A weird campaign cycle gets even weirder – three State Department contract employees have been caught nosing around in Barack Obama’s passport file. Two were fired, one was disciplined. The first breach was on January 9; the inspector general is launching an investigation.
Still, what did the snoopers expect to find? The only information on the passport that wouldn’t be in the public domain would be his Social Security number.
The only other information that would be in there would be his travel history, which wouldn’t be useful unless…
A little while back, the Hillary campaign — specifically Lee Feinstein, the campaign’s national security director, asked a question:
As voters evaluate you as a potential Commander-in-Chief, do you think it’s legitimate for people to be concerned that you have traveled to only one NATO country, on a brief stopover trip in 2005, and have never traveled to Latin America?
I remember hearing their charge that Obama had only visited one NATO country in his life and it seemed pretty hard to believe… out of countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, etc., Obama had only been to one? The boy who grew up in Indonesia, and visited relatives in Africa, never made it to any of those European countries? The guy who lived in Chicago and went to Harvard never made it to Canada? (I presume Canada wasn’t the site of the brief stopover trip.)
Now, I’m not saying that the Hillary camp did the snooping in the passport file. But in asking that question, they seemed awfully certain that Obama had never been to one of those countries earlier in his life, didn’t they? Note they didn’t say, “you have traveled to only one NATO country as a senator“, (it wouldn’t be all that surprising that Obama had only taken a few foreign trips since taking office in January 2005); they worded the question so that it encompasses his entire life.
The question came from the Hillary camp on March 12; two of the breaches were before that date. One breach occurred two days later.
Hmmm…
UPDATE: See this update here — apparently Obama’s passport file would only include identification of places for intended travel, and perhaps not even that. So what would be in the file that would be worth snooping around for?