Posted on 07/20/2004 6:14:20 PM PDT by True Capitalist
CLINTON SAYS BERGER-DOCUMENTS FUROR IS JUST POLITICS: 'WE WERE ALL LAUGHING ABOUT IT'
Tue Jul 20 2004 20:54:50 ET
Former president Bill Clinton defends his embattled national security advisor as a man who "always got things right," even if his desk was a mess.
"We were all laughing about it," Clinton said about the investigation into Sandy Berger for taking classified terrorism documents from the National Archives. "People who don't know him might find it hard to believe. But ... all of us who've been in his office have always found him buried beneath papers."
MORE
DRUDGE has learned: In an interview set for publication Wednesday in the DENVER POST, Clinton questions the timing of the Berger flap less than a week before the Democratic National Convention and two days before a presidential commission is slated to release its final report on the Bush administration's handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Clinton tells the POST he has known about the federal probe of Berger's actions for several months, calling the news a "non-story."
"I wish I knew who leaked it. It's interesting timing," he added.
"I feel terrible for Sandy. But I just believe his explanation because I know how much he cared about this ... terrorism business," Clinton said, describing his former security advisor as a "workaholic" who has "always been up to his ears in papers."
Developing...
Yep.......Clinton isn't as smart as he pretends to be.
Wait a minute!All the Dems are screaming about the timing of the leak.They said leaking an ongoing investigation,is in itself wrong....yet Clinton knew!
Lanny Davis....is my guess.
LAUGHING ABOUT IT???
THIS IS OUR BLEEPING NATIONAL SECURITY AND THIS BLEEPING CLOWN THINKS IT'S A BLEEPING JOKE????!?!?!?!?!
Yeah it is typical of them. Either they interupt or they dance around and don't answer questions you ask them
Kerry will lose in November because that's what the Clintons want.
Why do we still love this guy? (maybe they do but I sure as hell don't)
WARNING, WARNING, picture of evil, ugly man.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~45~2281869,00.html
Just finished watching Ann Coulter tear that Dem to pieces. He was sputtering something fierce. Something really smells bad here. How did the Democratic party sink so low? If the Democrats ever want to be seriously taken as a legitimate party again in the U.S.A., to mainstream Americans, they will have to show that they are no longer socialists or communists. And I still wouldn't trust them. A national party no more - they should listen to Zell Miller.
Exactly.
I'm hesitant to quote that "five times" number because although the NewsMax article says it was sourced on a WSJ article, I haven't seen the WSJ article.
Not that I don't believe it, but I'm not quoting that number to people until it's better sourced.
The leftists like to play this game. Something damaging comes out about them. Then THEY leak something really outrageous (like Berger stuffed papers in his socks and did it five times). Then that's relatively easy to dis-prove and people think the entire thing is made up.
That's probably clear as mud but it is a game they play to great advantage and I won't be drawn into it.
great point, however skepticism can only be applied by the media against the right.
I think you make some very good points. Maybe Berger did leak it.
Clinton's making things far worse,with this statement.It's the COVER-UP that always get them.And this sure looks like a COVER-UP and spin cycle to me.
He knew Al Qaeda was here in 1999, and he sent Berger to snatch the classified documents that proved it.
You mean Bubba....I don't think it was Hillary.
Puke-a-rific.
"So is this about Sandy Berger, or is this about politics?" asked Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.
Former President Clinton also weighed in, telling reporters at a Denver autograph session for his book "My Life" that "it's interesting timing."
Berger served as national security adviser for all of Clinton's second term. "I know him. He's a good man. He worked his heart out for this country," Clinton said.
The Justice Department is investigating whether Berger committed a crime by removing from the National Archives documents about the government's anti-terror efforts and notes that he took on those documents. Berger was reviewing the materials to help determine which Clinton administration documents to provide to the Sept. 11 commission.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told reporters the case was about theft and questioned Berger's statement attributing the removal of the documents and notes to sloppiness. Along with putting documents in his coat and pants, Berger acknowledged removing some documents in a portfolio. He returned most of the documents, but some still are missing.
"That's not sloppy," DeLay said. "I think its gravely, gravely serious what he did, if he did it. It could be a national security crisis."
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said he was "profoundly troubled" by the allegations, adding that Berger "has a lot of explaining to do."
Lanny Breuer, Berger's attorney, said his client has offered to cooperate with investigators. He said the decision to step aside from the Kerry campaign was done because "Mr. Berger does not want any issue surrounding the 9/11 commission to be used for partisan purposes."
Deputy Attorney General James Comey would not comment on the investigation other than that in general the Justice Department regards takes "very, very seriously" allegations of mishandled classified materials.
"It's our lifeblood, those secrets," Comey said.
The documents involved have been a key point of contention between the Clinton and Bush administrations on the question of who responded more forcefully to the threat of al-Qaida terrorism. Written by former National Security Council aide Richard Clarke, they discuss the 1999 plot to attack U.S. millennium celebrations and offer more than two dozen recommendations for improving the response to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
In his April 13 testimony to the Sept. 11 commission, Attorney General John Ashcroft said the review "warns the prior administration of a substantial al-Qaida network" in the United States. Ashcroft said it also recommends such things as using tougher visa and border controls and prosecutions of immigration violations and minor criminal charges to disrupt terror cells.
"These are the same aggressive, often-criticized law enforcement tactics that we have unleashed for 31 months to stop another al-Qaida attack," Ashcroft told the panel. He added that he never saw the documents before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Berger said in his March 23 testimony that Clinton submitted a $300 million supplemental budget to Congress to pay for implementing many of the documents' recommendations. Berger acknowledged, however, that not all of them were accomplished.
In his statement Monday, Berger said that every Clinton administration document requested by the Sept. 11 commission was provided to the panel. Berger also said he returned some classified documents and all his handwritten notes when he was asked about them, except for two or three copies of the millennium report that may have been thrown away.
Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, said the Berger investigation will have no bearing on the panel's highly anticipated report.
"This is a matter between the government and an individual," Felzenberg said. "They were not our documents, and we believe we have access to all the materials we need to see to do our report."
Peter Fenn...who is utterly comtemptable.
If WSJ is right and Berger took documents out FIVE times, how the heck doesn one call that "inadvertently?"
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