Obama's passport records improperly accessed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. State Department contractworkers improperly looked at Democratic presidential candidateSen. Barack Obama's passport records three times this year inwhat his campaign called "an outrageous breach of security andprivacy."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that onJanuary 9, February 21 and March 14 of this year three contractworkers all individually accessed Obama's passport records.

"At this point in time, it's our initial view that this wasimprudent curiosity on the part of these three, separateindividuals," McCormack said.

Speaking to reporters in a conference call, U.S. officialssaid they had asked the State Department's inspector general toconduct an independent investigation of the matter.

Bill Burton, spokesman for the Obama campaign said, "Ourgovernment's duty is to protect the private information of theAmerican people, not use it for political purposes."

"We demand to know who looked at Senator Obama's passportfile, for what purpose and why it took so long for them toreveal this security breach," Burton said.

A spokesman for Obama's Democratic rival, New York SenatorHillary Clinton, said of the security breach: "If it's true,it's reprehensible, and the Bush administration has aresponsibility to get to the bottom of it."

A political firestorm erupted in 1992 after StateDepartment officials searched Democratic presidential candidateBill Clinton's passport and citizenship files. The searchcoincided with Republican attacks on Clinton for his role inthe Vietnam anti-war movement as a student at Oxford Universityin 1969 and for a trip to Moscow he made at the same time.

An investigation found that no laws were violated butofficials exercised poor judgment.

Word of the passport breach came as Obama, who would beAmerica's first black president, was trying to rebound after arocky patch. He delivered a major speech this week on racerelations in an effort to explain his relationship with hislongtime Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Clinton overtook Obama in a daily Gallup tracking pollearlier this week and the latest survey showed her leading theIllinois senator 49 percent to 42 percent in the contest toselect the Democratic nominee to face Republican Sen. JohnMcCain in November.

The poll was a snapshot of current popular feeling, butClinton trails Obama in the state-by-state contest fordelegates that began in January. The nominees are formallychosen by delegates at the parties' conventions in the summer.

Clinton had hoped to try to chip away at Obama's delegatelead with a rerun of Michigan's contested Democraticpresidential primary. But a Clinton-backed "do-over" proposaleffectively died in the Michigan Legislature when lawmakersadjourned without considering the plan.

Obama opposed rerunning the Michigan primary. The Michiganand Florida Democratic primaries were invalidated because bothstates ignored party directives and held their ballotingearlier than allowed.

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; editing by Peter Cooney andTodd Eastham)