Barack Obama pictured with his mother, step-father and younger sister in undated photo.
Barack Obama, his Senate staff and his campaign learned just tonight that his passport records had been accessed improperly not once, not twice, but three times over the last three months, on January 9th, February 21st and March 14th, by three different people who have been identified only as State Department contractors. The story broke tonight on MSNBC just before 8 p.m., and it's a bombshell.
[Just as a point of reference, the Iowa caucuses took place January 3rd, and marked Obama's emergence as the man who could beat Hillary, "Super Duper Tuesday" in which Barack fought Mrs. Clinton to a draw, was February 5th, the "Potomac Primary" was February 12th, the Ohio-Texas-Rhode Island-Vermont primary was March 4 and Barack won Mississippi on March 11th.]
The State Department is claiming that the snoopers were simply nosy employees, two of whom were fired, one suspended, and none of whom were brought up on criminal charges, including charges of violating the Privacy Act, which would require that they shared information they learned in Barack's passport records with others. The State Department claims that didn't happen, and that far from being an act of political dirty tricks, the snooping was merely a case of "imprudent curiosity" exhibited three times, by three different people, in three months. How they determined that no one shared whatever they knew we'll never know. Nor will we know what was done about the breaches (and why no one bothered to tell Obama until tonight) by the State Department's Office of Inspector General -- that post being vacant at the moment, as Keith Olbermann reported tonight (William Todd is the deputy in charge.)
Meanwhile, the undersecretary of state who oversees the office in question had a slightly different version:
Undersecretary of State Patrick F. Kennedy, in a hastily arranged conference call with reporters, said he asked the State Department inspector general to open an inquiry into the matter and acknowledged that it might need to be expanded.
He also said he would brief Obama, who is locked in a tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, today on the matter.
Kennedy said that he did not know yet whether any laws were broken or whether the employees shared the information with others. He said that the incidents, which occurred at three offices, on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14, should have been "passed up the line" much sooner and that officials were seeking to determine why they had not been disclosed earlier.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was briefed yesterday afternoon, requested a "full investigation," department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
So we don't know if it was just "imprudent curiosity" after all? But we do know that Condi is either willfully ignorant, woefully uninformed, or a liar.
Now for the irony part ... there's always an irony part...
The employees were each caught because of a computer-monitoring system that is triggered when the passport account of a "high-profile person" is accessed, department spokesman Tom Casey said. The system, which focuses on politicians and celebrities, was put in place in recent years, after the State Department was embroiled in a scandal involving the access of the passport records of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992.
That would be by the Bush I administration ... how deliciously coincidental!
In that case, a special prosecutor determined that officials at senior levels were knowledgeable about the passport breaches. That investigation cost $2.2 million, but no one was charged.
Said prosecutor being the vile Joe DiGenova.
The department declined to release the names of the employees or the two companies for which they worked.
Kennedy said the contract employees -- who helped process some of the 18 million passport applications the department handles every year -- had access to personal records as part of their jobs in data entry, customer service and other administrative tasks. He said that contract employees undergo "public integrity checks," such as a review of police records, but that the department does not examine political affiliation. "That would be inappropriate," he said.
Yes. ... inappropriate ... like when Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and their little poorly educated henchmen "vetted" U.S. attorneys for political usefulness...
What is clear, according to all of the reporters (Howard Fineman, Andre Mitchell and Davod Shuster in particular) is that it strains credulity to think that violations of this import, given the high profile of the victim, were not reported up the chain of command, to Secretary of State Rice, or to the president himself. If true, it raises questions about Condi's competence (again ... remember that Augusst 6, 2001 PDB that didn't raise her hackles?) or it begs the question, who in the White House may have wanted this to happen, the better to help find something that could help John McCain to gain the White House in November, and thus keep the money ... I mean the war going.
So what could the snoopers be looking for ... theoretically? Well, Barack Obama has had a passport probably since he was two years old, and his mother took him to live in Indonesia when he was 7. He is a well-traveled man, and you can imagine the Little Green Footballer type searching for oppo research material that could be useful to a Karl Rove type... just sayin'...
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
