Posted on 07/21/2004 7:59:22 PM PDT by Bronco_Buster_FweetHyagh
Archives Employees Suspicious of Berger... devised a coding system and marked the documents they knew Berger was interested in canvassing, and watched him carefully... employees determined that that draft and all four or five other versions of the millennium memo had disappeared from the files after Berger viewed them, WASH POST set to report, say sources... Developing...
Kerry is a fool. This was orchestrated by Clinton who still thinks he's president. Should be pretty funny when Clinton and other RATS dump Berger overboard. Maybe Berget will claim insanity.
TerAYsa's probably already started writing big, fat checks to cover Kerry's botoxed bottom.
Berger may have been working for Kerry, but his real boss is still Clinton.
How true. Gore did make funny noises. And now Kerry has center stage, only nobody's paying any attention. He'll have to start gurgling soon. In fact all the RATS and their flunkies will gurgle in unison, a la 'gravitas'.
Kerry's probably figured out by now that thanks to Clinton, he has about as much chance of being pres. as Howdy Doody.
I didn't see the interview, but he has to be terrified that Clinton and the rest of RATs will either dump him off the back of the bus or engineer a tragic 'accident'. Or maybe we'll discover that Berger has a brain tumor that made him do it.
Didn't Karl Rove say recently that two or three big things were going to happen before Nov.? Maybe this is one of them.
Berger clearly believed he wasn't being videotaped.
As other Freepers have noted, a copy with original notes is original information. The real question is whether the information Berger destroyed is retrievable. So really a key issue is whether the handwritten notes were backed-up, or whether any have been irretrievably lost when Berger destroyed the documents he stole.
My guess is that the handwritten notes were not backed-up and some were likely lost irretrievably. I base this on the following points:
1. Visually you can see whether you are looking at a note written by hand with a pen versus a copy of the same. If Berger could see that the handwritten notes he was reading were xeroxed, there would have been little point in taking them. On the other hand, if he could see that the marginal notes were in blue ink and had scored the paper, he knew he was holding the original.
2. Generally speaking, archives aren't about making copies, they are about keeping originals, (or in this case copies of drafts which were originals by virtue of the original handwritten annotations. So if an archive got a document that had handwriting in the margins, they would catalog it but would not make copies. Remember there's thousands of pages involved, and the archivist didn't know ahead of time what Berger was after. They can't make copies of all that stuff. Archives never have enough space, and they certainly don't have departments or procedures in place to make precautionary copies for routine document review requests.
3. For the archives to have copied beforehand the documents given to Berger would have been no small task. You don't just walk over to the xerox machine and make a copy of a top-secret document. So had the original hand-written notes been copied there would have been a cumbersome procedure to go through. There's no indication that could have happened when Berger requested docs from the archivist, especially on his first visit. They had more chance to hand him dups on his second visit, but even still given the paperwork undoubtedly involved in copying top-secret docs, I don't this happened.
4. Handwritten marginal notes would not be something normally duplicated. Normally the reviewer writes the notes and returns the document to the author, and waits for the next draft version. Not duplicating margin notes goes double for secret documents, which aren't allowed to be copied except under prescribed rules and procedures.
5. The Post is reporting that the Archives contacted Bruce Lindsey, a Clinton guy. That shows either that they were sympathetic to the liberal view, or that they considered it merely an administrative and not a criminal matter. In either event, this suggests the likelihood of them having backed-up any document given to Berger as less.
Maybe North Caroline can outsource the governor's job to India, too.
The archives room monitors who broke rules and left Berger alone for private phone calls, plus all those bathroom breaks....when they realized what Berger had been up to, had to be terrified about being fired. And thank God. They had enough sense to go to their boss and get the sting going.
Never forget the 'INS'.....et al.
:-(
Thanks for the ping!
Thank you for your comments on this and yes I know, the issue is if the handwritten notes were copied. I agree, the documents wouldn't have been copied at the time of his request but was curious about the whole archival procedure and the use of microfilm & microfiche.
The draft documents almost certainly were NOT microfilmed.
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Whether Clarke remembers what he wrote is beside the point.
Appparently, what is missing are some of the "working draft copies" of the same document Clarke authored that had been redlined by certain of the 'Toon cabinet members, and perhaps Berger and 'Toon himself.
What did they comment, redline, marginal note, etc... is the question --- might have been VERY INTERESTING TO THE 9/11 Commission --- and now lost forever. Comments not put into the final draft of the Millenium report could have been very revealing of the state of mind of the previous administration.
I, for one, would simply like to have it released NOW as to whose copies, and comments, are missing. I do not ask that they release the document, or what was said.
All I want to know now, is WHOSE COPIES DID BERGER DESTROY?
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Short answer: NO
Hamburger on a toasted bun, anyone?
If I were Sandy, I'd be asking to be put in VERY protective custody. Problem is, with the Clinton's reach, it'd have to be in the Oval Office.
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