Posted on 07/20/2004 7:00:17 AM PDT by truthandlife
Former president Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, is under criminal investigation and subject to FBI searches of his home and his office since he was caught – probably by hidden cameras – purloining copies of highly classified terrorism documents and his own handwritten notes from a secure reading room at the National Archives in Washington. This event took place, according to the Associated Press, during preparations to testify at the Sept. 11 commission hearings after Clinton asked him to review and select the administration documents to be turned over to the panel.
This year, Berger has been informally advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Even after Berger voluntarily returned documents, two or three drafts are still missing of a sensitive, after-action report criticizing the Clinton administration’s handling of al Qaeda millennium threats and identifying American vulnerabilities at airports and sea ports.
The former national security adviser was also found in possession of a small number of classified papers containing his handwritten notes from the Middle East peace talks during the 1990s. They are not the focus of the current criminal probe.
The FBI searches occurred after National Archives employees reported they saw Berger place documents in his jacket and pants and then noticed some documents missing. Three still are. Berger admitted to “sloppiness” and “inadvertently” taking copies of classified documents. They were all immediately returned, he said, except for a few that he had “apparently accidentally discarded.”
The Berger affair is pennies from heaven for the Bush presidential campaign with important bearing on the inquiries into intelligence performance prior to the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War. It is also of deep significance for Israel.
For months, President George W. Bush and vice president Dick Cheney have been under unremitting attack in official probes, films and books for bad decisions and “flawed intelligence” in the war on terrorism and for misrepresenting the grounds for going to war in Iraq. In the privacy of the Bush White House, presidential aides grumble that the Clinton administration’s failure to properly handle rising threats from Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the 1990s left these ticking bombs in Bush’s lap. Clinton was said to have ignored the many warnings reaching him, including a specific threat against New York’s World Trade Center. However, Bush has always forbidden his campaign staff to point the finger at his predecessor in the White House for the ills of today, just as Clinton refrains from criticizing the incumbent.
The actions of his former aide have changed these rules.
Presidential challenger Kerry will have to think twice before attacking Bush on national security issues lest he lay himself open to reminders that a former Clinton aide and his own adviser was caught red-handed misappropriating classified materials that revealed how a Democratic president mishandled the threat of terror.
Berger was closely involved in more than one Labor-led Israeli government’s controversial handling of the peace process during the Clinton years. A founding father of Israel’s dovish Peace Now movement, the adviser was a friend of the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. He was less close to Shimon Peres, preferring to deal with his aide Yossi Bailin, the current leader of Israel’s far left Yahad party.
According to DEBKAfile’s sources, Berger removed his notes from Middle East peace talks from the National Archives in view of the unfortunate sequels of the Clinton presidency’s two central, mutually supportive policies. On the one hand, Clinton pushed hard for accommodations between Israel, the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors, while at the same time nurturing American ties in the Arab and Muslim world. He hoped to gain the trust of Arab and Muslim leaders for peace with Israel while persuading the Jewish state to be forthcoming with concessions. However, Clinton’s expectation of a Middle East peace triumph at the White House in the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords melted down in the ensuing blight of the Palestinian suicide terror confrontation that continues to beset the region.
The consequences of his second policy line were still more sweeping.
In deciding to go to war in 1998 on the Muslim Albanian side of the Balkans against the Christian Serbs, Clinton may have been influenced by the atrocities committed there but he was in essence pursuing his global strategy. He chose to elide the fact that Iranian Revolutionary Guards and al Qaeda cells - most Saudi-dominated - were fighting alongside Albanian and Bosnian Muslims – as did his advisers, especially Berger and secretary of state Madeline Albright. Islamic extremists and Arab terrorists as well as the Saddam regime prospered unnoticed in the Clinton years. Al Qaeda was allowed to build up in the Balkans a central logistical base for operations in Europe, from which the Hamburg cell later derived back-up for plotting the 9/11 attacks against America.
Berger is the second Clinton-era official to face prosecution for withdrawing classified materials from secure premises. Former CIA director John Deutsch was pardoned by Clinton hours before he left office and saved from paying the price for taking home laptops with classified materials in 1996. Earlier, Deutsch resigned.
The case of Sandy Berger differs because the charges against him arise from the request of a former president in connection with an official probe. There will always be a question hanging over the precise nature of this request. Did the former adviser copy and “discard” documents at Clinton’s behest or his own initiative? In the absence of answers, a cloud of suspicion will hang over the affair and almost certainly influence American opinion before and after November’s presidential election.
In other reports I've seen, the reporter left the impression that the "hand written notes" were notes he made while studying the documents in 2003 while preparing for the Commission. In this story, it seems clear that the notes were notes from the late nineties and were part of the archives. Does anyone know which is accurate?
If they were part of the archive, I smell another "skate out of prosecution free" episode coming. The action of stuffing the documents into his pants and socks shows clear criminal intent. The documents they're investigating he claims were "accidentally" carried out in a briefcase. This gives the prosecutors the option to not prosecute the case for which they have evidence, and avoid prosecuting the other case because they can't prove intent.
Truth means nothing to the Rats. The Rose Law Firm billing records were withheld for over a year, found in Ms. Clinton's private quarters, and everybody just went, "whoops! What a mistake!" The FBI files were treated in a similar way.
Berger removed and destroyed top secret documents that damaged Clinton, and it's pretty easy to guess who ordered him to do it. The fact that some of the documents were his hand-written notes should make no difference in whether or not removing them was a criminal act. If I make a hand-written report and turn it in, it is no longer my report. It is part of the official documents. Wonder if the mainline press will be able to sit on and obfuscate this one. I know they'll be able to avoid drawing the obvious conclusion as to where the trail leads. Berger may be hamburger, but Clinton&Clinton will skate free again, and probably be admired by the left for doing it.
most records,in my understanding, are kept in leather binders....binders were taken!!
Doogle
I was wondering the same thing! Why didn't they call the FBI in immediately to go over to his house or office and get them back the same day? Heads need to roll also at the Natl Archives staff. What good are these people if they let sensitive papers walk out of the secure room????
From what I've been reading here, it's gotten 'less than prominent' space in the larger newspapers like the LAT and NYT...they will not allow this story to get legs.
Visiting the National Archives, is not like visiting your local library. The security of the documents are very tight, you are not even aloud to bring a pen in with you, much less a briefcase. It bothers me that the National Security Advisor was not even aware that the National Archives has cameras on you. And he was inadvertently shoving classified documents down his pants? How do you do that? And how do you get away with that in the National Archives?
Wonder if I can get away with that at the “inadvertently” thing at my grocery store – Ooopps sorry, I inadvertently shoved that pot roast down my pants.
Remember, they not only have to deal with the "loyal" opposition, but main stream media.
There is a saying that goes something like this, "don't go after the King, unless you can kill him", which I interpret to mean, don't go after a stronger opponent unless you are sure you can win.
There have been pleanty of opportunities to go after the socialist on the left, but none of them would have meant victory, the main stream media would have defended them, and turned it around to work against this administrtion.
President Bush only has one more election to win, it is now getting close to the time to play his hand, which means raising the stakes, and winning the whole pot.
If they have it on tape, or at least good eyewitnesses, bringing charges against Berger will be the first step. It will open up the soft under belly of the Clinton machine.
The case can be made in open court, and spin as much as they like, the truth will get out, we here at Free Republic amoung others will see to it.
This is a serious crime, and one that can not be spun away as a prank, or a joke. Berger is facing real jail time, and his only hope will be to spill the beans.
Am I dreaming? Perhaps, but as I have watched this administration for the past three years, one thing has been made clear, these guys know how to pull off surprises over their opponents.
Pay back is a bitch, and I belive we are about to see a real cowboy in action.
NYT had it on page 17 bottom of page, four or five paragraphs
Even if it was just "hand-written notes" he took, it would still be against the law
The security is so tight at the National Archives you are not even alloud to bings pens in with you.
This is far worse than Watergate could have ever been. Far worse.
I wondered about that. Most plain old non-secure historical archives prohibit pens or even pencils, so I wondered how he was managing to take all these notes. Of course, I imagine the archivists probably don't search the readers, but just take their word for the fact that they have no writing implements or paper on them.
Thats true. It's clear evidence of democrats playing games with national security and committing crimes to do so. In the mean time endangering us all in the process.
Disgusting...they know damn well that if they play this down, the public won't have much clue as to the seriousness and criminality involved.
Just read on another thread that you are allowed to take notes, but all of the notes have to be left at the Archives, where you can access them again later but may not take them with you (even though you were the one who created them). Supposedly, they are reviewed only with a security officer present - I don't know if the officer wasn't there, or if Berger was so desperate he did something like "accidentally" drop his pen on the floor and attempt to stuff a note or two into his socks when he picked it up.
--in case no one else pinged you to this one.
your kidding, right? That would be worthy of Faun Hall... Leno would not let it slide!
This will be very interesting, to observe how it develops and plays out. The Bergler always struck me as a weak link in the Klinton Konspiracy of Kriminals.
He meant sloppiness in having nowhere but his pants and socks to stuff the documents and inadvertently being caught.
Since when?! I seem to recall any number of thinly-veiled insults as to Dubyuh's performance as POTUS...MUD
RATS ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN
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