In nine hours of close-door testimony, Chief Project Manager Henry Chao of CMS testified that he was unaware of a security memo, addressed to him, that warned of massive Obamacare security problems that could not be fixed until 2014 at the earliest. Sharyl Attkisson reports for CBS:
Chao said he was unaware of a Sept. 3 government memo written by another senior official at CMS. It found two high-risk issues, which are redacted for security reasons. The memo said “the threat and risk potential (to the system) is limitless.” The memo shows CMS gave deadlines of mid-2014 and early 2015 to address them.
But Chao testified he’d been told the opposite.
“What I recall is what the team told me, is that there were no high findings,” he said.
Chao testified security gaps could lead to identity theft, unauthorized access and misrouted data.
The memo was addressed to Chao, and written less than a month before Obamacare’s rollout. How could it be possible that he did not see it?
It was Chao who recommended it was safe to launch the website Oct. 1. When shown the security risk memo, Chao said, “I just want to say that I haven’t seen this before.”
A Republican staff lawyer asked, “Do you find it surprising that you haven’t seen this before?”
Chao replied, “Yeah … I mean, wouldn’t you be surprised if you were me?” He later added: “It is disturbing. I mean, I don’t deny that this is … a fairly nonstandard way” to proceed.
To say the least. Either Chao is lying or someone below him concealed the memo, putting millions of Healthcare.gov’s users’ personal information at grave risk.
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