Sanford is a security risk

Sanford is a security risk

"Maria" worked for the Argentine government

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La Nacion, one of Argentina's top newspapers, reports in Spanish that "Maria" is a a government employee. If that turns out to be the case, it will open the legitimate question of whether Gov. Sanford was being played by a government agent. Maria lives in Palermo, one of BA's upscale neighborhoods, in an apartment overlooking the Botanical Gardens, the equivalent of an apartment on central park New York. As an aside, Maria either had to come from a wealthy family, married a wealthy husband, or have access to other sources of income because she could not afford to live there on a government salary. As governor of a state, Mark Sanford has access to Homeland Security plans and intelligence that make him an attractive asset for foreign governments. This would have been particularly the case in mid 2008, when the "sparking thing" gained momentum, because he was under serious consideration for the VP position by the McCain campaign. As a potential VP candidate he would be closely watched for weaknesses that could be developed and exploited. Typically an asset is developed over a long period of time to gather information directly or to gather enough compromising information to "own" them. The timeline of this story follows a very familiar pattern. So a lot of questions remain unanswered:

1. What is Maria's position in the Argentine government. This may be hard to determine definitively because she could be IDd as a low level functionary. That is why it would be interesting to determine the source of her wealth.

2. How did she meet Gov. Sanford. Let's assume he met her on one of his prior trips to Argentina through the Commerce Department. That is when he was first IDd as a potential asset and the fix was in.

3. Who knew he was having an affair with an Argentine woman? This is important because someone has access to confidential information and making it public, including Gov. Sanford's e-mail traffic with Maria (turned over to McClatchy newspapers six months ago, according to reports) and, stunningly, someone was able to get access to his cell phone records very quickly over the last couple of days. My guess, and admittedly at this point it is just that, is that Gov. Sanford was under observation by someone with powers to get access to such information for some time.

4. Did Sanford find out she was a foreign agent and went down to Argentina tearfully to confront her?

Of course the Gov and Maria could just have fallen in love and, after 8 years of emails, he was blinded by the curvature of her hips and she... she saw an attractive and powerful man, a devout Christian and family man, who may some day be President of the United States with whom she wanted to share life in the White House. As she aptly said: impossible.