http://www.newsmax.com/KenTimmerman/brennan-passport-breach/2009/01/12/id/337482
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.
“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.
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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.
The Obama campaign acknowledged at its “Fight the Smears” Web site that Obama was a foreign national until the age of 18, by virtue of his father’s British then Kenyan citizenship.
“Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982,” the Web site stated.
“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.
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The State Department chalked up the passport file snooping discovered in March 2008 to “imprudent curiosity” by contract employees hired to help process passport applications.
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Following the breach, State Department managers met with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, whose committee has oversight over the Foreign Service and the passport office. Biden will be sworn in as Obama’s vice president on Jan. 20.
Hmmm.