Last night, 
I got shivers down the spine when the first snippets of this story aired on the cable nets:
Two contract-employees of the U.S. Dept. of State were fired and a third was ”reprimanded” for accessing Sen. Obama’s passport file. Supposedly, these instances were caught by a computer program that logs all queries to the passport files of high-profile celebrities and politicians.
But most troubling was the disclosure that the first of these file-peeks occurred on Jan. 9, 2008, the last on March 14, 2008. And yet Sen. Obama, his family, and his presidential campaign weren’t notified of the security-lapse until March 20, 2008…YESTERDAY.
Such news sets one’s mind ablaze with rapid-fire questions like these:
Why did it take the State Dept. 71 days to notify Sen. Obama of the security breaches?Where is the FBI? Where is the criminal investigation? What reason does the acting solicitor-general for State have, to be so sure that no Federal laws were broken? Why were the first two contract-employees fired, but the third reprimanded?
Who are these contract employees? What do they know? Who have they associated with? Are they connected directly or indirectly with another presidential campaign or special-interest group?
Which supervisors in the chain of command were notified of these lapses? If the first lapse was detected, then the second, why then wasn’t Sen. Obama’s file blocked from further view?
What did Condi Rice know, and when did she know it? Either way, this is a HUGE problem: if she didn’t know then there is a gaping security hole in the department. If she did know, who - if anyone - did she tell?And when did Pres. Bush and Vice-Pres. Cheney learn of all this?
Supposed safeguards were put in place after the 1992 election year, when the passport files of presidential candidate Gov. Bill Clinton had been breached. It has been suggested that inquiring minds wanted to determine if Oxford Univ. student Bill Clinton had travelled to Moscow.
Someone or several wanted to paint Bill a commie.
It is widely known that Sen. Obama spent a portion of his childhood in Indonesia. Were these contract-employees just curious, or, were any of them trolling for a Moscow-like bombshell to use against the Senator? And to that end, did any of them have the capability of tampering with the file (to add travel that never happened, remove travel that did happen, or apply other falsified data)?
If three contract-employees could breach the security of a presidential candidate’s passport file, what could three contract-employees be able to do to some Regular Schmoe’s passport file?
So much for Homeland Security!
And, just like in Watergate, I say FOLLOW THE MONEY.
UPDATE (by Chris): Secy. Rice needs to get a handle on things. Sens. Clinton & McCain have been victimized as well. (RK)
Filed under: National Politics
Later reporting has it that all three candidates information was spied upon, not just Obama’s.
Love the graphics Dan! Thanks for making it entertaining as well as informative!
Blue eye courtesy of the late, great Marty Feldman a.k.a. EYE-gor from “Young Frankenstein”.
Typical of the liberal press to forget to mention the Republican candidate’s files were also accessed. Instead of simply being outraged out this flagrant abuse of powers against Americans in general, the whining is only about Obama’s files.