Decision ‘08

Disgraceful

Most likely, you’ve seen this story by now, but I’ve been very busy of late and it’s been hard to find time to update and link everything I want to.

Disgraceful is truly the word, though, for the behavior of Sandy Berger, who will wear the shame of this for the rest of his life, I would imagine:

A former national security adviser to President Clinton, Samuel Berger, stashed highly classified documents under a trailer in downtown Washington in order to evade detection by National Archives personnel, a government report released yesterday said.

The report from the inspector-general for the National Archives, Paul Brachfeld, said Mr. Berger executed the cloak-and-dagger maneuver in October 2003 while taking a break from reviewing Clinton-era documents in connection with the work of the so-called September 11 commission.

“Mr. Berger exited the archive onto Pennsylvania Avenue,” the report says, recounting the story the former national security chief told investigators. “He did not want to run the risk of bringing the documents back in the building. … He headed toward a construction area on 9th Street. Mr. Berger looked up and down the street, up into the windows of the archives and the DOJ, and did not see anyone. He removed the documents from his pockets, folded the notes in a ‘V’ shape, and inserted the documents in the center. He walked inside the construction fence and slid the documents under a trailer.”

According to the report, Mr. Berger said he retrieved the documents after leaving the archives complex for the evening and took the papers to his office. It is not clear how long the documents were unattended at the construction site, but the report suggests it was a few hours, at most.

The former national security chief said he cut three documents up in his office and discarded them in the trash. Mr. Berger returned two other documents after archivists notified him that some records were missing, but his efforts to retrieve the others from the trash collector were unsuccessful.

Ask yourself this, though; how likely is it that Berger would have done this on his own initiative? I’m just thinking out loud here…and so is Jay Nordlinger…there’s more to this story than we’ll ever know, unless someone publishes a tell-all some day…

2 Responses to “Disgraceful”

1 daveinboca Says:
December 21st, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Berger removed these documents because they had personal notations that he and other senior Clintoon types had scribbled in the margins or by underlining.

Like his boss Billy Jeff, Berger is a liar through and through, and guilty of a felony that should bar him from classified documents for life. He is a criminal. He should be jailed for criminal malfeasance. Saddam knew how to treat traitors like this eff-up.

Of course, the NYT won’t cover this. It isn’t news unless it hurts Bush and Repubs.
2 Colin Says:
December 21st, 2006 at 6:31 pm
Dave,

This is kind of off-topic, but relates to your last sentence. Why do we need the NYT to hurt Bush and the Republicans, when those of us on the right are so good at hurting them (Bush and the Repubs) ourselves?