The American Thinker published an article, “Barack Hussein Obama and Harrison J. Bounel,” by criminologist Jason Kissner today that argues that the association between the name Harrison J. Bounel and Barack Obama in some unspecified transaction in a public database is much more than coincidence or an attempt at identity fraud. While the argument is couched in the language of probability, no actual math was harmed in the writing of the article.1
Detractors of the birther Social Security fraud theory point out that no one has been able to locate this Harrison J. Bounel who birthers claim is a real person to whom the social security number used by Barack Obama was originally assigned. If such a person existed, debunkers say, then one ought to be able to find some independent record of him.
Kissner turns the tables and says that the inability to find other records of Bounel is proof that he is a real person (are you confused yet?). Kissner’s argument is that the database record could not be fraudulent because it would have been too difficult to actually find someone with no other record in order to perpetrate the fraud.
Kissner’s claim is inserted in a straw man argument refuting the idea that some anti-Obama person created the fake record for Bounel. I suppose someone might have speculated on the possibility that the public record for Bounel with Obama’s SSN was created for the purpose of creating an anomaly in Obama’s record (“punking the birthers” is a sport for some), but I think it is more likely to be an error or an attempt at identity theft. The straw man context is not important because Kissner’s argument fits the real argument of random error or fraud as well as it does the straw man.
Kissner’s fallacy, however, is the ad hoc assignment of probability to something that’s already happened. It’s like looking at the winning lottery number and saying “what are the chances this number would come up?” and then arguing that the lottery must be rigged. In order to make the probability argument, one has to set the criteria in advance, or they have to be necessary. The fact that the name “Harrison J Bounel” doesn’t belong to anybody is not necessary to the hypothesis and so it’s not significant, no matter how improbable it is.
But the probability of coming up with a name belonging to nobody isn’t that low; in fact, it’s easy. I took the names “Kissner” and “Bounel” and used them with the first and middle names of the members of my immediate family (6 total). I got only one hit on Google for the 12 names I tried.
And finally Kissner’s argument works equally well against Obama fraudulently using an SSN belonging to Bounel: How could Obama have found someone so totally devoid of any record?
What Kissner won’t address is: assuming Harrison J Bounel is a real person (birther hypothesis), what are the chances that there is no record of him anywhere, not birth announcement, obituary, immigration record, census, city directory, grave, genealogy nor criminal record?
Read more:
-
Obama Conspiracy Theories articles on Harrison J. Bounel
- Obama Conspiracy Theories articles on Jason Kissner
- Kissner on the Boston Marathon bombing: ATLAHWorldwide video
1Kissner did some math in another article. The math was right, but the assumptions he made were unreasonable.
I think his derisive comments about me stem from envy, that I grabbed Dr. Conspiracy before he did. Kissner is involved in a range of crackpot conspiracy theories including the Boston Marathon bombing, Loretta Fuddy’s death, Obama’s SSN, Obama publicist brochure and MH370 Plane Conspiracy Theories.
Wow! The sheer amount of stupid coming off of that guy’s “logic” is actually causing me physical discomfort!
That’s basically the same fallacy that’s the foundation of the “too improbable life as we know it developed by chance” argument made by Creationists (except they mix it with an anthropomorphism – that only “life” as we perceive it is “life” – on top).
I removed the word “birther” from the article as describing Kissner. He actually says he thinks Obama was born in
KenyaHawaii.This is actually defensible, provided one is willing to expand the definition of “anomaly” to include “things I do not understand and am unwilling to be educated about.”
What the what?
How is that not birtherism?
Sorry. I write “born in Kenya” so often, that I did it without thinking. Kissner says Obama was most likely born in Hawaii.
That makes sense. But if he says “most likely” about a demonstrable fact, I’d say he’s dishonestly sowing doubt, and that makes him a Birfer.
This is not a math or probability problem. If Harrison Bounel actually exists there would be other records of him, and there would be people who know or knew him. What we have is one data point in a data set which warns readers of its unreliability, and Mr. Kissner attempts to create a cargo cult out of that.
Dr. Taitz has a blurb today that the fact that the most recent oil slick in the Indian Ocean was not from flight MH370 proves that it is more likely that the plane was hijacked and is sitting on the ground in Diego Garcia or Pakistan. The lack of any facts supporting those theories is of no consequence to her.
In both cases, you can’t fix stupid.
Yes!! I just logged on with my first cup of coffee and I don’t think my brain can cope with this one.
Please, Doc, save these brain twisters for later in the day!
i’m just wild about harry
though harry’s never met me
his id was stolen by barry
a crime only birfers can see
burma shave
Their assumption seems to be that President Obama’s records have a high number of errors that they call anomalies, but they never quantify the number or show it in comparison to other high profile individuals. How many SSNs are recorded for Presidents Reagan or Bush in the databases?
“Kissner turns the tables and says that the inability to find Bounel is proof that he is a real person (are you confused yet?).”
Kissner’s assertion is very much like other examples of birther logic, e.g., the fact that Zullo has not announced that he will release information means that he’s about to release information.
From the American thinker:
Lysander Spooner • 8 hours ago
Kevin Davidson pretends to take a scientific approach to conspiracy theories about “obama,” but it is clear from his postings that he is a simply a political hack masquerading as an impartial observer. He is not scientific or even rational.
“obama” has presented a facsimile of a document on the internet. When a harvard-educated lawyer participates in this kind of misdirection, it is evidence of bad faith. If the facsimile is genuine, there is no need to hide the original.
But it is Boehner and his cronies, who refuse to even consider the duly-sworn law enforcement agency’s allegations of fraud and forgery, who are responsible for facilitating high crimes and misdemeanors.
14 △ ▽
[Based on style, and the reference to Lysander Spooner, I’m assuming that this comment is by Ken Olsen, someone who is banned here. However, I can’t be sure, and so I approved the comment. Doc.]
Pete > Lysander Spooner • 5 hours ago
You know, the problem with Dr. Conspiracy is that he never actually investigates ‘missing’ Obama data. Presidents records become magically available soon after election, for all to see. Yet, we know that Obama’s public records of entry into Hawaiian grade school, which would include his birth certificate, are just ‘missing’. Not a single child from the class that he attended record is missing, but Obama’s record is gone. That’s not Conspiracy, that’s fact. Obama’s public records are ‘missing’ and the private records are ‘locked down’ preventing verification. Everything else is likely forgery or manipulated, his selective service registration and White house birth certificate. If the Obama people wanted to know the truth, they would be looking for it and verifying it. Questions should be: 1) Where did Bounel die 2) What is the lapse period in his SS benefits/payments. 3) Whose name is on the deed of Obama’s house and who pays the taxes there. No better way to destroy conspiracy theory, and prove your not a hack, than to investigate and publish the answers. I notice Kevin Davidson has done none of that.
[Based on style, and the reference to Lysander Spooner, I’m assuming that this comment is by Ken Olsen, someone who is banned here. However, I can’t be sure, and so I approved the comment. Doc.]
“Mr. Kissner, I served with Harrison Bounel. I knew Harrison Bounel. Harrison Bounel was a friend of mine. Mr. Kissner, you’re no Harrison Bounel.”
Did Pete make that up himself or did he copy off someone else’s paper?
Someone has been reading their Alinsky.
his pre-k records
the world must see
then you’ll take birfers
more seriously
burma shave
What I find scary is that Kissner teaches college-level criminology courses.
BTW, Jason Kissner is an alias, his real name is Michael J. Kissner.
I wonder what he is hiding.
Where did he get his degree……the Taft Law School?
Yes he did…do you know of anyother way of presenting a document on the internet? You can’t exactly put the original up on the internet….it’s not a bulletin board after all.
How is putting an copy of his document on the internet either misdirection or evidence of bad faith? You are just making no sense at all.
The definition of “facsimile” is “an exact copy of an original. How is putting an exact copy of the original hiding anything? And how exactly his he hiding the original? He passed it around the press room. Again, you make no sense at all.
“the duly-sworn law enforcement agency” hasn’t produced a hill of beans. The reason every sane person ignores their “claims” because if any prosecutor tried to bring charges on this “evidence” they would be de-barred, just like the last bunch of attorneys associated with Sherruf Joe.
You seem to confuse “missing data” with information you have no legal right to access.
Actually, no they don’t. THis is nothing more than wishful thinking. Some things leak out every now and then, but every document related to them doesn’t somehow “magically” become available…particularly documents that are inaccessible due to privacy laws.
Do we really know this? Please provide a link to a reputable source…and then provide me copies of his classmates records. I’m guessing you won’t be able to do either.
If it’s fact, then you should have no trouble providing evidence, like I asked for above.
Please provide me a list of the public records that are missing. And as stated many time, the President’s records are no more “locked down” then every other individual in the United States. Just accept the fact that you aren’t special enough to go trouncing through another person’s records. The President’s or anyone elses.
There is no evidence of forger or manipulation…just birther fantasies. Not a single credible individual has ever made a public statement to that effect…in fact quite the opposite. Even WND’s hired examiner said there is no evidence of manipulation. As for selective service registation….how exactly did Obama corrupt the selective service records while GW Bush was still president? Mind explaining that one to me?
The point is they know the truth, and they’re not going to go chasing down rabbit holes to exlpain every nutty birther theory. You just aren’t worth their time. Sorry. Again, you just aren’t that special.
Your questions are based on the hereto unproven theory that Harrison Bounel exists. Something you birther have yet been unable to do. If he is nothing more than an error in a database, or an attempt at identity fraud, then he never died, because he doesn’t exists, he never recieved SS benefits. And why do you assume he recieved SS benefits? The single data point on him never listed an age, so why do you assume he recieved SS benefits?
And I’m guessing President Obama knows exactly whose name is on the deed of his house….and here’s the kicker…it’s a public record…why don’t you drive down to the Cook County registrar and check it out yourself?
I’m also guessing President Obama knows how is paying taxes on his property…If you think it’s anyone other than the President or one of his duly authorized agents, feel free to drive down to Cook County to confirm it. Again, the burden is on the person making the absurd claims to prove they are correct, not those that assume that in the normal course of affairs, the person who owns a house has his name on the deed….not some individual that no one has yet been able to prove exists.
Added to the article:
And finally Kissner’s argument works equally well against Obama fraudulently using an SSN belonging to Bounel: How could Obama have found someone so totally devoid of any record?
Doc,
The (all too commonly misapplied) Kissner fallacy you mentioned was famously lampooned in the middle of a physics lecture by none other than Nobel Prize Winner, Richard Feynman, one of the true geniuses of the last century, who elicited laughter from his better educated audience members when he quipped in a serious tone of voice:
“You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won’t believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”
To buy OR finance what the Birthers are selling, one must be both stupid and ignorant!
Maybe Florida State University. There is a dissertation there from one Michael Jason Kissner, titled:
So we’ve moved on from absence of evidence being evidence of absence (which is wrong, but at least shows effort), to… what? Absence of evidence is evidence of evidence?
Since we’re quoting theoretical physicists in this thread, I point to Wolfgang Pauli’s “(i)t is not only not right; it is not even wrong.”
We talked about him just a bit a few months ago. He’s a Boston Bombing Truther.
http://www.thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6443&p=582044&hilit=kissner#p582044
Thank you for that detailed and precise critique; too bad it will fail to penetrate the original poster’s bias.
Kissner sez “The fellow who wrote this calls himself, quite appropriately, Dr. Conspiracy. ”
Kissner is on the youtube in conspiracy theory videos for The Boston Marathon Bombing, the Fuddy death, the MH370 Plane Conspiracy Theories, and more. If you got a conspiracy theory, Michael Jason Kissner is there. A well-rounded nut.
The origin of the Harrison J. Bounel connection is one of the few birther-related “anomalies” that really intrigues me, mostly because it is so recent. We’ll probably ever know what the Soebarkah reference means, or the year BHO Sr. was born, but the name Harrison J. Bounel didn’t crop up until 2011. I don’t believe it belongs to a real person. It is simply inconceivable to me that a person could live a life sufficiently high profile that he is engaged in some sort of financial or legal transaction with the President of the United States and leave only one single trace of his existence behind. This just isn’t plausible. I wonder if the data broker where the information first appeared keeps records that are sufficient to track where the information originally came from. I suppose they have a policy against releasing such information, but it strikes me as a policy that a creative (or dishonest) person could probably get around.
Kissner for the life of him cannot figure out how President Obama could be in the 1967 kindergarten class at Noelani Elementary School and still be in the kindergarten in Indonesia in 1967. He is puzzled by it. It is a great mystery.
Apparently the only mystery is how someone with such little research skills can be a criminology professor.
Magical Kenyan powers of course.
That was a crazy one. He argued that since most apprehensions for terrorist plots involve sting operations, one can assume that any terrorist attack most likely involves a sting operation.
The most logical ‘trial balloon’ I’ve come up with is that “Soe” is compounded to Indonesian names frequently, and may be an honorific related to the Sanskrit “Sri.” “Barkah” may be an Indonesian transliteration of “Barack.” Put them together, and just as the English once called young men “Master James” or what have you, “Soebarkah” is just “young master Barack.” It is a penciled-in notation as I recall, in a location on the form not associated with “last name.”
I may be off-base, but I think it’s logical enough that someone should run it past an actual Indonesian some day.
We had an authority confirm this here on the blog:
He probably wanted the name for himself and feels cheated because he is a PhD and I’m not.
I was in four schools in three states in the fifth grade. Let’s see if he can figure that out.
Why would such a thing appear on a US form at the US Embassy? If we were talking about an Indonesian form, then maybe. My own theory is that it’s the name of the person who scratched it out. Soebarkah is a common Indonesian surname (search on Facebook).
Ah. I thought I had seen it on an Indonesian record. Yes, that makes no sense. I was drawn to the Barkah/Barack similarity.
Never mind! [/Emily Litella]
Doc
Someone going by davidfarrar is talking about you (and quoting you) over at western journalism:
“It’s a notable coincidence that Bounel appeared in a record with Obama’s social-security number just one month after Orly Taitz published the President’s social-security number on the Internet (meaning that anyone could have learned of it, along with Obama’s name and public home address).
The fellow who wrote this calls himself, quite appropriately, Dr. Conspiracy.
His real name is Kevin Davidson, and he is not a doctor –but never mind.
I guess Davidson is either unaware of, or chooses to ignore, the many “notable” coincidences attending Obama’s background and identity (some of which are specified here).
Either that, or Davidson’s rule is: coincidences that can be construed in favor of Obama are actually conspiracies against Obama, while all coincidences that cast Obama’s identity in doubt are in fact idle conspiracy theories.
In any event, there is at least one enormous problem with Davidson’s conspiracy theory defense of Obama/Harrison J. Bounel: what search procedure did Davidson’s supposed random anti-Obama actor employ in order to unearth a name they could be sure absolutely nobody else was using?”
Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/obamas-latest-insult-birth-certificate-skeptics/#71jCS4LWR41LxEjC.99
Sorry. Didn’t realize that he was just cut-and-pasting the entire article.
That was going to be my comment!
1. Bounel didn’t die because he never existed. The credit bureaus have no record of him; his name doesn’t appear in any census, up to and including the 1940 census; no one with that name has ever registered for the draft; there is no record of anyone with that name ever registering to vote; there is no record of anyone with that name ever having a driver’s license; there is no birth record of him; there is no death record of him.
2. In order to have a “lapse period” in Social Security benefits/payments you first need to have a start date. There is no record of “Harrison Bounel ever having a Social Security Number, and without a Social Security Number a person cannot receive Social Security payments/benefits.
[The following comment is from the banned “helen” that I have given a one-time pass. Doc.]
A very common problem, if you want to file a ssa document using someone elses number you make up a fake name to go with the number.
At that time I don’t believe that the had the automatic checking then the do now!
[I have no idea what this means: what “ssa document” are you referring to? The only SSA document Obama likely has filed is the original application, which has no number on it. What you “believe” is not evidence. Certainly the IRS verifies SSN, name and date of birth on tax filings and we know Obama uses the same SSN on his recent tax filings that he did on his Selective Service System registration 30 years ago. So the number has been checked against the name. The transaction in the public database under discussion was dated November of 2009. I think “they had automatic checking” in 2009. Doc.]
So, it is no surprise that they can find no other H.J.B.
It could happen by the user of the name as an alias, just forgot to use a different number when filiing (sic) out a form, and used his real number with a fake name
[I still don’t know what form you’re talking about. The entire argument for Social Security fraud rests on the single public record index, and if Bounel isn’t a real person, then that record loses value. If Obama is using his own number, then why use a fake name? There is no coherent alternative narrative that explains the evidence. It is certainly more reasonable that someone fraudulently used a fake name and Obama’s published SSN and address, rather than Obama himself using an alias just one time in his life in 2009 AFTER he became president. Doc.]
By the way , I see LDS has a 1963 Kenyan BC in his filing, does that change your mind about the form being fake? And that the kerning is in the printed form and not the information in the form.
[The kerning objection to the 1961 Smith certificate, specifically to the “ny” in Kenya at the top, was based on the very low resolution version of the form available at the time. That objection was speculative because of the quality of the image. It doesn’t appear to show kerning in the higher-resolution version. On the other hand, the preprinted portion of the 1961 form is remarkably like the True Type Garamond font that you’ll commonly find on computers. I don’t know what filing you are taking about, but him filing his 1963 form somewhere means no more than Orly Taitz filing the 1961 version somewhere else. Since I have expressed no opinion on the 1963 certificate’s authenticity, I can’t change my mind. I just note that no certificate of that form has ever appeared in the public record. Doc.]
faceman, you seem to be new to the business. David Farrar – his real name – promised long ago to give up birthing. But he just can’t let go. Addicted to smear and lies …
..
That’s David Farrar all right. After all, who would claim to be that who was not?
Maybe he teaches the courses for all those criminals who wind up on the 11 O’Clock News, in the security camera video showing them dangling upside-down from the ventilation duct.
That thread is definitely being watched by DARPA: if they can achieve that level of density in our ship and tank armor, torpedoes, ship-to-ship missiles and IEDs will become obsolete.
I dropped the reference to Lord Monckton in the article for lack of relevance, or at least lack of relevance without further development of the parallel.
Of course none of this whimsical searching for Harrison J. Bounel is at all necessary. Afterall, how is it that Mr. Obama could steal Bounel’s social security number and then use it with which to file his income taxes?!? Especially given the fact that he and his wife, Michele, file jointly?!?
I mean it is only criminology. I don’t know if i’m more suprised that there is someplace that actually offers it on the PhD level (apparently 4 universities in the US do), or that someone would invest the time to get a PhD in the subject. Kinda like getting a masters in paralegal studies. It’s nice you did, but why? He has an advanced degree in “cop studies.” Looking at the quality of his writing, why so much frequently classes in this subject are offered by the likes of ITT Tech and the University of Pheonix.
IT’s a bit different, JoZepppy. Criminology is a broad area in why crime happens, and how to prevent it. Many schools have Graduate programs in Criminology, including Maryland, University of Albany (SUNY), University of Cincinnati, University of Missouri – St. Louis, Penn St., UC-Irvine, Florida St., Michigan St., Rutgers, John Jay College, Temple, Northeastern University, Florida, Penn, Delaware, George Mason, Nebraska-Omaha, American University, UI-Chicago, Washington St., Indiana, Sam Houston St., USF, South Carolina, UCF, UT-Dallas, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
LDS is a convicted forger and grifter. Why should anything which he presents be believed by anyone?
I have been trying to explain this to birfers for years.
Appropriating someone else’s SSN and using it with your name is an exercise in futility. It would only be a matter of time before you would be caught.
Identity thieves steal both the victim’s SSN and the victim’s name. They then apply for credit or a loan using both the SSN and the name, but with a different address. Or they apply for instant store credit using the SSN, name and correct address, then buy as much merchandise as possible and disappear.
If I were to take your SSN and apply for credit under my name, the application would immediately be denied because of the discrepancy.
It makes absolutely no sense for Barack Obama to use a SSN which was issued to someone else. As you noted, he has been filing income tax returns for years using the 042-68-xxxx SSN. The IRS matches tax return SSNs with Social Security records; if the names and numbers do not match, the returns are rejected.
I happen to know something about this. Back in the mid 1980’s after my father died, my mother was distraught and she hooked up with a new man. It turns out the man had stolen someone’s wallet at a State Fair in the 1960’s and had assumed this man’s name. She eventually married him (contrary to my protestations that she take a good look at who this guy really was). He had fathered children with another woman (unmarried) in the 1970’s and they all carry this assumed last name. When my mother married him, she did so under both names, once under the assumed name in Las Vegas and a day later under his real name in Reno. They are both deceased now, but a lot was written about him. He was the first ever federal convict of identity theft.
Your little rhymes are pretty good, but I can’t believe you missed this:
“Birfa Shave.”
This evening I sent the following e-mail to Kissner:
Dear Dr. Kissner:
If your recent article about “Harrison J. Bounel” you write, “We can’t be sure what the base rate of such errors in personal information databases is, but I’d be shocked if it happened very often.”
You therefore may be shocked to learn that EVERY Lexis-Nexis database search report contains the following disclaimer:
“Important: The Public Records and commercially available data sources used on reports have errors. Data is sometimes entered poorly, processed incorrectly and is generally not free from defect. This system should not be relied upon as definitively accurate. Before relying on any data this system supplies, it should be
independently verified.”
Note especially that Lexis-Nexis concedes that its reports are “generally not free from defect.”
I am a private investigator and have been using such database reports for two decades. They are merely a tool; they do not, in and of themselves; deliver definitive information. They provides leads, not answers.
As for Harrison J. Bounel, there is no evidence that a person by that name has ever lived.
1. The name “Harrison J. Bounel” does not appear in the Lexis-Nexis national database.
2. The major credit bureaus have no record of Harrison J. Bounel.
3. The name Harrison J. Bounel does not appear in any census, up to and including the 1940 census.
4. No one named Harrison J. Bounel has ever registered with the Selective Service System.
5. There is no record of anyone named Harrison J. Bounel ever being registered to vote in any state.
6. A nationwide search of driver records turns up no record of any state having issued a driver’s license to someone with that name.
7. No one has ever produced a birth certificate for Harrison J. Bounel.
8. No one has ever produced a death certificate for Harrison J. Bounel.
9. The name “Harrison J. Bounel” does not appear in the Social Security Death Index.
10. There is no record of a Social Security Number ever being issued to someone named Harrison J. Bounel.
I will be happy to answer any questions you may have. However, my professional opinion is that Harrison J. Bounel has never existed
“Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
That should be “In your recent article…”
Rickey,
Really liked your point by point reply, and it is spot on.
There simply is NO record of BOUNEL ever existing other than one time in a public data base with no real context.
My suspicion after having really looked at the census record, is that the name really is Boumel, I wish I could remember who it was that has the really good clear copies that can really be blown up to look at the detail, but since the record is at best third hand anyway, it really means very little, as the name could be anything. I happen to think/believe that you are 100% right as to who it actually was, your documentation covers the poor quality of the census record more than adequately. Conversely, if BOUNEL had been a Russian emigre, there would have been an entry record somewhere for him, and NYC Ellis Island is by far the most likely, and none has been found.
I think you have more than adequately disposed of the BOUNEL myth. Which leaves the only other two real questions of how an 18 year old ended up with a non-existent 78 year olds CT SSN, which he didn’t. I find it hard, well flat out impossible, to believe that an 18 year old could or would scheme to steal someones SSN, when all he would have had to do was apply for one, plus having the access and ability to do so. This severely begs reality. I am more inclined to one of two scenarios there, either there was an input error at SSA, and heaven knows they never make mistakes, or he applied for it through his first employer, whose corporate office of the time was in CT at the time and thus a CT number.
I looked up Harrison Bounel in Ancestry.com and can find no records at all. No city directory results, no census results, no death index results. Nothing! This person was a figment of someone’s imagination.
While I agree that Harrison J. Bounel never existed, I’m still curious about how this name became associated with Barback Obama (yeah, birthers never mention the fact that the main entry in that database associated with the 4425 SSN is Barback Obama, not Barack Obama). Harrison J. Bounel is not a typo (although his association with Barback Obama may be the result of a typo). It’s a name that somebody made up for a reason. I’m curious about who made it up and why.
The original database entry is here
http://www.scribd.com/doc/55859063/Obama-s-Connecticut-Social-Security-Number-Also-Tied-To-An-Alias-Harrison-J-Bounel
Its just a classic case of database noise.
The real reason the berthers latched onto this guy is that before this they were talking about Obama having stolen the identity of Jean Micheal Ludwig as it was easy to steal the identity of a dead guy, but they kept running into the snags of (a) he actually had a different security number to Obama and (b) was still alive when Obama got his SSN
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/ssn.asp
Before that they had been trying to say that Obama stole the idenity of Virginia Sunahara.
With Bounel, there was no record of the guy at all apart from that entry (indeed “he” could actually have been H Jane bounel as the entry says the gender is undetermined), so the Birthers could make up whatever they wanted about him/her.
By the way I recently brought up J M ludwig on the chatroom of a birther show and they HATED being reminded of that. 😀
Once upon a time it was common knowledge that the best way to ensure there wasn’t a hijacker with a bomb on your plane was to take a bomb on the plane with you.
After all what are the odds of there being TWO unrelated bombs on the same plane.
It wouldn’t have been difficult. Someone probably filled out a credit application using the name “Harrison J. Bounel” and submitted it with Obama’s SSN and address in Chicago. It’s the same way the credit databases got cluttered up with Obama’s name at addresses such is “123 White House” in Irvine, CA.
The key here is that the first and only time Bounel showed up in a database was in November, 2009, after Obama’s SSN had been posted on the Internet.
Actually wasn’t it around March 2011 when Al Hendershot first came out linking the house to a Harrison Bounel? Because the name never showed up in the original Susan Daniels searches.
November, 2009, is the date on the unidentified transaction listed in Hendershot screen print. I could understand a delay between a transaction and it showing up in a database.
As Doc notes, the month and year in the far right column represents the date and year when the information was entered into a database, not the date when it was retrieved. The entry for Bounel is dated 11/2009, which of course is after Obama’s SSN had become widely known.
I have never used the database which Hendershot used, but it appears to be a cut-rate service because there is no apparent option for ordering a more detailed report. It looks like he just entered Obama’s SSN and got the results which are shown. The primary source of that information is unknown, which is one reason why the database records are inadmissible in court.
It’s worth noting that the database searches which Neil Sankey ran late in 2008 turned up no record of Harrison J. Bounel.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/193580596/Affidavit-Neil-Sankey-45pp-SSNs-for-Obama1
hmm I tried searching for hendershot on google and the whole bounel thing last night earliest thing that kept coming up was his video claiming he found a connection in 2011.
Either way as stated the name didn’t show up until about a year after his SSN was widely out there. This is also after Orly and her minions were claiming that it was Jean Paul Ludwig’s social.
To clarify, Hendershot found in 2011 a database transaction dated 2009.
Correct. And we don’t know when that information got into the database which Hendershot used; we only know that he ran his search in 2011. The information could have been there since 2009, but apparently nobody conducted a search on Obama with that particular database until Hendershot did so.
What we do know is that Hendershot is the only person who found a reference to Bounel. Neil Sankey never found it; Susan Daniels never found it; John Sampson never found it. Lexis-Nexis has no record of anyone named Harrison J. Bounel.
I received an essentially nonsensical response from Jason Kissner:
Thank you for your email.
That Bounel, in a sense, might never have existed is the latent theory of the article.
That is what makes probability very relevant, and why we should specify carefully just what we mean when we say “such and such happens frequently”.
Random strings of letters do not appear frequently alongside names in info databases, do they?
Harrison J. Bounel is akin to such a random string.
I responded that the name “Harrison J. Bounel” appeared in Hendershot’s database search because somebody put it there, whether intentionally or unintentionally. It’s not a random string.
I then pointed out that there is no evidence that Obama has ever used Bounel’s SSN, and vice-versa. Also there is no record that a SSN has ever been issued to someone named Harrison J. Bounel. And I pointed out that Obama’s tax returns would have been rejected if he filed them with a SSN which does not match his name in the Social Security Administration’s records.
I also educated Kissner on the fact that identity thieves do not take another person’s SSN and associate it with their own names. An identify thief steals both a person’s SSN and name. One without the other is useless.
That was three days ago, and I haven’t heard from him since.
This point was all covered in the movie “Identity Thief” with Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy.
That does not sound like the argument of someone who has *any* ideal about criminal investigations.
If somebody aspiring to be a detective wrote this on his enrollment test, he’d get an “F” and kicked out on the spot.
Sounds like this “criminologist” is more of an armchair expert whose actual expertise is outside that field (kinda like those scanner salesmen who style themselves as forensic document examiners).