Passport Gate: US State Department Employee Looks For Real Clinton, McCain And Obama
PASSPORT files on the three leading US presidential candidates have been spied on.
A US state department employee looked at the files of Republican candidate John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.
Says US State department spokesman Sean McCormack: “In the case of Senator McCain, we detected earlier this year… one of the same people who accessed Senator Obama’s passport file also accessed Senator McCain’s passport file.”
McCormack said a trainee accessed Hillary Clinton’s file last year.
It’s awfully fair that all three candidates have been snooped on. Perhaps the game is to see who takes the most offence?
And what price one of the candidates being an impostor? Old Mr Anorak thinks John McCain resembles a young Bobby Chartlon, Barack Obama looks like the Messiah and Hillary Clinton looks like the kind of woman who plays a lot of golf because she likes the shoes.
Howard Berman, the Democratic chairman of the foreign affairs panel, compared the passport spying flap to a similar 1992 breach committed against then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton.
“[I]t is worth noting that that earlier situation also was characterised as isolated and non-political when the news initially emerged,” Berman said. But a subsequent inquiry found that government employees were hunting for information that would help embarrass Clinton during his campaign.
Joseph DeGenova, a lawyer involved in the 1992 Clinton investigation, said of the Obama breaches: ‘It’s really remarkable that something like this could have gone unreported. What’s disturbing about it is there are three separate breaches. It strains the imagination that somehow they were not linked.”
Two State Department employees were fired and a third has been disciplined for improperly accessing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s passport file, the State Department announced Thursday night.
Senior Department officials said they learned of the incidents only when a reporter made an inquiry Thursday afternoon. They said an initial investigation indicated the employees – all of whom worked on contract – were motivated by “imprudent curiosity.”
More:
Right Voices » Blog Archive » Poor Obama: All 3 Candidates Passport Info Accessed
State Department Passport Party » The American Mind
The Thomas Chronicles » State Department: Peek-a-boo!
Hot Air » Blog Archive » Passportgate: A bipartisan mess
Departure Gate…
Posted: 21st, March 2008 | In: Politicians Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
