Obama Passport Breached: Two State Dept Officials Fired, Investigation Underway
WASHINGTON — State Department employees inappropriately examined the passport files of Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, a security breach that forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to apologize to Obama.
The episodes raised questions as to whether the actions by the Bush administration were politically motivated.
Rice said Friday she apologized to Obama for a security breach in which three State Department contractors reviewed his file on three occasions earlier this year. Two of the employees were fired and a third disciplined.
"I told him that I was sorry, and I told him that I myself would be very disturbed," Rice told reporters.
Separately, Clinton issued a statement saying Rice told her that her passport file was breached in 2007.
The State Department's inspector general is investigating the Obama passport breach, which occurred on three separate occasions _ Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and as recently as last week, on March 14. On Friday, the department announced that the Justice Department would be monitoring the probe in case it needs to get involved.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday that the State Department would make results of the investigation available to congressional oversight committees and to Obama's office.
Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama's presidential campaign, has called the incident "an outrageous breach of security and privacy."
Two of the employees were fired for the security breach and the third was disciplined but is still working, the department said Thursday. It would not release the names of those who were fired and disciplined or the names of the two companies for which they worked.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, asked Rice in a letter on Friday to release the names of the contracting companies involved, contending that such information is in the public interest.
Former Independent Counsel Joseph diGenova said the firings of the two contract employees will make the investigation more difficult because the inspector general can't compel them to talk.
"My guess is if he tries to talk to them now, in all likelihood they will take the Fifth," DiGenova said, referring to the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination.
DiGenova said he didn't think a basic investigation would take long, perhaps a week to 10 days and that someone should be held responsible.
"Is inconceivable to me that civil servants working in a department which was part of a scandal in 1992 on this very subject would not understand that it was a management necessity to inform superiors.
It is not clear whether the employees saw anything other than the basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age, Social Security number and place of birth, which is required when a person fills out a passport application.
Aside from the file, the information could allow Obama's critics to dig deeper into his private life. While the file includes his date and place of birth, address at time of application and the countries he's traveled to, the most important detail would be his Social Security number, which can be used to pull credit reports and other personal information.
"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," Burton said on Thursday.
McCormack said the breaches occurred were detected by internal State Department computer checks. The department's top management officer, Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy, said certain records, including those of high-profile people, are "flagged" with a computer tag that tips off supervisors when someone tries to view the records without a proper reason.
The firings and unspecified discipline of the third employee already had occurred when senior State Department officials learned of the breaches. Kennedy called that a failing. Rice only learned about the breaches Thursday.
"I will fully acknowledge this information should have been passed up the line," Kennedy told reporters in a conference call Thursday night. "It was dealt with at the office level."
In answer to a question, Kennedy said the department doesn't look into political affiliation in doing background checks on passport workers. "Now that this has arisen, this becomes a germane question, and that will be something for the appropriate investigation to look into," he said.
The department informed Obama's Senate office of the breach on Thursday. Kennedy said that at the office's request, he will provide a personal briefing for the senator's staff on Friday.
Obama was born in Hawaii and lived in Indonesia for several years as a child before returning to the United States. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has traveled to the Middle East; the former Soviet states with Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.; and Africa, where in 2006 he and his wife, Michelle, publicly took HIV tests in Kenya to encourage people there to do the same.
Obama's father was born in Kenya, and the senator still has relatives there.
The disclosure of inappropriate passport inquiries recalled an incident in 1992, when a Republican political appointee at the State Department was demoted over a search of presidential candidate Bill Clinton's passport records. At the time he was challenging President George H.W. Bush.
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DESMOND BUTLER | March 21, 2008 12:12 PM EST |
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