Put a bit more accurately: professional people paid to publicize Barack Obama as recently as 2007 were claiming that he was born in Kenya. In this case, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. Their list of authors, courtesy the Internet Wayback Machine (AKA archive.org), lists Obama as of April 3, 2007, in these terms:
BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.
As of April 21, 2007, he was described thusly:
BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Hawaii to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.
The oldest capture of the site that archive.org has only goes back to November 3, 2006, but it contains the “born in Kenya” narrative.
Does this mean Obama was born in Kenya? No. I’m pretty sure he was born in Hawaii. But I’m also pretty sure he was trying to use the myth of a Kenyan birth for political purposes right up until it was detrimental. Remember, interesting things were afoot at the time:
On February 10, 2007, Barack Obama, then junior United States Senator from Illinois, announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Springfield, Illinois.
Getting his public record cleaned up to dump references to being born in Kenya down the memory hole would have been in full swing in April.