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State Dept. Contractors Peek at Obama File

Posted on: Friday, 21 March 2008, 06:00 CDT

By William M. Welch

The State Department said Thursday that it fired two people and disciplined a third for inappropriately looking at the passport file of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said there were three instances in which contract employees at the State Department looked at the private passport file of the Illinois Democrat, a file that is by law generally private.

"We believe this was out of imprudent curiosity, so we are taking steps to reassure ourselves that that is, in fact, the case," McCormack said.

He said the episodes occurred on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14. He said the department itself detected the activity.

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton called the incident "outrageous."

"This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation," Burton said, "and we demand to know who looked at Sen. Obama's passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach."

McCormack said it was not immediately clear what the employees were looking for. He said he did not know the names of the companies each worked for.

The State Department has informed Obama's Senate office about the employees' breach and scheduled a briefing for the senator's staff today, McCormack said.

The disclosure recalled an episode late in the 1992 presidential campaign when an assistant secretary of State was fired for a search of Bill Clinton's passport files.

After an investigation, State Department Inspector General Sherman Funk said that breach was made in an attempt to "influence the outcome of a presidential election," but there was no evidence that the incident had been orchestrated by the White House.

Contributing: Jill Lawrence (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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