Looks like three times this year, someone was snooping around without authorization in Barack Obama’s passport file. The people who did it were private contractors, and the State Department says that it looks more like idle curiosity than something political — but come on. I don’t believe that and you’d be insulted if I asked you to. Who believes that? Pick your villian — Hillary Clinton or Republican attack dogs — but someone was looking for dirt and got caught.
Cui bono?
UPDATE: It appears that all the candidates have had their files broken into. Yet the State Department insists that this was all the result of idle curiosity. Call me a skeptic (“You’re a skeptic, TL!”) but it still doesn’t ring true. You don’t summarily fire people for idle curiosity — you write them up or at worst you suspend them. There’s more going on here than idle curiosity.
Obama should use this as an example of politics as usual (digging up dirt) and tell the American people that his campaign will take the high road while sticking to the issues at hand: war, the economy, health care, etc.
deja vuhttp://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE5D71F39F93BA25752C1A964958260Apparently, Bill Clinton’s passport info was searched in 1992. Perhaps the viewing of McCain’s was meant to throw investigators off the scent of Republican operatives.