Politics

Chairman Waxman Requests the State Department Release the Identity of the Companies that Accessed Obama Passport File

By Jesse Lee

This morning Chairman Henry Waxman of the Oversight Committee wrote to the State Department to request the name of the companies that hired the contractors who gained unauthorized access to Senator Obama?s passport files and to urge the State Department to release this information to the public.

Full text of the letter (pdf):

Dear Madam Secretary:

Yesterday, Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, the Under Secretary of State for Management, confirmed that three contract employees working for two State Department contractors gained unauthorized access to the passport records of Senator Barack Obama. When Ambassador Kennedy was asked for the identities of the contract employees and the companies, however, he declined to provide them:

Question: Are you releasing the names of any of these three contractors or the companies for which they were contracting on behalf of the State Department? ?

Ambassador Kennedy: In a word, no.

I am writing to request that you provide the Oversight Committee by Monday with the identities of the companies involved in these breaches. I also believe this information should be made publicly available.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the principal oversight committee in the House of Representatives and has broad oversight jurisdiction as set forth in House Rule X.

Sincerely,

Henry A. Waxman
Chairman

Full post as published by The Gavel on March 21, 2008 (boomark / email).