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Former President Barack Obama falsely claimed thatLets Move,an initiative offormer First Lady Michelle Obama, helped bring down Americas obesity rates for our youngest kids for the first time in 30 years. In fact, research shows the obesity rate for 2- to 5-year-olds has been decreasing since 2004 long beforethe initiative began.

Its true that the obesity rate for young children continued to decline afterthe first lady launched Lets MoveinFebruary 2010, but theres no evidence that it contributed to that decline.

Obama made his claimat Seeds and Chips, a global food innovation summitthat took place in Milan, Italy, between May 8 and May 11.

President Obama, May 9: By working with schools, businesses and local leaders across America, Lets Move actually helped bring down Americas obesity rates for our youngest kids for the first time in 30 years.

We reached out to President Obamas spokesman, Kevin Lewis, for support for Obamas recentclaims. Over the phone, Lewis said Lets Move isnt still active but the mission continues through partnerships and relationships developed during the Obama Administration.

He alsopointed outthat Obama said Lets Move helped reduce obesity rates among 2- to 5-year-oldsin the United States, not that the initiativewas completely responsible for the drop. When we asked for proof that it helped, he said he wouldprovide some by email, but has yet to do so.

When research reporting a decline in the obesity rate of 2- to 5-year-olds was released in 2014, the White House put out a press release quoting the first lady. Though she was excited to see that rates had declined over 10 years, she didnt attribute the decline directly to Lets Move.

Michelle Obama, Feb. 26, 2014: I couldnt be more excited by the news that obesity rates for 2-5 year olds declined by 43% over the last 10 years. Progress of this magnitude can only be explained by the leadership and hard work we are seeing across this country.

Experts told us there is no evidence the initiativedirectly influenced childhood obesity rates.

The former first lady launched Lets Move with the goalof solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation. The initiatives programsaimed toensure that 60 minutes of physical activity [per] day is the norm in K-12 schools across the country and to encourage schools to incorporatesalad bars into lunches, among other goals.

As for achievements, according to the initiatives archived website, Lets Move [i]ncreased access to fruits and vegetables byproviding 3 million students with a salad bar, for example. Reaching over 12 million kids, the initiativealso equipped schools with a customized action plan to increase physical activity among children, the website says.

In unisonwith the initiatives launch in 2010,President Obama signed a memorandum toestablisha Task Force onChildhood Obesity. In a May 2010 report, the task force outlineda planthat aimed toreduce the U.S. childhood obesity rate to5 percent by 2030.

But since the launch of Lets Move, the obesity rate for all children aged 2 to 19 has remained stable. Between2009 and 2014, the obesity rate for 2 to 19 year olds hashovered around 17 percent, up from 10 percent for children surveyed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Since the 1970s the percentage of U.S. children with obesity has more than tripled, reports theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention.

Michele Polacsek,a childhood obesity expert at the University of New England in Maine, told us by email that a diet including more sugary drinks likely played a notable rolein the rise in obesity for both children and adults.

Liquid calories are especially harmful because they dont displace other calories in our diet, she explained. A 200 calorie drink doesnt make a person feel full the way a solid food 200 calories would.

According to the CDC, [m]any factors contribute to childhood obesity, such as genetics, the speed of an individuals metabolism, eating behaviors and quantity of physical activity. Children with obesity are at a higher risk for other chronic health conditions, such as asthma and type 2 diabetes, says the CDC. They are alsomore likely to suffer from depression.

Unlikethe trend for children ages 2 to 19, some research hasshown a declining trend since 2004 in theobesity rate for children between 2 and 5 years old. In other words, thattrend began before the launch of Lets Move.

In a paper published in theJournal of the American Medical Association,Cynthia L.Ogden, an epidemiologist at the CDC, and others reported that the obesity rate was 7.2 percent for 2- to 5-year-olds surveyed between 1988 and 1994. This rate peaked at 13.9 percent for kids surveyed between 2003 and 2004.

The first decline in the obesity rate for 2- to 5-year-olds in more than a decade occurred between 2005 and 2006, when the rate dropped to 10.7 percent from 13.9 percent in 2003-2004.

Since the launch of Lets Move, the rate has fluctuated dropping to 8.4 percent between 2011 and 2012 and rising to 9.4 percent for the childrensurveyed between 2013 and 2014. However,Ogden told us by email that the estimates for 2-5 year olds in 2011-2012 and 2013-2014 are not statistically different from each other.

What does statistically different mean?

Ogden and her group estimated the obesity rate for the U.S. population of 2- to 5-year-olds as a whole based on a sample of children in that age range. The obesity rate for the 2011 to 2012 survey sample group, for example, is8.4 percent.

For the population as a whole, the researchers can only estimate the rate withina range, which they call a confidence interval. The range for the 2011 to 2012 survey period, for example, is 5.8 to 11.7 percent.

This means Ogden and her group canconfidently say that the entire 2 to 5 year old populations obesity rate falls within that range, based on their analysis of the sample group. And the ranges for the 2011 to 2012 and 2013 to 2014 survey periods arent all that different from one another.

Overall, the researchers concluded the obesity rate for 2- to 5-year-olds rose steadily until it peaked in 2003 to 2004, and then began to decline.

ButMichael Goran, an expert in childhood obesity at the University of Southern California, isnt completely convinced by these numbers.

There has not been a consistent fall in obesity levels and levels tend to fluctuate from year to year, hetold us by email. We need to see a consistent change to make any more definitive conclusions.

Goran addedthere is no way to directly link/draw a line between what Lets Move did and changes in the obesity rate,as Obama claimed.

Polacsek, at the University of New England, also told us theres no evidence that Lets Movedirectly affected the obesity rate.

Polacsek added thatit would be very difficult to tie Lets Move back directly to national obesity rates especially given that obesity is a multifactorial problem and so many other programs were working to impact obesity rates at the same time.

Polacsek held backfrom making a definitive claim onwhether or nottheres a solid decliningtrend in obesity rates for 2- to 5-year-olds. But she did acknowledge that obesity prevalence percentagesfor 2- to 5-year-oldsjump around quite a bit. The number of participants for each survey period are actually pretty small once they are broken down by age, she explained, and thesmaller the numbers in analysesthe more likely they are to jump around. This means that Ogdens analysis is most useful when looking at multi-year trends but no conclusions should be drawn from one data point to the next, added Polacsek.

However, the CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture does have some additional evidence supportinga downward trend.

Researchers at these agencies looked at obesity trends from 2000 to 2014 forchildren ages 2 to 4 years old from low-income families who participated in theSpecial Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. This program provides food, health care referrals, and nutrition education to women and children under 5.

The researchersfound that the obesity rates decreased from 15.9 percent in 2010 to 14.5 percent in 2014. However, thats still above the 2000 rate, which was 14 percent.

The report adds that, Local, state, and national obesity initiatives, such as Lets Move, might be contributing to the modest declines in obesity by raising awareness of the problem of childhood obesity. But the report provides no definitive support.

Its also worth mentioning that its unclear whether or not programs started under Lets Move will continueunder the Trump administration.

In December 2010, Obama signed into lawtheHealthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which mandated the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to update the meal patterns and nutrition standards for the school lunch program with the aim of reducing childhood obesity. In January 2012, the USDA finalized a rule that requires most schools to increase the availability of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free and low-fat fluid milk in school meals, among other things.

But earlier this month, USDASecretary Sonny Perdue signed a proclamation thatbegins the process of restoring local control of guidelines on whole grains, sodium, and milk for school lunches. This includes allowing states to exempt schools from having to provide whole-grain products and beginning the regulatory process to allow schools to provide 1 percent flavored milk, which has added sugars.

Lets Movemay havecontributed to adecline in the obesity rate of young children, but theres no evidence of it, as Obama claimed. Experts say this would be a hard to measure, given that childhood obesity is a multifactorial problem.

Editors Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.

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Lets Move actually helped bring down Americas obesity rates for our youngest kids for the first time in 30 years.

Barack Obama

Former President

Speech in Milan, Italy

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

2017-05-09

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Just two days after the 2016 election, President Barack Obama warned President-elect Donald Trump against hiring Michael Flynn as his national security adviser. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

President Barack Obama personally warned then-President-elect Donald Trump against hiring Michael Flynn as his national security adviser last fall as Trump beganhis transition, current and former administration officials said on Monday.

Obama delivered his warning on Nov. 10, two days after the election, when Trump visited the White House and met with Obama in the Oval Office for what both men described at the time as a cordial conversation.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer confirmed the discussion, which was first reported by NBC News, but played down the seriousness of Obama's warning.

President Obama made it known that he wasnt exactly a fan of General Flynns, which frankly shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone, given that General Flynn had worked for President Obama [and] was an outspoken critic of President Obama's shortcomings, Spicer told reporters Monday at his daily briefing.

The revelation about Obama's warning to Trump came on the same day that former acting attorney general Sally Yates testified in Congress that she warned the White House's top lawyer in January that Flynn "was compromised by Russia" and could be blackmailed.

Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, served in the Obama administration as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and was fired in 2014. He went on to become a top policy adviser to Trump and acted as a prominent surrogate on the campaign trail and in television interviews, harshly attacking Obamaand others in his administration.

Trump ignored Obama's advice and tapped Flynn to serve as his national security adviser in the White House, a position he held for just 24 days until he was forced out for having misled Vice President Pence about his private conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

[Heres what we know so far about Team Trumps ties to Russian interests]

The president took appropriate action when he did, once he felt that General Flynn had misled the vice president, Spicer said.

Flynn's contacts with Kislyak and connections tothe Russian government have been the subject of inquiry by the U.S. government for months.

Spicer sought to pin blame for Flynn's troubles on the Obama administration, telling reporters, The question that you have to ask yourself, really, is that if President Obama was truly concerned about General Flynn, why didnt he suspend General Flynn's security clearance, which they had just approved months earlier?

The warning about Flynn was not a prepared talking point, a second former Obama administration official said, meaning it was not a subject that Obama had planned to raise with his successor. But as the two men discussed personnel, Obama expressed caution about putting Flynn in a high-level position. There were multiple reasons, the former official said, including Flynns performance leading the DIA, his attendance at the RT event in Moscow, and his controversial statements on Islam.

There wasnt certainly at the time the thought that hes compromised by his association with Russia, the former official said. It was more a confluence of red flags.

Greg Miller contributed to this report.

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Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn as national security ...

'It takes great courage to champion the vulnerable and the sick and the infirm.'

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

05/07/17 09:33 PM EDT

Updated 05/07/17 10:40 PM EDT

BOSTON Barack Obama on Sunday night called on members of Congress to exercise the political courage to not repeal Obamacare his first public comments about the law since the House voted to repeal it on Thursday, and a rare entry into the current political debate since leaving office.

I hope they understand that courage means not simply doing whats politically expedient, but doing what, deep in our hearts, we know is right, Obama said, in a speech here at the John F. Kennedy Library accepting the Profiles in Courage award in honor of what would have been Kennedys 100th birthday.

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I expect to be busy, if not with a second career, at least a second act, Obama said, promising more involvement.

Citing those who lost their seats after voting for the healthcare law in 2010, Obama described his fervent hope that current members recognize it takes little courage to aid those who are already powerful, already comfortable, already influential but it takes some courage to champion the vulnerable and the sick and the infirm, those who often have no access to the corridors of power.

The contrast of an Obama celebration days after the House vote on his signature law and President Donald Trumps repeated assertions that its dead, was on the minds of many in the room.

Its ironic, isnt it? said former interim Massachusetts Sen. Mo Cowan on his way into the event earlier in the evening.

I think it is altogether fitting that were here this evening, said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Barack Obama was able to pass the Affordable Care Act, a continuation of the vision of President Kennedy and Ted Kennedy. Today, Donald Trump is trying to destroy that vision.

Some of that seemed to be on the mind of Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, the lone Republican member of Congress who joined the library for the event (he's on the award committee), held in a white-and-gold draped tent behind the library building. A moderate who had a good relationship with Obama in the White House and is now one of Democrats top two Senate targets for next year, Flake said he wants to start the Obamacare conversation from scratch.

"I wouldn't expect the House bill to come through intact, he said, also repeating that he opposes Trumps border wall. We'll see. It'll be a long process."

Flake said hes been happy to see Obamas overall approach since the morning after the election to move toward unifying the country. Asked if he feels Trump has been unifying, Flake said, at times. At times, not so much.

Obama avoided any explicit comments about Trump, though he also made a passing mention of immigration reform, praising Dreamers, as the children brought undocumented by their parents to America whom he protected from deportation via executive orders while in office, who push down their fears to keep working and striving in the only country theyve ever called home."

And lamenting politics filled with division and discord, Obama said, everywhere, we see the risk of falling into the refuge of tribe and, and anger at those who don't look like us or have the same surnames, or pray like we do.

Obama has been edging slowly back into public after going dark for the first few months after leaving office. He made his first appearance, at a discussion with young leaders at the University of Chicago two weeks ago, and has since started doing paid speeches. Sunday was his first major speech as a former president, and he will now depart for an event at the Milan food summit with his friend and former White House chef Sam Kass and several other private events. He last week publicly endorsed French presidential winner Emmanuel Macron, and will travel to Berlin at the end of the month for an event with his friend and soul sister German Chancellor Angela Merkel, facing her own election campaign in the fall.

Susan B. Glassers new weekly podcast takes you backstage in a world disrupted.

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Like many Democrats, Obama found his own understanding of American politics challenged by Trumps election, and continues to oppose the path that the new president is taking, demanding to see it as a hiccup rather than a new reality. He delivered the political but non-partisan call to action that hes trying to thread, tying that to the spirit of Kennedy, calling the current environment a turning point in world history that demands the courage that the award is meant to recognize.

At such moments, we need courage to stand up to hate not just in others, but in ourselves, Obama said. At such moments, we need courage to believe that together, we can tackle big challenges like inequality and climate change.

As he did at the Chicago event, Obama spoke about the need for more people to get involved in their communities and in politics, with a particular emphasis on young people.

The Kennedy family was happy to hear that message.

One of the heartbreaking parts of our current political dynamic at the moment is that so many young people feel that politics isnt a constructive path to address those concerns, said Rep. Joe Kennedy III. Yet many of those same young people looked at President Obama as somebody who inspired them and was willing to take on those challenges and was energized by them.

As for Obamas own record, historian David McCullough said, Well have to wait 50 years for the dust to settle. It really takes a great deal to chip away at a mountain I think he built quite a mountain over time, Cowan said.

The event was largely an Obama celebration, complete with James Taylor mini-concert Its frankly a relief to be with Obama and not thinking about Trump, the musician said as he kicked off a set that ended with a rendition of the French national anthem in honor of Macrons win.

David Letterman, in blue-tinted glasses and the raggedy mass of a beard hes grown since retiring from his late night show, said of the award, Obama should get it every year.

Despite his own dismay at Trump, Letterman said he didnt need to hear Obama talk about the new president, but did want to hear Obama talk about inspiring a new generation to get involved.

If you dont have people doing this, Letterman said, itll turn into a dictatorship.

Missing out on the latest scoops? Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning in your inbox.

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Obama urges 'political courage' to save Affordable Care Act ...

Russian hackers targeted the 2008 Barack Obama campaign and U.S. government officials as far back as 2007 and have continued to attack them since they left their government jobs, according to a new report scheduled for release Friday.

The targets included several of the 2008 Obama campaign field managers as well as the presidents closest White House aides and senior officials in the Defense, State and Energy Departments, the report says.

It names several officials by title, but not by name, including several officials involved in Russian policy, including a U.S. ambassador to Russia, according to a draft version of the report, authored by Area 1 Security, a Redwood, California company founded by former NSAveterans.

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Theyre still getting fresh attacks, the company says.

The attacks on their email accounts have continued as the officials migrated to think tanks, universities and private industry, the company says. The favored weapon of the Russians and other hackers is the so-called phishing email, in which the recipient is invited to click on a innocent-looking link which opens a door to the attackers.

U.S. President Barack Obama, right, meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Los Cabos, Mexico, on June 18, 2012. REUTERS/Jason Reed

Michael McFaul, Obamas ambassador to Russia from 2011 to 2014, told Newsweek Thursday that he gets frequent warnings of phishing attacks by an unnamed foreign government from both his Google email service and Stanford University, where he is now a professor of political science. He says his colleagues, assistants and people like that at Stanford also get attacked on a fairly regular basis.

Read more: Russia's greatest weapon may be its hackers

I have not been successfully penetrated, to the best of my knowledge, McFaul said in a brief telephone interview. So far as he knows, I have not been compromised. There were three other U.S. ambassadors to Russia during Obamas eight years in office who could not immediately be reached for comment.

The role of Russia in attacks on the 2008 campaigns of Obama and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, has not been previously reported. On the eve of a U.S.-China summit meeting in 2013, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News that Beijing alone was responsible for a 2008 cyber attack on the Obama and McCain campaigns.

China cant be excluded as a perpetrator in those attacks, Area 1 Securitys report says, but its new data show that Russia tried to hack several members of the Obama campaign and could have done so at the same time as someone that achieved massive data exfiltration.

Blake Darch, a former NSA technical analyst who co-founded Area 1 Security, tells Newsweek that "state-sponsored Russian hackers have been targeting United States officials and politicians since at least 2007 through phishing attacks." Russian hackers reportedly breached the Joint Chiefs of Staff email system in 2015.

The company said one of the Russian targets was a deputy campaign manager in the 2008 Obama campaign, but was otherwise unidentified in its report. There were a number of them over a period of time. One was Steve Hildebrand. Reached in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he now runs a speciality bakery and coffee shop, Hildebrand says he was not aware that he might have been a Russian target and didnt remember being warned about cyberattacks of any kind during the campaign. Another senior 2008 campaign aide (and later White House National Security Council spokesman), Tommy Vietor, tells Newsweek he had no knowledge of Russian hacking at the time.

Besides top officials in the Energy, Defense and State departments, the Area 1 Security report cites a half dozen positions in the Obama White House that were targeted from 2008 through 2016, including the presidents deputy assistant, special assistant, the special assistant to the political director, advance team leaders for First Lady Michelle Obama, and the White House deputy counsel. None of them could immediately be reached for comment.

Among the State Department targets named by Area 1 Security were three top offices dealing with Russia and Europe. Evelyn Farkas, who served as Obama administration's deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia during 2015-2015, said she could not discuss matters that remain classified, but said the biggest impact she remembered offhand was the Russian hack of the Joint Chiefs.

Among the three top, unnamed targets at the Energy Department was the director of the Office of Nuclear Threat Science, which is is responsible for overseeing the U.S. Nuclear Counterterrorism Program.

The Area 1 Security report names the Dukes, also known as Cozy Bear and APT-29, for the Obama attacks, the same Russian actors named in the 2015 and 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the State Department.

In an interview, Darch called the Dukes a front for Russias premier intelligence-gathering arm, which would be the SVR, or External Intelligence Service, the Kremlin equivalent to the CIA, although he declined to specifically name it. As opposed to the DNC hacks launched to steal and publicize information damaging to the campaign of Hillary Clinton, he said, the Russian offensives that Area 1 Security uncovered were clandestine intelligence gathering operations designed to secretly penetrate a wide variety of institutions and industry.

Clinton had harshly criticized the Kremlins suppression of human rights and seizure of the Crimea, while her rival Donald Trump had repeatedly said he wanted to be friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Oren Falkowitz, a former analyst at the National Security Agency who co-founded Area 1 Security, says he launched the company to stop phishing attacks, which until then was thought to be impossible because so many employees continue to click on risky links in emails. The key to the companys success was persuading clients to let it monitor its servers, he told The New York Times in a 2016 interview.

In Fridays report, Area 1 Security says it uses a vast active sensor network to detect and trace phishing attacks. It said it could imagine the Dukes operating a giant spreadsheet where new targets are added, but never leave It moves quickly, compromising a server or service to send out phishing emails from it, and then leaves, never returning to check for bounced email messages to cull from its list.

Most ex-officials dont realize they are carrying the blemish of being a Russian target into their new workplace, the Area 1 Security report says. As a result, they give the Dukes beachheads in companies and organizations they never even planned on or imagined hacking, such as Washington think tanks, defense contractors, lobbyist offices, financial institutions and pharmaceutical companies stocked with high ranking former political, military and intelligence officials.

Russia is notoriously persistent in pursuing targets, the report says. Its a lesson on why every organization needs great security.

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Exclusive: Russian Hackers Attacked the 2008 Obama Campaign - Newsweek

Barack Obama jokingly wipes his brow during a forum with young leaders in Chicago. Photograph: Jim Young/AFP/Getty Images

An American presidents ex-girlfriend who claims she was written out of history. A scathing review from the New York Times. And a literary feud with a rival biographer.

Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, by the Pulitzer prize winner David J Garrow, is no ordinary addition to the annals of political biography. It took nine years to produce and runs to a doorstopping 1,461 pages. Its unusually candid disclosures about Obamas sex life and drug use have generated clickbait headlines. In particular, it contains extensive interviews with Sheila Miyoshi Jager, a former girlfriend who claims Obama twice proposed marriage.

But Garrows reliance on Jager as a source has been attacked by the influential New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani, as has his own critical portrayal of rival Obama biographies. On Friday, one of those biographers, David Maraniss, weighed in with a tweet: Willl [sic] say this once only. David Garrow, author of new Obama bio, was vile, undercutting, ignoble competitor unlike any Ive encountered.

The controversy comes as Obama himself starts to mould his post-presidential career. This week, he unveiled the conceptual design of his presidential library and museum in Chicago and released a video endorsing the centrist Emmanuel Macron in the French election. On Sunday, the 55-year-old will deliver his first major speech since leaving the White House when he receives a John F Kennedy Profile in Courage award in Boston. He has not, as yet, offered direct criticism of his successor, Donald Trump.

The new book by Garrow, who describes himself as essentially a Bernie Sanders democratic socialist, offers a taste of how Obamas legacy is likely to be contested. Its attention-grabbing element is Jager, now a professor of East Asian studies at Oberlin College in Ohio, who declined to be interviewed for this article.

Garrow writes how Obama and Jager met in mid-1980s Chicago, moved in together and talked about marriage all the time. He continues: In their evenings at the spacious apartment on South Harper, Barack read literature, not history, while Sheila had more than enough course readings to occupy her time. And, of course, there was another dimension as well. Barack is a very sexual/sensual person, and sex was a big part of our relationship, Sheila later acknowledged.

In the winter of 1986, according to Jager, Obama asked her to marry him. But when the couple visited her family home, Obama met her father and his best friend both conservative Republicans. It did not go well. They talked politics and, at least in the view of the friend, Mike Dees, Obama ended up getting beat up. Jagers father came out against the marriage.

The following year, according to Jager, Obama changed and gained a sense of manifest destiny. He became someone quite extraordinary and so very ambitious, and this happened over the course of a few months. I remember very clearly when this transformation happened, and I remember very specifically that by 1987, about a year into our relationship, he already had his sights on becoming president.

Discussion of marriage dragged on, Garrow writes, but it was affected by what Sheila describes as Baracks torment over this central issue of his life, the question of his own race and identity. The resolution of his black identity was directly linked to his decision to pursue a political career and to the crystallization of the drive and desire to become the most powerful person in the world.

The book claims that even after Obama met Michelle Robinson, a law firm colleague, he continued to see Jager irregularly for a year (I always felt bad about it, Jager says). And it strongly implies that his preference for Michelle, an African American, over Jager, who is half-Dutch and half-Japanese, was politically motivated.

Baracks prior relationships had been with women who, like himself through 1985, were citizens of the world as much as they were of any particular country or city, Garrow writes. But if Barack truly believed that his destiny entailed what he thought, he knew full well the value of having roots in one place and having that place be essential to your journey. And who more than Michelle Robinson and her family could personify the strong, deep roots of black Chicago?

Jager does not appear in Obamas bestselling memoir, Dreams from My Father. Instead, she is conflated with two other ex-girlfriends into a single woman who makes a cameo appearance.

I never understood why he wrote it that way, Jager told Garrow. There are whole passages from that book that are essentially copies of his letters to me. I always found it ironic that he was using his love letters to me to write his book and then completely omitted me from the entire account.

The author said his researcher got the scoop on Jager in 2009 because, knowing what address Obama had lived at, it was simply a case of going to the University of Chicago library and pulling the student directories for 1986, 1987 and 1988 to see who else was living at the address.

Speaking from Pittsburgh on Friday, he said: I find this really quite astonishing and humorous that given all of the inaccurate speculation about Baracks life over the years, it dawned on no journalist that thered be student directories from the 80s that you could go look at. It seemed like an obvious thing to do but nobody had done it.

I was living in Britain at that time in 2009, and so I emailed her out of the blue and that began a very extensive email conversation.

Garrow, who spent eight very intense hours with Obama last year and showed him the manuscript, said he had been taken aback by the intense media interest in this aspect of the book. Im sort of bemused because to me its not surprising that someone, anyone would have prior girlfriends. I dont think thats the most interesting thing about Barack.

The single most important thing about Sheila and Sheilas memories is her crystal-clear recollection of Barack beginning to talk about his political aspirations and sense of political destiny in 1987. That matches up with how everyone who came to know him at Harvard Law School from 88 onward realized from day one: this was someone who was going to be a politician.

For Garrow, if not for headline writers, a more important and equally neglected part of Obamas life is his eight years in the state legislature in Springfield, Illiniois, which were hugely politically formative. He also argues that Obama was once a firm supporter of single-payer universal health coverage and outspoken critic of government surveillance, only to reverse these positions once he reached the White House.

He added: I think its just undeniable that there has been this profound change and an embrace of big money, an embrace of all of these music and movie celebrities and Richard Branson billionaires. To me, its a profound change from who he once was.

Up through 2004, this was someone who lived a very modest, middle-class paycheck-to-paycheck life, and so to see him, as president, get so infatuated with celebrities and weve seen that infatuation with celebrities and all this money and private airplanes continue this spring Ive just really come to feel that who he is now is astonishingly different from who he was up through 2003. To me, this is a much more substantive point than who was his girlfriend in 1987.

But Garrows narrative cannot resist more references to sex than might be expected in an academic history, nor a chance to belittle rival biographers. He states that Maranisss 2012 book, Barack Obama: the Story, contained only two newsworthy nuggets and that reviewers panned the volumes shortcomings. He also quotes Jager as saying Obama called her out of the blue and said he was disgusted by Maranisss interest in his sexual history.

Asked about Maranisss tweet accusing him of being vile and ignoble, Garrow said he had never met or spoken to him and denied feeling insulted.

No, he said. Im an academic. I think American life would be better without Twitter and I think wed have a better country if the president was not on Twitter. What people say in a bar or a pub doesnt necessarily merit being memorialised. So he doesnt like being criticised in print. Im not surprised.

In the New York Times, Kakutani dismissed the biography as a dreary slog of a read: a bloated, tedious and given its highly intemperate epilogue ill-considered book that is in desperate need of editing, and way more exhausting than exhaustive.

A spokesman for Obama declined to comment.

Excerpt from:
Obama biography stirs controversy with tales of politics, sex ...