WASHINGTON – Officials are trying to figure out how the Twitter account of the Air Force’s top public affairs officer waded into the contentious battle over immigration, and are promising to tighten up social media safeguards as a result.

Last week, someone with access to Brig. Gen. Kathleen Cook’s account retweeted a message from Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly about President Barack Obama’s decision to shield up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

“The president has decided the last two years of his term are going to be a disaster,” followers of both Kelly and Cook read late Friday.

The tweet disappeared on Saturday, with a message from Cook that “my last RT was not tweeted by me… fixing…”

In a written statement Monday, Cook denied she had issued the tweet criticizing the commander-in-chief. Commentators on the Internet observed it could be a violation of U.S. regulations for a commissioned officer to publish “contemptuous words against the president.”

Cook said she had been busy with family responsibilities rather than tweeting when what she called the “errant retweet” occurred.

“Throughout this entire process, I have been on leave tending to my daughter who had surgery this past Friday,” she said. “I was not on Twitter at the time of the post.”

Several other people have had access to her Twitter account over the years for official purposes, she said.

Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Karns said he couldn’t speculate on who issued the tweet or whether it was intentional or an accident by someone using the wrong Twitter account. He said Air Force officials are investigating, and added that Cook’s account password has been changed for the first time in years.

“We’ve learned a lesson here about the importance of safeguarding social media accounts, and particularly the importance of changing passwords regularly,” he said.

carroll.chris@stripes.com Twitter: @ChrisCarroll_

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