The Berger wrist slap: A dangerous precedent

Townhall.com ^ | April 5, 2005 | David Limbaugh

[clyde260]

The Berger wrist slap: A dangerous precedent David Limbaugh (archive)

April 5, 2005

It is very troubling, though not surprising, that the Justice Department is barely going to slap Sandy Berger's wrists for intentionally violating a criminal law critical to our national security.

Berger, a national security adviser in the Clinton administration, was caught red-handed removing sensitive, classified documents from the National Archives.

He wasn't doing something as innocuous as research for his personal memoirs. No, he was preparing for testimony before the 9/11 Commission to vindicate Bill Clinton's performance in response to the terrorist threat. The documents he secreted, purloined, and later deliberately destroyed, were exceedingly relevant to the subject matter of his 9/11 testimony.

The documents were drafts of a damning "after-action review" by anti-terrorist expert Richard Clarke of the Clinton administration's actions in thwarting an attack by Al Qaeda against America during the millennium celebration. The report revealed "glaring" national security weaknesses and attributed prevention of the attack to "luck."

Under a plea agreement with the government, Berger will be fined $10,000 and his national security clearance will be suspended for three years. The Justice Department rationalized this absurd lenience by saying, "Berger did not have an intent to hide any of the content of the documents" or conceal facts from the commission. He destroyed copies, not originals. He wasn't trying to cover-up Clinton administration incompetence, but took the documents because it would be more convenient to prepare for his testimony in his office.

What kind of message is Justice sending here? It seems the Bush administration bends over backward to avoid placing its predecessor in a negative light. Remember the way it buried the trashing of the White House by outgoing Clinton personnel?

Perhaps the administration is also giving Berger the benefit of the doubt because of his "distinguished career" and stature. But doesn't Berger's stature -- in a society supposedly committed to the rule of law -- militate against leniency?

Indeed, because of his particular expertise and the important government position he held, Berger arguably should be held to a higher standard than your common classified document thief. Berger, of all people, should know the importance of protecting sensitive national security information.

But by this plea agreement, are we not -- in a time of war when national security means everything to the preservation of the republic and protection of American lives -- saying these rules are merely technical and not that important?

Keep in mind we are not talking about some innocent mistake, as Berger deceitfully euphemized his crime when first caught in the act. He has admitted that he took the documents deliberately and surreptitiously.

Even if Berger didn't hide the documents in his socks or underwear, he was, by his own admission, hiding them. Moreover, as others have pointed out, he revealed his criminal intent by meticulously shredding the documents with scissors.

Why is the Justice Department so anxious to believe Berger's motives were not to obstruct the commission, but only to make his preparation for testifying before the commission more convenient?

We now know Berger deliberately took the documents knowing it was against the law to do so. He acted with malice aforethought. He later lied repeatedly in saying he took them by mistake. The documents pertained to the competence of the Clinton administration in responding to the terrorist threat when that question was directly at issue before the commission and part of the fiercely partisan political debate of the day. Berger had every interest in making the Clinton administration look good in the very area addressed by the Clarke memo. Is it just a coincidence that the documents he took and destroyed pertained specifically to these questions and were unfavorable to the administration he served?

Where are the Democrats on this issue? Are they not the ones who have been obsessed with retrospectives and endless self-flagellating investigations into how our intelligence agencies failed, implying that we could have prevented 9/11?

Given the gravity they attach to these investigations, how can they possibly understate the significance of Berger's crime? His actions -- even if you naively believe they weren't in furtherance of a Clinton cover-up -- grossly undermined the integrity of our investigative process and national security in general.

I have no desire to see Berger in jail, but we darn well should be sure that he loses his national security clearance permanently. If not, we are saying these investigations are really just partisan showmanship, that national security document classification and other security laws are much ado about nothing and that if you're important enough, you can violate national security laws with virtual impunity.

Justice is setting a dangerous precedent with the Berger plea agreement.

David Limbaugh is a syndicated columnist who blogs at DavidLimbaugh.com

[Boozefighter]

How many hyped by right wing media "scandals" that just fizzle and die and never go anywhere does this make now?

You would think people would start to wonder if they are being manipulated, but nope, the Perpetually Enraged American® starts frothing at the mouth every time, right on command.

[soundandvision]

Mitch McConnell: "Sandy Berger walked out of the National Archives with some P.D.B's in his BVD's and some classified doc's in his socks"

Where is Seuss when you need him?

[Kenny Bunk]

where are the originals? And what the Hell is in these papers that made Sandy Burglar so hot to destroy them?

[kellynla]

Berger has a "Get Out of Jail Free" card and as long as he keeps his trap shut he'll be "taken care of" by the George Soros & Copay crowd...

See what a few hundred FBI files can do for you...
the Clintoons "appropriate" and copy them and BOOM they have a J.Edgar Hoover insurance policy ad infinitum...

Is this a great country or what!

I bet G.Gordon Liddy is feeling like a 14KT chump these days!

[Calpernia]

>>>Willie's whole record is based on the destruction/censorship of documents from his past (how about his records from Oxford concerning the student he raped to cause his expulsion?).

Just a flash from the past.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1209454/posts

Clinton's ROTC Letter As Entered in Congressional Record (Page: H5550) 7/30/93

Dear Col. Holmes,

I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on you will, but I have to have some time to think about this first letter. Almost daily since my return to England I have thought about writing, about what I want to and ought to say.

First, I want to thank you, not only for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind to me last summer, when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing that made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known a little more about me, about my political beliefs and activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC.

Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary but also for the opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly but studied it carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did.

I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations October 15 and November 16.

Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar at Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments for and against allowing, within the Selective Service System, the classification of selective conscientious objection, for those opposed to participation in a particular war, not simply to "participation in war in any form."

From my work, I came to believe that the draft system itself is illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war, which in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation. The draft was justified in World War II because the life of the people collectively was at stake.

Individuals had to fight, if the nation was to survive, for the lives of their country and their way of life. Vietnam is no such case. Nor was Korea an example where, in my opinion, certain military action was justified but the draft was not, for the reasons stated above.

Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill, and maybe die for their country (i.e. the particular policy of a particular government) right or wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi draft board, a letter I am more proud of than anything else I wrote at Oxford last year. One of my roommates is a draft resister who is possibly under indictment and may never be able to go home again. He is one of the bravest, best men I know. His country needs men like him more than they know. That he is considered a criminal is an obscenity.

The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason only, to maintain my political viability within the system. For years I have worked to prepare myself for a political life characterized by both practical political ability and concern for rapid social progress. It is a life I still feel compelled to try to lead. I do not think our system of government is by definition corrupt, however dangerous and inadequate it has been in recent years. (The society may be corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that is true we are all finished anyway.)

When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was having a hard time facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been fighting against, and that is why I contacted you. ROTC was the one way in which I could possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam and the resistance. Going on with my education, even coming back to England, played no part in my decision to join ROTC. I am back here, and would have been at Arkansas Law School because there is nothing else I can do. I would like to have been able to take a year out perhaps to teach in a small college or work on some community action project and in the process to decide whether to attend law school or graduate school and how to begin putting what I have learned to use.

But the particulars of my personal life are not near as important to me as the principles involved. After I signed the ROTC letter of intent I began to wonder whether the compromise I had made with myself was not more objectionable than the draft would have been, because I had no interest in the ROTC program itself and all I seem to have done was to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I had begun to think that I had deceived you, not by lies--there were none--but by failing to tell you all of the things I'm telling you now. I doubt I had the mental coherence to articulate them then.

At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had sent my 1D deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of my self regard and self confidence really set in. I hardly slept for weeks and kept going by eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought sleep. Finally, on September 12 I stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft board, saying basically what is in the preceding paragraph, thanking him for trying to help in a case where he really couldn't, and stating that I couldn't do the ROTC after all and would he please draft me as soon as possible.

I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it with me every day until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn't mail the letter because I didn't see, in the end, how my going in the army and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a feeling that I had punished myself and gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England to try to make something of the second year of my Rhodes scholarship.

And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes and the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is dis-service, or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal.

Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say. There is still a lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say hello to Colonel Jones for me. Merry Christmas.

Sincerely,

Bill Clinton

[Diogenesis]

Perhaps the goal is to have America attacked again.
Perhaps the goal is to encourage theft of CODE LEVEL documents.
Perhaps the goal is that morality just isn't ground in the dirt low enough yet.
Perhaps those at the top work with, for, or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, al Qaeda.
Food for thought:

Sandy Berger-Burglar was a key beneficiary of "Gorelick’s Wall"
TIME, "The Ubiquitous Mr. Fix-It", Adam Cohen

---

John Kerry was a key beneficiary of Berger's Burglaries
Rescued: Data the Kerry/Edwards Campaign Tried to DELETE from its site! (grandpa dave found cache)

---

Berger purloined all draft revisions of a key critique of the government's response
to the millennium terrorism threat, a document that detailed Administration knowledge
– and inaction – regarding al Qaeda presence in the U.S. in 1999
and 2000. Stolen were crucial notes in the margins of these drafts
which reveal the thinking and agendas of the
Clinton Administration relating to the mounting terrorist threat.
Washington Post, "Berger Quits as Advisor to Kerry", Susan Schmidt

---

Berger was not qualified as NSA.
He was a millionaire lawyer and lobbyist with a career centered on expanding trade with China.
Tom Laughlin, http://www.billyjack.com/jung/08_politics/articles/990515_spy.html

---

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh opined that
Burger “was a public-relations hack, interested in how something would play in the press” .
The New Yorker, per http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200311030753.asp

---

Dick Morris noted Berger “seemed to work overtime
at opposing tough measures against terror”,
advising vetoes of legislation aimed at crippling Iranian terror funding
and working to block antiterror sanctions.
Wall Street Journal, "While Clinton Fiddled", Dick Morris, http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=95001824

---

Berger repeatedly rebuffed Sudanese offers to hand Osama bin Laden
to the United States in a deal brokered by a $900,000 contributor to Democrat campaigns.
Source 1 - National Review, "Clinton & Khobar", Rich Lowry


Source 2 - Washington Times, "Miniter Responds", Richard Miniter

---

Berger allowed bin Laden and his top lieutenants to escape to Afghanistan.
NewsMax, "Aide: Clinton Unleashed bin Laden", Chuck Noe

---

Berger was singled-out by UN Inspector Scott Ritter for the collapse of UN inspections efforts in Iraq].
"Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem - Once and for All" by Scott Ritter

---

Berger admitted that the Clinton Administration failed to develop a war plan to fight al Qaeda
National Review, "Warning B.S.", Rich Lowry

---

Berger was the "go-to" man regarding China policy
when Communist Chinese money was being funneled into Democrat Party coffers
in exchange for policy concessions, strategic nuclear technology,
and all pending patent applications at the US Patent Office.
The Hill, "Fundraiser resurfaces from 1996", Sam Dealey

---

Berger stonewalled the Energy Department about Chinese spying in Los Alamos for three years.

---

It was Berger who for Hillary Clinton let bin Laden go
both from the Sudanese and was he was briefly vulnerable to missile attack.
[e.g. US News & World Report, Paul Bedard, 15 Mar 2003]

"Mr. Berger, calling Mr. Sandy Berger. THIS IS IMPORTANT. Please. This is urgent.
We can take out Osama, now. Please answer!!! We have him in our sight."

Berger-Burglar: "Nope. Forgetaboutit. No big deal. Bill and I are too busy watching the West Wing on TV."

---

"I was summoned to the office of National Security adviser Sandy Berger,
who chewed me out for not having a national security adviser (on the West Wing).
So I opened the next season with Anna Deavere Smith as the national security adviser" -
Aaron Sorkin

[RedEyeJack]

The Justice Department nor the courts can give or take away security clearances. DoD gives out the most based on security investigations. They will certainly take them away if someone holding a clearance commits a violation. The courts cannot direct that a clearance be given or taken away. That function is clearly a responsibility and authority of the Executive Department. Even with a clearance you need an access which is an additional qualification process and something that Berger had if he had "access" to "code-level" material as the documents in question have been described. Also you have to have a further justification to get classified material, a "need to know". Subjective, yes, but someone has to approve before you get to read documents. No one is supposed to go rummaging through classified document without a reason.

This all leads back to the '92-'93 period when many of Clinton's staff were refused clearances and accesses due to unfavorable information in their background investigations... As I recall Clinton exercised authority and directed that clearances and accesses be granted. The result was people like Craig Livingston getting access to Classified documents, in this case they were classified by Justice, FBI files... It would be interesting to know what role Sandy B played in making that happen. Anyway, looks like with this we see again that what Bill Clinton wants Bill Clinton gets... thanks again, Arlen

[blaquebyrd]

"Mitch McConnell: "Sandy Berger walked out of the National Archives with some P.D.B's in his BVD's and some classified doc's in his socks"

When McConnell stood before the cameras to spin this little ditty I knew at that point that nothing would come from any investigation. By mimicking Dr. Suess it showed how serious congress took the matter. This investigation is over, there's no deal or strategery only a bunch of useless hacks in the department of justice and the congress.

[Sir Gawain]

Why should he Not be in Jail?

You should ask Bush.

[Mr. Jeeves]

This is no precedent, this is the political class being held unaccountable like back in Rome.

The American Republic ended on February 12, 1999. They still put on a pretty good circus on Capitol Hill, but no one close to DC takes it seriously. Limbaugh's faux outrage makes a good column, but he knows better.

[blaquebyrd]

"See what a few hundred FBI files can do for you..."

Can we please stop with the "FBI Files" defense? If the republican party can be blackmailed into not doing its job because of scandalous information in their "FBI Files" then may should resign as they are not fit to serve!

[Paine in the Neck]

"He destroyed copies, not originals."

This is spin. This is how the Clintonistas are attempting to minimize his offence, like "it's just about sex". It is my understanding that, while the base document was one that the Archves held several copies of, each had *original* marginal notations. It was not the base document that Berger was after, it was the markup notes on the document that were incriminating.

[MD_Willington_1976]

[bvw]

Anthony Burgess wrote Clockwork Orange. Not Orwell, as the poster implies. That's a wee bit of the long side for a mis-translatation.

[MD_Willington_1976]

Yeah I notoced that too...but the basis of the Orwell novel still applies...Rules for them, rules for us...

[kellynla]

"then may should resign as they are not fit to serve!"

don't tell me, tell them! LOL

Bush & Company have not jailed anyone from the Clintoon administration yet...have they?

In fact the Los Alamos Loser, Richardson went on to become governor of New Mexico for pete's sake!

[bvw]

It is sickening to thing of just how much that is so -- would Bush send in Federal Marshalls if some Florida Judge orders Peter Jennings to be starved to death -- if his wife decides she's simply not to be bothered anymore?

[7.63Broom]

How many hyped by right wing media "scandals" that just fizzle and die and never go anywhere does this make now? You would think people would start to wonder if they are being manipulated, but nope, the Perpetually Enraged American® starts frothing at the mouth every time, right on command.

I see. Berger never stole any classified documents, it was all a lie perpetrated by the "right wing media". Sure. And if anyone is upset that Berger gets off with a slap on the knuckles, well they're just being manipulated by said media. You sound like a liberal.

[blaquebyrd]

"Bush & Company have not jailed anyone from the Clintoon administration yet...have they?"

No and they won't. The time to indict for any crimes directly connected to Clinton was during Bush's first administration and Bush chose not to do it. That's why I'm not surprised by the lack of any meaningful punishment for Berger. The precedent for looking the other way has been set. If the Bush administration were to reverse course and come down hard on Berger too many questions would be raised about lenient treatment (read no indictment) for past Clinton indiscretions. I just wish they wouldn't make it so damn obvious.

[kellynla]

when you're right, you're right...