House Oversight Chairman Darrell “Witch Hunt” Issa has once again leaked a partial transcript from a private interview, which ABC News obtained “exclusively” from Darrell Issa, that portrays healthcare.gov as a security risk.
There have been “two high findings” of risk – the most serious level of concern – in testing over the past few weeks, the top Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) cybersecurity official told the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday in a private transcribed interview.
It’s a “vulnerability in the system,” CMS chief information security officer Teresa Fryer told the committee of one of the issues.
But as Steve Benen at Maddow Blog points out, the areas of risk were already fixed before ABC published their story.
So I checked in with Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, who said “key details” from Teresa Fryer’s transcript “were omitted” before it was leaked to ABC. It’s true that security testing uncovered a recent vulnerability, but Issa’s leak left out relevant facts: there have been no security breaches, the vulnerability was identified and fixed, and Fryer sees the security measures in place as “best practices above and beyond what is usually recommended.”
We know what Darrell Issa’s game is, but beyond that ABC News is irresponsible and lazy.
ABC’s original report, which has been updated, did not mention that the vulnerabilities referenced in Darrell Issa’s congressional click-bait have led to no security breaches or that the problems have already been fixed, meaning they published the story without so much as contacting other committee members or the administration for comment. That’s how great their hard-on for a negative Obamacare story is.
Of course one may forgive them knowing that Darrell Issa has never done something like this before. Oh, wait.
Does Darrell Issa actually do anything other than hype fake scandals? His inquisition began with the Solyndra witch hunt and today we’re no closer to the impeachment he’s been dreaming about than we were then.