WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- President Obama's choice to run the U.S. Transportation Security Administration said he gave a Senate committee misleading data but it was "inadvertent."
In an affidavit filed in October with a Senate committee considering his nomination, Erroll Southers acknowledged he inappropriately accessed a federal database two decades ago -- but he corrected his account of the infraction in a letter to the committee one day after the panel approved his nomination to head the TSA, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
Senate Democratic leaders plan to push for a full vote in January on Southers' nomination, which has been blocked by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.
Southers is a former FBI special agent and assistant chief for homeland security and intelligence at Los Angeles World Airports Police Department. His nomination has been approved by two U.S. Senate committees. TSA is being led by an acting administrator pending a vote in the full Senate.
In an Oct. 22 affidavit, Southers said he asked a San Diego Police Department employee to access information in a federal database on his ex-wife's new boyfriend. In a letter to the Senate Homeland Security Committee after the committee approved his nomination, Southers said his recollection had been faulty -- and that he personally conducted two database searchers he had neglected to mention in the affidavit, the Post reported.
The letter to committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, Ind.-Conn., and ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, has not been publicly released, the newspaper said.
"I am distressed by the inconsistencies between my recollection and the contemporaneous documents, but I assure you that the mistake was inadvertent, and that I have at all times taken full responsibility for what I know to have been a grave error in judgment," Southers said in the letter.
A White House spokesman told the Post Lieberman and Collins "were satisfied" with the letter and the incident should not affect the nomination.
