By David Jones 27th November 2009
As a highly regarded young detective, Neil Sankey was once seconded to elite Scotland Yard units hunting down IRA bombers, dangerous anarchists and organised crime barons.
Today, however, almost 30 years after quitting Hampshire constabulary to become a private investigator in California, he is wrestling with an inquiry that is as controversial as it is complex; one that makes that his former police work seem mundane by comparison.
Now aged 64, and semi-retired, Mr Sankey is attempting to prove that Barack Obama is guilty of the most audacious act of fraud in U.S political history, having become President when he was not even eligible to run for office.
The infant Obama with his mother, Ann Dunham, who met his father at university
He is conducting his inquiries on behalf of a protest group known as the 'Birthers' - so-called because they claim Obama lied about his birth place to satisfy the requirements of the U.S constitution, which stipulates that the President must be a 'natural born' American citizen.
According to his biography, Obama was born 48 years ago in Hawaii, the 50th state of the union. But the Birthers are convinced that he came into the world in Kenya, his father's homeland, and Mr Sankey claims he has already uncovered a great deal of evidence to support this astonishing assertion.
'As an investigator it has become obvious to me that something very strange is going on,' he intoned gravely when we spoke this week.
'His background throws up all kinds of anomalies. It may sound incredible (but) this guy comes from nowhere. No one really knows who he is.'
To most Americans, of course, the very idea that anyone could cheat their way into the world's most powerful post by rewriting their personal history sounds preposterous.
They dismiss the Birthers as a bunch of crackpot conspiracy theorists and closet racists who still cannot accept a black leader, even though Obama won the election by some 10 million votes.
Yet the number of people who believe this apparently outlandish theory is extraordinarily high, particularly in the southern states, where old racial divisions endure.
According to one recent opinion poll, an astonishing 53 per cent of southerners are either convinced their President really is a covert foreigner, or at least feel unsure about the matter. In more integrated parts of the country, the doubters remain a small minority.
However, with the tide of goodwill that greeted Obama's victory now ebbing away, after a series of perceived mistakes and unfulfilled promises, the Birthers are gaining credence in mainstream America.
They claim to have amassed 500,000 signatures on a petition insisting that the President must prove beyond doubt where he was born; and all across the country, giant billboards are sprouting up which make the same shrill demand.
Mounted this week outside a car dealership in Denver, Colorado, the latest such sign depicted Obama wearing a turban.
'Birth certificate - Prove It!' read the accompanying slogan, adding: 'President or Jihad?'
'Everything I've read about Mr Obama points right to the fact that he's a Muslim,' explained the car showroom's owner, Phil Wolf.
'It's about anti-Americanism. It's about anti-Christianity.'
Questions about Obama's birthplace were first raised during the 2008 presidential election campaign.
Then, even hard-line Republicans and Right-wing pundits distanced themselves from this line of attack, fearing they would be accused of bigotry or cheap scaremongering.
Now that is changing, and one of the country's most respected political commentators, Lou Dobbs, not only encourages debate about this once-taboo subject on his TV and radio shows, but appears to have aligned himself with the sceptics.
'I believe Barack Obama is a citizen of the United States, folks, don't you? But I do have a couple of little questions, like you,' Dobbs remarked with ill-disguised mischief during one recent broadcast.
'Why not just provide a copy of the birth certificate? That's entirely within the President's power to do so. One would think the President would want to get rid of this nonsense. But he doesn't - and so, none of us knows what the reality is.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231542/Barack-Obama-British-detective-Neil-Sankey-claims-lied-birth-President.html#ixzz0YFngayY6
