the date much later than such a failed E-Verify could have possibly occured, for reasons entirely unrelated to birtherism.
The results of which, they did not mention to anybody until much later. Good thing they have posted proof of their claim. Oh wait…
Here’s little tidbit from Birther Report that indicates that something changed in E-Verify regarding Obama’s SSN after Linda Jordan impersonated the President to access his SSN via SelfCheck:
“[…] Linda Jordan, a citizen investigator who discovered that upon entering Obama’s alleged Social Security number into an online search tool, E-Verify, at the Social Security website more than two years ago, an error message appeared. Shortly thereafter, the system no longer accepted the number in a standard search.”
Not only but also…
Wasn’t there a couple of cops that looked him up in NCIC and got fired for it? The query was flagged and triggered a visit from the Secret Service as I recall.
It is perfectly reasonable that there are flags in various databases about ‘sensitive’ info surrounding those the Secret Service are tasked with protecting.
I think besides the 50 states not being enrolled in the program at the time Linda Jordan ran the E-Verify I think the issue is more along the lines that she lied about what happened. If you’ve ever run a self check on yourself using the E-Verify system you would know it’s not as simple as knowing a name, social, address and birthday. The E-Verify system asks additional questions to verify who you are. In my case when I ran it on myself it asked me which bank I had my auto loan under, what was the last payment due date and how much was paid. You know stuff only the person themselves would know. Linda most likely got asked additional questions, couldn’t answer them and then got the mismatch.
I agree, it makes perfect sense that access to the records of the President, Vice-President, etc. are blocked.
25 years ago I worked for USAA, the insurance company for active and retired military officers (now available to enlisted personnel as well). We had the ability to look up information on every USAA member. I was new there and while I was trying to familiarize myself with the company’s search functions I had the idea to look up George H.W. Bush. I found out that he was a USAA member, but when I tried to get beyond that my access was denied and my search attempt was flagged.
If they could do it 25 years ago, how much easier it must be to do it today.
I keep reading that Mrs. Dunham took a part time job in a probate office the better to troll for an SSN to pirate for her grandson. Has anyone ever presented any convincing evidence that she ever worked such a job. If citizenship was an issue it would have made far more sense to naturalized the youth. That way the problem would be over and done with and not subject to the risk the alleged fraud would be uncovered causing all kinds of problems.
Propaganda reporting in itself, even if I didn’t know anything about birtherism. Not reporting what that error message was leads to all kinds of misleading conclusions. FWIW, she could’ve gotten a 404 or “connect to Internet failed” and BR’s report would still sound like something nefarious happened.
The fact that Obama “failed” e-Verify is another example of wrong information having entered birther lore – after all, the result was neither “never issued” nor “mismatch”, so there is no way to draw the conclusion the SSN was fake or not his. I’ve pointed this out a hundred times back when WND ran the story with the screenshot of the result clearly showing this, but still birthers covered their ears and ran with what they wanted to be true.
She worked in the juvenile court as a volunteer. She wouldn’t have had access to SSNs also the other issues birthers have is she did this after she retired from the bank in 1986 long after the social was issued to Obama in 1977.
Thanks Dr. Noisewater. Right after I posted I found the info you provided while not even looking for it. But since time travel is the only possible explanation for a number of birther beliefs why should this one be any different?
Not to mention that if they were going to steal a Social Security Number, why steal one which had just been issued? It would make more sense to steal a dead person’s SSN.
Of course, the very notion of taking another person’s SSN and attaching it to your own name makes no sense.
Following up on Dr. Ken’s response, I believe that the original source of the “probate” story–a Kansas newspaper–confused “probate” with “probation.” http://www.thekansan.com/article/20080825/NEWS/308259988
Thanks, Thinker!
Can anyone off the top of their head recall who first floated the “grandmother stole him an SSN” lie? And which prominent birthers have most often ppounded it?
That’s probably something Loren Collins might know much more about I’ll have to check around the fogbow to see when it might have come up.
Snopes puts the claim back at June 2011
Rickey ……
http://www.mrfa.org/ssn.htm
Thanks for the link…. My SSN starts with a 232. So I could be from either West Virginia or North Carolina. I’m so confused!! Lucky for me my BC confirms I was born in West Virginia.