Archives Staff Was Suspicious of Berger

Washington Post ^ | July 22, 2004 | John F. Harris and Susan Schmidt

[Remember_Salamis]

Last Oct. 2, former Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger stayed huddled over papers at the National Archives until 8 p.m.

What he did not know as he labored through that long Thursday was that the same Archives employees who were solicitously retrieving documents for him were also watching their important visitor with a suspicious eye.

After Berger's previous visit, in September, Archives officials believed documents were missing. This time, they specially coded the papers to more easily tell whether some went missing, said government officials and legal sources familiar with the case.

The notion of one of Washington's most respected foreign policy figures being subjected to treatment that had at least a faint odor of a sting operation is a strange one. But the peculiarities -- and conflicting versions of events and possible motives -- were just then beginning in a case that this week bucked Berger out of an esteemed position as a leader of the Democratic government-in-waiting that had assembled around presidential nominee John F. Kerry.

As his attorneys tell it, Berger had no idea in October that documents were missing from the Archives, or that archivists suspected him in the disappearance. It was not until two days later, on Saturday, Oct. 4, that he was contacted by Archives employees who said that they were concerned about missing files, from his September and October visits. This call -- in Berger's version of the chronology, which is disputed in essential respects by a government official with knowledge of the investigation -- was made with a tone of concern, but not accusation.

[snooker]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1175720/posts

[js1138]

Weren't some of the "handwritten" comments Berger's own handwritten notes which he removed from the documents ..??

No, the handwritten notes were made in the room while he was reading the documents. It is also a serious violation of security to remove notes from the room without permission.

The handwritten notes are the papers he hid in his socks.

[js1138]

I don't see any issue with Archives calling Lindsey first, he would have been the legal pointman from the Archive's point-of-view.

This seems to have been handled rather well by the Archivist. You have to expect some white glove treatement for the former head of national security. When it became obvious that Berger had taken documents, that called his attorney and advised him of the problem.

But when Berger returned documents that weren't known to be missing, bells started ringing. They set up a sting, and what we have now is the result. He could have gotten away with the first offense, but something was so important that he kept at it, even after getting caught.

[js1138]

This stinks to high heaven. Either he is lieing in order to protect Kerry, or he didn't tell Kerry in order to damage him?

So clinton and his cronies knew, but didn't tell Kerry. That is one of the most interesting facts about this story. It means Kerry is completely frozen out of the insider's loop.

[js1138]

you saw it here first:

Nah, it's been circulating on FR since the first day. At the very least, he intended to return copies with the handwritten margin notes removed.

[js1138]

It won't truly reach Watergate proportions until it becomes a conspiracy.

We know the entire clinton militia knew back in October. That's when Lindsey was notified. If they didn't warn Kerry, that's really cold. If they did, he's toast.

[turbocat]

Get this!! from the New York Daily News:

Berger, accused of smuggling some of the secret files out of the National Archives, got the monitors out of the high-security room by telling them he had to make sensitive phone calls. Guards were convinced to violate their own rules by stepping out of the secure room as he looked over documents and allegedly stashed some in his clothing, sources said. "He was supposed to be monitored at all times but kept asking the monitor to leave so he could make private calls," a senior law enforcement source told the Daily News.

Whoa!!

[js1138]

I can see how you can manage to squirrel the paper and leave, but what do you use to get pristine paper back into the Archives?

The documents themselves were carried out in his portfolio (briefcase). Only his handwritten notes were stuffed into his clothing.

[Lael]

BTTT!!!

[oldbill]

Daschle To Demand Probe of Berger Missing Documents

---

Soon-to-be-former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) today demanded a Senate investigation into the disappearance of highly classified documents from the National Archives. Daschle, speaking from his Senate office, said "I am troubled, very troubled, really really troubled by this event." He continued "the notion that Sandy Berger, an honorable former government employee, sightseeing at the Archives with his grandchildren, could have a cascade of paper files accidently fall on him and into his sock and jock shows just how much the Bush tax cuts have endangered our infrastructure." Given the number of documents reported to have penetrated Berger's clothing, Daschle expressed surprise that he did not die from a thousand paper cuts.

In a related development, New York Senator Hillary Clinton today asked for an FBI investigation after numerous marked up pages from the National Archives records mysteriously showed up in a box on a coffee table in her Chappaqua residence. "I thought we had fixed that problem when we ditched the White House maid years ago!" said Clinton.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

I think he also feels a sense of injustice that after building a reputation as a tireless defender of his country that many Republicans would try to assassinate his character to pursue their own ends.

Not character assassination -- it was character suicide.

[New Perspective]

[Bigg Red]

There is no way the likes of Couric and Rather can spin this story. It comes from their side.
**

They don't have to spin it, as they will probably just ignore it and not cover it.

[Bigg Red]

He was seen stuffing classified documents into his clothes, and the best the dems can come up with is "the timing is suspicious"!

&&

Quite reminiscent, is it not, of the case in which R aids discovered D correspondence, on a server shared by the Rs and the Rats, that showed that the Rats were taking marching orders from special interest groups. The big blow-up involved the fact that the staffer had accessed the e-mail while the media coverage ignored the content of the communications.

[Bigg Red]

Turns out Kerry camp released the info, not the White House or Republicans.


&&

Speculation or fact?

[pilgrim]

107 posted on 07/21/2004 10:14:30 PM PDT by Howlin

"The AP.

John Solomon.

Lanny Davis' favorite leakee." 

Howlin,  Lanny Davis was on the  Linda Chavex Morning Radio show  and was asked the question, "Are you the Sandy Berger leaker?"  He just laughed and in typical 'Clintonism speak'  went on to another subject, averting the question. 

 

Did a 'Samuel Berger' on the NARA website and found another 'missing file or folders' in a box given to the Eisenhower Library and a Samuel Berger holdover from the Truman Administration who handled political appointments.

 

Not the same "Samuel Berger" but is was interesting....regards.........  :^pilgrim

Microsoft Word - PERSONNEL SERIES.doc  or http://eisenhower.archives.gov/listofholdingshtml/listofholdingsD/DULLESJOHNFOSTER/PERSONNELSERIES.pdf  (snip)

Box Number 12, Page 12, Paragraph  2 & 3

[Chronological File] January 1954-March 18 1954 (1)-(3) [handling of political appointments

in State Department; Samuel Berger as Truman Administration holdover; Ambassador to

Panama; RNC and ambassadorship in Paraguay; UNRWA; David E. Kaufman; Howland

Sargeant and previous service in Truman Administration; International Joint Commission and

International Boundary and Water Commission; Senator Margaret Chase Smith and

appointment for Clifford Carver; US-India bilateral air transport agreement; Jefferson

Patterson; Ambassador to Korea; Karl Bendetsen; Church of Christ missionaries in Italy;

ambassadorships in Iraq, Iran and Israel; David Kaufman and Caracas Conference]

 

PLEASE NOTE: Folders for period April through June 1954 were missing from this

collection when it was received by the Eisenhower Library  (end of snip)

 

 

[Bigg Red]

HE wasn't doing this to protect Clinton's legacy. It's bigger than that for him to risk what he did.

**

His motive then?

[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

What I find interesting is that DC bureaucrats are overwhelmingly 'Rats, so the odds are that 'Rats ratted out Bergler the 'Rat. When a top 'Rat's behavior is so bad that the little 'Rats are offended it's got to be very bad.

[Dolphy]

I hope that Bergergate goes right to the matter and exposes these "fictitions" and the tactics of the fictators. Wilson, Berger, Clarke, Clinton, and then Kerry - the dominoes are falling.

This is my hope as well. I also think it's an explanation for why the Dems have been after Cheney from almost the first day he took office and why Tenet was kept around. (The Vice President knows his way around Washington, he knows his way around large bureaucracies and he knows how to get results. Tenet knew what his organization was infested with.)

[Howlin]

This looks interesting, but I cannot get it to open!

WORLD magazine exclusive: Berger and classified documents ...
World Magazine - 4 hours ago
In this WORLD exclusive, Congressman Curt Weldon says, "This is the second time now that we have a documented case of Berger mishandling classified information ...
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