Passports of Rich & Famous on View

July 3, 2008— -- The confidential passport files of high-profile individuals have been accessed more frequently than previously thought, according to a new report obtained by ABC News.

The State Department Office of Inspector General report surveyed the files of 150 famous people and found that 127, or 85 percent, of them had their records accessed at least once. Nine of them had their records accessed more than 100 times, and nearly a third were accessed at least 25 times.

The names of the famous individuals were not released due to privacy concerns. Officials said today that the people in question have not yet been notified that their files may have been breached.

The 107-page report admits officials don't know yet if those were authorized accesses. "Although an 85 percent hit rate appears to be excessive, the Department currently lacks criteria to determine whether this is actually an inordinately high rate," the report states.

Florence Fultz, managing director of passport services at the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, told reporters that it was "possible but unlikely" that all of the accesses were justified.

The heavily redacted report has no mention of the presidential candidates, but the investigation was sparked by reports that the records of Senators McCain, Clinton and Obama records were breached several times in the past year.

The State Department revealed today that one additional person has been fired in connection with accessing the records of the candidates. Another employee was also fired for unauthorized access to other individuals' records.

Such files contain personal information, including photographs. "The vast majority of our passport files contain only the passport application form. In more complicated cases, such as those involving a derivative citizenship determination, law enforcement issues, or possible fraud, we may keep originals or copies of other documents in the file. This represents only a very small percentage of our files," the State Department said in March.

The Inspector General report has raised concerns on Capitol Hill. Senator Joseph Biden, D-Del., has written a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying, "The report paints a very disturbing picture."

"To state it plainly, it appears to be a system-wide failure on the part of several bureaus in the Department. I urge you to conduct a management review to determine the causes of this failure, which were not within the scope of the Inspector General audit," Biden wrote in his letter to Rice, requesting that he receive a progress report from the State Department on implementation of the IG report's recommendations within 90 days.

When the candidates' file breaches were revealed, the State Department said that its warning system had worked, pointing out that alarms were triggered when the senators' files were accessed. However this report says those controls are inadequate.

The IG report says the warning system was "very limited in the number and types of individuals captured. For example, the list contained the names of 38 of about 127 million passport holders and excluded many other high-profile individuals, including key political figures, celebrities, and other prominent people frequently mentioned in the media."

To conduct the study the Office of Inspector General formulated its own list of 150 famous people, using lists of influential Americans in publications like Forbes magazine and Sports Illustrated.

The search looked for whether the individuals' files were accessed between September 2002 and March 2008.

The State Department's bureau of Consular Affairs has received recommendations from the IG and has already taken some steps, including dismissing some personnel.

The bureau has increased the number of oversight monitors from two to eight and has slashed the number of employees with access to the records in half, including barring those whose accounts have remained inactive for 90 days.

Consular Affairs has also boosted the number of names that trigger an automatic review when their records are accessed from 38 to more than 1,000.

The report recommends that Consular Affairs implement controls similar to ones used by the Treasury Department and the IRS to safeguard tax information. It says that Consular Affairs has agreed to implement this recommendation.

Consular Affairs rejected a recommendation to develop new guidelines to discipline workers who accessed the files without permission, according to the report.