Breach Of Obamas Passport files leads to firing at State Department

Breach Of Obamas Passport files leads to firing at State Department

www.msnbc.msn.com

Two contract employees of the State Department were fired and a third person was disciplined for accessing passport records of Sen. Barack Obama "without a need to do so," State Department officials confirmed to NBC News.

The three people who had access to Obama's passport records were contract employees of the department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, NBC News has learned. The unauthorized activity concerning Obama's passport information occurred in January.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This Breaking news as MSNBC is reporting that 2 employees have been fired for breaching the records of Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. A third employee/contract is also under investigation:

This huge and could be a potential Watergate type conspiracy. Please post updated information as you find it.


www.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This seems too good to be true, for the Obama campaign.
This is just my opinion, but I am calling BS on this.

My gut tells me this is self-inflicted.
Contractors, paid by "someone" to access this information.
The value of the information, is probably much less than the value of
victim factor, that will be played up by B.O's Campaign..

Again, I could be wrong..but the key will not be WHO performed the break-in, but WHO paid for it.

Originally posted by spacedoubt
This seems too good to be true, for the Obama campaign.
This is just my opinion, but I am calling BS on this.

My gut tells me this is self-inflicted.
Contractors, paid by "someone" to access this information.
The value of the information, is probably much less than the value of
victim factor, that will be played up by B.O's Campaign..

Again, I could be wrong..but the key will not be WHO performed the break-in, but WHO paid for it.

Thats true spacedoubt.....the money-trail will give us a better idea of who this is linked to....it appears that his files have been access 3 times since January.

I was watching CNN when this news broke. Candy Crowley said that the same thing happened to Bill Clinton when he was running for his first term.

I just heard Campbell Brown say that this "breach" occurred in January or February. If that's true, then it happened just as he was hitting his electoral stride. I don't see any motivation for his campaign to have done it, at least not at that point. I admit that the timing is suspicious, though.

edit to add: Crowley also said that whoever did it to Bill Clinton had been a political appointee, not a lifetime State Dept person.

[edit on 20-3-2008 by HarlemHottie]

reply to post by HarlemHottie


It appears that the Inspector General of the State Dept. did not find out about this until today....WOW. Sounds like the information was pigeon-holed with-in the State Dept.

They also have not mentioned what companies that these contractor worked for, I am sure they know the Contracting companies...so why is that info being held up?

This sucks! Why do the CIA not get investigated for illegally spying on regular American citizens? Yet these guys got fired for taking a sneak peak at his passport?! I guess the law only works if your a senator or have connections to the US president. Otherwise your screwed!

Of course the breach is being dealt with and it really is a non-story. I think like someone else said that this is self inflicted.

Obama is done. His goose is cooked and he did it himself by not denouncing that kook pastor of his. I mean come on... Obama is more of a racist for hiding it than someone who is blatant about it...

Obama is bad for this country and its better we find out about it right now as opposed to later.

During a State Dept conference call just now, Dept. officials claimed that they found out about this through a reporter! WHAT!

So much for airtight Homeland Security.....The more we get on this the shadier it seems.

Spacedoubt when I tried to post here earlier there was a post that suggested Hillary's supporters were behind this.

When I tried to submit a post I was blocked and got an automated reply that a moderator had closed the thread.

Now I see your post replacing the post suggesting Hillary was behind it.

Are you abusing your privileges as a moderator to tamper with posts to promote your own political views ?

I think we members of ATS are entitled to an answer ?

Here's an interesting point made by the State department:

"There is no indication that there was any political motivation. It (appears to have been) prurient interest," said a State Department official who asked not to be identified. The official said two had been fired and the third disciplined.
www.reuters.com...

How do they know that this was not politically motivated....Senior officials just found out about this today!

They have yet to release the names of the contracting companies responsible for these employees. That information will tell us a lot more once it's released.

[edit on 20-3-2008 by realmatrix]

The word "breach" seems to be a regular occurance around Obama.

Like when Security "breached" themselves to stop screening for weapons at one of his rallies in Texas. Seems like someone is trying AWEFULLY hard to keep him out of the picture. Hmmmm

STARRING & FLAGGING...This is a story to keep an eye on IMHO!

[edit on 20-3-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

reply to post by sy.gunson



Sy, the issue is that 3 threads were open on this topic at the same time. What we do when this happens is typically to leave the first one open and close the others. This assists in keeping the conversation flowing because it would be extremely difficult for members to keep track of 3 threads about the same topic. Which do you post to? Which do you read? Etc.

Those other threads can be seen here and here. Both were closed, appropriately, and the reasons were posted there.

I assure you, this is standard procedure to keep things concise and easy to follow.

Thank you for understanding.

Apparently the primary person responsible for this was a former Ambassador to Paraguay under the Clinton Administration. This is just too much intrigue. Please, God let it be a Billary takedown!

STARS and FLAG...will be watching to see were this goes

I don't think this was self inflicted at all! Can you say Watergate...

off topic, HarlemHottie I like your supergirl picture.

Okay, I've had a chance now to search and read a couple of different articles on this one.

So lets anazlye this one see if we can find the motive

These are contractors both CNN and MSNBC are saying they are not in high level management postions. So the question is how do low level contractors gain access to this type of information. Think about it people, this is the State Department, its not like they could just walk in and pull open a filing cabinet. Were talking access codes for doors, computers, and knowing were to look. Lets also not forget that this was done on 3 seperate occasions by 3 seperate people...DO I SMELL FISH

Check out Huffington Post they have a pretty good article on this story with some new info not stated in other sites.

The dates of the breaches were January 9, February 21, and March 14 -- last Friday. Those correspond, as TPM's Josh Marshall noted, to the New Hampshire primary, the Democratic debate in Texas, and the day the Reverend Jeremiah Wright story became major political news.

MSNBC reported that the State Department official in charge of the Bureau Of Consular Affairs during the first two breaches of Obama's passport has a connection to the Clinton administration. "Mora Hardy was a consular affairs chief until the end of last month when she retired from foreign service work. Before her stint as the assistant secretary of state of consular affairs, Hardy was an ambassador to Paraguay under President Bill Clinton. She was also an executive assistant to Warren Christopher."

The Washington Times reports that the fired officials used their authorized network access to look up and read Obama’s passport application and other records.

[edit on 20-3-2008 by whoreallyknows]

Hillary must be getting desperate; she's the most likely person to have been behind this. This is a really dirty political move, most definitely not ethical. I, too, think this might be an interesting story that leads to something big.

I'm figuring an inside job myself. I liked Obama as a candidate till I saw who one of his supporters were. All three candidates are poor choices, and if you put them in a bag and shook it up, they'd all fall out together. As they say though.. Folow the money trail.

It's truly a choice of the lesser of three evils here..

[edit on 3/21/08 by LLoyd45]

What's the significance of Obama's passport files? Why would they(assuming the people ho accessed the files are working together) want to access those files on three separate occasions?