World-famous neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson, a rising star among Republicans, says President Obama should be more open with his records, including documentation that could show he applied for financial aid as a foreign student.

Carson saw his popularity surge after a 2013 National Prayer Breakfast keynote, with Obama sitting just a few feet away, in which he delivered a 27-minute stinging rebuke of the administration, citing "moral decay and fiscal irresponsibility."

After the speech, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial that practically begged Carson to run for president.

Now he's speaking out on the issue of Obama's eligibility.

In an interview on Alan Colmes' Fox News radio show, the left-leaning Colmes suggested that it was racism against a black president that caused people to doubt his origins.

Bunk, asserted Carson.

"Has there been anybody else who has had a shroud of secrecy around their records like this?" Carson asked.

He told Colmes he didn't personally challenge Obama's claim of being born in Hawaii, but he insisted Obama needs to be more transparent.

Colmes retorted: "I never heard of a president before questioned about his birth certificate, being treated as if he was a foreign, 'not one of us,' 'he's a secret Muslim.'

"Doesn't that arise out of some sort of soft bigotry?"

Carson replied that the "best way to put that to rest is expose everything, including your academic records."

"Let us know, you know, where did you apply – when you applied to Columbia, from where were you applying?"

Colmes insisted Obama has "released both versions of a birth certificate, and that wasn't even enough for those who kept criticizing him for not releasing the information."

"They said, 'that's not real.' They continue to say it wasn't real," said Colmes.

Carson asked: "Don't you think it is reasonable for people who are seeking public office, or are in public office, to allow people to see what they're getting, and to expose their past records?"

"What you said is fair," Colmes replied. "But you just said a few moments ago, would you have the same reaction were it a white person versus a black person; no white president has ever been asked to produce a birth certificate."

Carson again asked: "But has there been anybody else who has had a shroud of secrecy around their records like this?"

The issue of Obama's birth and other records centers on the Constitution's requirement that a U.S. president be a "natural-born citizen." Some interpret that to mean a citizen born on U.S. soil; others say it is someone born on U.S. soil to two Americans or simply someone born to two Americans. Obama originally declined to release any documentation about his birth, and later, when he released computer-generated documents, a multitude of experts and a formal investigation by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's volunteer posse have concluded the documents are fraudulent.

WND reported this week billionaire Donald Trump said Obama refused to respond to his offer of a $50 million donation to a favorite charity if he would release the records.

Does anyone really know where Obama is from? Find out the startling truth from New York Times bestselling author Jerome Corsi.

In the radio interview, Carson said he has questions "about where [Obama] applied from, when he applied to Columbia," but he accepts Obama's claim to have been born in Hawaii.

Colmes argued a white president has never had to go through the kind of scrutiny brought by "the birther movement, questioning whether the president was even born here, saying he's really a Kenyan, he's really an African, and he's not even a Christian, he's really a Muslim."

Carson replied: "I don't think that it is racially motivated. I do think that people want to know, because, you know, be objective, you have somebody whose name is Barack Hussein Obama."

Carson emphasized there "is secrecy about some of his records, there's something that's been written in the past which I'm sure you're familiar with that says he was born somewhere else."

'Born in Kenya'

WND reported in 2012 numerous references to Obama being born in Kenya, including by his own publicist.

Obama's then-literary agency billed him as "born in Kenya" starting in 1991 in connection with a book Obama never wrote. WND reported that similar references came as recently as seven years ago to promote his highly touted book "Dreams from My Father."

As WND reported at the time, Breitbart News found a brochure from two decades ago in which literary agency Acton & Dystel promoted Obama as the author of the never-produced "Journeys in Black and White," declaring Obama was "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."

Twelve years later, however, the Dystel of Acton & Dystel was busy promoting Obama's new book, "Dreams from My Father," and still touting the author as "born in Kenya."

Through the Internet archive Wayback Machine, WND found an August 2003 listing of Dystel & Goderich's author bios, including the following: "Barack Obama was the first black 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 is 'Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance."

Even if the original 1991 brochure's listing of Kenya as Obama's birthplace was in error, as the agency has since claimed, it apparently was an error Obama allowed his publicist to persist in for over a decade, right until after he was running for president.

In April 2007, two months after Obama had launched his presidential bid, Dystel was still touting the then-Democratic senator from Illinois as "born in Kenya."

Another trip through the Internet's Wayback Machine shows Dystel & Goderich describing Obama this way: "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."

Only a few weeks later, the Internet archive reveals, the publicist had changed Obama's birthplace to Hawaii.

The text of Obama's biography in the brochure Breitbart reported, created by Acton & Dystel in 1991, states: "Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation. He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago's South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White."

Breitbart News published a disclaimer at the beginning of its report stating its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, was never a "Birther," and Breitbart News "has never advocated the narrative of 'Birtherism.'" Breitbart himself once characterized Obama's eligibility as "not a winning issue."

Yet the biographies are just a few of numerous published reports – as well as personal claims – that Obama was born abroad, including the testimony of a Chicago-area postal worker who claims he was told by the parents of Bill Ayers that Obama was a foreigner.

Allen Hulton, a retired Chicago-area mailman, has come forward with his first-person recollection of a clean-cut young man he identified as Obama who approached him and told him he was going to be president.

Hulton delivered mail to Tom and Mary Ayers in a Chicago suburb in the late 1980s and early 1990s and claims to have met Obama in front of the Ayers home.

He has given a sworn affidavit to investigators commissioned by Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio to determine whether Obama is eligible for Arizona's 2012 election ballot. Hulton has recorded about three hours of video interviews with WND.

Hulton says that in conversations with Mary Ayers while on his route he learned of the couple's enthusiasm and support for a black foreign student. One bright, warm Chicagoland day, he recounts, he met the student who fit Mary Ayers' description in front of the Ayers home in Glen Ellyn, Ill. That young man, Hulton is convinced, was Barack Obama.

Hulton delivered mail to the Ayers, who are both deceased, when he was stationed at the post office in Glen Ellyn, an upper-middle class suburb 25 miles west of downtown Chicago, from late 1986 to 1997. He was a Postal Service employee from March 28, 1962, through March 30, 2001.

As WND reported, Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers – whom he dismissed in a 2008 debate as "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood" – plagued him in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Young Obama

Over a period of years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hulton estimates he spoke with Mary Ayers about 18 to 20 times and once to Tom Ayers, who died in 2007. Mary Ayers died in 2000.

"Sometimes Mary would be out when I delivered the mail, and we would exchange a few words on occasion," he says, recalling that she liked to talk about her family.

"One day, Mary came to the door when I came up to the house with the mail," he remembers. "After a greeting, she started enthusiastically talking to me about this young black student they were helping out, and she referred to him as a foreign student."

Hulton assumed that by "helping" the student, Mary Ayers meant she and her husband were financially supporting the black foreign-exchange student with his education.

See excerpts of Jerome Corsi's interviews with Allen Hulton:

He says that Mary Ayers told him the student's name, but that it was a "strange name" that he could not remember, even though at the time it sounded African to him.

"I was taken aback by how enthusiastic she was about him," Hulton says. "And I believe she said he was from either Kenya or Indonesia, and I favor Indonesia in my recollection."

WND has reported that when Obama was in Indonesia with his Indonesian stepfather and his mother from ages 6 to 10, he was registered in school as an Indonesian citizen and a Muslim. He went by the name Barry Soetoro, adopting the surname of his Indonesian stepfather. His mother's passport listed him with the name Soebarkah.

There also was an internal bulletin from the Kenyan National Security Intelligence Service, or NSIS, that states that the Kenyan government in 2009 commissioned a cultural museum in the Obama home village of Kogelo to honor the "birthplace of President Barack Obama" and rededicate the tomb of his father, Barack Obama Sr.

The 2009 NSIS bulletin report said:

The ministry of national heritage this month hosted a cultural festival in Kogelo and commissioned a cultural museum on a plot donated by a member of the Kogelo community. The cultural festival was attended by the minister for national heritage, William ole Ntimama and U.S. ambassador, Michael Ranneberger. This was to honour the birthplace of President Obama and re-dedicate the tomb of Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., the president's late father. But the project had been delayed because of ownership wrangles surrounding the plot.

According to an article in the Kenyan Daily Nation newspaper July 5, 2010, the Kenyan government's plan to build a 112 million Kenyan Schilling ($1.3 million) cultural center at Kogelo was locked in a dispute over who should donate land to the government for the project.

The Daily Nation, which published an artist's sketch of the proposed Kogelo cultural center, referred to it as Obama's "ancestral home."

The NSIS memo suggests the Kenyan intelligence agency kept a close watch on the Obama family in Africa.

It noted the Kenyan government provided assistance to Obama's step-grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, in the form of additional security and a government stipend of 50,000 Kenyan Schillings ($575) per month.

A Kenyan blog, "Jaluo," reported that Grandmother Sarah caused family conflict when she visited Moammar Gadhafi in Libya "to the surprise and chagrins of the White House in Washington, D.C.," and "without a proper delegation and approval of the entire family."

The NSIS bulletin echoed the concern that Sarah Obama was visiting Muslim countries on her own initiative, commenting, "Mama Sarah had requested government assistance to travel to Mecca, Saudi Arabia for Hajj pilgrimage," but "the Saudi Arabia government through its Nairobi embassy has come to her aid" by announcing "she will be a state guest in Saudi Arabia during her time there."

WND also reported Kenyan MP James Orengo at one point asked the nation's parliament, "How could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the president of America?"

On the day after Obama's election, MP Boni Khalwale asked fellow members, "Could we allow … a Motion for Adjournment so that we could also continue the celebrations of having a Kenyan ruling the USA?"

In addition, a number of media sources – including National Public Radio – reported Obama's birthplace as Kenya prior to his election as president.

Another reference was made in 2008 in the Nigerian Observer.

Under a Washington dateline, Solomon Asowata wrote, "Americans will today go to the polls to elect their next president with Democratic Party candidate, Senator Barack Obama largely favoured to win. The Kenyan-born Senator will, however, face a stiff competition from his Republican counterpart."

An African Travel Magazine once reported, "As Kenyan born U.S. Senator Barack Obama jets into Kenya today as part of his African tour, concerns have once again been raised on the security preparations for other visitors and residents."

An article in the Sunday Standard in Kenya begins, "Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack (sic) Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations."

The article is credited to the wire service Associated Press. However, it could not be found either in the AP archives online or the African newspaper's website.

Also, an African news site and an MSNBC broadcaster referred to President Obama's birthplace as being outside of the United States.

A report by Modern Ghana posted in advance of the president's visit stated his birthplace was on the continent of Africa.

"For Ghana, Obama's visit will be a celebration of another milestone in African history as it hosts the first-ever African-American President on this presidential visit to the continent of his birth," the report said.

A video shows Michelle Obama telling of her husband visiting "his home country in Kenya":

With additional reporting by Drew Zahn and Jerome Corsi.