Denver talk-radio host Peter Boyles interviewed Lietenant Colonel Terrence Lakin’s spokesperson Margaret Hemenway Tuesday, the second day in a row as the “birther” showdown unfolds in Washington. Boyles has admitted he is fascinated by the story of Greeley native Lakin, a decorated 18-year Army medic who refuses to deploy for the second time to Afghanistan because he doesn’t fully believe Pres. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States. Lakin is the latest and highest ranking of a handful of soldiers who have subscribed to the mostly right-wing theory that Obama has hidden or falsified the usual documents that would prove his citizenship and that he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars “lawyering up” to protect their secrecy. Boyles, at the very least a semi-believer in the conspiracy himself, clearly admires the man the media is now calling “Colonel Birther.”
“Lakin is risking everything… this guy, he’s hardly a punk, he’s done his [tours of duty] in the past and now he’s willing to call [the president] out on it. He throws it all away. He loses all his benefits and retirement pay and goes to prison for hard labor. It’s not a punk thing by any stretch.”
According to reports, the Army is considering charging Lakin with a host of crimes, including “missing movement,” for not appearing in Fort Campbell Monday as ordered to deploy overseas, and conduct unbecoming an officer. It is highly likely, given the precedent established in related trials, that Lakin will be stripped of his rank and hauled off to the military’s Leavenworth high security prison in Kansas, where he could be sentenced to hard labor for years.
Some see Lakin not as hero or martyr but as a tragic victim of the poisoned partisan atmosphere fed by the country’s over-the-top infotainment politics news industry, where conspiracies seem to hatch by the hour.
KHOW radio’s Boyles, though, is clearly reveling albeit gravely in what he calls the “showdown” and the “reckoning” that he believes history may well soon deliver to force the president to reveal the supposed missing citizenship documents and the alleged coverup.
“This isn’t about just the birth certificate,” he told listeners, callers and the large number of people who had apparently sent emails to the station blasting Lakin for disobeying orders in a time of war.
“The birth certificate is only one of so many documents. It’s a series of documents, a series of certifications that have been blocked, hidden… medical records, baptism, college and school records, passports, adoption papers– these are all hidden away,” said Boyles.
Hemenway, a staffer at the American Patriot Foundation, the group supporting Lakin and helping to raise money for his legal defense, described her vision of a de facto conspiracy among members of the upper echelons of power covering for the president mostly to cover for themselves, fearing that the case could wrench open a broad window on individual incompetence first in vetting the president and then in accepting the pretender president as legitimate.
“Lakin thinks the truth matters… The problem is that a lot of powerful important people have already said ‘There’s nothing here. We don’t need to worry about this.’ And their reputations and their image are on the line. It is truly a David and Goliath story. And so, many people want to keep this swept under the rug, because it’s embarrassing to them, because frankly they should have exercised due diligence. They should have vetted this man properly. It didn’t happen. In hindsight it’s a colossal mistake that it was allowed to happen like this, and we still actually are not aware of what Obama’s citizenship status is… You’re asking some people to have egg on their face if it comes out he was not actually born in Hawaii and he was born in Kenya as many Kenyans have said he was. This is a huge problem.”
Boyles said people just get “yelled at” for even asking these questions. As he did Monday, he talked about Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly who have dismissed the birther storyline. Boyles said progressives are using the Fox News rejection of the story against Boyles, to make him appear even less credible. It’s them, he said, Beck and O’Reilly, “they look like fools.”
“O’Reilly lied. He said he had seen the evidence. Joe Farrah [founder of right-wing site WorldNetDaily] calls him on it. O’Reilly said Well it wasn’t him, it was his staff. Farrah calls the staff on it and then they say No, the only thing they saw was what was on the internet… They look like fools.”
Lakin’s Greeley family have distanced themselves from his stance. His father told the Greeley Tribune last week that they were Obama supporters. Lakin posted a YouTube explaining his decision and he also posted his letter to Obama.
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