« Halleluja | Main | Speaking Up » Oh The Irony22 Mar 2008 10:32 pm Turns out the firm whose employees were sneaking peeks at Barack Obama's passports is run by Obama counterterrorism advisor John Brennan. UPDATE: Correct that, Brennan's firm employed only one of the three separate people who illicitly accessed Obama's files. Comments (19)
A UK Tabloid, no. The ever more desperate Clinton-based and McCain-based realities, though, are another matter. 
Matthew, you overstate this. ONE of the three people who breached files worked for a company that has a CEO who supports Obama. The other TWO work for a different company (whose CEO has given money to Hillary, FWIW) So not all of the employees, but just one of the three.
This is actually pretty imprecise: Obama's files were accessed by three different people working for two different companies on three different occasions (as far as I can tell). This one company employed only one of the three employees (the one who didn't get fired, the incident that happened sometime last week). It was a different company who employed the contractors who got fired for taking a peak at his stuff earlier this year.
This proves . . . something.
Sounds like you need to correct this pronto, Matt. As stated, it falsely claims that all three of the incidents are traced to Brennan's firm, when only one of the three incidents traces to him. And, no doubt, the White House put this out.
Went over this already, but lemme go through the timeline again: In the beginning, Maura Harty, a Clinton appointee (who was also career State Department) runs this particular operation. Mid last year: State Department employee during training looks up Hillary Clinton -- instantly detected, Clinton instantly notified, minor disciplinary action, presumed to be curiosity. Jan and Feb this year, two separate employees of Stanley Inc, a company run by a Clinton supporter access Obama's passport file. They are fired, making investigation by the IG near impossible. No one is notified. Maura Harty retires. March this year, an employee of TAC, a company run by an Obama supporter, accesses McCain and Obama's passport files. He is caught, the Obama campaign is notified, and he is disciplined but not fired pending an investigation. Then, the Jan and Feb breaches are detected. Obama is notified after press inquiries. Clinton notifies the press, apropos of nothing, of the first breach from last year. State then notifies McCain that his file was also breached.
Can't wait until the government has all of our health care files too!
MATT MATT MATT You should check your co-workers blogs -- Here you go: The firm that employed the two contract employees who were FIRED for going into Sen Obama's files in Jan and Feb worked for a firm owned by a Hillary Clinton supporter --that is the STANLEY company - whose owner has donated to and is a Hillary Clinton supporter These supervisor over these two contract employees was Maura Hardy - now retired (and former ambassador to Paraguay under Pres Clinton in 1998). Ms. Hardy did not pass these infractions up the chain of command. The third person who on March 14th looked into both Obama and McCain files was not fired - as of now -and works for the ANALYSIS corp which is the firm Marc and you refer to As a result of this - the news of the breaches was "leaked" to the Washington Times who in turn reported this to the State Department officials who were previously unaware of these incidences. The July 2007 peek at Sen Clinton's file was a state employee who was being trained and they used a "familiar name" as the test as part of the training. The trainee was supposed to use her mother's name but instead used Sen Clinton's name. She was not fired or reprimanded as this was with a supervisor present. There may be nothing more to this - but so far it is apples and oranges. And now it is an FBI investigation because the state department has no jurisdiction over the fired employees. The IG cannot even interview them. We asked Marc, and now Matt we ask you: kindly post this update to your story so people who only read your front page see the facts We all wait to see the results of this now FBI led investigation Link: Thanks
I still honestly expect to discover they also looked up George Clooney's passport info. What exactly could be in the passport info of any of them? It's not like they can sneak in and out of the country on commercial flights and no one notices. It's like it wants to be an episode of Alias, but we keep bumping up against the vision of any of them whipping off a wig and scaling a building. (Okay, Barack might actually do okay as Dixon. McCain is no SpyDaddy, and Hillary no Sidney.)
Not much of a story from any angle.
Looking into Obama's passport file is much more egregious than Clintons or McCains (though looking into any of them is a clear, unacceptable privacy violation). Obama lived abroad when he was younger. When you live abroad, all of the documentation regarding your time in another country is filed in your passport file. School records, legal records, and (I believe) medical records. Clinton and McCains files contain a lot of stamps from a lot of countries, Obama's contains the entire history of nearly a decade of his life.
Passport scandal leads to Virginia contractor One Stanley, Inc., contractor allegedly looked at Obama's passport records on January 9, and then a second Stanley employee allegedly took a peek at similar Obama records on February 21, the officials said. Stanley, Inc., fired both workers after the alleged security breaches were discovered, the officials added. Most curiously, CNN has been screwing up facts all over the place. In this case, it's the fact that the FIRED employees are from Stanley. The TAC employee who looked was not fired. Suggests the bigger problem is the Stanley pair, does it not. CNN’s Kyra Phillips Pushes The ‘Iran Is Supporting al Qaeda’ Lie CNN has lost its credibility and legitimacy. Now it's just caprine needless natriuretics.
Passport scandal leads to Virginia contractor One Stanley, Inc., contractor allegedly looked at Obama's passport records on January 9, and then a second Stanley employee allegedly took a peek at similar Obama records on February 21, the officials said. Stanley, Inc., fired both workers after the alleged security breaches were discovered, the officials added. Most curiously, CNN has been screwing up facts all over the place. In this case, it's the fact that the FIRED employees are from Stanley. The TAC employee who looked was not fired. Suggests the bigger problem is the Stanley pair, does it not. CNN’s Kyra Phillips Pushes The ‘Iran Is Supporting al Qaeda’ Lie CNN has lost its credibility and legitimacy. Now it's just caprine needless natriuretics.
So did anything nefarious really happen that's worth mentioning? I have a Lexis ID through work. I can look up the street address (in addition to other public records) of pretty much anyone for whom I have a name. Is there any evidence that any of these people did anything aside from saying "Hey, I have access to Obama's records. Maybe I'll kill 10 minutes by looking them up." Sure, they shouldn't have done it. No argument there. But it sounds like all three have had their info accessed. Is there any evidence that it was done by anyone other than somewhat low to mid level employees with too much access and too much time to kill?
I blogged this earlier, from a security point of view the employer is irrelevant here. for the breach to occur there had to be motive and opportunity. The administration didn't need to worry about motive. They allowed thousands of people access to the information, thus guaranteeing that every imaginable motive will have been covered from McCain supporting plumber to Al Qaeda sympathizer. http://dotfuturemanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/03/irrellevant-information.html From a political point of view we have to give the administration the benefit of the doubt here. Anyone got any doubt that they have not being doing this type of stuff these past 7 years left? A very basic principle of security is that you design the system so that nobody can accuse you of malfeasance. If you control the system, you have to make sure nobody can accuse you of having rigged it.
Don't you just love outside contractors?
This is why Keith Olbermann is no different than Code Pink or the 911 truthers. Is he gonna spend 25 minutes panting and sweating about how this kills our democracy? So sad to see 4 years of good dissent work go down the drain. Idiot.
This story is so stupid. One, passport files have nothing interesting in them. Two, it doesn't matter they were contractors. Basically the US government has contracted out a variety of low and mid-level positions. All it that happened is that a low level person was curious and decided to look something up because they were bored. I'd be willing to bet celebrities records get looked up all the time.
Comments closed April 05, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
As a comment on Time's blog noted, all this insinuation that Obama himself or the campaign could have had anything to do with it isn't even worthy of a UK Tabloid.
I'm sure you don't mean to insinuate this, Matt, but that's how sentences like this are being read.
Posted by David B. | March 22, 2008 10:44 PM