The US presidential race took a bizarre turn when the State Department disclosed that workers had improperly rummaged through the passport files of all three candidates. Senator Barack Obama called for a congressional investigation.
The snooping first surfaced against Obama, the Illinois Democrat whose file was accessed three time this year. In the course of Friday, however, department officials said the contract workers with access to the files also had dipped into the private information of New York Senator Hillary Clinton, the other Democratic hopeful, and Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has wrapped up his party's nomination.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who reportedly only heard of the incidents starting on Thursday, apologized to the candidates and promised her department would investigate.
But Obama was not satisfied and said Congress should investigate to insure the probe was not "simply an internal matter."
It was unclear whether the incidents were politically motivated. But they dominated US news at the start of a quiet holiday weekend and were a welcome diversion for the Obama campaign after a week of political battering over incendiary remarks by the candidate's longtime pastor.
The passport issue flared as Obama, locked in an increasingly nasty nomination battle with Clinton, secured a key endorsement, the backing of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
Richardson served former president Bill Clinton -- candidate Clinton's husband -- as UN ambassador and energy secretary.
"You are a once-in-a-lifetime leader," Richardson said, speaking at a spirited rally in Portland, Oregon, with Obama at his side. "Above all, you will be a president who brings this nation together."
The passport disclosures were a major embarrassment for the State Department and viewed as a serious breach of privacy. The snooping into supposedly secure government records on politicians recalled a 1992 case in which a Republican political appointee at the State Department was demoted for searching Bill Clinton's passport records when he was running against US president George H.W. Bush.
Two of the workers who breached Obama's records on Jan. 9 and Feb. 21 have been fired. A third worker, who accessed the Illinois senator's file on March 14, had only been reprimanded. It subsequently turned out that person had also looked at the McCain file earlier this year.
Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the individual no longer has access to passport records.
"I can assure you that person's going to be at the top of the list of the inspector general when they talk to people, and we are currently reviewing our [disciplinary] options with respect to that person," McCormack said.
The two fired contractors worked for a company called Stanley Inc. Earlier this week, the 3,500-person company won a five-year, US$570 million contract to support passport services at the State Department. The company refused comment, but a State Department official confirmed that the two contractors had been employed at Stanley. The official requested anonymity because the information had not been publicly released.
In the Democratic battle, winning Richardson's backing was a major boost for Obama, and was seen as a rebuke to Clinton because of Richardson's service in her husband's administration. Richardson is also a Democratic superdelegate and former presidential candidate.
Richardson's backing of Obama, who aspires to become America's first black president, could show most dramatically among the governor's fellow Hispanics -- the US' largest ethnic bloc, which has largely backed Clinton.
He told Democrats it was time to stop bickering and get behind Obama, but the Clinton campaign dismissed the endorsement.
Senior strategist Mark Penn, noting Clinton's February victory in the New Mexico primary, said, "Perhaps the time when he could have been most effective has long since past."
Penn added that he didn't think it was a "significant endorsement."
The nod from Richardson had been sought relentlessly by both Obama and Clinton. Bill Clinton even went to Richardson's New Mexico home in January to watch the US' premier television sporting event, the football Super Bowl.
As a Democratic superdelegate, Richardson has a key role in the tight race for nominating votes and could bring other superdelegates to Obama's side. He also has been mentioned as a potential running mate for either candidate.
Obama leads Clinton among delegates whose votes were determined by primaries or caucuses, 1,406 to 1,249. But neither is on track to win enough pledged delegates to clinch the nomination -- 2,024 are needed. So the outcome could be decided by superdelegates -- elected and party officials who can choose whomever they like.
Including Richardson, Clinton leads 250 to 215 among superdelegates who have announced a choice. About 40 percent have not declared.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS