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AP: Clinton Adviser Probed in Terror Memos
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By JOHN SOLOMON
WASHINGTON - President Clinton (news - web sites)'s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, is the focus of a Justice Department (news - web sites) investigation after removing highly classified terrorism documents and handwritten notes from a secure reading room during preparations for the Sept. 11 commission hearings, The Associated Press has learned.
Berger's home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI (news - web sites) agents armed with warrants after he voluntarily returned documents to the National Archives. However, still missing are some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration.
Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had made while reading classified anti-terror documents at the archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. He also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio, they said.
"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced," Berger said in a statement to the AP.
Lanny Breuer, one of Berger's attorneys, said his client has offered to cooperate fully with the investigation but had not yet been interviewed by the FBI or prosecutors. Berger has been told he is the subject of the criminal investigation, Breuer said.
:Kerry Adviser Sandy Berger Sees Potential 3 Year Force Presence in Iraq
WASHINGTON, Jul. 09 /PRNewswire/ --
WASHINGTON, July 9 /PRNewswire/ -- In a wide-ranging and exclusive interview with Bisnow on Business released today, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, now a chief foreign policy adviser to Senator John Kerry, says, in answer to a question about how long a "substantial U.S. force presence" might remain in Iraq: "I can certainly imagine us having a force there in three years. I hope it will be a smaller force."
In answer to a question about whether the U.S. is better off for having invaded Iraq, Berger says: "I don't think we're safer for having invaded Iraq ... I think over the long term Saddam constituted a threat. I think we would have had to deal with him at some point, but Iraq was not a terrorist problem before we invaded. Because of the nature of our invasion, the unilateral invasion and essentially unilateral occupation, Iraq has become a magnet for terrorists from around the world, so I don't think we're safer."
freeandfun1 said:you wonder what kind of stuff he was trying to hide that required his "sneaking" classified documents out of a secure area. To me, indicates that he was trying to make sure something was not exposed.
maybe I am reading too much into it, but based on their (the democrats) past actions in regards to cover ups, I doubt it.
ScreamingEagle said:Unbelievable.
Most people would go to jail for such an act.
Do you think he will?
Probably not, he already apologized for his "sloppiness". :huh:
Kathianne said:Have to agree, but it is bad news for the Kerry campaign. Hmmm, think perchance it's a 'Hillary Moment'.
Merlin1047 said:Nope. It it was a "Hillary Moment", he'd be dead by now.
Also Michael Savage was ranting on this topic earlier this evening. Apparently a couple of the removed documents were "inadvertently" discarded and not returned to the archives.
krisy said:That is disgraceful! How can he not get charges brought up?! What in the world was he hiding?! I would love to hear what it is ,especially since the Bush adm. is taking so much heat for things in the press.
CYA
Posted by Stephen Green · 20 July 2004
I have a more than passing familiarity with pants.
When you've got skinny legs like mine, you learn all about pants. You learn which pants give you the illusion of having a rear end. You learn that when wearing a suit, you also wear suspenders. Because for really thin guys, like for really fat guys, pants held up with suspenders drape better than those worn with a belt. You learn or at least ought to damn well learn not to try to wear your jeans fashionably (read: "stupidly") down below your hips, because they just won't stay on that way. Instead, you pull your jeans up high and cinch them with a belt. You also pray to Whomever that your pathetic attempt to keep your pants up doesn't result in how do I phrase this nicely? an unsightly bulge up front.
When you've got silly legs, three generations of clotheshorses preceding you, a little bit of money and a smattering of taste, you get to know pants intimately. So I know pants.
And I like my pants but I don't always like to wear them.
Show me a hot tub, and the pants are coming off. If it's after dark, or at least in a neighborhood nice enough that the cops aren't on patrol, then what's under them is coming off, too. Give me a cocktail or nine and some friendly company, and there's a good chance my pants will end up on the floor long before I do. But that's just the life-of-the-party side of me, and one of the few things about my life marriage has yet to change. Although I'm certain my bride is working on it.
This would probably be a good time to tell the story about the first time I did tequila shots, and how I lost my pants at BC's Tavern in Eureka, California, and how I just barely avoided going to jail that night. I would tell that story, but you've got the gist of it already, methinks.
And pants is a fun word to say. As Jeff Goldstein might write:
Are those your pants?
Yes, those pants belong to me.
Or as David Letterman's voiceover guy has been saying for years, "World Wide Pants the world leader in entertainment, and pants."
Go on and say it out loud with me, even if you're in a meeting at work. "Pants pants pants pants pants pants pants." Fun, isn't it?
But today, for once, I'm not thinking about my pants. I'm not, at least not at this very moment, even thinking about what's in my pants. I'm oh dear Whomever save me thinking about Sandy Berger's pants.
And I'm oh dear Whomever there's no hope for me is there? thinking about what's inside Sandy Berger's pants:
Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had made while reading classified anti-terror documents at the archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants.
That's right the former National Security Advisor to President Clinton stuffed classified information down his pants and walked (a bit oddly, I'd wager) to his car. So that I might not be labeled a partisan hack, let me first say something in Sandy's defense at least he didn't also have a shredder down there. Because you just know that Fawn Hall could have destroyed top secret documents with a top-secret spy device hidden in her not-so-Top-Secret cotton thong.
And before we continue with this sad excuse for an essay, let us be thankful that I didn't use this segue to force you to picture Sandy Berger in a cotton thong.
Now then. The fact that Berger stole classified data doesn't bother me. The fact that he stuffed them down his pants doesn't bother me. God knows, I've stuffed enough inappropriate items down my pants to make both Berger and Hall blush, and then get them so hot and bothered that they'd have to make out. Nope, those two facts don't bother me at all. (On the other hand, I'm slightly drunk. Ask me in the morning if the thought bothers me, of Sandy Berger and Fawn Hall, with their unmentionables filled with Top Secret memos, making out on a White House basement desk, and I'm likely to throw up on your lap.)
Let me tell you what bothers me.
Berger was the National Security Advisor who was so hidebound by legalities, that he told his boss not to accept Sudan's offer to turn over Osama bin Laden to us back in 1996:
"The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time, and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who was deputy national security adviser then.
Eight years ago, Osama wasn't exactly on the top of our National Worry List. But we knew of him, we knew of his declaration of war against us, and we knew he'd already attacked us. So who cares if we didn't have enough to indict him? There are quiet ways of permanently dealing with our enemies, assuming we can get our hands on them.
Clinton had the chance, served up on a platter. Sandy Berger worried about the legal niceties and, five years later, 3,000 Americans were killed in New York, in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon. And some of the blame for that rests at the document-stuffed shoes of Sandy Berger.
One of the National Security Advisor's jobs is to tell the President that something nasty has to be done to some even nastier person. Berger, more concerned with legalities than with national security (which should be the Attorney General's job, not the NSA's), told Clinton to let Osama go.
And yet not even that is what bothers me.
What bothers me and what should bother you is that the man who was too concerned with the law to get Osama when he had the chance, was rather cavalier about the law when it came to shoving classified items down his 46-inch waistband.
Sandy Berger covered his ass, quite literally, with the papers which, just might, show how he inadvertently helped Osama bin Laden murder the asses of 3,000 of Berger's fellow Americans.
Once, when I was young and foolish, I almost spent the night in jail for dropping trou in public. What should become of Sandy Berger for stuffing his?
For my money, that's at least one "inadvertently" too many, and that is not a literary criticism. Perhaps this explanation will fly for those who have never worked around classified documents, but since I spent three years producing such material, I can tell you that it's impossible to "inadvertently" take or destroy them. For one thing, such documents are required to have covers -- bright covers in primary colors that indicate their level of classification. Each sheet of paper is required to have the classification level of the page (each page may be classified differently) at the top and bottom of each side of the paper. Documents with higher classifications are numbered, and each copy is tracked with an access log, and nowadays I suppose they're tracking them by computers.
Under these rules, it's difficult to see how anyone could "inadvertently" mix up handwritten notes with classified documents, especially when sticking them into one's jacket and pants. Furthermore, as Clinton's NSA, Berger would have been one of the people responsible for enforcing these regimens, not simply subject to them. The DOD makes these rules crystal clear during the clearance process at each level of access, and security officers (which Berger clearly was) undergo even further training and assessment on security procedures. "Inadvertent" and "sloppiness", in the real context of secured documentation, not only don't qualify as an excuse but don't even register as a possibility.
Schmidt and Eggen also try to tone down the potential damage Berger's theft could do to national security:
The missing copies, according to Breuer and their author, Richard A. Clarke, the counterterrorism chief in the Clinton administration and early in President Bush's administration, were versions of after-action reports recommending changes following threats of terrorism as 1999 turned to 2000. Clarke said he prepared about two dozen ideas for countering terrorist threats. The recommendations were circulated among Cabinet agencies, and various versions of the memo contained additions and refinements, Clarke said last night.
Breuer said that Clarke had prepared a "tough review" and that the document was something of a critical assessment of what agencies did well and what they failed to do in the face of the millennium threat.
Clarke said it is illogical to assume Berger would have sought to hide versions of the memo, because "everybody in town had copies of these things." He said he could not recall most of the recommendations, but one that he did remember -- having FBI field offices send wiretap material to Washington for translation instead of translating it locally -- still has not been accomplished.
Now we have another excuse -- that the material isn't important and shouldn't be considered a problem. After all, everyone knew what was in the memo, right? Unfortunately, as the article does state elsewhere, there were several versions of the memo during its development, and each had different information and recommendations. It would appear that at least one memo had information and/or recommendations that received no action, and its release might embarrass the Clinton administration's national-security team. Besides, the NSA or DOD still considered the data to be highly sensitive, and its loss means that the information it contained has either been destroyed, or if you believe Berger, may be lying intact in a Virginia landfill, waiting to be discovered.
I find it highly suspect that the first expert the Post found to speak on this is Richard Clarke. How many of the partisans will come out of the woodwork? Next, we'll have Joe Wilson come out and claim that the documents never existed in the first place.
insein said:You know whats the most sickening thing? If condaleeza were the one to have doen this, She'd have been in jail next to Martha Stewart already. The media would have had here charged, tried and convicted all within an hour. then they would have pushed this onward to try and impeach Bush. Yet its a former Clinton NSA chief and its no big deal.
In fact McAuliffe is saying that the timing of this story is more questionable then the actions that Berger ADMITTED to doing!!!
Kathianne said:More than that, demonstrates the lack of responsibility on the top of DNC.
freeandfun1 said:and the media. other than conservative talk shows and fox, NOBODY is giving this the attention it should be getting.
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1. The New Yorker: Shouts and Murmurs
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ScreamingEagle said:Unbelievable.
Most people would go to jail for such an act.
Do you think he will?
Probably not, he already apologized for his "sloppiness". :huh:
