Passport Files of 3 Candidates Were Pried Into

The State Department, in an embarrassing revelation, said Friday that it was investigating several episodes in which an employee and several contract workers peered into the passport files of all three presidential contenders.

While officials said they thought the actions were garden-variety snooping by idle employees and not politically motivated, the episodes and the failure to notify the victims in a timely manner led Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to spend Friday morning calling the three presidential contenders, reaching Senator Barack Obama in Oregon, Senator John McCain in Paris and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York.

Describing her conversation with Mr. Obama, Ms. Rice said, “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.”