2009 Report: Hawaii Health Department went paperless, discarded documents

By Thomas Lifson

In the words of Lewis Carroll, it gets curioser and curiouser. According to this report, back when Lou Dobbs (then a CNN host) began to raise questions about Obama's birth, CNN president Jon Klein had his researchers contact the Hawaii Department of Health to inquire as to the records. TV Newser reproduced the letter in a post dated July 24, 2009:

From: Klein, Jon (CNN)
Sent: Thu Jul 23 19:00:44 2009
Subject: Important re birth certificate

I asked the political researchers to dig into the question "why couldn't Obama produce the ORIGINAL birth certificate?"

This is what they forwarded. It seems to definitively answer the question. Since the show's mission is for Lou to be the explainer and enlightener, he should be sure to cite this during your segment tonite. And then it seems this story is dead - because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef.

Thx

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*In 2001 - the state of Hawaii Health Department went paperless.*Paper documents were discarded*The official record of Obama's birth is now an official ELECTRONIC record Janice Okubo, spokeswoman for the Health Department told the Honolulu Star Bulletin, "At that time, all information for births from 1908 (on) was put into electronic files for consistent reporting," she said.

So, is the pdf document released by the White House a copy that was scanned into the Hawaii DOH files? If so, why, then, are there anomalies? (See this, this, this, and this, for instance.)

Hat tip: Nick Chagouris

Update: It has been asserted that CNN reported last week that the documents are kept in the Department of Vital Statistics, not Health. But I ahve not been able to track down a reference. It seems odd that the rpesident of CNN would get it so wrong.