Posted on 07/30/2004 12:11:35 PM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
3 Critical Points
There are several points here. In addition to destroying documents, Sandy Berger was acting as an agent of the executive branch for the 9/11 Commission and was screening the information that was to be provided to them. The Bush Administration did not choose Berger to do this. The 9/11 Commission did. Then the Commission saw only what Berger wanted them to see via hiding behind the Executive Privilege implied by constitutional separation of powers. This makes the 9/11 Commission report worthless. The Commission did not see what Berger, Gorleck and Ben Veniste did not wish them to see, with the cooperation of Co-Chairmen's Kean and Hamilton.
Second, the National Archives saw multiple egregious security violation occur and DID NOTHING. They did not call security to stop and search Berger for the classified documents he stuck in his pants, his socks and his leather folder. They did not stop him from taking and keeping notes on those classified documents. Then they let it happen twice. The first time Berger did it and the second time during their "sting."
Third, there were multiple and repeated breakdowns in the reporting of this security breach. "The Kid" already mentioned the one between the Justice Department and the White House Council. There were others. This is from Representative Chris Cox on the breakdown between the 9/11 Commission and Congress's Intelligence Committees over what Berger did:
"Established protocols for informing the congressional intelligence committees of the security breach were not followed. Nor, at Tuesday's briefing to the House Leadership by the Commission, could Chairman Tom Kean and Co-Chairman Lee Hamilton say whether the specific documents destroyed by Mr. Berger had at any prior time been inspected and reviewed by commission staff. Yet the documents involved, written by former National Security Council aide Richard Clarke, have been at the center of the controversy over the adequacy of the Clinton administration's response to the growing al Qaeda threat.
While many are concerned with which laws may have been broken, a more fundamental question is why Mr. Berger, by any objective reckoning a subject of the Commission's investigation, was reviewing sensitive materials in order to determine which Clinton administration documents would be provided to the Commission. The destroyed documents reportedly contained more than two dozen recommendations for action against Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network -- a measuring stick for the Clinton administration's response."
So, we have the following happening in relation to Sandy Berger:
1. The 9/11 Commission used Sandy Berger as its representative of the Executive Branch in the search for counter terrorism documents from the Clinton Administration.
2. Both it and the National Archives chose not to inform the Congressional intelligence committee's of Sandy Berger's security breach for months most likely in order to protect the credibility of the 9/11 Commission's just published report.
This smells to high heaven and should be the subject of Congressional investigations with all parties involved under oath.
Further, it is plain fact that everyone in the National Archives involved in setting up that vaunted "sting" of Sandy Berger still knowingly let unique code letter secret level classified documents be stolen and destroyed. Every decision maker involved in letting Berger leave the national archived unsearched, twice, should be fired for cause.
Les Folies Berger: The National Security Angle
That is not the least of the National Archive's sins. Mr. Berger was allowed to make cellular telephone calls while alone in the secured document vault and likely during his unmonitored rest room breaks at the Archives. See this article from the New York Daily News:
Guards left Berger alone, sources say Ex-security adviser reportedly told monitors to violate rules as he took breaks, took files.
By James Gordon Meek New York Daily News
Washington — Former national security adviser Sandy Berger repeatedly persuaded monitors assigned to watch him review top-secret documents to break the rules and leave him alone, sources said Wednesday.
Berger, accused of smuggling some of the secret files out of the National Archives, got the monitors out of the high-security room by telling them he had to make sensitive phone calls.
Guards were convinced to violate their own rules by stepping out of the secure room as he looked over documents and allegedly stashed some in his clothing, sources said.
"He was supposed to be monitored at all times but kept asking the monitor to leave so he could make private calls," a senior law enforcement source told the Daily News.
Berger also took "lots of bathroom breaks" that aroused some suspicion, the source added. It is standard procedure to constantly monitor anyone with a security clearance who examines the type of code-word classified files stored in the underground archives vault."
The high level security monitoring of code level secret documents that should have happened did not. Perhaps Berger had a digital camera equipped cell phone. We don't know, because the National Archives so-called security did not examine it, because if they did they would have seized it like they should have seized the documents Berger stuffed into his cloths.
Consider for a moment that he may have taken photos/videos of classified documents and transmitted those over an insecure wireless line. The damage if he did is incalculable.
Washington D.C. is the capitol of the most powerful nation-state on the face of the planet. Every embassy in the D.C. area has a roof filled with antennas that are not there for satellite dish television. They are there to listen to our telephones, computers and other data transmissions. If Democratic operatives can bug then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's cell phone and have one of their House members give their recordings to the media. It is a certainty that hostile foreign powers are monitoring every cell phone call Sandy Berger makes on the off-chance of "striking it rich."
The War on Terrorism has taught us one bitter lesson that both Democrats and the Bush Administration have repeatedly refused to learn, admittedly for different reasons -- OUR ENEMIES COOPERATE. What one terrorist supporting state knows, the whole terrorist network soon learns.
This has horrible implications. My "worst case scenario" is as follows:
1. Sandy Berger photographs and e-mails Richard Clark's Millennium After Action Report that included a list of America's port security vulnerabilities
2. The Syrian Embassy's signals intelligence equipment (or that of another unfriendly embassy) intercepts the document or documents.
3. Clark's list of port vulnerabilities is passed on to al-Qaeda via Iran's Mullahs (or another hostile intermediary).
4. In the months since Berger's visits to the National Archives, Iranian and Syrian agents under cover of diplomatic immunity have used that document to case vulnerable American ports for al-Qaeda.
5. al-Qaeda's sleeper cells here in America were passed this detailed targeting information for a terrorist attack before the November Presidential election.
If we do have another mass casualty attack on America before the November election's, it may have happened with Sandy Berger's unwitting assistance.
What Now?
At this point we cannot undo what has been done, but we can take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. First, Republicans need to read every Republican politician or staffer involved in the 9/11 Commission out of any leadership roles in the party and of any future Republican administration. They cannot be trusted not to be fools or back stabbers.
Second, the Republican controlled House Government Reform Committee needs to hold hearings on the Berger security breach to pinpoint the security breakdowns and fill the lives of all concerned with lawyers. Above all, it is clear Sandy Berger's cell phone records from several weeks before this security breach to date needs to be subpoenaed and investigated.
It is clear that the so-called "bi-partisan" House and Senate Intelligence committees cannot be trusted to do this job. Their very "bi-partisan" nature makes it impossible for them to function given the power Democrat's have on those committees and their overwhelming partisan interest in burying the subject in torrents of hate speech and delay.
Last, the Bush Administration needs to start disciplining the Federal bureaucracies when they fail. Bush has steadfastly refused to fire anyone in the Federal bureaucracies for incompetence and by doing so has made their incompetence his own. The retention of Tenet at CIA and the chief of FBI counter-terrorism after 9/11/2001 is proof enough of that. Bush has only fired people when they openly challenged him and displayed disloyalty he could not ignore, as Treasury Secretary O'Neil and US Army Chief of Staff Shinseki demonstrated.
America needs to protect its secrets from its foreign enemies before it is too late, and only Presidential leadership can make it happen.
If Bush doesn't break his bad leadership habits soon, before the next major domestic attack by al-Qaeda, he will find out that the American people are nowhere near as forgiving of incompetence as he is.
(Excerpt) Read more at windsofchange.net ...
His number 1 is completely "WRONG"! Former President Bill Clintoon asked Mr. Burger to go and review the documents, not the 9/11 commision as he states.
All of this does us absolutely no good if the BC'04 campaign doesn't do something about it. This is more serious than Watergate which caused Nixon his Presidency.
ping
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