State Dept. Contractors Look at Obama’s Passport? But Why? UPDATE: McCain, Clinton Passport Probed Too

I was listening to the radio last night as I sat at my desk, and Rusty Humphries started talking about the latest in a series of scandals involving Barack Obama. Granted, he was the “victim” in this one, as far as we know now.

Here’s what happened as we know it. ABC News.go.com says:

Embarrassed officials of the State Department held a hasty late-night conference call Thursday to acknowledge that two employees had been fired and a third disciplined for unauthorized breaches into the personal passport information of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

The breaches took place as long ago as January, though senior staffers at the department said they did not learn about them until Thursday.

USA Today.com adds:

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.

In typical liberal, knee-jerk reaction, the Obama campaign blames the Bush Administration:

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton issued a statement Thursday evening, saying, “This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes.”

The State Department isn’t really a stronghold of Bush supporters, Mr. Burton. As Rusty Humphries noted last night, it is just as possible that this is a Clinton job. Why? To see if Barack ever joined the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and his nut-job pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright is going to Lybia to see Muammar Qaddafi.

The official story is that these three were just a trio of Obamatons, looking into the history of their hero.

The breach seems like “imprudent curiosity” among the contract workers, said McCormack, adding that senior management at the State Department was not aware of the incidents until Thursday afternoon.

We’ll see. I’m not buying that these folks were just “fans” who were interested in losing their jobs over a little info on Barack. Reminds me of a few “egregious violations of privacy” in the Clinton White House.

UPDATE:

From ABC News:

An embarrassed State Department admitted today that the passport files of all three presidential candidates — Sens. John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — have been breached by its employees.

The bombshell announcement came within hours of the admission that Obama’s personal file was improperly accessed several times earlier this year and no one was notified of the breach.

In a rapid series of escalating admissions, State Department Secretary Condoleezza Rice called Obama to apologize. She then had to call Clinton to apologize as well. And by noon, the department held a news conference to concede that McCain’s personal file had also been improperly accessed.

Hat Tip: Darrell from Morning Coffee