Two contract employees of the State Department were fired and a third person was disciplined for inappropriately looking at Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's passport file.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the department itself detected the instances of "imprudent curiosity," which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14. He would not release the names of those who were fired and disciplined.
Hard to know just what to make of this at this point. But let's flag it and keep watching: two fired and now another disciplined for breaching Obama's passport file at the State Department.
Remember, something very similar happened to Bill Clinton in 1992 -- eventually brushed under the rug by an 'independent' counsel investigation by Joe DiGenova.
That would be the day after the New Hampshire primary, the day of the Democratic debate in Texas and the day the Wright story really hit.
So we have employees of a GOP controlled State Department accessing private files on the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination on dates that coincide with major events in the campaign. Given the propensity for the Bush White House to politicize almost any agency it's hard to give the benefit of the doubt in instances like this.
2 comments:
What type of information is in a person's Passport file anyway? Seems like a non-issue to me, but we shall see.
I'll freely admit that at this point I automatically default to worst-case scenario-until-proven-otherwise mode with the Bush crew. It very well may be nothing. I'm interested to see what's in a U.S. Senator's passport file.
Post a Comment