Fever Dreams From My Real Father #5: Joel Gilbert's Phantom Evidence

Joel Gilbert wasn't interested in talking to me, but he's been more than happy to chat with people who aren't likely to challenge him. He's been the subject of several WND articles, he's made multiple radio appearances with folks like Alex Jones, and he's appeared on the Peter Boyles Show alone at least eight times.

And there's an odd feature that recurs in these interviews: Gilbert keeps citing evidence that he says he discovered, evidence that he says supports his theories, but it's evidence that's not actually in his movie.

For instance, when I called Peter Boyles' show and said that the nude pictures are not of Ann Dunham, Peter challenged me to explain why the floorboards match. My response: I haven't seen any evidence that they DO match. I've seen the wooden floor in the old black-and-white photos...but that's it. There are no comparison shots from Davis' house in the movie, or on Gilbert's website. Gilbert SAYS he took photos, and he SAYS that the photos match, but he hasn't actually PRODUCED any such photos for anyone else to independently look at and draw their own conclusions. And even though he claims on the radio that the photos he took are strong and compelling evidence, he hasn't provided any justification for why, if that's true, he hasn't shared those photos.

WND says that Gilbert has made "many research trips to Hawaii," and Gilbert has made repeated claims as to what he found on those supposed trips.

He's even produced a couple of things which, if you give him the benefit of the doubt, could have been procured on such a trip. Exciting things like high school yearbook photos of Frank Marshall Davis' children (who look nothing like Obama), and a photo of a vice raid at the Negro Elks Club in 1952 (which occupied Davis' house before he moved there in 1956). In a video interview with Alex Jones, Gilbert showed viewers a picture he said he took...of the outside of Davis' house, taken from the street. Basically, stuff that has absolutely no bearing on his substantive claims about Obama's relationship with Frank Marshall Davis.

Meanwhile, Gilbert keeps referring to other evidence in interviews that he insists validates his theories. He certainly wants his radio listeners to think that he's discovered such proof. But strangely, THAT evidence is missing from his actual movie, omitted in favor of things like stock footage of airplanes taking off and landing.

For instance:

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

The current owner of the house gave Gilbert permission to enter, photograph and document the house.

Funny thing: Dreams From My Real Father contains precisely ZERO photographs taken by Gilbert inside the Davis residence. Not of the floors, or the windows, or the furniture, or even just the shape of the rooms.

Of course, that could be explained if the photographs wouldn't prove anything. So what does Gilbert say he found inside?

“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.”

The film never so much as mentions the subject of flooring. When I called the Peter Boyles Show last week, Mr. Boyles wanted me to explain how the floorboards "match." I pointed out that there's nothing to compare; the movie never shows any comparison photos of the floorboards to show that they DO match. I was being asked to explain a supposed similarity between photos that ARE on the internet, and phantom photos that Joel Gilbert has talked about but never produced.

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.

And yet, no comparison pictures of the flooring appear in the film. Neither does the claim that matching flooring was discovered, or any pictures of this "original piece of plywood."

However, here Gilbert at least provides some vague description of the wood he says he saw...and it doesn't match what is seen in the black-and-white photos. The nude photos obviously don't show the boards' color or stain or varnish, but they do show that they're boards. Roughly four inches wide. Plywood, by contrast, comes in sheets; Gilbert even claims to have found a "complete original piece" of plywood, not boards.

(There's also the rather dubious notion that even after changes of ownership of the house, the same plywood sheets would still be hanging around after more than 50 years.)

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.”

1) Nowhere in the film does Gilbert claim that the windows match.
2) If Gilbert took any photos of these windows to show they match, he didn't include them in the movie for some reason.
3) His description of the windows in the pin-up photos isn't even accurate. Look at the pictures in Gilbert's own video. There's only one window visible, and its bottom sill is roughly two feet from the floor. Like with the plywood, when Gilbert actually deigns to provide even a minimal description of what he supposedly saw, his descriptions don't match what can be plainly seen in the old 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.

The movie makes no reference to measurements of the windows or measurements of the floor, nor does it include any video or photographs of the house.

So in short, Gilbert claims he gained access to the Davis house at 2994 Kalihi Street, discovered and photographed all kinds of stuff inside the house that he says absolutely proves that the nude photos wer taken inside THAT house...and then he left ALL of that evidence out of his movie.

And that's not all: while he's been publishing 'Breaking News' follow-ups on his website about yearbook photos and 1952 vice raids, what has he NOT published? Any of this evidence he claims to have procured inside the house. He's claimed he took photographs, video, and measurements, and to date, he hasn't produced even a single photograph that he took inside that house.

There's another claim about the interior of the house that Gilbert made to Alex Jones:

"Even the couch is an exact match to the couch that Frank Marshall Davis sat on in many photos."

"Many photos"? If Gilbert claims there are "many photos" of Davis sitting on this "exact" couch, where are they? Because they're certainly not in his movie. In the movie, Gilbert shows exactly one photo of Davis sitting on a couch. Given that it was taken the same month Davis first moved to Hawaii in 1948, and several years before he lived in the house in question, it's uncertain whether that was even HIS couch he's sitting on.

And more importantly: it's NOT an exact match. The couch in the 1948 photo plainly has separate cushions across the back, whereas the couch in the nude photos does not; it merely has a raised seam. Gilbert's one and only photo shows that they're not the same couch at all.

  

It's the same as with his claims about the floorboards and the window: when Gilbert provides any detail at all to support his claims that the photos match Davis' house, all he does is provide information that suggests they're actually DIFFERENT.

The interior of the house is also not the only area where Gilbert has cited phantom evidence. For instance, here's what the film says about Obama's birth:

On August 4, 1961, a midwife was called to the house. A few days later, Gramps phoned in my birth to the Hawaii Department of Health, as was the norm for home births...as agreed, he declared the father 'Unknown.'

While this amusingly conflicts with Birther fictions that Obama was born in Kenya, Gilbert still provides no evidence to support 1) a home birth, 2) a midwife, 3) a phoned-in registration, or 4) that the father was declared as "Unknown." In fact, the existence of two newspaper announcements from the following week for "Mr. and Mrs. Barack Obama" rather undercut the notion that the father was "Unknown."

Neighbors of Davis have said Obama began visiting Davis every week at his home from the time Obama was 10 years old.

What neighbors? Gilbert drops this tidbit, but never identifies the neighbors, or quotes what they had to say, or how they would know that a visiting 10-year-old was a young Obama. There's no evidence to support this testimony of these anonymous "neighbors," not on Gilbert's website and certainly not in his film.

“As Ann Dunham engaged in nefarious activities with Frank Marshall Davis, who was likely involved in pornography and prostitution, why would she bring 10 year-old Barry back from Indonesia and tell her father something to the effect of, ‘I’m going back to Indonesia, but please take young Barry to Frank’s house a few times a week,’” he said.

Gilbert loves to repeat the claim that Ann Dunham instructed her father to take her son to see Davis; he's stated this on virtually every appearance on the Peter Boyles Show. His supporting evidence for this private instruction from daughter to father? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It's indistinguishable from something that he simply made up. Also, as was pointed out previously, this instruction from daughter to grandfather is incompatible with Gilbert's thesis in the movie that Gramps was a CIA agent who wanted to conceal his daughter's relationship with Frank.

Speaking of Boyles' show, Gilbert dropped another evidence-less claim on Boyles' September 26th broadcast:

"There are written catalog numbers on the bottom of those photos. I have taken those to handwriting analysis folks and they have all agreed that it is highly likely that it's Frank. It's almost exactly."

Gilbert's movie was released three months ago, and I've listened to a lot of his interviews, and this was the first time I'd heard him cite evidence from "handwriting analysis folks." And of course, just like the neighbors, these are anonymous handwriting analysis folks. After all, Gilbert can't risk having someone like me follow up with them to see if he's telling the truth. Keeping his supposed experts anonymous provides the illusion of credibility, without even needing real people.

What makes this last bit so brazen is that Gilbert has done this before. Remember, in his introduction to Paul McCartney Really Is Dead, Gilbert tells his viewers that he had his mysterious tapes of 'George Harrison' tested by "three different forensic labs." And he told an interviewer the same story about having the tapes forensically tested. That was obviously made-up, since Gilbert has retroactively declared his film a "spoof." Then it was anonymous and unaccountable "forensic experts"; now it's anonymous and unaccountable "handwriting analysis folks." But otherwise, it's Gilbert playing the same game with his audience.