Mike Zullo’s Credentials Revisited

I don’t exactly relish writing another article on former Cold Case Posse lead Mike Zullo. However, at the Post & Email Sharon Rondeau continues to pimp Zullo’s discredited investigation almost non-stop and Zullo is defaming the “Obots” again.

Mike Zullo, who claimed the investigation into President Obama’s birth certificate had ended over a year ago, just can’t drop it either. He made a series of appearances recently on Carl Gallups’ little weekly radio show Freedom Friday on WEBY in Milton, Florida and came up with a bunch of wacky new theories.

Zullo held a final “press conference” on December 15, 2016 before the recently defeated convicted criminal Sheriff Joe Arpaio left office. I put “press conference” in quotes because it wasn’t a press conference. Zullo and Arpaio took no questions. The stated reason was that the Phoenix media had not taken the Cold Case Posse investigation seriously and had not been fair to Zullo.

I covered this fake press conference in a post last year: Mike Zullo Admits the Obots Were Correct All Along What was noteworthy about the December 15, 2016 event was that Zullo abandoned almost everything he had trotted out at two earlier press conferences in 2012. Zullo had found another forensic laboratory in Italy who would take his money and do some sort of analysis on something. We don’t know if Zullo was turned down by  every single forensic lab in the US before going to Italy or if they just kicked in a free pizza and a box of cannoli.

The new theory Zullo trotted out via a poorly produced, fuzzy video from Mark Gillar was that the Obama LFBC had been made by copying parts of the birth certificate of Johann Ah’Nee over to the Obama certificate. AH’Nee was also born at Kapi’olani Hospital a couple of weeks later than Barack Obama in 1961. The evil Obots quickly showed the theory was nonsense and that even on the fuzzy video the supposed “nine points of forgery” didn’t match. See my article Overlay of Obama and Ah’Nee Birth Certificates Shows the Latest Cold Case Posse Forgery Theory Is Nonsense

Ah’Nee coincidentally had provided her birth certificate to Jerome Corsi through Miki Booth the Japanese American Birther Princess from Oklahoma and friend of Ah’Nee. Corsi published a photo of the Ah’Nee certificate was published at WND September 11, 2011 to supposedly show what a “real” Hawaii. WND hid the name and the certificate number. A number of people pointed out that the certificate immediately blew up some of the favorite Birther talking points including the one that the name of the hospital (Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital) was not what the hospital was called in 1961. The name of the hospital on the WND certificate matched perfectly.

Other information was gleaned from the WND certificate. Some clever folks like John Woodman noticed that redacted fields could be read off the photo of the back of the certificate by using photo editing software by using a mirror image filter and cranking up the contrast. Woodman figured out the name of the certificate holder was Johanna Ah’Nee (although he did not publish her name) and that the certificate number was 696 lower than Obama’s (09945 vs 10641) even though Ah’Nee’s certificate was filed over two weeks later.

Almost immediately WND replaced the images in the article with ones that redacted more information including the name of the hospital and the bleed through of the front of the certificate to the back.

Zullo in 2016 expected us to believe that the very certificate that someone used to forge Obama’s LFBC just happened to be the one that fell into the hands of Jerome Corsi and WND just four months after the release of the Obama LFBC on April 27, 2011. Yep, out of hundreds the people who were born at Kapolani in 1961 Miki Booth just happened to be friends with THE one.

Last month private citizen Mike Zullo produced not one but at least two entirely new theories. Yeah, that’s right this was one year after the end of the Cold Case Posse investigation (and the Cold Case Posse itself) and over five years after it started. Here was Zullo expecting us to believe that he had new relevant evidence after working full time on this for five years.

The new big news from Zullo last month was that Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office informant and con man Dennis Montgomery had figured out that the CIA (under George W. Bush at the time mind you) had hacked into the Hawaii Department of Health database in 2008 and planted the information that was used to generate the certificate of live birth that the Obama campaign.

Following that appearance some folks at the Fogbow noted that the COLB that the Obama campaign published in 2008 was actually issued in the summer of 2007. Zullo’s response the following week was that Montgomery had discovered the CIA had previously been hacking into the Hawaii DoH. How convenient and flexible Zullo’s stories are!

Zullo also claimed that the two different cell phone images of one of the certified copies of the LFBC taken by NBC reporter Savannah Guthrie at the White House on April 27, 2011 were not of the same document. Zullo had apparently made the discovery himself that letters in box 11, the father’s birthplace were different. The text in that box is “Kenya, East Africa”.

One of Guthrie’s photos is a close up image of the part of the LFBC that had the seal and the other was a wider shot that showed the entire certificate. Zullo claimed that the alignment of the letters in “East Africa” was different in the two photos. The analysis was ridiculous. It was really amateur hour stuff.  Also, the idea of explaining a photo analysis on the radio was also comedy from the get go. Gallups had posted Zullo’s photos on his Facebook page earlier that day.

Just to check I looked at Box 11 from four images. I cropped the same section with box 11 from the Guthrie close up image, the Guthrie wide image, the White House LFBC PDF and the Scott Applewhite AP JPG image. I rotated and scaled the cropped sections to line up from top to bottom.When I scaled up the images I maintained the pixels instead of using the default smoothing algorithm.

From top to bottom: Guthrie closeup photo, Guthrie wide photo, White House LFBC PDF, Applewhite AP JPG

Obviously the AP photo has the highest resolution and the Guthrie wide photo has the lowest. Zullo’s proof that the two Guthrie photos can’t be of the same document hinges on the differences in the vertical position of the letters like the “E” in “East” and the “Af” in Africa.

There is a simple explanation for letters shifting position. Notice that in the Guthrie wide photo the resolution is so poor the “E” is only five pixels high. Each pixel can only be one color. The color and brightness of a pixel are the average of the color and brightness over the entire pixel. If the image is off one pixel the letter would vertically shift 20% of its height.

Add to this all of these images have gone through some one or more compression algorithms. This can also affect letter position. To test this I imported the same box from the White House LFBC PDF into GIMP at two different resolutions. The top image is imported at 300 pixels per inch and the lower one is 100 pixels per inch.

Notice that in the lower resolution image the offsets of the “E” and “a” are completely gone and only the vertical offset of the “A” in “Africa” remains.

Box 11 White House LFBC at 300 ppi (top) and 100 ppi (bottom)

The analysis of the Guthrie photos by Zullo is amateur at best and dishonest at worst.If anything what these images show is that all these photos come from the same original source.

Now let’s  finally get to the point of the article. Of course, Sharon Rondeau told us about all this wonderful news in an article at the Post & Email. Every time Zullo speaks it seems to be worthy of a Rondeau article. Our good friend and a person who actually is an expert in vital records, Doctor Conspiracy, left a comment on Rondeau’s article.

I know Mr. Zullo desperately wants to find something wrong with Obama’s birth certificate, but I would have thought that after so many misfires, he would get the message that he’s wasting his time. Zullo is not an trained investigator, he is not a forensic expert, and he is not competent to do the work he is trying to do. It’s obvious from his consistent failure.

In this instance, he falls for an optical illusion. If you rotate the close-up Guthrie photo so that the lines are horizontal, then it is obvious that the “frica” are aligned the same. It’s only when viewed at an angle that the eye tries to interpolate the image and makes the “f” appear higher.

An qualified and unbiased expert wouldn’t have made such an elementary mistake. Also a rational person would realize that Obama releasing several different versions of his birth certificate on the same day (or even making multiples in the first place) defies reason. When something is patently absurd on its face, then it’s not true.

Rondeau was not amused:

Sharon Rondeau
Tuesday, January 2, 2018 at 9:44 AM
What you have posted is a bald-faced lie. Zullo’s training and credentials are a matter of public record, and the excuse you make for the “optical illusion” of the “Guthrie photo” is completely unacceptable in the world of real, paper documents. Would any authorities accept that explanation in the presentation of your own paper birth certificate?

Because the Obama birth certificate image is a forgery, there is no “rational” explanation for its many anomalies. You and several others here appear to have a deep, vested interest in continuing this ridiculous charade.

This is a final warning to all commenters: Anyone posting knowingly false information will be banned permanently. While intellectually-honest discourse in search of the truth is encouraged, flagrant dishonesty is not.

https://www.thepostemail.com/about/

Rondeau for probably the 10,000th time confuses the fact that an image of a certified copy of a birth certificate is not the same as the certified copy. If Obama had to submit a birth certificate it would not be a cell phone image taken by a reporter. He would use a certified copy. He has several of them.

What about Zullo’s training and credentials? Public record? She conveniently forgets to link to that public record. Did that include training to identify a forged document?

As I have documented before here Zullo has a habit of padding his resume or letting others do it for him. See my article CCP Chief Deputy Clown Zullo Engages in Hilarious Resume Padding

Rondeau’s comment set off a discussion as to whether Zullo was really a detective when he worked as a policeman in Demarest, New Jersey for a tiny borough police force in the 1980’s. There is no public record available for Zullo’s time on the force there. The borough web site lists the police force as consisting of a chief, three sergeants, nine patrolmen, eight special police, and twelve crossing guards. There are no detectives.

Zullo does claim to have been a detective. In 2012 he gave an interview to Pete Papaherakles at something called the American Free Press:

“I worked as a detective in Bergen County, N.J. for five years,” said Zullo. “This is across the river from New York City, an area that includes over a million people, with 70 police departments. In addition to street crime, the area has a high degree of mob crime and white-collar crime. After that, I worked for seven years as an investigative detective with legal firms and with my own firm. Since 2005 I have been working with Sheriff Arpaio in Maricopa County as an investigator. That’s over 20 years of investigative work.”

Last year Sharon Rondeau apparently was directed to a retired Phoenix, AZ policeman named Steve Soha who knew Zullo back in Demarest and was a patrolman in a nearby  borough.

On Tuesday, retired Phoenix Police Department Lieutenant Steve Soha provided The Post & Email with a glimpse into his work with Zullo over a five-year period in the 1980s, after which they remained in touch through the present day. Soha is a former New Jersey police officer, decorated combat Marine veteran, and 20-year veteran of the Phoenix PD, retiring in 2015.

Soha related that between 1980 and 1985, Zullo was a police officer in Demarest, NJ, while he was an officer in nearby Haworth. “They were adjoining towns. We would work together on quite a few things, actually,” Soha told us. “When it started out, we were the only ones on duty on the night shift. I was the only police officer on duty in Haworth, and he was the only one in Demarest. We backed each other up. If he got a call, I would assist him, and vice-versa.

…

“As we got a little bit more experience, Michael was promoted to the Detective Bureau. We worked a couple of cases together, as the bad guys didn’t stop at the town borders. Michael and I worked a lot on investigations. I was not in the Detective Bureau, but I was conducting investigations in my town, and Michael and I worked together there.”

When we asked about any significant events which stood out in his mind from the time period, Soha responded, “There was a burglar that was really tearing up all the towns in northern New Jersey. Michael and I worked on that together, which trickled into New York City. Then there were a couple of armed robberies that were happening, and because of an informant that Michael developed, he and I worked on and solved that case and ended up arresting two people. It was a pretty high-profile case, because these guys were carrying out violent armed robberies not just in our towns, but also in larger communities. Because of Michael’s investigative experience and developing a confidential informant, we solved that case.”

Those two accounts don’t really jive since it would mean Zullo was immediately promoted into the “detective bureau” upon employment. As I said before Demarest has neither detectives nor a detective bureau and has more crossing guards than patrolmen. Demarest even 20 years later averaged only about a crime per month. There is no record of a single case of forgery in Demarest that I could find.

All this detective nonsense doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that Zullo has no training in computer or document forensics. He isn’t qualified to have led an investigation into something he can never have access. We know what the two forensic analysts he hired never had access to any original document to examine and we don’t know what they actually said about whatever they examined.

Mike Zullo could clear up all these questions by releasing what his actual experience and training are with documentation and by releasing copies of Reed Hayes’ and FORLAB’s reports. To date he has refused to do so.

Now that Joe Arpaio is running for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat and pushing the birth certificate BS again maybe Zullo will get the major media attention he has craved for so long. Be careful what you wish for Mike. Be very careful.