if I take a classified document, xerox it and sell the copy but return the origional, have I committed a crime?
my point is that we don't know what hamburger did with the documents. he could very well have copied ans sold them to all sorts of folks all over the globe.
the documents were locked in the archive so this would not happen.
someone steals my car, robs a bank, then returns the car - does that mere fact hat my car got returned to me negate the fact that it was stolen and used in a crime? returning the car doesn't make things right.
1. Berger may have thought he was taking the "originals" and did not know they were "copied."
2. Whatever his spinners say, everyone of any political stripe with any shred of common sense knows that sticking documents in one's pants is not a "mistake." That the Dem party leaders tried to spin for him rather than dump him like a ton of bricks is amazing.
The source of what Indepententmind just said below. I would like to know if this is proper precedure for secret documents?:
The problem for Berger is that the originals are also in the material waiting for the construction of the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock. That project is being managed by the National Archives. When officials of the National Archives saw Berger stuffing documents in his pants, they checked to see what was missing. They called Little Rock and got the memos replaced, only this time they had invisible markings. Berger apparently returned and saw those same documents, so he took them again
National Archive Called Clinton Library