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*snip* The Obama transition team released the names of 13 people on Wednesday who will direct a top-to-bottom review of federal agencies and another six who will lead teams that will review Treasury, State and Defense department policy, budget and personnel issues. *snip* It includes four former lobbyists, three top campaign fund-raisers and two former employees of troubled mortgage giant Fannie Mae, with some overlap among them. Four people in the group have ties to the consultant McKinsey & Co. and two have experience leading high-tech start-ups. Mr. Obama's transition advisers include Tom Donilon, a top lobbyist for Fannie Mae,...

Okay, first a little background for Freepers who haven't been following all of these stories. STORY #1: Coughlin & Islam at the Pentagon Stephen Coughlin was a Pentagon analyst [in fact the ONLY Pentagon analyst] with a specialization in Koranic & Hadithic formulations of Jihad. At the urging of one Hasham Islam [also known as "Hesham H Islam"], in the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Coughlin was fired in early January of 2008 [or late December of 2007]. After an enormous uproar in the intelligence community, and with the help of Congresswoman Sue Myrick [R-NC], Coughlin was finally...

Blackwill stays India's key lobbyist17 Dec 2007, 0247 hrs IST, Indrani Bagchi, TNN NEW DELHI: With a firm eye on the nuclear deal and its future passage through the international and US system, the government has renewed the multi-million dollar contract of its favourite lobbyist in Washington. Robert Blackwill's firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers will be India's sole lobbyist in the US for 2008 for the second consecutive year. In 2006, India had added Venable, another law firm engaged in Washington advocacy, to work the US Senate when the Hyde Act was doing the rounds of Capitol Hill. India is...

When Bill and Hillary Clinton did their online "Sopranos" spoof after the HBO show's finale, they may have been trying to tell us something more than we realized. The Clintons, sans the New Jersey accent, subtly yet unmistakably were announcing: "We and our posse are back. Burglars and all." In fairness to the Clintons, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger is just one burglar, but when we're talking about national-security information, a single thief is all you need to question a candidate's credibility. That the Hillary Clinton campaign would even take Berger's phone calls, never mind hold him close as an adviser,...

Congressmen press Justice to test Sandy BergerStill no polygraph as agreed in plea deal, 'national security' at issue Posted: October 12, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2007 WorldNetDaily.com Two years after agreeing to a polygraph in a plea deal, former National Security adviser Sandy Berger still has not taken the test, prompting 23 Republican Congress members to demand action by the Department of Justice. The aim is to determine "what documents were stolen and how our national security was compromised," said the letter by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., to the acting attorney general. Berger – who was placed on probation,...

After the cancellation of the western series 'Johnny Nuance' after the 1959 season, CBS turned to the newspaper comic pages to fill its 8 pm Friday night slot. Debuting October 4, 1960, 'That Darn Sandy' featured chubby 9-year old Jay Carruthers in the title role of little Sandy Baxter, the pint-size troublemaker made popular by the Hal Langston comic strip. The series ran four seasons and added several catchphrases to the lexicon, like "gee golly whillikers, Mrs. McGrady!" and "I hope Mom and Dad can get me out of this one!" But by 1964 Carruthers had outgrown the role. At...

During the months of September and October 2003, former Clinton National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, made at least three trips to the National Archives, ostensibly for the purpose of briefing himself and his former boss, Bill Clinton, for their testimony before the 9/11 Commission. During the time that Berger was given access to highly classified material, he was seen stuffing documents into his trousers, his underwear, and even into his socks. By the time FBI agents arrived at Berger’s home and office he had already destroyed some of the stolen documents. Berger told FBI agents that he had “inadvertently” removed...

Election '08: What does the Clinton campaign's use of convicted and disgraced Sandy Berger as an adviser say about the judgment of someone who wants to be president of the United States? Berger's tie to Hillary through his service as national security adviser to husband Bill is not a compelling reason to seek his counsel. Neither is a Clinton friendship with Berger that goes back 35 years. This is a man who was charged and convicted of the unauthorized removal of classified material from the national archives, not someone with a sparkling resume of success. Clinton can pass off his...

Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Berger, who was fired from John Kerry´s presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton´s campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008. This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton´s admirers. “It shows poor judgment and a lack of regard for Berger´s serious misdeeds,” said law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University, who nonetheless called Clinton “by far the...

ONCE A CLINTON . . . September 15, 2007 -- For Hillary Clinton, it must seem like déjà vu all over again (as Yogi Berra might put it). But for voters, Camp Clinton's panicky move to refund $850,000 (temporarily, anyway) in donations linked to former fugitive con artist Norman Hsu hearkens back to hubby Bill's sordid fund-raising during his 1996 re-election campaign. And the funny money isn't the only ghost from the Clintons' past. Newsweek reports that the senator is relying for foreign-policy advice on a triumverate of her husband's top advisers - including Sandy "Sticky Fingers" Berger. **SNIP** Last...

It’s gotten very little mainstream media coverage (surprise!) but Hillary Clinton’s national security adviser is none other than Sandy “Docs In My Socks” Berger, who pleaded guilty to stealing and destroying classified documents related to the Clinton administration’s anti-terror efforts, immediately before Bill Clinton’s testimony to the 9/11 commission: Hirsh: Battle for the Best and Brightest. "The more experienced Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has relied largely on her husband and a triumvirate of senior officials from his presidency—former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke and former national-security adviser Sandy Berger (who tries to keep a low profile...

Archived Clinton Records May Go Public Soon BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun September 13, 2007 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/62549 An estimated 10,000 pages of daily schedules from Senator Clinton's tenure as first lady could be made public as soon as December, though Presidents Clinton and Bush could postpone the records' release, a National Archives official said yesterday. "Our hope is to get it done by the end of the year," the acting director of the Clinton Presidential Library, Emily Robison, told The New York Sun. She stressed that she was only referring to the review and redaction of...

You can tell the man who boozes, by the company he chooses ... and the pig got up and slowly walked away. The poem by Clarke Van Ness warns people that they will be judged by the actions of those with whom they choose to associate -- and even a pig has enough sense to walk away from disaster. Hillary Clinton has a big problem with her associates, and it's self-inflicted. Lost in the Norman Hsu shuffle, the news that Hillary has asked former Clinton national-security adviser Sandy Berger to join her campaign should cause even more questions about her...

The War on Weldon Gets Scarier, Part II © Jack Cashill WorldNetDaily.com August 21, 2007 This the second in a four part series detailing how and why a collaboration of Democratic activists conspired to unseat Pennsylvania congressman, Curt Weldon, in the November 2006 elections. Read Part 1. I met Congressman Curt Weldon for the first (and only) time in July 2006. He graciously consented to assist me in some research I was doing. I, in turn, was able to help connect some of the dots in the chain of forces aligned against him. All dots led to former national security...

The CIA's top leaders failed to use their available powers, never developed a comprehensive plan to stop al-Qaida and missed crucial opportunities to thwart two hijackers in the run-up to Sept. 11, the agency's own watchdog concluded in a bruising report released Tuesday. Completed in June 2005 and kept classified until now, the 19-page executive summary finds extensive fault with the actions of senior CIA leaders and others beneath them. "The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner," the CIA inspector general found. "They did not always work effectively and cooperatively," *snip* Yet the...

Iran: The Conspiracy that Wasn't July 20, 2007 The New York Post Amir Taheri . . . THOUGH IT DOES SEEM A FINE IDEA Esfandiari: Hardly a "foreign plotter." EVER since its creation in 1979, the Islamic Republic in Iran has been obsessed with conspiracy theories, especially "foreign plots" to topple it. This paranoia was demonstrated again Wednesday with the televised confessions of two U.S. citizens of Iranian origin arrested in Tehran and accused of working for the "Great Satan." To most Iranians who watched the sordid show, the two "enemies of Islam" seemed unlikely heroes of an international conspiracy....

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was sentenced Thursday to community service and probation and fined $50,000 for illegally removing highly classified documents from the National Archives and intentionally destroying some of them. Berger must perform 100 hours of community service and pay the fine as well as $6,905 for the administrative costs of his two-year probation, a district court judge ruled.>p> "I deeply regret the actions that I took at the National Archives two years ago, and I accept the judgment of the court," Berger said outside the courthouse after his sentencing.

The Incredible Judicial Disparity: Berger v. Libby June 8, 2007 at 5:23 am · Filed under Vox Populi If you needed any more proof that the American judicial system is completely and alarmingly subjective – beyond Paris Hilton's early release – look no further than the disparity between the sentences imposed on Sandy Berger and I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby. In Washington DC’s version of The Peoples’ Court, it would seem that the deciding factors in how severe a sentence one gets depends on political party affiliation, the severity of the crime be damned. This past Tuesday US District Judge Reggie...

USA Today: Did Sandy Berger 'Steal' Secret Docs? We're Debating That Still Posted by Ken Shepherd on June 8, 2007 - 10:24. You know, it seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. Stuffing secret documents down your pants and removing them from a secure room in a federal facility, that constitutes stealing.USA Today's "On Deadline" blog isn't sure, though. (bold/italics are USA Today's): Sandy Berger, the national security adviser under former President Clinton, was disbarred yesterday in the District of Columbia.The Washington Post says Berger agreed last month to give up his law license in order to avoid a prolonged investigation that...

BERGER'S ETERNAL SECRET May 27, 2007 -- It now looks like the American people will never learn how - and why - Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy "Sticky Fingers" Berger, stole and destroyed classified documents from the National Archives. That's because Berger - in a significant, but little-noticed, move - has short-circuited the last investigation into his sordid little burglary. As Byron York reports at National Review Online, Berger last week voluntarily surrendered his law license. Now, that's hardly as serious a step as it sounds, since - as Berger freely admitted - "I have not [practiced law] for...