Barack Obama’s campaign tonight is demanding a full investigation of reports that his passport files at the State Department were viewed without authorization.
“This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an Administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes. This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.
NBC News is reporting that several low-level State Department employees have been fired over the January incident, and the department is conducting an internal investigation.
The three people who had access to Obama’s passport records were contract employees of the department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, NBC News has learned. The unauthorized activity concerning Obama’s passport information occurred in January.
“A monitoring system was tripped when an employee accessed the records of a high-profile individual,” a department official told NBC News. “When the monitoring system is tripped, we immediately seek an explanation for the records access. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the supervisor is notified.”
NBC is also reporting that the very act of this access is a privacy act violation, and could maybe get some kind of criminal referral to the FBI. Currently, there is none.
This happened back in 1992, under George HW Bush, against Bill Clinton.
A State Department official who carried out the two-day search of passport files for information about Gov. Bill Clinton said today that he had resigned, just 48 hours before Federal investigators are expected to issue a report criticizing the search.
The official, Steven M. Moheban, was a top aide to Elizabeth M. Tamposi, the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs who was dismissed last week by President Bush for her role in the search of files on Mr. Clinton, his mother, Virginia Kelley, and Ross Perot, the independent Presidential candidate.
AP:
McCormack said the department itself detected the breaches, which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14.
Three intrusions.
MORE: Condoleeza Rice knew about this yesterday, but the Obama campaign only heard about it today, and not from the Secretary but a functionary.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was notified of the security breach yesterday, and responded by saying security measures used to monitor records of high-profile Americans worked properly in detecting the breaches.
MORE: NBC reports that the State Department Inspector General, who would be the lead investigator, just learned of this today. The first intusion of Sen. Obama’s passport records was over 2 months ago!
Contract employees, huh? Hm. Privatization is clearly the way to go for everything.
A few more details about the Obama passport breach. According to a new piece out in the Post from Glenn Kessler, the breaches occurred Jan. 9th, Feb. 21st and March 14th.
That would be the day after the New Hampshire primary, the day of the Democratic debate in Texas and the day the Wright story really hit.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/184677.php
TPM Josh Marshall….
GOP shenanigans again…color me shocked
“GOP shenanigans again…color me shocked”
The Democrats better investigate this fully, including finding out if anyone from the GOP had contact with these three contract workers.
I’m waiting for the media to spin this as bad news for Obama. Either:
* They’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion to save a “failing” campaign (or the Obama campaign did this on purpose to save their chances)
* This is a desperate attempt to smear the Republicans (who can do no wrong)
* “What exactly is Obama trying to hide? If he didn’t do anything wrong, why is the campaign so up in arms about the issue?
Any day now…watch!
durablend, sadly, you don’t need to look for the media to find that kind of spin. Take a trip through the blog comments on mydd or taylormarsh.com. I am starting to wonder whether there is even a Democratic coalition.
It makes you wonder if his phones are tapped.
Why do you assume it’s the GOP? Isn’t there someone else in this race with a history with personnel files?
They’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion to save a “failing” campaign
Failing? 165 delegate lead is hardly failing.
Heckuva job, Condi.
Farris may be right this time. I wouldn’t put it past them.
Duros,
I’m just going with the likely media spin possibilities.
Gotcha. My comment was more of response to said spin.
Per MSNBC, Hillary and McCain’s passports were also snooped into.
Oh, good. It’s nice to know that even the infractions against privacy rights are getting equal-time opportunity.
The contract employee thing is important.
They are not vetted as professional civil servants are, they are not covered by the regulations preventing electioneering, and there is a lot less legal liability associated with misdeeds.
If I wanted a political operative to dig dirt from a governmnet offiec, I would use a contractor.
See (http://40yrs.blogspot.com/2008/03/obama-passport-recordgate.html)
So given that there is a history of this kind of thing, I’d like to know why just anybody in State (contractor or regular employee) can access these records and why they are relying on an after-the-fact “tripwire” to catch them. Wouldn’t it make more sense to require authorization before you can look at the records of presidential candidates? Seems to me like a system that’s designed for abuse.
“Why do you assume it’s the GOP? Isn’t there someone else in this race with a history with personnel files?”
And what control does she have over who is hired in this department? Go on, tell us what control she has. Or are you talking out of your ass, again?