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Berger And Lies
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 12/21/2006
Equal Justice: Sandy Berger deliberately pilfered and hid classified documents. So why is Scooter Libby the one facing prison time? And why aren't these docs on the front page of the New York Times?
National Archives Inspector General Paul Brachfield on Wednesday released a report showing that in 2004 Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser, "knowingly removed classified documents from the National Archives and Records Administration and stored and retained such documents at places," including temporarily under a construction trailer outside the main National Archives building.
This seems to blatantly contradict the feeble mea culpa Berger issued when in the summer of 2004 he was caught removing said documents and stuffing them into his clothing, documents that directly contradicted his testimony before the 9/11 Commission.
Back then Berger said he "made an honest mistake," a mistake that according to his plea bargain (which netted him no jail time and a meager fine) included taking five classified documents, using scissors on three of them, then lying to the National Archives when asked about them.
"Honest" is not the word we would ascribe to his "mistake," and the report from Brachfield shows just how dishonest, and criminal, his actions were. Brachfield reported that on one visit, Berger took a break to go outside without an escort, noting, "in total during this visit, he removed four documents. . . ."
According to the report, "Mr. Berger said he placed these documents under a trailer in an accessible construction area outside Archives 1 (the main building). Berger admitted that he later retrieved the documents from under the trailer and returned to his office."
So what was in those documents that he would risk his career and his freedom in what amounts to — dare we say it? — a third-rate burglary? One of them, the Millennium After-Action Review, written by Bush critic Richard Clarke, dealt with the Clinton administration's handling of terror threats, including the plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999.
In his televised testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Berger claimed that the Clinton administration's "sustained attention" to terrorist threats and "rigorous actions" had foiled that plot. But Attorney General John Ashcroft told the commission he had seen some of the documents that Berger stole and that they showed the plot was stopped with "luck playing a major role." The documents would prove who was right.
Berger, with Clinton's authorization, was supposed to be reviewing National Security Council documents to refresh his memory so he could accurately testify about what the Clinton administration was doing to fight terror in the run-up to 9/11. Instead, he used it to destroy records that would contradict his false testimony.
A couple of things come to mind here. One is that Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, still faces perhaps decades in a federal prison for "deceiving investigators" — meaning that perhaps one of the busiest men on the planet has a different recollection of certain events from the reporters who asked him questions.
Berger, who stole with the intention of destroying national security documents to lie to Congress and deceive the American people, was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, pay a $50,000 fine, serve 100 hours of community service and be denied access to similar documents for three years or the next Clinton administration, whichever came first.
The other is that the likes of the New York Times, which delights in jeopardizing national security when doing so harms the Bush administration, are seemingly not interested in these documents, certainly not enough to splash them all over the front page. Oops! We forgot. Wrong administration. Wrong party.
In October, several top House Republicans wrote Thomas M. Davis III, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, to investigate whether there was criminal misconduct in Berger's actions and just what information was destroyed or is still missing.
Somehow we doubt that this matter will be high on the new Democratic majority's list of investigations, and we don't think those documents will be splashed across the Times' front page any time soon.
