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Lanny the Leaker?
The partisan press is trying to recast Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger's alleged theft of documents from the National Archives as a Republican scandal. Today the Washington Post gets on board, with a news article reporting that "for the second day in a row, administration officials said yesterday that more of President Bush's aides knew about [the] investigation . . . than the White House originally acknowledged."
A Post editorial also takes aim at the administration:
It's hard not to be repulsed by the reaction to the affair by President Bush's campaign spokesmen and Republicans in Congress. They have suggested, without foundation, that Mr. Berger took the papers to benefit Mr. [John] Kerry, who [by the way served in Vietnam and] says that he knew nothing of the matter.
Well, fair enough; the claim that Berger filched the docs to help Kerry, repulsive or not, is indeed without foundation. But the Post concludes its editorial with some unfounded speculation of its own:
It's worth noting that news of the months-old investigation of Mr. Berger just happened to leak on the week before the Democratic convention, and two days before the release of the Sept. 11 commission's report--which covers serious lapses by President Bush as well as President Bill Clinton. Officials at the Bush White House had been briefed on the Berger probe. Could that be a coincidence?
It's weird to see journalists engaging in this Beltway speculation over who "leaked" the information to the press. After all, journalists are supposed to like leaks, which further "the public's right to know" and, more importantly, reporters' ability to get scoops. But somehow when the leak is seen as benefiting Republicans--recall the Valerie Plame kerfuffle as well--the press's partisanship seems to override its thirst for information.
But as long as everyone else is playing this game, we might as well join in. Many observers have made the point that it's far from a given that it was a Republican source who put this story into circulation. Democrats could have done so now to avoid its coming out just before the election. On Wednesday National Review's Jonah Goldberg fingers one suspect, Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Clinton:
The fellow who broke the Berger story was John Solomon [of the Associated Press]. And According to Davis, Solomon was "the most fair" reporter he knew because Solomon was willing to take so many items from Davis.
Goldberg quotes an April 12, 1999, article by the Washington Post's media reporter, Howard Kurtz:
In "Truth to Tell," [a book] out next month, Davis argues for "good," factually based spin over "bad," deceptive spin--but concedes that some of his spin was "so transparent that it is amazing that we thought we could get away with it." . . .
Davis called the reporter he deemed most fair, the AP's John Solomon, with documents suggesting that Clinton had made fund-raising calls from the White House residence. The leak occurred on July 3, 1997, so the story would get lost on the Fourth of July holiday.
Yesterday Davis appeared on Linda Chavez's radio program, and a caller named David asked him if he was the Berger leaker. He evaded the question (an audio clip, in MP3 format, is here):
David: National Review is insinuating that the whole hoopla about who leaked this to the AP reporter could be settled by posing the question to Mr. Davis. They've suggested that since he cites the same reporter in his book and his articles about public relations . . .
Davis: (laughter)
Chavez: I think we're getting a response, David.
David: . . . that he may be the one that may have leaked this, since this is his favorite reporter.
Chavez: . . . Lanny Davis, did you leak this?
Davis: Well first off, thank you caller for asking me that. I've heard about that. The caller is absolutely correct; I wrote a chapter in my book about one of the great reporters who covered the White House, John Solomon of the Associated Press. I always get him into trouble by saying he's a great reporter, because people think he treated us with a soft touch. In fact [he] killed us almost all the time. But I'm afraid that if I asked John Solomon "Who leaked it to you?" he would give me the same answer that he's always given me when I ask that question, which is, "None of your business."
Chavez: Well, OK, Lanny, but David was asking you; he wasn't asking John Solomon: Did you leak this information to John Solomon in order to get the bad news out first?
Davis: Oh, did I? (laughter) Well, let me put it this way: Had I been asked last October by my old friend Sandy Berger, who is a great man, an honest man, and has done something that he sincerely regrets--I would have suggested to Sandy that we call John Solomon and that he sit down with John Solomon and tell him the whole story and get the story out last October. Because sure as the sun rises in the east, Linda, there were enough people who knew about this that this particular week out of 52 weeks in 2004 is not surprising as the week that somebody chose to leak the story.
Davis's evasion doesn't necessarily mean he was the leaker, but it's certainly curious.
Mr. 'No'
The New York Sun reports that Sandy Berger nixed a proposal to get Osama bin Laden nearly five years ago:
On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council's counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: "In the margin next to Clarke's suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, 'no.' "
Meanwhile, New York's Daily News reports that "U.S. officials scrapped a 1999 plan to offer the Taliban a $250 million bribe to turn over Osama Bin Laden, fearing then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would object to paying off the infamous women's rights abusers":
According to the final 9/11 commission report, Bill Clinton's administration had already made fruitless overtures to the Taliban, paying $10 million to $20 million annually in bribes.
"Two senior State Department officials suggested asking the Saudis to offer the Taliban $250 million for Bin Laden," the report said, citing a May 1999 memo. But White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke "opposed . . . a 'huge grant to a regime as heinous as the Taliban' and suggested that the idea might not seem attractive to either Secretary Albright or First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton--both critics of the Taliban's record on women's rights."
The bribe idea sounds half-baked anyway, but should the sensibilities of the president's wife really weigh so heavily on questions of national security?
I hadn't really thought about that, but that really would have been worse timing, but you won't hear most of the media ever admitting that.I don't even understand the whole comment about timing to begin with. Wouldn't it have been much better timing to leak this information while Berger was testifying before the 9/11 Commission?
