On the March 20 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, discussing the State Department's admission that Sen. Barack Obama's passport records had been repeatedly accessed without authorization by three contract workers, two of whom have since been fired and the third disciplined, host Sean Hannity said to Fox News contributor and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), “Seems to me Barack Obama is looking for anything to distract from the story of Jeremiah Wright [Obama's recently retired pastor].” Gingrich responded: “Well, no. No, my first thoughts are to be totally with Senator Obama on this. I think your records are confidential,” adding, “The government has an absolute obligation to keep them. I suspect these people have broken a law. I don't think it's enough just to fire them. And frankly, if the first breakthrough was back in January, how can they say that the security system worked?” Hannity responded: “The only thing I might disagree a little bit on -- because immediately they make it into a political statement by blaming the administration.” Gingrich replied: “Well, look, of course, but that's -- the Obama people can do what they want to.”

From the March 20 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

HANNITY: But we start tonight with former speaker of the House, Fox News contributor, author of The New York Times best-seller, again, Real Change -- Newt Gingrich is back with us. Mr. Speaker, welcome aboard.

GINGRICH: Good to be with you.

HANNITY: All right, just one point on this breaking news tonight. There's a couple things that we do know that Bill Gertz has put into the Washington Times, and one is that Secretary of State Condi Rice is saying that the security measures that are used to monitor the records of high-profile Americans worked properly in detecting the breaches and that these were contract employees. Seems to me Barack Obama is looking for anything to distract from the story of Jeremiah Wright. Your initial thoughts?

GINGRICH: Well, no. No, my first thoughts are to be totally with Senator Obama on this. I think your records are confidential.

HANNITY: Oh, I agree with that.

GINGRICH: The government has an absolute obligation to keep them. I suspect these people have broken a law. I don't think it's enough just to fire them. And frankly, if the first breakthrough was back in January, how can they say that the security system worked? Why didn't they -- go ahead.

HANNITY: The only thing I might disagree a little bit on -- because immediately they make it into a political statement by blaming the administration.

GINGRICH: Well, look, of course, but that's -- the Obama people can do what they want to. As an American citizen, I expect my government to protect the secrecy of documents that I give them. And I believe that they have -- that this is probably a very severe penalty. It's not enough just to fire these people. I think that the Justice Department should look into this, not because it's about Senator Obama, but because we have to sustain a very high standard of protecting the right to privacy of Americans.

HANNITY: Yeah. There you and I agree. And I think everybody's privacy has to be protected, and we've had a number of breaches over the years. So we're in full and complete agreement about that.