2 fired for looking into Obama's passport files

WASHINGTON — The State Department said Thursday night that it had fired two contract employees and disciplined a third for accessing Sen. Barack Obama's passport files.

Obama's presidential campaign called for a "complete investigation."

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the employees had individually looked into the Democratic presidential hopeful's passport file on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14. To access such a file, the employees must first acknowledge a pledge to keep the information private.

The department would not release the names of the three employees.

Another State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said it was not clear what the contract employees may have seen in the records or what they were looking for but added that an investigation into the employees' motives and backgrounds had begun. He said he did not know the names of the companies they worked for.

The employees were each caught because of a computer-monitoring system that is triggered when the passport accounts of a "high-profile person" are accessed, Casey said.

The system, which focuses on politicians and celebrities, was put in place after the State Department was embroiled in a scandal involving the access of the passport records of presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992.

The department uses contract employees to help with data entry, customer service and other administrative tasks. The employee involved in the March 14 incident has only been disciplined so far, because the investigation of that incident is continuing, an official said.

Though the workers were caught by a computer system that focuses on high-profile people, Casey said a computer report is generated on every access to passport records and spot checks are taken to ensure that employees are not violating the Privacy Act.

Obama, who represents Illinois in the Senate, was born in Hawaii and lived in Indonesia for several years as a child before returning to the states. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has traveled to the Middle East, the former Soviet states and Africa, where in 2006 he and his wife, Michelle, publicly took HIV tests in Kenya to encourage people there to do the same.

Obama's father was born in Kenya, and the senator has relatives there.

It was unclear why it took so long for the first two incidents to be reported to senior management.

Material from The Associated Press and McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report.