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UPDATED: Breaking Obama passport scandal

Drudge says that Obama's passport was breached, and the State Dept. is investigating. Two people fired. Didn't this happen with (Bill) Clinton?

    by Will Bunch | Columnist
    Published 

Drudge says that Obama's passport was breached, and the State Dept. is investigating. Two people fired.

Didn't this happen with (Bill) Clinton?

UPDATE: What goes around comes around -- from Nov. 1992:

The official, Steven M. Moheban, was a top aide to Elizabeth M. Tamposi, the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs who was dismissed last week by President Bush for her role in the search of files on Mr. Clinton, his mother, Virginia Kelley, and Ross Perot, the independent Presidential candidate.

So I wonder if Obama's trip to Manchuria would be in there?

UPDATE II: Apparently the story is from the Washington Times, so...Drudge, Washington Times, what's the pro-conservative spin on this?

UPDATE III: NBC says it's confirmed the story, so it must be true.

Here's a link:

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.
"A monitoring system was tripped when an employee accessed the records of a high-profile individual," a department official told NBC News. "When the monitoring system is tripped, we immediately seek an explanation for the records access. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the supervisor is notified."

As far as the election goes, this will definitely hurt Bush's chances of winning a third term.

UPDATE IV: OK, the tin foil hats are out :-) ...ready?

1) The office that handles passports, consular affairs, is indeed run by a woman named Maura Harty, who's a....wait for it -- Clinton administration holdover. Remember, no one has implicated her or any State Department employees -- the two people who were fired were contract workers.

2) The greatest interest in Obama's overseas travel has been expressed by Clinton supporters. One area of interest -- and I really don't understand what exactly they were getting at -- is Obama's European travels, or non-travels.