Clinton aide took home classified 9-11 papers

WASHINGTON – In a blockbuster revelation that may prove to be the most shocking scandal of the Clinton administration, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger is under criminal investigation for pocketing highly classified terrorism documents prior to the Sept. 11 Commission hearings.

Berger is the focus of a Justice Department investigation for removing the documents and handwritten notes from a secure reading room, the Associated Press is reporting. He has been serving as a national security adviser to John Kerry's campaign.

FBI agents searched Berger's home and office after he voluntarily returned some documents to the National Archives. However, AP reports, still missing are some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration.

Berger and his lawyer told the news agency yesterday he knowingly removed handwritten notes he made while reading classified anti-terror documents at the archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. They said he also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.

"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I 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 in a statement to the AP.

According to the AP, Lanny Breuer, one of Berger's attorneys, said his client has offered to cooperate fully with the investigation but had not yet been interviewed by the FBI or prosecutors. Berger has been told he is the subject of the criminal investigation, Breuer said.

Berger served as Clinton's national security adviser for all of the president's second term and most recently has been informally advising Democratic presidential candidate Kerry.

Berger was in the National Archives rifling through the files at the request of former President Clinton, who asked him to review and select the administration documents that would be turned over to the commission.

The FBI searches of Berger's home and office occurred after National Archives employees told agents they believed they saw Berger place documents in his clothing while reading sensitive Clinton administration papers and that some documents were missing, officials said.

When asked, Berger said he returned some classified documents that he found in his office and all of the handwritten notes he had taken, but could not locate two or three copies of the highly classified millennium terror report.

The officials said the missing documents included critical assessments about the Clinton administration's handling of the millennium terror threats as well as identification of America's terror vulnerabilities at airports to seaports.

In the FBI search of his office, Berger also was found in possession of a small number of classified note cards containing his handwritten notes from the Middle East peace talks during the 1990s, officials and lawyers told the AP.

"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 Sept. 11 commission, I inadvertently took a few documents from the Archives," Berger told the AP. "When I was informed by the Archives that there were documents missing, I immediately returned everything I had except for a few documents that I apparently had accidentally discarded," he said.

Breuer said Berger believed he was looking at copies of the classified documents, not originals.

Berger took handwritten notes on the classified papers, which his lawyer claims was "technical violation of Archive procedures, but it is not all clear to us this represents a violation of the law."

Berger testified at one of the commission's public hearings about the Clinton administration's approach to fighting terrorism. The former president answered questions at a private meeting.

The former national security adviser had ordered his anti-terror czar, Richard Clarke, in early 2000 to write the after-action report and has spoken publicly about how the review brought to the forefront the realization that al-Qaida had reached America's shores and required more attention.

Berger testified that during the millennium period, "we thwarted threats and I do believe it was important to bring the principals together on a frequent basis" to consider terror threats more regularly, according to the AP report.

The missing documents involve two or three draft versions of the report as it was evolving and being refined by the Clinton administration, officials and lawyers say. The Archives is believed to have copies of some of the missing documents.

Breuer said the Archives staff first raised concerns with Berger during an Oct. 2 review of documents that at least one copy of the post-millennium report he had reviewed earlier was missing. Berger was given a second copy that day, Breuer said.

Officials familiar with the investigation said Archives staff specially marked the documents and when the new copy and others disappeared, Archives officials called Clinton attorney Bruce Lindsey to report the disappearance.

Berger immediately returned all the notes he had taken, and conducted a search and located two copies of the classified documents on a messy desk in his office, Breuer said. An Archives official came to Berger's home to collect those documents but Berger couldn't locate the other missing copies, the lawyer said.

He retained counsel, and in January the FBI executed search warrants of a safe at Berger's home as well as his business office where he found some of the documents. Agents also failed to locate the missing documents, according to the AP account.

Justice Department officials have told the Sept. 11 commission of the Berger incident and the nature of the documents in case commissioners wanted more information, officials said. The commission is expected to release its final report Thursday.

Congressional intelligence committees, however, have not been formally notified.

"The House Intelligence Committee has not been informed on the loss or theft of any classified intelligence information from the Archives, but we will follow up and get the information that is appropriate for the committee to have," the committee said Monday in a statement. "And if it has occurred, we should be informed. If there has been delay in getting the information to the committee we need to know why."

Berger is the second high-level Clinton-era official to face charges over taking classified information home.

Former CIA Director John Deutch was pardoned by Clinton just hours before Clinton left office in 2001 for taking home classified information and keeping it on unsecured computers at his home during his time at the CIA and Pentagon. Deutch was about to enter into a plea agreement for a misdemeanor charge of mishandling government secrets when the pardon was granted.

Remember this juicy piece from long ago, in which Berger is mentioned? What wasn't the testimony ever made public?

Aide: Clinton Unleashed bin Laden
Chuck Noe, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Dec. 6, 2001
Bill Clinton ignored repeated opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist allies and is responsible for the spread of terrorism, one of the ex-president’s own top aides charges.
Mansoor Ijaz, who negotiated with Sudan on behalf of Clinton from 1996 to 1998, paints a portrait of a White House plagued by incompetence, focused on appearances rather than action, and heedless of profound threats to national security.

Ijaz also claims Clinton passed on an opportunity to have Osama bin Laden arrested.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, hoping to have terrorism sanctions lifted, offered the arrest and extradition of bin Laden and "detailed intelligence data about the global networks constructed by Egypt's Islamic Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas,” Ijaz writes in today’s edition of the liberal Los Angeles Times.

These networks included the two hijackers who piloted jetliners into the World Trade Center.

But Clinton and National Security Adviser Samuel "Sandy” Berger failed to act.

”I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities,” Ijaz writes.

”The silence of the Clinton administration in responding to these offers was deafening."

Thank Clinton for 'Hydra-like Monster'

”As an American Muslim and a political supporter of Clinton, I feel now, as I argued with Clinton and Berger then, that their counter-terrorism policies fueled the rise of bin Laden from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster,” says Ijaz, chairman of a New York investment company and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Ijaz’s revelations are but the latest to implicate the Clinton administration in the spread of terrorism. Former CIA and State Department official Larry Johnson today also noted the failure of Clinton to do more than talk.

Among the many others who have pointed out Clinton’s negligence: former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris, the late author Barbara Olson, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iraqi expert Laurie Mylroie, the CIA and some of the victims of Sept. 11.

And the list grows: members of Congress, pundit Charles R. Smith, former Department of Energy official Notra Trulock, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, government counterterrorism experts, the law firm Judicial Watch, New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler, the liberal Boston Globe – and even Clinton himself.

The Buck Stops Nowhere

Ijaz's account in the Times reads like a spy novel. Sudan’s Bashir, fearing the rise of bin Laden, sent intelligence officials to the U.S. in February 1996. They offered to arrest bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or to keep close watch over him. The Saudis "didn't want their home-grown terrorist back where he might plot to overthrow them.”

”In May 1996, the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere.”

That’s when bin Laden went to Afghanistan, along with "Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who traveled frequently to Germany to obtain electronic equipment for al-Qaeda; Wadih El-Hage, Bin Laden's personal secretary and roving emissary, now serving a life sentence in the U.S. for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya; and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saif Adel, also accused of carrying out the embassy attacks.”

If these names sound familiar, just check the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists.

The Clinton administration repeatedly rejected crucial information that Sudan had gathered on these terrorists, Ijaz says.

In July 2000, just three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, Ijaz "brought the White House another plausible offer to deal with bin Laden, by then known to be involved in the embassy bombings. A senior counter-terrorism official from one of the United States' closest Arab allies - an ally whose name I am not free to divulge - approached me with the proposal after telling me he was fed up with the antics and arrogance of U.S. counter-terrorism officials.”

This offer would have brought bin Laden to that Arab country and eventually to the U.S. All the proposal required of Clinton was that he make a state visit to request extradition.

"But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer, letting it get caught up in internal politics within the ruling family - Clintonian diplomacy at its best.”

'Purposeful Obfuscation'

Appearing on Fox News Channel’s "The O’Reilly Factor” on Wednesday night, Ijaz said, "Everything we needed to know about the terrorist networks” was in Sudan.

Newsman Bill O’Reilly asked how Clinton and Berger reacted to the deals Ijaz brokered to bring bin Laden and company to justice. "Zero. They didn’t respond at all.”

The Clintonoids won’t get away with denials, he said. "I’ve got the documentation,” including a memorandum to Berger.

"This was purposeful obfuscation,” he asserted.

O’Reilly wondered why the White House didn’t want information about the terrorists. Ijaz said that was for the American people to judge, but when pressed he suggested that Clinton might intentionally have allowed the apparently weak bin Laden to rise so he could later make a show of crushing him.

Concludes Ijaz in the Times: "Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.”

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