Rice Apologizes to Obama Over Passport Record Breach
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tells reporters Friday she has apologized to Barack Obama for a breach of his passport files. (AP Photo)
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice personally apologized to Barack Obama following reports that Obama’s passport file was accessed three times this year by unauthorized State Department employees.
“I said I was sorry. I told him myself that I would be very disturbed if someone went into my passport file,” Rice told reporters Friday morning. “I said I would stay on top of it and get to the bottom of it,” she added.
The State Department has launched an internal investigation into the breach of Obama’s passport records, which prompted the department to fire two contract employees and discipline a third. The Justice Department also is aware of the probe.
Obama’s campaign called the news “outrageous” and demanded the department find out why the Illinois senator’s files were accessed and why it took so long to reveal the breach.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Thursday confirmed instances of what he called “imprudent curiosity” by the employees. McCormack said the breaches, which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14, were detected by internal State Department computer checks, which flag certain records of high-profile people when someone tries to access the records improperly.
But on a phone call with reporters, he said senior management only became aware of the breach Thursday. The firings and unspecified discipline of the third employee already had occurred when senior State Department officials learned of the incidents. He said the discovery “should have been passed up the line” to senior management earlier.
The department’s inspector general launched the investigation Thursday, McCormack said.
The Washington Times reports that the fired officials used their authorized network access to look up and read Obama’s passport application and other records.
Department Undersecretary Pat Kennedy told reporters the three employees were supposed to use their access for specific tasks, adding, “They violated that trust and they were caught in the monitoring system that we have.”
He said there’s an “ongoing review,” but he would not release any more details about what those employees did for the department, nor their identities. He said there’s no reason to believe the contractors disclosed what they saw in the passport records to anyone else, but that that is also under review.
U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House oversight committee, on Friday wrote a letter to Rice calling for the identities of the companies involved to be released.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton issued a stern statement Thursday night, saying: “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.”
McCormack said Rice, who was briefed on the matter Thursday afternoon, pressed for the investigation.
He said it was not immediately clear what the contract employees may have seen in the records or what they were looking for.
The department informed Obama’s Senate office of the breach, and a personal briefing for the Illinois senator’s staff was scheduled for Friday, McCormack said.
Similar breaches involving public officials have happened in the past.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, officials in the administration of President George H.W. Bush searched the State Department files of then-Democratic nominee Bill Clinton. An inspector general’s report called the search improper and said it was aimed at finding material that would be damaging to Clinton’s campaign.
After a three-year investigation costing $2.2 million, independent counsel Joseph diGenova concluded in a separate report that some of the actions investigated had been “stupid, dumb and partisan” but not criminal.
Click here to read the story in The Washington Times.
FOX News’ Nina Donaghy and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Is this Box still Open? Have you checked all Passports?
Well folks, there you have it all. His polls are coming down. North Carolina should go his way with the racist card he played there too. But now that he sees Hillary going to wallop him in Penn, he needs “some typical white votes” So …. Jeremiah can now be thrown under the buss too.
You want him living next door? I have no need for him; my pleasure, you can have him
Do you want him living in the White House?
Just Obama? Why…is he special or are they just afraid of the whining? His handlers are a bunch of elite babies.
Poor Obama!
The super Delegates aren’t going to elect Barack “Bad Judgement” Obama - especially since he played the RACE CARD instead of taking responsibility for taking his children to hear a racist, anti-American, ranting lunatic each Sunday while feeding us a lie about wanting to “unite and transcend race”. What a liar and a joke!
Just Watch - the Super Delegates will do what’s right !!!!!!
Hillary ‘08
I find it curious that the only mention of these invasions of privacy in this article involve republican administrations.These outraged democrats and the media seem to have forgotten the FBI files of leading republicans which were illegally in the hands of the Clinton administration.In my mind that particular abuse of authority is more properly compared to the Watergate burglary with the exception of the media interest in not scandalizing a democrat administration.