US President Barack Obama's father had intended to put his unborn son up for adoption as the senior Obama tried to appease US immigration officials who raised concerns about him having two wives as well as his “playboy ways”, a new book has revealed.
Details about Obama senior have emerged in a book by Boston Globe reporter Sally Jacobs.
Titled 'The Other Barack, The Bold and Reckless Life of President Obama's Father,' the biography is slated for release next week.
“In the spring of 1961, President Obama's father revealed a plan for his unborn son that might have changed the course of American political history,” Jacobs said in an
article in the Boston Globe.
The elder Obama, who was at the time a sophomore at the University of Hawaii, had come under scrutiny by federal immigration officials who were concerned that he had more than one wife.
When questioned by the school's foreign student adviser, the 24-year-old Obama insisted that he had divorced his wife in his native Kenya.
Although his new wife, Ann Dunham, was five months pregnant with their child 'Barack Obama II', Obama declared that they intended to put their child up for adoption.
“Subject (Obama senior) got his USC (United States citizen) wife 'Hapai' (Hawaiian for pregnant) and although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away,” according to a memo describing the conversation with Obama senior written by Lyle Dahling, an administrator in the Honolulu office of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.
