Rice apologises over Obama passport 'snoopers'

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was today forced to make a personal apology to Barack Obama after government workers snooped into his personal files.

Obama aides have been demanding to be told if the three people who opened his passport application documents without authorisation were politically motivated.

All worked for sub-contracted firms. Two have been fired, and the third disciplined.

Ms Rice said she spoke with the Democratic presidential hopeful and told him she was sorry.

“I told him that I was sorry and I told him that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file and therefore, I will stay on top of it and get to the bottom of it.”

The State Department has begun an investigation by its acting inspector general, who in turn has asked the Justice Department to be involved if it turns out that any laws were broken.

Asked if she believed anything illegal had taken place, Ms Rice said: “I can’t comment before there is an investigation but there will be a full investigation.”

“None of us wants to have a circumstance where any American’s passport files are looked at in an unauthorised way,” she said.

Ms Rice said she was particularly disappointed that senior officials at the State Department were not immediately notified.

“It was not to my knowledge, and we also want to take every step to make sure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen again,” she said.

A state Department spokesman said it would make all of the results of the investigation available to congressional oversight committees and to Mr Obama’s office.

He refused to release the names of those who were fired and disciplined or the names of the two companies for which they worked.

It is not clear whether the employees saw anything other than the basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age, social security number and place of birth, which is required when a person fills out a passport application.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama’s presidential campaign, called the incident “an outrageous breach of security and privacy.”

“This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach.”

The department said the unauthorised access was detected by internal computer checks. Certain records, including those of high-profile people, are “flagged” with a computer tag that tips off supervisors when someone tries to view the records without a proper reason.

The issue stood to be a welcome diversion for the Obama campaign after a week of political battering over inflammatory remarks on racism by the his long-time pastor who he has refused to disown.

That, coupled with the coveted endorsement of New Mexico governor Bill Richardson appeared to have, temporarily at least, refocused attention away from the pastor row.

Mr Richardson’s backing of Mr Obama stands as a major boost, perhaps most importantly among the governor’s fellow Hispanics who form America’s largest ethnic bloc and have largely backed Hillary Clinton.

As a Democratic superdelegate, Mr Richardson has a key role in the tight race for nominating votes and could bring other superdelegates to Mr Obama’s side. He also has been mentioned as a potential running mate for either candidate.