If elected, Arizona Senator John McCain would be the first President in the history of the United States who wasn't born in the USA.

John McCain (as reported by Jack Cafferty (Video)) is said to have been born in the Panama Canal Zone, but was he?

McCain claims eligibility to hold the office of the President by virtue of his birthplace, he says, on a US Military Base. McCain claims he was born on the Coco Solo Naval Installation in the Canal Zone. But, is that even possible given that the Coco Solo Naval Hospital wasn't built until after 1941 when FDR commissioned the land on which it was to be built? That's at least 5 years after McCain was supposedly born there.

So what is the real story surrounding McCain's birthplace? Good question. The McCain campaign says they are looking into it, but how hard is it really to look at your own birth records to find out what hospital you were born in and why does it matter anyway? Well, I suppose the real question is why is McCain afraid to tell us what hospital he was born in, is there a cover up story there? If the facts were revealed, would they show that McCain was born in a hospital that wasn't, in fact, in the ten mile wide US administered Canal Zone back in 1936?

Research show that American babies in the Canal Zone were normally born in the hospital located in the Panamanian city of Colon, which was outside the Canal Zone. So what is wrong with that? Isn't McCain still considered a US Citizen? Well, its not as simple as that. The President, according to the Constitution, must be more than just a citizen, he must be a natural born United States citizen.

Back in 1936 if you were born in the Canal Zone you were not automatically a US Citizen in some cases you were only a US National, but that is not the same thing as a US Citizen. But, if you were born in the Republic of Panama, well there it starts to really get murky even if your parents were Citizens. Congress did attempt to fix this murkiness for most cases, but they failed to address the constitutional question for candidates for President. Because the Constitution is so hard to amend, and the likeliness of a person being born outside the US running for President was slim, congress didn't bother to act.

Maybe McCain didn't want the question of his birthplace to hurt his Presidential campaign prospects. It was probably just a lot easier to say you were born on the Military Base because most people would assume that babies born a military base are automatically US Citizens, even though that is not really the case, it works politically, but... what if you weren't actually born on a military base? What if you were born in a hospital in a foreign country?

Well, that may be just too murky a question for a presidential candidate to answer, and the temptation to cover it up may look like an easy fix. You know; what they don't know won't hurt them, and it's all ancient history anyway, right? Well, maybe, but when the story hits the papers, then how do you explain to the American People, whom you hope will vote for you, that you lied to get into office rather than address the tough question? That question becomes even harder to answer than, where were you born.

[This is a NewsBusters Exclusive Report.]

** Link to a related topic on whether John McCain meets the definition of "natural born Citizen" >>.