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Curious coincidences in the Obama passport scandal

The contractor involved in the poking into the "passport file" of presidential candidate Barack Obama has now been revealed to be Stanley Inc - they had a $160 million contract with the State Department to help with passport handling.

Files were accessed in Jan, Feb and March of '08. Most recently March 14th.

On March 18th, Stanley got a $570 million extension of their contract

Man, if only the State Department had known they were egregiously screwing up and some of their workers were violating privacy of prominent democrats, why then they would never, I'm sure have got the contract renewed... they really dodged a bullet on that one.

Fortunately they will in the future have a "secure" passport center for the work, so I'm sure such things will not happen again. At least not for the next 4 years anyway.

Company began working for the State Department in 1992, during the previous Bush administration. I'm sure you all remember that in '92 a State Department political appointee accessed then-Presidential-candidate Bill Clinton's passport files, in a futile attempt to find damaging information about Clinton.
Clearly it then became imperative to move such operations to a private contractor so that political appointees within State would not be caught doing such things.

Terrible. Fortunate there was a market solution, eh?

Stanley is very much a Navy company. CEO Nolan apparently mostly donates to republicans, but it is ok, because apparently he also donated to "Independent Democrat" Joe Lieberman as well, so there. ;-)

Be interesting to see what, if anything, we ever learn about this episode.
Hope Stanley is more careful with their employees, they are supposed to be one of the better companies to work for and have done very well for themselves doing contract work for government agencies in the last five or so years.
I do hope these rogue employees did not poke around a lot of other Senator files, or other major political figures. Maybe someone better check they weren't selling compromising information to opponents of democracy and the American way of life.

h/t dd

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The same Stanley that moved their corporate H.Q. to the Cayman Islands, or Dubai or some such place so's they could avoid paying the taxes? Sounds about right...

By Matt Platte (not verified) on 21 Mar 2008 #permalink

There are two Stanleys: Stanley Inc. is the Virginia company involved with State Department. Stanley Works is the familiar too making company that still is headqauartered in Connecticut. In 2002 they were going to move to Bermuda, but didn't do so because of all the bad publicity.

By natural cynic (not verified) on 21 Mar 2008 #permalink

Worried yet?

The Saudi Shura council will secretly discuss national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors, media reports said Saturday.

URL: http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=96940

By Dunkleosteus (not verified) on 24 Mar 2008 #permalink

What? Me worry?

Sourced from the UAE.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast…

Here is a post-meeting news item
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=108173&d=24&m=3&y=200…

I guess the Israeli's are worried about a response to last month's assassination in Syria, and claim Syria has mobilised, possibly to support Hizbollah.
We'll see.
The US is not really in a position to do anything, which is awkward - if the preposition it will look like, and be, premeditated offensive warfare, which is somewhat problematic; on the other hand if the balloon does go up and the US is not in a position to respond, it is both embarrassing and costly.

Nasty little strategic hole.