The California Highway Patrol is investigating how a digital recording made in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office of him talking about a Hispanic legislator's fiery temperament became public.
The department's high-tech crimes investigators are looking into whether hackers got into the governor's office computers or whether the recording, which was stored as an MP3 file on the governor's office server, was obtained some other way, CHP spokesman Tom Marshall said.
"We'll look at the security overall, the whole security of the governor's office computer system," Marshall said.
The recording, made during a speechwriting session last March, was obtained by the Los Angeles Times, which published a story last week. It featured the governor and his chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, idly speculating about the ethnic background of Republican state Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, whom Kennedy praises for her gumption.
After some banter about whether she is Cuban or Puerto Rican, Schwarzenegger says, "They are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."
The governor apologized for his remarks on Friday, saying he cringed when he read them. Garcia said she was not offended and appeared by the governor's side as he apologized.