US election rivals' files breached

The State Department acknowledged yesterday that workers had snooped into passport files of senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain, a day after disclosing workers had improperly viewed the file of senators Barack Obama.

The department apologised to the three top US presidential candidates - Democrats Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama and Republican Mr McCain - and promised an investigation into the breach.

Mrs Clinton's file was accessed last summer by a trainee hired to help relieve the backlog of passport applications at the time, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. He said the department also detected earlier this year that Mr McCain's passport file was accessed by one of the same people who looked at Mr Obama's file.

The incident is an embarrassment to the Bush administration and revived memories of the controversy that erupted in 1992 after State Department officials searched former President Bill Clinton's passport and citizenship files when he was the Democratic presidential candidate.

Earlier yesterday, Dr Rice told reporters she spoke with Mr Obama about the breach. "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," she said.

Mr McCormack later said Dr Rice had called Mrs Clinton and would speak with Mr McCain, who was travelling in Europe.

"Secretary Rice expressed the same sentiments to Senator Clinton, and I would expect that she would say the same thing to Senator McCain: We're sorry that this happened and... We're going to do a full investigation," he said.