I sure do. It was covered quite extensively in the days after it happened, last March.
ABC reported it thus:
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.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice made it clear to the agency’s inspector general that an investigation “is top priority.”
The breaches occurred on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14, and were detected by internal State Department computer checks, McCormack said. The department’s top management officer, Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy, said certain records, including those of high-profile people, are “flagged” with a computer tag that tips off supervisors when someone tries to view the records without a proper reason.
The State Department would not release the names of those who were fired and disciplined, or the names of the two companies they worked for. The department’s inspector general is investigating.
“We believe this was out of imprudent curiosity, but we are taking steps to reassure ourselves that that is, in fact, the case,” McCormack said.
It was also suggested by some at the time, that Condoleeza Rice was behind the spying of Barack Obama.
But what was the real motive for the breach?
Ken Timmerman connects some dots in this report at Newsmax:
Obama’s top terrorism and intelligence adviser, John O. Brennan, heads a firm that was cited in March for breaching sensitive files in the State Department’s passport office, according to a State Department Inspector General’s report released this past July.
The security breach, first reported by the Washington Times and later confirmed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, involved a contract employee of Brennan’s firm, The Analysis Corp., which has earned millions of dollars providing intelligence-related consulting services to federal agencies and private companies.
During a State Department briefing on March 21, 2008, McCormack confirmed that the contractor had accessed the passport files of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain, and that the inspector general had launched an investigation.
Sources who tracked the investigation tell Newsmax that the main target of the breach was the Obama passport file, and that the contractor accessed the file in order to “cauterize” the records of potentially embarrassing information.
“Cauterize”? What does that mean exactly?
“They looked at the McCain and Clinton files as well to create confusion,” one knowledgeable source told Newsmax. “But this was basically an attempt to cauterize the Obama file.”
At the time of the breach, Brennan was working as an unpaid adviser to the Obama campaign.
What kind of “potentionally embarrassing information?”:
The passport files include “personally identifiable information such as the applicant’s name, gender, social security number, date and place of birth, and passport number,” according to the inspector general report.
The files may contain additional information including “original copies of the associated documents,” the report added. Such documents include birth certificates, naturalization certificates, or oaths of allegiance for U.S.-born persons who adopted the citizenship of a foreign country as minors.
Just to be clear….At the time of the breach, Brennan, who heads the firm that was cited for the breach, was working as an unpaid adviser to the Obama campaign.
Timmerman continues:
“Fight the Smears” attempted to debunk rumors that Obama was not a U.S. citizen by producing a 2007 computer-generated copy of his certification of live birth.
“The truth is, Barack Obama was born in the state of Hawaii in 1961, a native citizen of the United States of America,” the Web site states.
However, “native citizen” is a colloquialism, not a legal term. It is not the same as “natural-born citizen,” the requirement to be president set out in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution.
Chief Justice John Roberts has scheduled a Supreme Court conference on Jan. 23 on Lightfoot v. Bowen, one of several cases alleging that Obama is not a “natural born” citizen because of his birthright British citizenship.
Shortly after the election, Brennan was rumored to be Obama’s pick for CIA director, but Senators would surely have questioned him about this, as well this article he wrote in an foreign policy magazine over the summer in which he advocated direct dialogue with Tehran, and assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebonan’s political system:
After nearly three decades of antagonistic rhetoric and diplomatic estrangement between the United States and Iran, the next president has the opportunity to set a new course for relations between the two countries. When the next president takes up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Iranian officials will be listening. The president must implement a policy of engagement that encourages moderates in Iran without implying tolerance for Tehran’s historic support of terrorist activities. This strategy will require patience and sensitivity to the complex political realities inside Iran. To successfully chart a new course for U.S.-Iranian relations, the next president must (1) tone down rhetoric; (2) establish a direct dialogue with Tehran, including comprehensive, private discussions and deployment of a special envoy; (3) encourage greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system; and (4) offer carrots in addition to sticks, including consideration of legitimate Iranian concerns on regional security issues.
Anyway, as always…move along…nothing to see here.
