Crash fuels conspiracists

When President Obama marched into the White House briefing room with his Hawaiian birth certificate in April 2011, he said: “I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest.”

How right he was. The release of his long-form birth certificate did not eliminate the “birther” movement, which contends that Obama was born in Kenya is therefore ineligible to be president. Although conspiracists had demanded its release, once he made public the document it merely shifted the debate. Some birthers accused Obama of forgery, while others turned their focus to his college transcripts in hopes of proving that he had applied for admission as a foreign student. (He had not.)

And this week, birthers seized on a plane crash off Hawaii that killed one person: state public health director Loretta Fuddy, the woman who verified the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate.

Skeptics turned to social media Thursday to suggest that Obama had played some role in Fuddy’s death. Twitter posts included: “The WH tying up loose ends?” “What did she really know?” and “R.I.P. Loretta Fuddy -- we’ll know the truth about Barack Hussein Obama, regardless.”

Donald Trump, a longtime doubter of Obama’s birthplace, also weighed in on Twitter: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”

That reaction didn’t surprise those who study conspiracy theorists.

Mark Fenster, University of Florida law professor who wrote a book on conspiracy theories, said adherents will search for evidence to support their beliefs, and each piece of news can give their theory new life.

“The theories themselves are a process of stitching together individual facts to form a larger narrative, and this is just one more fact that gets linked to the chain,” Fenster said.

Fuddy, 65, was among nine people in a Cessna that crashed into the ocean Wednesday, shortly after leaving Kalaupapa Airport on the island of Molokai about 3:15 p.m. The eight others on the plane, including the pilot, were rescued, but Fuddy “remained in the fuselage of the plane,” Honolulu Fire Capt. Terry Seelig told KHON-TV. “It’s always a difficult situation when you’re not able to get everybody out.”

On Thursday, Lt. William Juan with the Maui Police Department said that Fuddy’s body had been recovered from the wreckage and that an autopsy would be conducted.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, agency spokesman Eric Weiss said, and a preliminary report should be ready in 10 to 14 days.

The pilot of the Makani Kai Air plane did not call for help, officials said, but radio reception is bad in the area.

Makani Kai Air President Richard Schuman said the crash was caused by “catastrophic engine failure.”

Fuddy was apparently headed to Honolulu from Kalawao County, a park on the north coast of Molokai and the home of Hawaii’s former leper colonies. The director of the health department serves as the mayor of Kalawao County.

Fuddy had been the state’s public health director since March 2011. She approved the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate, which is not a public document in Hawaii, at his lawyers’ request.

More recently, she had been involved with implementing the Affordable Care Act and the state’s gay marriage law, which took effect Dec. 2.

Hawaii’s governor praised Fuddy.

“Our hearts are broken. Loretta was deeply loved and respected. She was selfless, utterly dedicated, and committed to her colleagues in the Department of Health and to the people of Hawaii,” Gov. Neil Abercrombie said in a statement. “Her knowledge was vast; her counsel and advice always given from her heart as much as from her storehouse of experience.”

For Orly Taitz, the leading birther litigator who has argued in several federal courts that Obama isn’t a natural-born American, the sole fatality was too much of a coincidence.

“Attorney Taitz calls on 8 courts and judges who received her cases to rule expeditiously on the merits and review the evidence of forgery and theft in Obama’s IDs before more people die in strange accidents,” she said on her website. Taitz has yet to win a case in the matter.

Anyone who believes that Obama’s birth certificate is fake will find a way to tie the plane crash to their beliefs, said Dan Cassino, professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.

Their train of thought goes something like this, he joked: “If there’s nothing wrong with the birth certificate, why did Obama have the people from Scandal go ahead and shoot that plane down?”

It’s unclear how many people ascribe to birther beliefs. But a poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University in January found that 36% of voters, including 64% of Republicans, believed Obama is hiding information about his background.

Conspiracy theories aren’t new, Cassino noted. The birthplace of the 21st president, Chester A. Arthur, became a point of contention in 1881 as rumors spread that he had been born in Canada.

The Internet has made it easier to spread outlandish theories, Cassino said. Thirty years ago, if you tried to tell people about a farfetched belief, they’d ignore you, he said. But online, “you can go and find a community of people who all agree with you.”

This causes a false-consensus effect, in which people overestimate how many people agree with them, he said. Under these conditions, the loudest voices win, and theories become more and more extreme, he said.

Fenster said he didn’t think the Internet had increased the number of people who believe in conspiracy theories. But it does provide people with a platform to instantaneously make their beliefs known, and allows theories to develop much more quickly, he said.

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soumya.karlamangla@latimes.com