Flashback: John Brennan Employee Viewed Secret Obama Passport Info Without Permission And Was Promptly Murdered

Flashback: John Brennan Employee Viewed Secret Obama Passport Info Without Permission And Was Promptly Murdered

Mar 11, 2013 19 Comments Pat Dollard
“TAC is headed by Obama’s top terrorism and intelligence adviser, John O. Brennan, which has earned millions of dollars providing intelligence-related consulting services to federal agencies and private companies. Brennan is also a former CIA agent.” – See below
Excerpted from WND: According to March 2008 reports, State Department employees conducted an unauthorized search of Obama’s passport files during the recent presidential campaign. CNN reported that three different contract workers accessed his information on separate occasions – Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14 – without authorization. Two workers were fired and another faced discipline.
Obama’s files reportedly contained copies of passport applications, birth date, basic biographical information, records of passport renewal and possibly citizenship information.
The Obama campaign demanded a thorough investigation to determine which employees looked at the file and why.
“This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton told CNN in a statement. “Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes.”
Meanwhile, a key witness who had been cooperating with federal investigators was later found fatally shot in front of a Washington, D.C., church. A police officer found the body of Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., 24, slumped dead inside his car.
At the time, investigators said they didn’t have any information connecting the murder to the passport case. After one year of investigation of the homicide, there have been no arrests.
The passport has not been released.
Excerpted from The Washington Times, April 19, 2008: A key witness in a federal probe into passport information stolen from the State Department was fatally shot in front of a District church, the Metropolitan Police Department said yesterday.
Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., 24, who had been cooperating with a federal investigators, was found late Thursday night slumped dead inside a car, in front of the Judah House Praise Baptist Church in Northeast, said Cmdr. Michael Anzallo, head of the department’s Criminal Investigations Division.
Cmdr. Anzallo said a police officer was patrolling the neighborhood when gunshots were heard, then Lt. Harris was found dead inside the vehicle, which investigators would describe only as a blue car.
Emergency medics pronounced him dead at the scene.
City police said they do not know whether his death was a direct result of his cooperation with federal investigators.
“We don’t have any information right now that connects his murder to that case,” Cmdr. Anzallo said.
Police say a “shot spotter” device helped an officer locate Lt. Harris.
A State Department spokeswoman yesterday declined to comment, saying the investigation into the passport fraud is ongoing.
The Washington Times reported April 5 that contractors for the State Department had improperly accessed passport information for presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, which resulted in a series of firings that reached into the agency’s top ranks.

Excerpted from The Right Perspective: News of the security breaches prompted a statement from then-Senator Joseph Biden, who had not yet been chosen as Obama’s running mate. Biden, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had oversight of the Foreign Service and the passport office.
“I am deeply troubled that State Department contract employees sought access to Sen. Barack Obama’s passport files,” the statement from Biden read. “Firing or disciplining those responsible is an important first step. But we need to understand why these employees had access to this information in the first place, why they sought the information, and why it took over two months for this matter to come to light. I urge the Secretary of State to promptly refer this matter to the State Department Inspector General for investigation.”
The Washington Times reported on March 22 that the two low-level contractors who were fired worked for Stanley Inc., a 3,500-person technology firm based in Arlington that had just won a US $570 million contract to continue providing passport services to the State Department.
Although dismissed as “low-level” employees, The New York Times reports Stanley Inc. prides itself on extensive background checks for its workers. Approximately 53% of its employees have security or top secret security clearances, which means their employees didn’t just “walk in off the street and are now curious about Senator Obama’s files.”
A third contractual employee working for The Analysis Corp. (TAC), a McLean-based information firm that has helped the State Department automate the Terrorist Watchlist over the last several years, was reprimanded. TAC is headed by Obama’s top terrorism and intelligence adviser, John O. Brennan, which has earned millions of dollars providing intelligence-related consulting services to federal agencies and private companies. Brennan is also a former CIA agent.
This individual’s actions were taken without the knowledge or direction of anyone at TAC and are wholly inconsistent with our professional and ethical standards,” the company wrote in a press statement at the time.
Newsmax tied the security breach to the Natural Born Citizen issue back in January 2009:
Sources who tracked the investigation tell Newsmax that the main target of the breach was the Obama passport file, and that the contractor accessed the file in order to “cauterize” the records of potentially embarrassing information.

“They looked at the McCain and Clinton files as well to create confusion,” one knowledgeable source told Newsmax. “But this was basically an attempt to cauterize the Obama file.”
At the time of the breach, Brennan was working as an unpaid adviser to the Obama campaign.