Excellent question. Perhaps:
1. Clinton is orchestrating the damage control on this story and they wanted it to be released too late to make the evening news.
2. It's the Clinton pattern to break bad news yourself so that you can spin it your direction. By the time government releases it's report, makes the arrest, brings charges etc... it will be "old news". Time to move on.
3. Clinton wanted the story out and old news before he spoke at the Democrat convention.
4. Berger is expecting to be indicted and arrested very soon, and wanted to get out front with his efforts to prejudice a DC jury in his favor.
What Mark says here is very important.
"This should be a very, very big deal, and the Democrats will attempt to do everything possible to kill it. It's big because it is a crime to destroy government property, including classified documents, and to obstruct a government investigation (9/11 investigation).
The information that was destroyed, to the extent we know about it thanks to Ashcroft's testimony, most likely showed the extent to which the Clinton administration failed to adopt recommended policies to fight terrorism.
And my guess is that some of those recommendations must have had some relevance to stopping what would become 9/11, otherwise Berger would not have risked everything to get to them..."
My favorite reason?
Max Cleland should have kept his mouth shut today.