The Bush Administration didn't "suppress" any story, for one thing, and for another, there are *numerous* reasons why Berger got a light sentence (e.g. he's cooperating as a double-agent for us now).
Posted on 04/05/2005 2:16:14 PM PDT by ovrtaxt
On Thursday, March 31, just hours after Terri Schiavo died, the Justice Department announced that former Clinton national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was about to get his wrist slapped.
Among the "mistakes" that triggered the slap was Berger's hand-shredding of several critical documents with a pair of scissors. Another "mistake" that Berger acknowledged was lying to all and everyone about what he had done when first questioned. He now admits the destruction of these documents was "not inadvertent."
With both Schiavo dead and the pope dying, the media were free to downplay the Berger story, which they eagerly did. They provided almost no answers and asked few questions. The Washington Post, however, did manage to pose a conundrum, "It remains unclear," asked the Post, "why [Berger] destroyed three versions of a document, but left two other versions intact."
In an earlier article on Berger, I suggested an answer to this question – the president's handwritten notes on a document make one version entirely more dangerous than an identical document without those notes. My source for this process was Col. Buzz Patterson, author of "Dereliction of Duty."
Patterson carried the "nuclear football" for the president during the fateful summer of 1996 and as such had almost total access. One morning that Patterson identifies only as "late-summer" 1996, he was returning a daily intelligence update to the National Security Council when he noticed the heading "Operation Bojinka." As Patterson relates, "I keyed on a reference to a plot to use commercial airliners as weapons." As a pilot, he had a keen interest in the same.
In the way of an omen, Islamic terrorist Ramzi Yousef was on trial in New York on the day of July 17, 1996, for his role in Operation Bojinka (Serbo-Croatian for "loud bang"). The publicly known part of this plot was Yousef's plan to blow up 11 American airliners over the Pacific. A lesser-known element of Bojinka, the one Patterson stumbled upon, was the plan to use planes as flying bombs. That same summer, courtesy of an FBI informant in Yousef's New York jail, Yousef was actively communicating with the terrorist world. Among his correspondents was his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the mastermind of 9-11.
Patterson was not in position to connect Bojinka and TWA Flight 800. The knowledge of what happened the night of July 17, 1996, had been kept remarkably tight. What Patterson did learn from seeing the president's hand-annotated response to this intelligence report is that Clinton had read it carefully.
"I can state for a fact that this information was circulated within the U.S. intelligence community," Patterson writes, "and that in late 1996 the president was aware of it." That Clinton was reviewing this information in the immediate aftermath of TWA Flight 800's demise suggests more than mere coincidence: The FBI had received these documents from the Philippine police 18 months earlier.
Berger now says that the documents he shredded had to do with an after-action review written by Richard Clarke and dealing with various terrorist threats at the time of the millennium. A little skepticism is in order here. Could these documents possibly have been worth risking one's career over? I don't think so.
The Bush Justice Department has given Berger a pass in the form of a $10,000 fine and a meaningless three-year suspension of his security clearance. The probe dies with the fine.
There is one likely reason why the Bush administration cooperated in the suppression of this story. Revealing it might have dangerously destabilized the government. The TWA Flight 800-9/11 thread is among the very few revelations that has the potential to do just that.
If you'd like to sound off on this issue, please take part in the WorldNetDaily poll.
Read "Terror cover-up in Texas City?"
Purchase "Mega Fix: The Dazzling Political Deceit That Led to 9-11" now!
About Mega Fix: In this stunning, surprisingly entertaining, 90-minute DVD video documentary, Emmy-award-winning filmmaker Jack Cashill traces the roots of Sept. 11 to the perfect storm of disinformation that surrounded the Clintons' desperate drive for the White House in the years 1995-1996.
Cashill leads the viewer from Oklahoma City to Dubrovnik, where Ron Brown's plane crashed, to the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia to the destruction of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island to the Olympic Park bombing.
As Cashill proves beyond dispute in this DVD, these are not multiple conspiracies, but all part of one major political fix, the mother of all fixes ... the Mega Fix.
Extra special offer: As a valuable added bonus, purchasing "Mega Fix" from WND's online store also qualifies you to receive – FREE – three power-packed issues of WND's acclaimed print magazine, Whistleblower. Watch for the FREE offer during checkout!
To arrange a showing in your city, please send an e-mail to Jack Cashill.
Related columns:
MEGA FIX: Top FBI lawyer helped destroy TWA Flight 800
MEGA FIX PREVIEW series:
'MEGA FIX' PREVIEW: PART 1, The Oklahoma City bombing
'MEGA FIX' PREVIEW: PART 2, The Oklahoma City aftermath
'MEGA FIX' PREVIEW: PART 3, The assassination of Ron Brown
'MEGA FIX' PREVIEW: PART 4, Clinton blocked truth about murdered U.S. troops
'MEGA FIX' PREVIEW: PART 5, TWA Flight 800: Attacked, destroyed, covered-up
'MEGA FIX' PREVIEW: PART 6, Clinton covered up 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombings
'MEGA FIX' PREVIEW: PART 7, How Clinton's team hid Flight 800 attack
'MEGA FIX' PREVIEW: PART 8, How 9-11 commission covered up mass murder
The link to "Terror cover-up in Texas City?" shows link not found. I posted one of the original posts on the explosion, can you tell me what you found and where?
"--So you think Patterson's claim is suspect? Why?"
It's a fishy story, with fish connections and assumptions.
No. 1 - why the President would be reviewing drafts of the document.
The simple answer for Berger was that he was protecting himself.
And the 9/11 commission made remarks about Berger's side notes on other documents.
The Bush Administration didn't "suppress" any story, for one thing, and for another, there are *numerous* reasons why Berger got a light sentence (e.g. he's cooperating as a double-agent for us now).
The Clinton team is looking like the dots.
Why am I getting more disappointed in the credibility and effectiveness of our Washington government almost on a DAILY BASIS ???
=======
Te he he.... I just learned that Burgler DID get desert!
Guess that would drop you down to "on a MINUTE BASIS" !!! ;-))
--So you think Patterson's claim is suspect? Why?"
It would be *rare* for a President's handwritten comments on NSA docs to be stored in archives rather than destroyed after said comments were acted upon.
It would be *more* likely that each draft copy of said main report would have different comments from each agent who analyzed and marked up their unique copy, based upon their different knowledge base from their different CODE WORD level clearances.
In fact, my version easily explains why THREE DIFFERENT COPIES needed to be destroyed by Berger, whereas the WorldnutDaily author of the article for this thread doesn't explain at all why the President would have marked up 3 out of 5 copies of said main report differently.
Hmmm.... Major crime, solidly proven. Admitted criminal intent. Mild slap on the wrist as a result.
Lots of outrage over this, including a lot of pure speculation such as found in this article.
Admitting criminal intent is HUGE. Why would the prosecutors have forced Burglar to admit criminal intent if all they were going to give him was a light slap on the wrist?
For one thing, the admitted criminal intent makes it much harder to justify the trivial penalty. So why would the prosecutor insist on the admission, and even insist that the admission be made publicly?
Wouldn't it have been easier to justify the penalty if the admission was kept confidential? (Burglar's admission could have been kept confidential easily. National security issues, etc...)
So why was Burglar forced to make a public admission of criminal intent? Something does not add up...
I suspect it goes back quite a way. Perhaps didn't start with Bush Sr., but I believe it became much worse at that time, at least in the "Third Way/NWO" sense of it. Flourished, of course, under Clinton, and I see little being done to put a stop to it under Dubya.
They're playing with fire. Trust in government seems to me to have hit another low point.
Republican presidents always seem terribly concerned that the coverups of their Democrat predecessors must continue to be covered up.
The article doesn't mention it being a draft document. Even if it was it was one of Richard Clarke's, not Clinton's, so some comments on it would indicate he had read the report and didn't do anything about it.
...Make it four, gents.
I guess that will make it a conspiracy or a poker game
It could have been to protect the system (i.e. you can't just steal docs, destroy them, lie, and have a clean public character), or it could be such an admission will factor in to Berger's boss getting convicted (i.e. something illegal *did* happen).
Yet more evidence that DC insiders get to play by a different set of rules than the rest of us.
bump
Perhaps there are copies of the Burglar docs.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.