Replies

UNBELIEVABLY WEAK!!!

This is unreal - this slimebag should have served JAIL TIME with a FELONY on his record for this. I know this plea deal was discussed or rumored some time ago, but still it's absolutely galling when it's finally announced (and with a Friday night anti-media dump to minimize publicity). At a minimum, the government should never have let him plead without agreement that he would relinquish his security clearance FOR LIFE. I have a friend who used to work in a high office in the Pentagon, who says that outstanding military careers have been ended for much less than this. Sandy Burglar will wash his hands of this and still be eligible to serve in a future 'Rat administration if (heaven forbid) there should be one.....

"Officials have said the five versions were largely similar, but contained slight variations as the after-action report moved around different agencies of the executive branch."

Gee, would those "slight variations" be the handwritten remarks of people like Bill Clinton, Algore, and Sandy Burglar himself???? I know that's been denied by some stories in the past, but it seems pretty near inconceivable he would have bothered to do these nefarious deeds or would have cared about vanishing THREE versions of the report down the Orwellian memory-hole unless they each contained unique features that he simply had to prevent the 9/11 Omission Commission from seeing........ SANDY BURGLAR IS SCUM.

"outstanding military careers have been ended for much less than this"

That is, for far less serious non-criminal mishandling of a classified document such as leaving it on your desk inadvertently, etc. What Sandy Burglar did was obviously completely intentional and pre-meditated, criminal in the extreme, and goes far beyond the truly 'inadvertent' actions that have wrecked careers of some otherwise fine officers. Treating Sandy Burglar with such "kid gloves" makes a mockery of the standards and laws for handling classified materials. It certainly makes it clear yet again that 'Rat scumbags do not have to follow the same laws and rules as all the rest of us!!

Lots of things in Washington are unreal. Justice is not served in equal terms. As we all are painfully aware. Deals must have gone down in private on this one. It's just to transparent.

From my files:

We already know exactly what Berger took and why. From Ashcroft's testimony:

The NSC's Millennium After Action Review declares that the United States barely missed major terrorist attacks in 1999 — with luck playing a major role. Among the many vulnerabilities in homeland defenses identified, the Justice Department's surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized for their glaring weaknesses. It is clear from the review that actions taken in the Millennium Period should not be the operating model for the U.S. government.

In March 2000, the review warns the prior Administration of a substantial al Qaeda network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here. [My note: AD info?]

Furthermore, fully seventeen months before the September 11 attacks, the review recommends disrupting the al Qaeda network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls.

Post #745

It falls directly into the AD timeline. In that same post, I note that what Sandy Berger stole was the versions of the after action report:

The missing copies, according to Breuer and their author, Richard A. Clarke, the counterterrorism chief in the Clinton administration and early in President Bush's administration, were versions of after-action reports recommending changes following threats of terrorism as 1999 turned to 2000. Clarke said he prepared about two dozen ideas for countering terrorist threats. The recommendations were circulated among Cabinet agencies, and various versions of the memo contained additions and refinements, Clarke said last night.

Therefore, they were never provided to the Commission, as evidenced by the Commission Report footnotes (#769):

46. NSC email, Clarke to Kerrick,“Timeline,”Aug. 19, 1998; Samuel Berger interview (Jan. 14, 2004). We did not find documentation on the after-action review mentioned by Berger. On Vice Chairman Joseph Ralston’s mission in Pakistan, see William Cohen interview (Feb. 5, 2004). For speculation on tipping off the Taliban, see, e.g., Richard Clarke interview (Dec. 18, 2003).

And to what does footnote (46) refer? On p. 117, Chapter 4, we find this:

Later on August 20, Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea fired their cruise missiles. Though most of them hit their intended targets, neither Bin Ladin nor any other terrorist leader was killed. Berger told us that an after-action review by Director Tenet concluded that the strikes had killed 20–30 people in the camps but probably missed Bin Ladin by a few hours. Since the missiles headed for Afghanistan had had to cross Pakistan, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was sent to meet with Pakistan’s army chief of staff to assure him the missiles were not coming from India. Officials in Washington speculated that one or another Pakistani official might have sent a warning to the Taliban or Bin Ladin. (46)

How about that? How many times have we heard Clinton say that he missed Bin Ladin by just a few hours? Yet the after-action report is missing, so the Commission relied on Sandy Berger's testimony.

Then the Clarke/Kerrick memo peaked my interest and I found this (#784):

Clarke was nervous about such a mission because he continued to fear that Bin Ladin might leave for someplace less accessible. He wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin's having met with Iraqi officials, who "may have offered him asylum." Other intelligence sources said that some Taliban leaders, though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin to go to Iraq. If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq, wrote Clarke, his network would be at Saddam Hussein's service, and it would be "virtually impossible" to find him. Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Clarke declared.