Posted on 07/19/2004 11:04:55 PM PDT by GAGOPSWEEPTOVICTORY
WASHINGTON, July 19 - President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, removed classified security documents from the National Archives while vetting them in preparation for testimony before the Sept. 11 commission and has become the subject of a criminal investigation, his lawyer said Monday night.
Mr. Berger removed at least two versions of a memorandum assessing how the government handled intelligence and security issues before the millennium celebrations in 1999, his lawyer, Lanny A. Breuer, said. He also removed notes he took about classified documents, the lawyer said.
"In the course of reviewing over several days thousands of pages of documents on behalf of the Clinton administration in connection with requests by the 9/11 commission, I inadvertently took a few documents from the archives," Mr. Berger said in a statement.
He said, "I deeply regret the sloppiness involved," and added that he had not intended to keep any document from the commission. The investigation was first reported by The Associated Press.
Mr. Berger returned all of the documents and notes to the archives in October, within a week of his learning they were missing, his lawyers said.
Federal agents investigated Mr. Berger's handling of the materials, a senior government official said this evening. The official said the inquiry's results were being reviewed Justice Department prosecutor, who will decide whether any laws were broken.
What a liberal rag.
I like the part where he inadvertently stuffs them into his pants and his briefcase. They avoided quoting him here. Thats like leaving out the punchline to the joke.
Can you imagine what they would say if this was a Republic official? " Obviously a cover up is in progress; to the stake with him!"
He absentmindedly took them with him, but he knew exactly where they were in order to return them?
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5711928
"Berger and one of his lawyers said he inadvertently removed copies of a classified memo and his handwritten notes on the material he reviewed, but immediately returned them when he was told by the Archives 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.
"
OMG, IF a GOP did this, he would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.
No. Berger is a Democrat and the Clintons are crooked. The question is: what will come first, an investigation or an Arkancide?
My, my.....how nice of him! The Times makes it almost sound altruistic, doesn't it?
Federal agents investigated Mr. Berger's handling of the materials, a senior government official said this evening. The official said the inquiry's results were being reviewed Justice Department prosecutor, who will decide whether any laws were broken.
Then why is it STILL being investigated?
This is an ongoing investigation -- as far as I have read, there are no "results" to be reviewed.
In ONE WEEK, so sez the NYT!
He accidently took them......then he accidently discarded them?
But this is not the entire story.
He took TWO copies of a document, just at two differen times!
Don't worry he "accidentally" discarded ONLY a few documents. You know the ones with big letters that said CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET?! /sarcasm
"I immediately returned everything I had, except for a few documents that apparently I had accidentally discarded," Berger said in a statement.
This statement is very odd, and it's in both this story and the AP account. Why is Berger doing anything on behalf of a now non-existent administration? Is Clinton still giving orders to his former cabinet officers? Was Berger asked to make some damaging documents disappear (into his pants)? Are Berger and his lawyer intentionally redirecting inquiries to Bubba, et al?
We'll have to wait and see if the press reports this as a huge story or a "third-rate burglary."
This NYT piece is about as "scrubbed" as it's going to get.
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in that room tonight, when they talked about just how much they HAD to print.
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This is way too big for even the NYT's to sweep under the rug. The RATS are going down over this one
Here's a question
He KNOWS that notes are not allowed to be taken out of the room ... Notes are also not allowed to be made afterwards unless he recieves special permission
Sooooooooo .. Why did he even bother taking notes in the first place when he know they couldn't leave the room??
Hmmm. The Slimes just posted their front page image and it didn't make it... A story about state goverments being shorthanded "Governors Tell of War Impacts on Local Needs," as did a story about "Basic Training Doesn't Guard Against Insurance Pitch to GIs."
Apparently, women in lesotho who get HIV were more important than some classified documents being taken --- that made it there. Along with a fashion story about "flying shirt tails."
What a frigging joke... there's also a story about wells in Iraq and a Bush story about the Iran-Al Qaeda link.
An intense 49-year-old Arkansas lawyer for whom a blue blazer passes as casual attire, Lindsey serves as the invisible "captain of the defense," as one former White House colleague put it, for the crisis of the moment. Lindsey's preferred modus operandi, as described by those who have worked with him over the years, is to tamp down trouble even before it erupts or, when pressed, to relinquish only whatever tiny morsels of information he judges sufficient to keep the news media at bay.
Whether the allegations involve the draft, sexual liaisons or Whitewater, Lindsey functions as the president's political lookout, bearer of bad news and chief damage control specialist.
"There is no end to which Bruce wouldn't go for the president," said Bill Burton, a fellow Arkansan and former White House colleague. "There are things Bruce would do for the president that nobody else on Earth would do, and Bruce wouldn't even think twice about it."
Let's see if they have as many stories about this as they did about the prison photos.
It's one thing to "accidently " take them
It's a WHOLE OTHER story to throw them out when he realized he had them
Why not return them back to the 9/11 Commission ??
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