Our Long National Nightmare of Sandy Berger and the Classified Documents

Don't miss the Wall Street Journal's must-read article, The Berger Files.

The full degree of Sandy Berger's treachery in stealing documents from the National Archives has not yet really sunk in for the general public, mainly because the left-leading mainstream media have done their best to downplay and then ignore the story.

The story needs to be told and retold until it sinks in.

Here's an excerpt from The Berger Files:

The more we learn about Sandy Berger's brilliant career as a document thief, the clearer it becomes that there is plenty we still don't know and may never learn. On Tuesday, the House Government Reform Committee released its report on Mr. Berger's pilfering of classified documents from the National Archives.

The committee's 60-page report makes it clear that Mr. Berger knew exactly what he was doing and knew that what he was doing was wrong. According to interviews with National Archives staff, Mr. Berger repeatedly arranged to be left alone with highly classified documents by feigning the need to make personal phone calls, and he used those moments alone with the files to stuff them in his pockets and briefcase.

One incident is particularly suggestive. By his fourth and final visit to review documents and prepare for testimony before the 9/11 Commission, the Archives staff had grown suspicious of how Mr. Berger was handling the documents, so they numbered each one he was given in pencil on the back of the document. When one of them--No. 217--was apparently removed from the files by Mr. Berger, the staff reprinted a copy and replaced it for his review. According to the report, Mr. Berger then proceeded to slip the second copy "under his portfolio also." In other words, he stole the same document twice.

Read the rest.

Sandy Berger was Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser and was also Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry's security adviser.  Despite his weak-kneed service as a National Security Adviser (he presided over the failure to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden despite having him in the sights and the acquisition of nuclear technology by North Korea), Sandy Berger stilled passed for a leading "star" in the Democratic Party leadership less than three years ago.

Berger did not accidentally remove classified documents from the National Archives.  He did so deliberately, with the apparent motive of covering up Berger's and Clinton's negligence in the war on terror in the years that led up to the September 11 attack.  There was no mere mistake here.  This was an intentional cover-up through criminal activity carried out directly by a man who not long ago was at the highest levels of the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party.

Let's consider just how deep was Berger's treachery.  For all the Watergate-related errors of former president Richard Nixon for which he was hated, he did not steal classified documents from the United States National Archives. 

If it was a "long national nightmare" for aides of Richard Nixon to break into a Democratic National Committee office, it was certainly a national nightmare for Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser to steal and destroy highly classified documents related to testimony before the 9/11 Commission from the National Archives of the United States of America.

If a Republican had stolen and destroyed such classified documents, hearings would still be going on in Congress and every day's news would bring fresh revelations, fresh demands for heads to roll, and additional charges or resignations.  The press would be beating down doors with questions like these:  What was in the classified documents Berger destroyed?  Were additional documents destroyed?  Is this the first time Berger destroyed classified documents without authorization?  Did anyone else participate in destroying classified documents without authorization?

Instead, there was brief coverage when the crime was first revealed; a virtual blackout on the story in the mainstream media until Beger pled guilty; and then more silence from most media outlets. 

It's not just a lack of intellectual curiosity.  It clearly is agenda-driven.  The degree of deceit that the mainstream media is willing to ignore as long as it involves Democratic Party operatives is frightening.  If these are the watchdogs we are trusting to guard the henhouse, now that Democrats are in charge of Congress the chicken coop will soon be bare.

The new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Henry Waxman, a Democrat, does not even include on the main committee website the staff report of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding Sandy Berger's theft of classified documents.  That is an ironic and grave and telling omission for the committee on "oversight" -- one that should fill Democrats with shame.  This is not oversight; it's "overlooking" and "deliberately sweeping under the rug."

Fortunately, the official Congressional committee staff report is available through a link from ranking Republican minority member, Thomas M. Davis, III.  Here is the full staff report of the U.S. House of Representatives 110th Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform entitled Sandy Berger's Theft of Unauthorized Documents: Unanswered Questions.  Skim the table of contents or read it all, if you wish.

Sandy Berger's theft of classified documents was no aberration.  Berger was the man Bill Clinton, and later John Kerry, asked the entire nation to trust.  Yet when Clinton learned what Berger had done, he made light of it.  Was Clinton shocked and dismayed by Berger's deceit?  Of course not.  Clinton's own track record for honesty was not exactly impressive.  It takes a lot for a President of the United States to be impeached for perjury before a grand jury and for obstruction of justice, and suspended from the practice of law for five years.

Sandy Berger stuffing classified documents into his pants because they contained inconvenient truths is just Bill Clinton, writ large.  Henry Waxman's failure to publish the report of his own Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in a place where the public could easily find it is just more of the same:  Hide the inconvenient truth.  Hide the inconvenient truth.  Hide the inconvenient truth.

For some in government, daily decisions revolve around about what's best for the nation.  If mistakes are made, they are honest mistakes. 

For others, honesty is not even on the radar as something to strive for.  It's not about honor or duty.  It's about power at any cost.

As a nation, we need to look in the mirror and figure out who we intend to be.

What kind of people are we willing to to elect?

~~~

Update 1/15/07:  Sandy Cass has more with What Did He Take and Why Did He Take It?

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Photo link.  Note: The words stealing and theft as used herein mean the crime to which Sandy Berger pled guilty and specific acts of intentional wrongdoing he has ackowledged, including knowingly removing and destroying classified documents from the National Archives.

Trackbacks at Wake Up America, Conservative Cat, Basil's Blog and Woman Honor Thyself

Comments

[Erik]

Wow! Is everything left or right to you? Left-right and Democrat-Republican controversies are nothing more than false dichotomies. Corruption is corruption and it should be pursued as such. I like your research, but find your approach unsettling and as biased or more biased than the media you appear to abhore.

Erik
http://search4beauty.blogspot.com

[Angel]

If a Republican had stolen and destroyed such classified documents, hearings would still be going on in Congress and every day's news would bring fresh revelations, fresh demands for heads to roll....great post Gina...ty so much for the link...the hypocrisy is overwhelming isnt it!!

[Keith]

Gina's blog is News... OPINION ... INSIGHT. The news media, not the editorial media, is supposed to be reporting NEWS. That's the difference. The examples of opinion being reported as news by the MSM are endless.

Yes, corruption is corruption and needs to be rooted out and punished. The point is that the press makes huge deals out of minor incidents on the right, and minimizes huge deals, like Sandy Berger's little indiscretion, on the left. Want an example of inequality in the press, just look at how they handled Trent Lott and Robert Byrd's comments on race... which one of these men is a former member of the KKK and is now President Pro Tempore (not a word about his views on the subject of race) and which one was forced out of a leadership position in the senate (after non-stop interpretive "reporting" of a comment he made at a birthday party honoring an old man)?

The press has sadly drifted far away from reporting into the world of opinion... Gina, on the other hand, is up front with her views and distinguishes between facts and opinions. I'll take honesty over deception any day.