Given Obama's unique background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.
Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Obama wrote. For a few childhood years Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as a nonpracticing Muslim.
Theories about Obama's background have taken on a life of their own. But every independent analyst seeking the origins of the cyberspace attack winds up back at Martin's first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.
Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Obama's heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including "Obama Nation," the widely discredited best-seller about Obama by Jerome Corsi. Corsi opens with a quote from Martin.
"What he's generating gets picked up in other places," said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University who has investigated the e-mail campaign's circulation and origins, "and it's an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time."(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.) Allen said that Martin's original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Obama had attended "Jakarta's Muslim Wahabbi schools.
Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world."
Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in "Dreams of My Father," and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions where he was taught about the Quran.
Sampley, coincidentally, is a Vietnam veteran and longtime opponent of Sen. John McCain and Sen. John Kerry, both of whom he accused of ignoring his claims that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. He previously portrayed McCain as a "Manchurian candidate".
Speaking of Martin's influence on his Obama writings, Sampley said, "I keyed off of his work."
Martin's depictions of Obama as a secret Muslim have found resonance among some Jewish voters who have received e-mail messages containing various versions of his initial theory, often by new authors and with new twists.
In his original press release Martin wrote that he was personally "a strong supporter of the Muslim community." But, he wrote of Obama, "It may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel," and, "His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles."
Yet in various court cases, Martin had impugned Jews.
A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the overseeing judge "a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race."
In another motion, filed in 1983, Martin wrote, "I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did."
During an interview, Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.
But in his "48 Hours" interview in 1993 he affirmed a different anti-Semitic portion of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, "The record speaks for itself."
On Friday, when asked about an assertion in his court papers that "Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome," he said, "That one sort of rings a bell."
He said he was not anti-Semitic. "I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish," he said, "and I was being victimized by religious bias."
In discussing his denied admission to the Illinois bar, Martin said the psychiatric exam listing him as having a "moderately severe personality defect" was spitefully written by an evaluator he with whom he clashed.
Martin, who says he is from a well-off banking and farming family, is clearly pleased with his newfound attention. But, he said, others have added to his work in "scary" ways.
"They Google Islam and Obama and my stuff comes up and they take that and kind of use that -- like a Christmas tree, and they decorate it," he said. For instance, he said, he did not necessarily ascribe to the widely circulated e-mail from the Israeli right-wing activist Ruth Matar, which includes the false assertion, "If Obama were elected he would be the first Arab-American president." He said he had personally come to "accept" Obama's word that he is a Christian. His intent, he said, was only to educate.
He said he had personally come to "accept" Obama's word that he is a Christian. His intent, he said, was only to educate.
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