Most Hill Panels Refrain From Launching Passport Probes

Despite an initial uproar over news that State Department contractors improperly viewed the passport files of presidential candidates, congressional oversight committees are mostly awaiting results of an internal department probe before launching separate investigations, Capitol Hill aides and State officials said.

Comment on this article in The Forum."We're not expecting any big involvement from Congress," said a department official familiar with the matter. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif., said March 21 that his panel will independently investigate the passport snooping.

On March 21, State Department officials announced that contractors that process passports for the department had fired two employees and disciplined another for inappropriately accessing the passport files of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz.

State's response to the issue appears to have at least temporarily headed off inquiries from other committees. Without unexpected revelations from an investigation by the State Department's inspector general, "we think we may have seen the end of this," the agency official said.

A State Department spokesman has attributed the snooping to "imprudent curiosity," rather than political motivation by the employees involved, two of whom were fired. But the spokesman said the inspector general will look more closely at the issue.

Department officials briefed Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers and aides to Obama, whose passport file was accessed multiple times by an employee of a department contractor, and Clinton and McCain, both of whose files were viewed last year. State officials have briefed House Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee and House Judiciary Committee staff, a department official said.

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will wait for results of the inspector general investigation, a spokeswoman said. "I don't believe there are necessarily any next steps," she said. "The . . . committee is sort of yielding to IG and the [Justice Department]."

The Justice Department is monitoring the IG probe but is not now conducting an independent investigation. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., last week released a letter to Secretary of State Rice urging that the department release the names of the contractors whose employees reviewed the passport files. The department has since identified the companies. A committee spokeswoman said Waxman has not decided whether to investigate further.

Other lawmakers have expressed interest in the passport issue while urging broader measures to ensure privacy of government information. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has said he is carefully reviewing the passport matter, which he said raises questions about breaches affecting lower-profile citizens.

But the committee is "monitoring" the situation and has no plans for any related investigation, an aide said. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and ranking member Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., urged March 25 that the Justice Department investigate if the accessing of the passport files violated federal privacy laws. They called for passage of a bill they have introduced that would require that federal agencies provide timely notification of data security breaches and increase requirements for how government contractors "guard" sensitive personal data.