posted April 01, 2005 01:45 PM              

Getty Images

Sandy Berger served as the national security adviser in Bill Clinton's administration.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Talk About It: Post | Chat


WASHINGTON (April 1) - Sandy Berger, who was President Clinton's top national security aide, has acknowledged taking classified documents from the National Archives and cutting them up with scissors, law enforcement officials said Friday.

Rather than the ''honest mistake'' he acknowledged last summer, Berger told Justice Department lawyers he intentionally took and deliberately destroyed three copies of the same document dealing with terror threats during the 2000 millennium celebration, said the officials. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because Berger's plea had not yet been accepted by a judge.

A U.S. District Court hearing was scheduled for Friday afternoon, at which time Berger was expected to enter a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge.

The court appearance was the culmination of a bizarre episode in which the man who once had access to the government's most sensitive intelligence was accused of sneaking documents out of the Archives, which houses the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and other cherished and top-secret documents.

The charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of a year in prison and up to a $100,000 fine.

However, the plea agreement calls for Berger to serve no jail time but to pay a $10,000 fine, surrender his security clearance for three years and cooperate with investigators, the officials said. Berger also was required to acknowledge that taking the documents was not inadvertent, they said.

Security clearance allows access to classified government materials.

The Bush administration disclosed the investigation in July, just days before the Sept. 11 commission issued its final report. Democrats claimed the White House was using Berger to deflect attention from the harsh findings, with their potential for damaging President Bush's re-election prospects.

After news of the probe surfaced, Berger acknowledged he left the National Archives on two occasions in 2003 with copies of documents about the government's anti-terror efforts and notes that he took on those documents.

He said he was reviewing the materials to help determine which Clinton administration documents to provide to the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks. He called the episode ''an honest mistake'' and denied criminal wrongdoing.

Berger and his lawyer, Lanny Breuer, have said Berger knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket and pants and inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.

He returned two of the five copies of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration.

''Mr. Berger has cooperated fully with the Department of Justice and is pleased that a resolution appears very near,'' Breuer said Thursday.

The Associated Press first reported in July that the Justice Department was investigating Berger for incidents at the Archives the previous fall. The disclosure prompted Berger to step down as an adviser to the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

Clinton was among Democrats who questioned the timing of the disclosure of the Berger probe, three days before the release of the final Sept. 11 commission report. The commission, writing three months before the 2004 presidential election, detailed failures of both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Leaders of the Sept. 11 commission said they were able to get every key document needed to complete their report.

04-01-05 1048ES

posted April 06, 2005 02:57 PM            

Berger, a national security adviser in the Clinton administration, was caught red-handed removing sensitive, classified documents from the National Archives.

He wasn't doing something as innocuous as research for his personal memoirs. No, he was preparing for testimony before the 9/11 Commission to vindicate Bill Clinton's performance in response to the terrorist threat. The documents he secreted, purloined and later deliberately destroyed were exceedingly relevant to the subject matter of his 9/11 testimony.

The documents were drafts of a damning "after-action review" by anti-terrorist expert Richard Clarke of the Clinton administration's actions in thwarting an attack by al-Qaida against America during the millennium celebration. The report revealed "glaring" national security weaknesses and attributed prevention of the attack to "luck."

Under a plea agreement with the government, Berger will be fined $10,000 and his national security clearance will be suspended for three years. The Justice Department rationalized this absurd leniency by saying, "Berger did not have an intent to hide any of the content of the documents" or conceal facts from the commission. He destroyed copies, not originals. He wasn't trying to cover up Clinton administration incompetence, but took the documents because it would be more convenient to prepare for his testimony in his office.

What kind of message is Justice sending here? It seems the Bush administration bends over backward to avoid placing its predecessor in a negative light. Remember the way it buried the trashing of the White House by outgoing Clinton personnel?

Perhaps the administration is also giving Berger the benefit of the doubt because of his "distinguished career" and stature. But doesn't Berger's stature – in a society supposedly committed to the rule of law – militate against leniency?

Indeed, because of his particular expertise and the important government position he held, Berger arguably should be held to a higher standard than your common classified document thief. Berger, of all people, should know the importance of protecting sensitive national security information.

But by this plea agreement, are we not – in a time of war when national security means everything to the preservation of the republic and protection of American lives – saying these rules are merely technical and not that important?

Keep in mind we are not talking about some innocent mistake, as Berger deceitfully euphemized his crime when first caught in the act. He has admitted that he took the documents deliberately and surreptitiously.

Even if Berger didn't hide the documents in his socks or underwear, he was, by his own admission, hiding them. Moreover, as others have pointed out, he revealed his criminal intent by meticulously shredding the documents with scissors.

Why is the Justice Department so anxious to believe Berger's motives were not to obstruct the commission, but only to make his preparation for testifying before the commission more convenient?

We now know Berger deliberately took the documents knowing it was against the law to do so. He acted with malice aforethought. He later lied repeatedly in saying he took them by mistake. The documents pertained to the competence of the Clinton administration in responding to the terrorist threat when that question was directly at issue before the 9/11 commission and part of the fiercely partisan political debate of the day.

Berger had every interest in making the Clinton administration look good in the very area addressed by the Clarke memo. Is it just a coincidence that the documents he took and destroyed pertained specifically to these questions and were unfavorable to the administration he served?

Where are the Democrats on this issue? Are they not the ones who have been obsessed with retrospectives and endless self-flagellating investigations into how our intelligence agencies failed, implying that we could have prevented 9/11?

Given the gravity they attach to these investigations, how can they possibly understate the significance of Berger's crime? His actions – even if you naively believe they weren't in furtherance of a Clinton cover-up – grossly undermined the integrity of our investigative process and national security in general.

I have no desire to see Berger in jail, but we darn well should be sure that he loses his national security clearance permanently. If not, we are saying that these investigations are really just partisan showmanship, that national security document classification and other security laws are much ado about nothing and that if you're important enough, you can violate national security laws with virtual impunity.

posted April 06, 2005 03:19 PM            

If the Bush Justice Department knows why Berger did what he did, they are not saying so. Of course, Berger continues to surround himself with the usual Clintonesque rhetoric, which amounts to mouthing words of innocence and benign motivations based on pure intentions.

In fact, one could interpret Berger's artfully crafted explanations so as to develop sympathy for the man Clinton says "worked his heart out to protect our national security." Of course Clinton and his shrew of a wife were the hardest workers of all in that dysfunctional administration – and if you don't believe that, just ask them.

Berger maintains that he was tired and wanted to study the documents at home. He didn't want to raise too much of a fuss returning them, so he chopped up three as a favor to Archives staff. Gee, what a nice guy! Who could dislike this guy?

A recent editorial in the Washington Times suggests such slaps on the wrist send the wrong message and may cause citizens to become even more cynical about their government. The Times is my favorite newspaper, but I honestly believe they are behind the curve in assessing the mindset of the average citizen.

Is it a surprise to anyone that less than 50 percent of the population bothers to vote? Could it be that they have become so cynical that they have lost all interest in participation in their own government? If this was the case, would anyone be surprised?

Is there a level beyond cynicism? Some people would call this apathy.

I watched scandal after affair after screw-up after violation of law during my years in the Clinton White House. Recall that a certain Craig Livingston was able to secure nearly 1,000 FBI files on the Clintons' more important political enemies, and when special prosecutors looked at the evidence, they could find nary a violation of law. The Clintons had already misused power by trying to jail Billy Dale and his six innocent coworkers in the Travel Office, merely because "Hillary wants our people in these slots."

The Clintons did all this and more, and there were no repercussions beyond the political. It is doubtful that more than half of the population cared about Clinton's reckless behavior in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky – but they should have.

When the Bush administration decided to enter into this bargain with Sandy Berger, the only persons benefiting besides Berger himself were Bush's hostile and vicious political opponents. With Berger's ability to regain his security clearance in just three short years – an acknowledgement by the establishment that security clearances have become a joke – the way was paved for this sloppy moron to serve on, or perhaps co-chair, an important future commission related to our national security.