WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Samuel "Sandy" Berger, national security adviser under former President Bill Clinton, is under investigation after removing classified documents from the National Archives while he prepared to appear before the Sept. 11 commission, a U.S. official said Monday.
The official, who asked not to be named, said the investigation was pending and could provide no other information. Another official confirmed an investigation was taking place.
Berger said he inadvertently took a few documents and his notes on the material reviewed but immediately returned them when he was told by the Archives that the documents were missing.
"I immediately returned everything I had, except for a few documents that apparently I had accidentally discarded," Berger said in a statement.
"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved but 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.
A Justice Department official refused to comment.
In testimony before the 9/11 Commission in April, Attorney General John Ashcroft detailed the highly classified March 2000 document, saying it contained a set of sweeping recommendations on how to combat the al Qaida threat that were completely ignored by the Clinton White House.
"The NSC's Millennium After Action Review declares that the United States barely missed major terrorist attacks in 1999 -- with luck playing a major role," Ashcroft told the Commission.
"Among the many vulnerabilities in homeland defenses identified, the Justice Department's surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized for their glaring weaknesses."
"It is clear from the review," declared Ashcroft, "that actions taken in the Millennium Period should not be the operating model for the U.S. government."
The Millennium plot review warned the Clinton administration "of a substantial al Qaida network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here," the Bush attorney general said.
"Furthermore, fully seventeen months before the September 11 attacks, the review recommends disrupting the al Qaida network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls," he explained.
Ashcroft's comments suggested why a former Clinton national security official might not want the information contained in the Millennium review to ever see the light of day.
"Despite the warnings and the clear vulnerabilities identified by the NSC in 2000," he told the Commission, "no new disruption strategy to attack the al Qaida network within the United States was deployed. It was ignored in the Department's five-year counterterrorism strategy."