(Title and graphic inspired by Joel Gilbert)

At the end of my last post, I mentioned that I had two developments in my research on Joel Gilbert that came too late to be included in my initial series on him and his movie, and so I would be following up with those two. This is the first of those developments.

In Part 5 of my series, "Joel Gilbert's Phantom Evidence", I discussed a number of claims that don't actually appear in Dreams From My Real Father, but which Joel Gilbert has taken to repeating in interviews.

For instance, on October 4, Gilbert told his interviewer that Ann Dunham and Frank Marshall Davis were intimate, and he said the following to support his claim (at about the 30:14 mark):

Gilbert: "We do have photos of them together in various compromising positions, we did cover things up to be respectful."

Now if you've watched Dreams From My Real Father, you know that the movie contains precisely ZERO photos of Ann and Frank "together". Not in compromising positions, or even in casual situations. There are no photos whatsoever of the two of them even sharing a frame. And he hasn't released such photos anywhere else. Gilbert is clearly not referring to photos he has secreted away; his qualifier about "cover[ing] things up to be respectful" makes no sense if the photos are just sitting on his hard drive.

No, Gilbert is telling his radio audience that he has pictures of Ann Dunham and Frank Marshall Davis "together in various compromising positions," and he wants them to believe that such photos are in his movie. But they're not. He knows they're not. He's lying.

But that's not the biggest lie that Gilbert has invented for interviews and the radio. Here is how WND's Jerome Corsi describes Joel Gilbert's Hawaiian 'investigation':

Before releasing a small sample of the pin-up photographs he claims shows a nude Ann Dunham posing for Davis, Gilbert undertook extensive research.

He traveled to Hawaii to inspect and photograph the Honolulu address that the FBI file documents as Davis’ residence beginning in 1956...

“The Davis house is an English Tudor architectural style dwelling, very uncommon for the Hawaii islands,” Gilbert told WND. “There are no similar houses in the neighborhood or anywhere else that I visited in Hawaii.”

The current owner of the house gave Gilbert permission to enter, photograph and document the house. “The flooring in the photos of Ann stands out, as at first glance it appears to be expensive wood flooring,” he said. “However, once inside the house and peeling away a corner covered with layers of linoleum, I realized that it was a simple piece of plywood that had been varnished.”

Gilbert found one complete original piece of plywood in a shed behind the house that was an exact match to the flooring in the setting where the “Ann Dunham and friends” pin-up photographs were taken.

Noteworthy also were the windows appearing in the pin-up photos. “The windows in the living room of Frank’s house were tall and narrow – a design unique to English Tudor style houses,” he noted.

“The windows at 2994 Kalihi Street appear to match the tall, narrow windows with their bottom sill low to the floorboards seen in the pin-up photos.”

Gilbert took measurements of the windows and the floor at various angles, as well as video footage and still photographs of the living room.

Also, here is Gilbert on Alex Jones:

"I actually went to the house in Hawaii...and we took the measurements and found that that was the house, and the photos are traced to Davis."

And I'm not about to list all the numerous times Gilbert has repeated this in his nine appearances on Peter Boyles' show. Listen for yourself if you're interested.

I pointed out before that although Gilbert keeps discussing these supposed findings of his, he has yet to actually show any of these photos or videos of the house. What I learned this Monday was WHY.

On Monday, October 1, I finally got the chance to speak with the owner of 2994 Kalihi Street. He'd been wondering when or if anyone would reach out to him about Gilbert's movie. We spoke for over 45 minutes, and during that time, he told me just how dishonest Gilbert's account has been.

It turns out that Gilbert originally contacted the owner (who I'll call "Jack") in the latter months of 2011, claiming to be with the History Channel. He said that he was working on a program about the poetry of Frank Marshall Davis, and wanted permission to visit Davis' house as part of his research.

It wasn't until March or April of 2012 that Gilbert finally asked to schedule a visit. By this point, Jack, who knew a little about the conspiracy theories circulating about Davis and his house, was suspicious of Gilbert. But he allowed him to come to the house, and even allowed him to come in to take photos. Jack had a hunch he knew what Gilbert was going to be looking for, and he thought that by letting him see the interior for himself, that Gilbert would see and understand that the nude pictures were not taken inside the house at 2994 Kalihi.

Jack's suspicions about Gilbert were confirmed when Gilbert whipped out a measuring tape. Gilbert had not previously asked to do any measuring, and Jack naturally recognized that the dimensions of his rooms would be utterly irrelevant to a History Channel documentary about Davis' poetry.

As Jack explained to me, what's the truth about the floors in his house? The truth is that they don't match the floors in the nude photos. The windows? They don't match the windows in the nude photos. The room seen in the published photos is plainly not a room inside the house at 2994 Kalihi Street.

Thus, it took Jack quite by surprise when a friend contacted him after Gilbert began promoting his movie, to let Jack know what was being said about his house. What he found surprised him. Whereas he had thought that by letting Gilbert inside the house that it would make Gilbert realize that his theory was wrong, Gilbert had instead gone a different route: he had simply decided to lie about what he found in Jack's house. He lied about the floors. He lied about the windows. He lied about finding the room from the photos. And that wasn't all: Gilbert's claim to have found "a complete original piece of plywood" in a shed that matched the flooring in the photos? That didn't happen at all, says Jack.

What's more, Jack was later contacted by Jerome Corsi himself, and Jack told him as well how his house bore no resemblance to the room seen in the photos. And displaying a complete disregard for journalistic integrity, Corsi simply ignored what Jack told him, and instead has reported Gilbert's story as the truth.

Now I'm sure some people will read this post and respond with "Why doesn't Jack show pictures proving his house doesn't match the photos?" Several reasons:

1) If I were to post pictures of the inside of Jack's house, there would be no way for me to prove to readers that it actually was the inside of *Jack's* house. It could just as easily be the interior of some other house. Such an objection would certainly be inevitable from people who want to believe Gilbert; if they don't trust my account of Jack, they're not going to trust the pictures either.
2) Even if it were conceded that the photos did indeed depict the house at 2994 Kalihi, the next inevitable objection would be that he and I had simply omitted pictures of some part of the house. A particular room, or even just a particular angle of a room. So once again, people would find a reason to conclude the pictures were unsatisfactory.
3) Apart from the issue of whether such pictures would actually persuade Gilbert's faithful, Jack is simply not interested in sacrificing his privacy to the extent of posting extensive pictures of the interior of his home on the internet. Certainly not in an effort to satisfy the doubts of some conspiracy theorists. Remember, any such photos are automatically tied to his street address; ask yourself if you would publish a bunch of photos of the inside of your house, tagged with your street address.
4) Finally it's not Jack's burden to prove that it's not his house in the nude photos. Nor is it mine. Joel Gilbert is the one who has claimed, again and again and again, that he found proof that the rooms match. That he took pictures and video showing that they match. And yet he put NONE of that in his movie, and he's produced NONE of that to the public, even though it's been six months since he visited Jack's house, and even though he continues to tout his 'investigation' in interviews.

(Notice, too, that I couldn't care less about Gilbert's claims about "measurements." Numbers that Gilbert himself wrote on paper isn't proof that those numbers are reflective of the inside of Jack's house, or that they're accurate estimates of what's seen in the published photos; remember, I've established that Gilbert knowingly lies to his audience. Also, I think the photos only show a total of two walls in the room, so any comparison of measurements would be speculative at best.)

Joel says he has the photos and video to prove his claims, so it falls to him to produce those photos and/or video to back those claims up. It's not Jack's job to sacrifice his privacy to prove Joel wrong. Joel already lied to Jack about why he wanted to come into the house in the first place, and he already lied to the world at large about what he found there.

And that's why you're never going to see those photos or video of 2994 Kalihi Street from Joel Gilbert. Not in his movies, not in his ads, not on his website, and not in WND articles that Jerome Corsi writes about him. He'll talk about them on the radio, where he can't be asked to show anything. But to show any actual photos he took would only prove what a liar he is.

Joel Gilbert. He lies to his research subjects about who he works for. He lies about what he's researching and why. And he lies about his findings to his audience.

 

A commenter below writes:

 

I liked this post so much I ordered your book from amazon.ca. I am in awe.

Indeed, if you notice the ad in the sidebar, I have a book that's due to be released by Prometheus Books in a little under two weeks from now. As the title might suggest, it's something of a field guide for skepticism and critical thinking. And yes, I do utilize Birtherism as an illustration on several occasions.

 

 

It's my first book, and it actually grew out of an initial proposal that was Birther-centric. Given the evolution of this project, it remains my hope to write another book about the strange history of Birtherism and other Obama-related conspiracy theories (if only to justify the time I've spent following them).

 

At the center of Gilbert's theory that Frank Marshall Davis is Obama's father is a series of nude and fetish photographs. They were the focus of his second promotional video for the DVD. They're featured prominently on his website, and he consistently references them in radio interviews. Radio host Peter Boyles has called them the "Rosetta Stone" that will unlock Obama's secret past, and Alex Jones declared "It's her in these photos."

The "her" to which Jones refers is Obama's mother Ann Dunham, who Gilbert claims is the woman depicted in these photos. Three of the photos were originally posted on the website of The Astute Bloggers in October 2008, where it was claimed that they had been forwarded by a reader. Even though one photo plainly bore a watermark of "free-vintage-porn.com", some people were convinced that the photos were of Ann Dunham. Over time, the claim evolved so that it was Frank Marshall Davis who was said to have taken the photos as well (perhaps an unsurprising development, as The Astute Bloggers website was also responsible for starting the rumor that Frank was Obama's father).

 

Here's what the narrator of Dreams From My Real Father has to say on the matter:

"At some point, she agreed to pose. These photos were taken a few weeks before Christmas 1960, when Mom was about five weeks pregnant with me. There's no mistaking: this is MY mama."

Gilbert has further elaborated on the photos outside the film itself. In his website Q&A:

I also obtained seven indecent photos of Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, taken at Frank Marshall Davis’ house, suggesting an intimate connection between Dunham and Davis...

What new revelations are in Dreams from My Real Father?
First, I make the case that Barack Obama’s real father was Communist Frank Marshall Davis. Next, the relationship between Davis and Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, is illustrated with seven indecent photographs of Dunham, some including other women, taken at Frank Marshall Davis’ house in Honolulu.

On the 'Breaking News' portion of his website:

Racy photos of Barack Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, have recently surfaced in vintage fetish and bondage magazines. The photos, taken at Frank Marshall Davis' house in Honolulu, appeared in Bizarre Life, Exotique, Secret Pleasures, and Battling Babes.

And in interviews:

But if you look at the many, many photos of Ann Dunham and the naked girl in the pictures -- especially you can see her teeth; she has some recessed teeth on the left side -- it's very obviously Ann Dunham.

Most people didn't take the photo claim very seriously, because the woman in the pictures doesn't really look all that much like Ann Dunham. Sure, she bears a passing resemblance, in the same sense that as a bespectacled young white guy, I bear a passing resemblance to Daniel Radcliffe. Frankly, the woman in the photos looks a lot more like Joan Collins than Ann Dunham.

Since their original appearance in 2008, some have attempted to debunk the photos by identifying the model. This has proven fruitless, and unsurprisingly so; many mid-century nude and fetish models were nameless faces, anonymous to the world at large.

 

To his credit, Gilbert did somehow locate additional photos of the mystery woman he claims is Ann. And as noted above, he named several magazines where he claims they appeared. Both on his website and in Dreams, he shows the covers of six specific issues, and the website (on the right) flatly states "Frank Marshall Davis' photos of Ann Dunham appear in these vintage men's magazines." The magazines Gilbert shows are:

Exotique #2
Exotique #4
Exotique #6
Exotique #14
Secret Pleasures
Battling Babes
Bizarre Life #9

The last three magazines were published in 1958, 1957, and 1969, respectively. Exotique was published between 1955 and 1959.

Curiously, though, the pictures Gilbert shows appear in NONE of the issues he identifies. I consulted with the owner of a fansite for these magazines, who checked and confirmed that Gilbert's photos are nowhere to be seen in these issues. I personally reviewed copies of Exotique #14, Battling Babes and Secret Pleasures, and they included NO pictures of the mystery model.

What Secret Pleasures DID feature, on page 26, was this photo:

 

Who is the woman? I have no idea. But look at the chair she's seated on. At the pillow in the chair. At the window behind her. At the record player to her right, and the records peeking out below her leg. At the cabinet behind her, and at the floor beneath her. Look familiar?

 

That's right, it's the exact same setting as the 'Ann' photos. Published in a 1958 men's magazine. And it's not the only one. From Exotique #25, pages 7 and 40, respectively:

 

Again, does that setting look familiar? Same couch, same floor, same picture on the wall, even the same random pillow arrangement on top of the couch as seen in other photos in Gilbert's videos. The woman is even wearing the same spiked-ball earrings as Gilbert's 'Ann'. Who is she? I don't know, but she looks an awful lot like the woman who appears with Gilbert's 'Ann' in several photos in his movie.

Now granted, these photos alone don't prove that the mystery model couldn't be Ann. Perhaps Davis took these in 1958, and he didn't change the arrangement of his room for two years. That's odd, and hardly the most compelling explanation, but it's not impossible. (Even though Gilbert himself would likely concede that these are from the same photoshoot.)

Unfortunately for Gilbert, that's not all. Further up this post, there's a screenshot of Gilbert's own website, with a video still that shows the woman he claims is 'Ann' sitting on a couch, pulling a black opera glove onto her left arm. That image appears in Gilbert's Dreams and in his promotional videos as well, but he's never released a full-size copy of that photo.

I found one, however:

 

This picture appeared in Exotique #23, on page 22. In 1958. When Ann Dunham was only 15 years old. Two years before Ann Dunham even moved to Hawaii.

It can also be found reprinted in volume 2 of the 3-volume Exotique hardcover collection.

We may never know who the mystery model is. But the Dunham family didn't move to Hawaii until the summer of 1960. Unless Ann Dunham had access to a time machine in the 1960s, it simply cannot be her.

Moreover, Joel Gilbert knows this. He found that opera glove photo; it was not circulating the web as an 'Ann' photo prior to his videos. He knows it came from Exotique, a magazine that ceased publication in 1959. From WND: "Gilbert found that several of the photos in the collection appeared in a magazine called Exotique, published by pin-up photographer Leonard Burtman, who worked in New York City."

Thus he knows this picture was published two years before Ann first stepped foot in Hawaii, years before she could have met Frank Marshall Davis. And yet he explicitly claims, multiple times, that the photo was TAKEN at Christmastime 1960. This is not a lie of ignorance or mistake; it is a lie of pure, fully-informed malice.

And that's the BEST-case scenario for Gilbert. Gilbert knows that Ann was born in 1942, and he knows he found these pictures in 1958 magazines. If Gilbert truly believes that these ARE somehow pictures of a 15-year-old Ann, then he's been distributing hundreds of thousands of DVDs featuring nude and erotic pictures of someone he believes to be an underage girl.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gilbert has thus far refused to disclose the actual sources of the erotic photos he put in his videos. He identified six issues, none of which checked out, and five of which contradict his 1960 date anyway. As shown above, to disclose the true issues would be to destroy his own claim that the photos are of Ann, and to let his audience know that he's lying to them. And so he refuses to cite his sources, even when they're just magazine issue numbers.

So there you have it. The people who've said 'Frank Davis took naked pictures of Stanley Ann Dunham in December of 1960' are provably wrong. The woman they claim is Ann was having her photographs from this very shoot published at least as early as 1958. When Ann was a 15-year-old in Washington, years before she ever stepped foot on Hawaii or could have conceivably even met Frank Marshall Davis. Joel Gilbert has unnecessarily obscured the actual publication dates of the pictures he found, because he knows those simple facts will prove to everyone that he's lying about them being taken in 1960, and lying about Frank Marshall Davis taking them of Ann, and lying about them being evidence of an intimate relationship between Frank and Ann.

As I wrote in my first post in this series, "I can't promise that I'll convince everyone that Joel Gilbert is a charlatan and his film is a joke, but I think by this time next week, anyone who continues to trust Gilbert has some depressingly low standards for what they'll believe." I'm sure some people will still prefer to believe in him and his photos, and nothing will convince them otherwise. To them, I can only say this: just as Joel Gilbert has known for months, you now know that his photos were being published in 1958. Possibly even earlier. So if you still want to believe that the woman in those photos is Ann Dunham, that means you also have to believe that the woman in those photos is no more than 15 years old. Keep that in mind as you talk about them, and post them online, and save them on your computer. I know you're not doing anything illegal or morally disgusting (because it's not Ann), but what are you telling yourselves?

Finally, even though I've reached #1 in this series and I think I've solidly proven my case, I had two more research developments on Monday that I'll be typing up in the next few days. So be sure to keep an eye out for those to come.