Posted on 12/02/2015 6:51:53 AM PST by TroutStalker
Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, who served under President Bill Clinton, has died at the age of 70.
"V sad start to day; just learned Sandy Berger passed away during the night," Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted Wednesday morning. "Good man & friend who served nation well as bill clinton's NSA."
Antony Blinken, the current deputy secretary of state and a Berger acolyte, tweeted, "Mourn the passing of Sandy Berger --- father, husband, mentor, friend, leader and great patriot. RIP SRB."
Berger, a longtime lawyer who founded Stonebridge International, a Washington-based advisory group, after leaving government, had just been awarded World Food Program USA's inaugural Global Humanitarian Award on Tuesday.
“We are honoring one of America’s most devoted and influential humanitarian champions,†Rick Leach, the group's president and CEO, said in a statement. “On behalf of WFP USA, Sandy has been our principal voice in advocating that the U.S. and the world respond effectively to the greatest humanitarian challenge of our generation.â€
Berger served as Clinton's top foreign policy adviser during the 1992 campaign before serving as deputy national security adviser and eventually national security adviser shortly after Clinton began his second term, in March 1997.
As the president's chief foreign policy aide, Berger oversaw the Clinton administration's push to expand free trade in Africa and Asia, as well as its response to the al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, the NATO-led bombing of Kosovo, and the efforts to forge a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. 20151201_mitch_mcconnell_2_GTY_1160.jpg
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Following his time in the Clinton administration, Berger remained an active player in Washington's foreign-policy debates, informally advising Democratic politicians, including Hillary Clinton, and publishing articles about various international issues. As secretary of state, Clinton consulted Berger on topics from how to handle Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to how to "gain leverage over the Pakistanis" and persuade them to go after al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, her emails show.
In an op-ed for POLITICO Magazine in August, Berger warned Congress against rejecting President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, writing that doing so would allow "Iran to move further toward a nuclear weapon, presenting the United States and Israel with terrible choices."
Berger's legacy was marred, however, when he pleaded guilty in 2005 to removing highly classified documents from the National Archives in Washington the previous year. The inspector general of the National Archives said that a staff member had witnessed the former NSA adviser wrapping the classified documents around his socks and under his pants.
He was fined $50,000, sentenced to two years' probation and stripped of his security clearance for three years. Following a Justice Department investigation and subsequent congressional hearings, Berger voluntarily gave up his license to practice law in 2007.
"While I derived great satisfaction from years of practicing law, I have not done so for 15 years and do not envision returning to the profession," Berger said, according to a contemporaneous Associated Press report, "I am very sorry for what I did, and deeply apologize."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/sandy-berger-national-security-adviser-216344#ixzz3tAw7qbhL
Hillary is just the electronic, female version of Sandy Berger.
Cause of Death: Restricted circulation caused by stolen documents in pants.
Burn in Hell Sandy.
That should keep him quiet.
Thanks, I had forgotten what he did.
Cause of Death: Restricted circulation caused by stolen documents in pants.
Burn in Hell Sandy.
Yet when all the insiders knew Libby wasn’t guilty but Armitage with Powell’s knowledge was the bad guy, Bush just let Libby swing...
Yep, I’ll lay that at Bushie’s feet...
And his pa’s turning on Cheney and Rummy recently confirms all we need to know about that family....
Well Pres. Bush commuted Libby’s prison sentence. Still Libby’s reputation is tarnished.
When it comes to having my own theory, conspiratorial or not, I say “Thanks, don’t mind if I do.”.
Enough effort.
I am not going to say anything at all.
Really? How did I miss that? I thought he stiffed the pardon for Libby and at the time thought it was pretty low to do it...sorry.
The comments section below the Politico article isn’t exactly showing a lot of love for Sandy either.
Lack of details as to what he actually died from/of is, of course, feeding into the possibly unfounded speculation that his cause of death wasn’t natural, accidental, or self-inflicted.
After all, he was a close associate of the Clintons.
My first thought. He knows where the Clintons "hid the bodies".
Maybe he was asking for a few favors in exchange for his silence - because he also knows where he hid the documents.
It would be a thrill to find out those documents have now been recovered!
Or blackmail.
lol!
Along with Wesley Clark and John McCain, Berger was one of the loudest advocates of sending US ground troops into Kosovo. Good riddance.
More derangement from the hate Bush folks
I hope they checked to make sure he wasn’t trying to smuggle classified documents in his coffin.
What documents was he trying to remove? Why?....Anything related to 2011. Why? Because Saudi Arabia would cut off the money pipeline to the Clinton Fraud Fund.
afterall, they're fighting those awful, terrible, raskelly republicans...
May his grave be a litterbox for the local fauna.
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