Condoleezza Rice Apologizes to Barack Obama for Passport File Breach

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has personally apologized to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama after it was revealed unauthorized State Department employees had accessed his passport file at least three times since the beginning of the year.

An investigation has been launched into the passport breach and two contract employees have already been fired and a third disciplined. The breach had been called an “imprudent curiosity” by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

Obama was notified of the breach on Thursday and by that evening his spokesman Bill Burton issued a statement, saying: “This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an Administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes.

“This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach.”

On Friday morning Rice told reporters that she had spoken personally with Obama and when asked what she said the Secretary of State said, ““I said I was sorry. I told him myself that I would be very disturbed if someone went into my passport file, I said I would stay on top of it and get to the bottom of it.”

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