Timothy Adams

The Barack H. Obama Birth Certificate Controversy and the New Media: Fear and Freedom in Contemporary America Timothy Adams

"I guess I need to tell you where I am and why." Timothy Adams,a long-time critic of the Bush Administration's illegal wars and policies, gets tapped by the political base in Honolulu, Hawaii to manage one of the state offices charged with verifying voter and candidate identification and balloting for the national electoral cycle of 2008. He is present when the controversy over the candidacy of then Senator Barack H. Obama, who claims to have been born "in hospital," "in Hawaii," breaks; first on the local and then the national scene. In the face of mounting evidence that the senator's biography is a manufactured fiction; Adams tells of gag orders, switched stories, political intrigues, and the moneyed interests that backed the political rise of one of the new century's most influential politicians. What happens when he himself becomes a target for the vicious machinations of modern American politics? Can freedom survive in the growing surveillance/police state that is Post 9-11 America? In the course of a year full of personal attacks and in the face of state intimidation, Adams tells us what he learns about his nation, his self, and the brave, new world emerging in his home.