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Passport Files Of All Three Candidates Breached
by The Associated Press
Posted: March 21, 2008 - 1:30 pm ET
(Washington) The passport files of the three
presidential candidates - Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John
McCain - have been breached, the State Department said Friday.
State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack said the breaches of McCain and Clinton's passport
files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were
made aware of the privacy violation regarding Obama's records
and a separate search was conducted.
McCormack said the individual
who accessed Obama's files also reviewed McCain's file earlier
this year. This contract employee has been reprimanded, but
not fired. The individual no longer has access to passport
records, he said.
"We are reviewing our
options with respect to that person and his employment
status," McCormack said.
In Clinton's case, an
individual last summer accessed her file as part of a training
session involving another State Department worker. McCormack
said the one-time violation was immediately recognized and the
person was admonished.
The incidents raise the
question of whether the information was accessed for political
purposes.
Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice spoke with Obama and Clinton on Friday and expressed her
regrets. She planned to speak with McCain as well. State
Department officials headed to Capitol Hill to brief the
staffs of all three candidates.
"The secretary has made it
clear . . . to them that this is top priority," McCormack
said. "There's nothing else that's more important than
make sure go through and do this investigation."
The State Department said the
Justice Department would be monitoring the probe in case it
needs to get involved. The Justice Department declined to
comment on its role.
McCormack declined to name the
companies that employed the contractors, despite demands by a
senior House Democrat that such information is in the public
interest.
"At this point, we just
started an investigation," he said. "We want to err
on the side of caution."
Sen. McCain, who was in Paris
on Friday, said any breach of passport privacy deserves an
apology and a full investigation.
"The United States of
America values everyone's privacy and corrective action should
be taken," McCain said.
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 critics to dig deeper into the
candidates' private lives. While the file includes date and
place of birth, address at time of application and the
countries the person has traveled to, the most important
detail would be their Social Security number, which can be
used to pull credit reports and other personal information.
The violations were detected
because electronic files of high-profile people are flagged.
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