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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,...

Samuel R. Berger's theft of documents from the National Archives compromised national security "much more than originally disclosed" and resulted in "incomplete and misleading" information being given to the September 11 commission, says the former chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.     "It is now also clear that Mr. Berger was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to compromise national security, apparently for his own convenience," Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, Virginia Republican, said yesterday.     "No one ever told the commission Mr. Berger had access to original documents he could have taken without detection."     In October, Mr. Davis led an...

Three From Clinton Administration Urge Disney to Cancel or Revise Sept. 11 MiniseriesBy JESSE McKINLEY Published: September 7, 2006 Three members of the Clinton administration have written the chairman of the Walt Disney Company, ABC’s parent, to complain that the network’s coming two-part miniseries “The Path to 9/11” is fraught with factual errors and fabrications. The letters ask that the five-hour movie, scheduled for broadcast Sunday and Monday, be either edited for accuracy or canceled, and ABC gave a small indication yesterday that some changes might be made. One of the officials, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, said in...

Proving that he’s just as adept at stuffing an election candidate’s coffers as he is at stuffing his own socks, Sandy Berger hosted an "almost secret" Washington fund-raiser for a recently retired three-star vice admiral last night. Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr, as the Village People would say, is "In the Navy". And when you want to take an Able Danger Congressman Curt Weldon down, what better way than to send in the Navy? Berger, dubbed "Sandy Burglar" by radio meister Rush Limbaugh, gained notoriety for trying to stuff classified documents into his socks and other attire. The man, who...

Several members of President Bill Clinton’s national security team are hosting a Washington fund-raiser tonight for retired Vice Adm. Joseph Sestak Jr., the Democrat running against U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon in November. Officials at Sestak’s campaign headquarters in Media will not comment on the event, though an invitation sent out to potential donors and obtained by the Daily Times lists Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger as a host. "As a general rule, campaigns don’t comment on fund-raisers or people who hold them," said Sestak’s campaign chairman, Myles Duffy. Berger, who served as Clinton’s second-term national security adviser, pleaded guilty last year...

WASHINGTON, March 31 - Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal misdemeanor charge and give up his security clearance for three years after removing classified material from a government archive, the Justice Department and associates of Mr. Berger said today. A well-respected figure in foreign policy circles for many years, Mr. Berger has also agreed to pay a $10,000 fine as part of an agreement reached with the Justice Department in recent days after months of quiet negotiations, the associates said. He is expected to enter his...

President Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, rejected four plans to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, worrying once that if the plans failed and al Qaeda launched a counterattack, "we're blamed." According to the September 11 commission's 567-page report, released Thursday, Mr. Berger was told in June 1999 that U.S. intelligence agents were confident about bin Laden's presence in a terrorist training camp called Tarnak Farms in Afghanistan. Mr. Berger's "hand-written notes on the meeting paper," the report says, showed that Mr. Berger was worried about injuring or killing civilians located near the camp. Additionally, "If [bin Laden]...

7 minutes ago To: National Desk, Political Reporter Contact: Phil Singer of the Kerry-Edwards Campaign, 202-464-2800 WASHINGTON, July 20 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) released the following statement today on Samuel R. Berger: "Sandy Berger is my friend, and he has tirelessly served this nation with honor and distinction. I respect his decision to step aside as an adviser to the campaign until this matter is resolved objectively and fairly." Paid for by John Kerry for President, Inc.