“The common contact between a hapless thief and a professional team of operatives might have been who in State Department they both got to that allowed it and knew it was going on and got paid to let it happen”
Key words there: “might have been”. In other words, it’s pure, baseless speculation. There is no evidence for any such connection.
In fact, simple logic tells us that it’s very unlikely that such a connection existed. The Brennan employees had access to the passport database themselves, because his company had a contract with the State Dept to process passport applications. Harris, on the other hand, alleged that he had an accomplice in the State Department itself. Since Brennan’s employees had direct access to the passport records themselves, they wouldn’t have had any need to seek out Harris’ alleged accomplice. We have no reason to think they would have even known about Harris’ accomplice in the first place. So, the only reason to assume a connection between them, is if you WANT to find a connection, which is not a good reason at all, if you want to find out the truth of a matter.
Plenty of stories published when it happened in 2008
The head of State Department passport section Ann Barret was named in the investigation of unauthorized access and was transferred
Maybe Quarles “unauthorized access” during same time period was a mere.... co inky dink. However he had been named as a cooperating witness in federal investigation of unauthorized passport data access ..... his death may or may not have been a mere co inky dink. It is still unsolved